Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)
Plenary session hosted by the Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)
Tuesday, March 2, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT
PLENARY: Using Data to Benchmark your Research Computing and Data Program: The RCD Capabilities Model and Community Dataset
Presenters: Claire Mizumoto, UC San Diego & Patrick Schmitz, Semper Cognito Consulting
Join us during the regular data-facing slot for the first (and hopefully not last) People Network plenary session! Claire Mizumoto and Patrick Schmitz from the Capabilities Model working group will present the results from the first community dataset. These assessments were completed using the 1.0 version of the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model (RCD CM), over a period of several months in the Spring and Summer of 2020. This Community Dataset provides insight into the current state of support for RCD across the community and in a number of key sub-communities.
Across science, engineering, social sciences, and the humanities, every university depends upon research computing and data (RCD) professionals and infrastructure. The rapid evolution and diversification of RCD infrastructure, services, and support poses significant challenges to academic institutions as they try to effectively assess and plan for the growing needs of researchers. Many institutions would also like to assess their capabilities in comparison to peers. The lack of a shared vocabulary to describe the various aspects of RCD support hinders coordinated efforts to advance support of and for researchers. These challenges are especially acute for smaller and emerging RCD support organizations, which often lack experience supporting RCD and have limited resources to develop an analysis framework for strategic planning. To address these gaps, a collaborative team developed a Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model that allows an organization to self-evaluate across a range of RCD services. The Model provides structured input to guide strategic planning, leveraging a defined and shared community vocabulary and enabling benchmarking relative to peer institutions.
Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)
Thursday, March 11, 1pm ET (12pm CT/11am MT/10am PT)
All About Orienting Researchers to Research Computing + Data Resources
This month, we’re exploring the many angles and approaches our community takes to orienting researchers to research computing and data (RCD) resources. Who are our target audiences and how do we connect with them? What orientation processes work well? What are the challenges? As there is a huge diversity of both researchers (faculty, students, scholars to be oriented) and resources (services, capabilities and expertise on which to orient them), we will have a small panel of speakers from different RCD contexts share their experiences, with time for questions and comments from everyone on the call.
Presenters: TBD. Email Claire Mizumoto (claire@ucsd.edu) by March 2 if you are interested in sharing your experience.
Emerging Centers Track (third Wednesdays)
Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT
An Emerging Centers community call to highlight different institution’s experiences in supporting, promoting, and advancing RCD
Panelists: Jason Wells, Bentley University; Doug Jennewein, University of South Dakota and Arizona State University; Lauren Michael, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Susan Ivey, Research Data & Infrastructure Librarian, NC State University Libraries, leads a panel of Emerging Centers ‘Experts’ who will share their experiences and lessons learned which may be applicable to the development of coordinated approaches to supporting RCS/cyberinfrastructure in YOUR organization. These ‘experts’ from our community, who have different, yet similar, experiences, and come from a variety of institutions and will address questions such as:
- Can you describe the processes for planning, developing, and implementing a coordinated approach/model to supporting RCD/ cyberinfrastructure at your organization?
- Did you collaborate and coordinate with any existing units when planning?
- What does the reporting structure look like for new positions (how did you decide which units these positions would be placed, for example)? How did you prioritize needs and requesting of new staffing resources?
- What types of advisory and/or governance structures are in place?
Systems-Facing Track (third Thursdays)
Thursday, March 18, 1p ET/ 12a CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT
Enabling Science Collaborations with Secure and Flexible Service Deployment
Modern research requires collaboration across institutions, facilities and scientific domains. SLATE helps build multi-institution cyberinfrastructure using secure and declarative deployment tools which leverage Kubernetes. SLATE also enables a federated operations model that gives cyberinfrastructure developers and operators the flexibility to innovate at scale, expanding the reach of domain specific science gateways and multi-site research platforms. We’ll describe the development and operations model with examples of cyberinfrastructure in production today using SLATE.
Presented by: Rob Gardner – Univ of Chicago, OSG, SLATE
Interested participants need not subscribe to a particular track to participate in calls. However, additional details for track members, including notes documents and any pre-call activities, will be distributed ahead of the call via the email lists and other communication channels within each track.
The CaRCC People Network, aims “to foster, build and grow an inclusive community (termed the “People Network”) for campus CI, research computing and data professionals.” If you have received this email NOT via CaRCC’s People Network, and you would like to join the People Network, which includes Researcher-facing, Data-facing, Systems-facing, and other tracks, please fill in the form at http://bit.ly/join_carcc_people_network.
All calls will take place within the same Zoom room distributed via email. Please join the People Network (link just above) or contact help@carcc.org for details.