Posted by d.barclay on 12 May 2023 - 11:30am 

By Emily Delva, ELIXIR-UK.

This article was first posted on the ELIXIR-UK website.

From the 2nd to the 4th of May, the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) ran their Collaborations Workshop for 2023. This year’s event had the theme ‘Sustainable Career Development for those in the research software community: looking after your software, your career, and yourself.’ which encompassed technical, career and personal development. The event was hybrid, with those in person being based in Manchester, UK.

This event saw researchers, developers, funders, policy makers, educators and more get together to explore best practices and the future of research software. 

On the second day, our DaSH Community Manager Xènia Pérez Sitjà (University of Bradford) and Shoaib Sufi (SSI), who is also a Fellowship Advisor, co-facilitated a workshop alongside Lieke de Boer and Carlos Martinez-Ortiz (both Netherlands eScience Center) titled ‘Career development through champions programmes’.
The facilitators in this workshop highlighted the importance of champions, and brought real examples from their current community champion programmes to the table. Read more about their workshop here.

Xènia is a member of the Steering Committee that worked on this event, and had received an invite from our SSI colleagues to attend.

A handful of our DaSH Fellows attended the event, which was a fantastic opportunity for them to network and attend insightful workshops especially with the theme ‘Sustainable Career Development’. Emma Karoune (Alan Turing Institute) who is a Fellow from the first DaSH Cohort facilitated a session on the second day with colleague Anne Steele (Alan Turing Institute) titled ‘Research Infrastructure Roles: Perspectives, Paths, and Lived Experiences‘, during which they explored career paths and lived experiences of those who work in and around research infrastructure. Read more details about their session here.

ELIXIR-UK’s newest member, Open Life Science (OLS) hosted a workshop titled ‘Open Life Science: helping you care for yourself and your community’, this session introduced the attendees to the importance of self care and wellbeing within the Open Life Science curriculum and was led by Patricia Herterich and Mayya Sundukova. The online mentorship and cohort-based training that OLS provides allows participants to grow and sustain communities around their topics in the workplace. Find out more about OLS joining ELIXIR-UK here.