Research Computing Network Launch
About 30 people from across the University attended the Launch Event for the St Andrews Research Computing Network, hosted by the Library in the Lawrence Levy Studio in the Byre Theatre over lunchtime on 14th June. The main purpose of the event was to bring together as many people as possible who develop software for Research at the University and to determine how we should proceed in order that members get the maximum possible benefit from the Network.
Following an introduction touching on the motivations for the setting up of the Network and how we reached this point, three members gave presentations on technologies they use as part of their contribution to research at the University. Rob Schick of CREEM gave a presentation titled “Using R, RStudio, and git to Support a Reproducible Research Workflow”, involving a live demonstration of the several aspects of his workflow. Swithun Crowe of the Library’s Research Computing team gave a presentation titled “Become a Solr power user: getting the most out of Solr”, covering, amongst other things, the conceptual differences with relational databases and some of the ways in which it is possible to interact with a Solr index. Where these two talks covered very different technologies, likely to be used in very different fields, “Vim: Why Not?” by Ken Munro of Psychology and Neuroscience covered a near-universal topic for developers – the (choice of) text editor.
Following a bite to eat and a chance for attendees to chat amongst themselves, we reconvened for the group discussion. It was heartening to hear a good deal of enthusiasm for the Network initiative from the attendees and several key points emerged. There was a good deal of enthusiasm for further, more focused events, including training in various areas and events targeted at particular audiences e.g. new PGRs. It was felt that there were services which the University could provide which would be of benefit to developers, including a GitHub-like repository. More detailed requirements will need to be gathered in this area, and it is not currently clear what it may be feasible to provide. Finally, it emerged that although we’ve managed to reach quite a few people – at the time of writing, the Network mailing list has more than 70 subscribers – we’re not reaching everyone we need to. Some schools are under-represented, and it’s clear that more needs to be done to reach PGRs.
If you’d like to join the mailing list, please sign up – it’s the best way to keep up with announcements and events relevant to developers of software for research at St Andrews.
Thanks to all who attended and whose enthusiasm made the event a success. Particular thanks to our speakers, and to Alex Konovalov and Roman Spesyvtsev, both of whom had been scheduled to speak but were unfortunately unable to – though we still managed to find time a bit tight! Thanks also to the various staff at the Library and the Byre who helped make the event possible.