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The "little book of software struggles" and other great ideas from our Fellows

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Aleksandra Pawlik

Aleksandra Pawlik

SSI fellow

Posted on 19 June 2013

Estimated read time: 3 min
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The "little book of software struggles" and other great ideas from our Fellows

Posted by a.pawlik on 19 June 2013 - 9:50am

By Aleksandra Pawlik.

fellows-meeting-06-2013_1.jpg

Every six months we meet with our Fellows to discuss their experiences of Fellowship programme. Last week's Fellows' meeting had a very busy schedule! Almost 24 intensive hours (with a break for a good night sleep) filled with discussions, ideas and experiences.

The main theme of the meeting was the anthology about software in different research disciplines. The original idea for the book came from Caitlin Bentley. The anthology will be a collection of essays by the Fellows presenting their views and experiences in using the software in their respective disciplines and research communities. This is the first time we are publicly announcing the idea! It is still work in progress but the meeting allowed us to develop a plan for the anthology, including the framework for writing and editing the essays.

Everyone at the meeting was asked to summarise the anthology in one sentence. Probably the most popular summary was The little book of software struggles, which  proposed by Melody Sandells. Whilst the anthology might be about struggles with software, the Software Sustainability Institute is all about finding ways to help.

The meeting started with a recap of the Fellows' activities, which included many highlights such as attending conferences and workshops as well as organising events like Software Carpentry bootcamps. Fellows' reports from the conferences and workshops are published on our intelligence webpage.

The six-monthly meeting turned out to be an excellent opportunity for the Fellows to ask each other questions, comment on their experiences and provide advice and suggestions. The Fellows discussed suitable tools and methodologies to approach particular problems, and many useful contacts were shared. As we've found in the past, bringing people together to talk - even for a relatively short period of time - is very productive. A number of interesting topics were raised, such as Computational Anthropology, expanding the user community for your software and several others, which the Fellows will discuss in posts on our blog.

The topic of research software licensing and intellectual property started a heated discussion. It was closely related to our recent post about Do you know who owns your Intellectual Property? and our plans for the Great Licenceathon.

Ten Fellows attended the meeting in Manchester: Caitlin Bentley, Nick Pierce, Stephan Lautenschlager, Barry Rowlingson, Robin Wilson, Adam Crymble, Melody Sandells, Richard Abel, Kayla Iacovino and Cefn Hoile. More information about the Fellows can be found on the Fellows biography page. The meeting was hosted by Shoaib Sufi and Aleksandra Pawlik. We were also joined by Neil Chue Hong and, for a short while, by Carole Goble.

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