Reflections on RSE conferences
Some years ago, a really cool badge appeared on my GitHub profile, because some projects I had contributed to were part of the Artic Code Vault. Little did I know at that time that I would get very close to the Artic Code Vault in 2023 while attending a solar physics conference in Svalbard, near the north Pole. And this, attending conferences in cool places, is a perk for some of us in academia.
The primary benefits of attending conferences, summer schools, hackathons, and meetings, include learning and sharing with different researchers, both collectively and personally. Additionally, one has the bonus of travelling to places one might never have imagined, as I did in Svalbard. While attending these events can be tiring, I usually gain inspiration, new insights, and meet kind people making it an enriching experience.
RSE conferences
For many of us in the RSE world, our backgrounds tend to be multidisciplinary, as are the events we participate in. The meetings that I have attended in the past were mainly in astrophysics, computational sciences and HPC. It was not until late 2020 when I attended virtually my first RSE event with the Nordic RSEs. I found there a nice community and was even able to connect with RSEs to collaborate later on trainings based on Code Refinery and Carpentries. Interacting with other RSEs can be a valuable way to keep each other up-to-date and hear from one another how to tackle technical and social challenges.
deRSE24
This year I attended my first RSE deRSE24 conference in person, in Würzburg. I participated in the volunteer program since it is a good way to network and get to know the deRSE community. There was a full program and although transportation strikes were announced, the conference was well attended. There were a lot of interesting talks, posters, demos and dynamic workshops that would appeal to different domain scientists, different programming language developers, and for broader applications.
RSECon24
The leading RSE conference is RSECon in the UK. I have attended virtually this year and last year. Many of the talks left me feeling re-energized and the program includes a wide-range of topics with fresh perspectives. This year I particularly enjoyed the “Environmental impact and social responsibility in large scale HPC services: ARCHER2 case study” talk, and seeing more sessions on sustainability like “Green RSEs”.
US-RSE24
I recently came back from my last official RSE conference hosted by the US-RSE in Albuquerque, NM. It was a motivating event with a very friendly community. I decided to sign up to volunteer for one session and get involved in the mentoring program, both as a mentee and as a mentor. Both experiences were enriching, especially the mentoring program. The agenda was also comprehensive, and I enjoyed the discussion and collective component of workshops and BoFs, e.g. “Brainstorming Strategies for Cultivating Successful and Collaborative RSE Teams”.