On the travel request page, you will be asked for reasons why you think a conference is of interest to the Software Sustainability Institute. On the conference report page, you will be asked to provide a list of the conference highlights and a more in-depth report about the any significant discoveries or people that you met. Below, we've asked one of our staff members to provide some sample responses that show the level of detail we're looking for.

Help

If you have any questions, please contact us at agents@software.ac.uk.

Travel requests

The majority of the travel request page is dedicated to basic information about the conference you want to attend. You should ensure that you are familiar with the terms and conditions before making a travel request.

The important question on the travel request page is How is the conference relevant to the work of the Software Sustainability Institute? It is the answer to this question that will most likely dictate whether the Agents network will cover your expenses.

How is the conference relevant to the work of the Software Sustainability Institute?

The Big Computing Group (BCG) brings together users and providers of big computing from across the World. This is a community of people who either use software to conduct research or advise researchers who use software. The earth sciences, physics and life sciences feature prominently in the research conducted by people who use the BCG, although many other research fields are also represented.

The conference brings together the decision makers from the BCG – everyone from the Director, the managers of each of the main contributing projects and a lot of the people that work for them.

I have been invited to talk about recent work, so there will be the opportunity for me to describe the work of the Software Sustainability Institute. There are many opportunities for meeting new people and learning about the latest developments: there is an exhibition area, workshops, tutorials and two conference dinners.
 

Conference reports

Highlights

In this question, we're looking for a list of the main discoveries that were made at the conference and any follow-up actions that the Institute should complete to make the most of the information you have collected.

1. Software sustainability appears to be gaining importance at the highest levels of the BCG organisation
2. There is significant interest from venture capitalists in commercialising research from the BCG organisation
3. Group A has recently been awarded funding to publicise their work and appears to be having considerable success in doing so
4. Met four new contacts with an interest in research software

Conference report

The conference report is the whole focus of the Agents network. We're looking for anything between 400-1000 words describing the people, research areas, technologies and funding opportunities that appeared particularly important.

There has been a definite shift in the BCG towards sustaining the software used in the community. In fact, the term software sustainability cropped up in a number of the presentations and plenaries at the conference. BCG’s Director, person A, was the first person to mention the term, but he didn’t go into much detail. However, Person B, who is responsible for bringing together the different software packages used for big computing, spent the majority of his plenary on the subject of software sustainability. It would appear that there might be the opportunity to provide advice here, so I met with person B and gave him my contact details. In addition, I talked to Person C, who has been tasked with the creation of a repository for all of BCG’s software. BCG hope that this will make their software available to the widest possible audience. I talked to person C and asked them to get in contact with the Software Sustainability Institute once the repository is online.

It appears that there is significant interest in commercialising the research being produced by the BCG community. There were two venture capital firms – Firm A and Firm B – exhibiting at the conference. It appears that it is early days in the commercialisation of BCG research, but there certainly appears to be money available from both private and government sources. I talked to person C who works for Firm A. He is interested in producing tutorials that will help researchers learn about running a commercial venture. Person C is interested in anyone who can help publicise these tutorials. It would appear that there is interested here for the Institute, because commercialisation is one route to sustainability.

During my presentation I showed the overview slide for the Software Sustainability Institute. This led to a few questions about the Institute – mainly about the services offered by the Institute and whether it could work with researchers only within the UK. I answered these questions and directed people to the Institute’s website.

Group A has recently been granted new funding which they are using to widen the support for Big Computing between universities across Europe and the World. It appears that they are trying to garner attention for their work by investing some of their money into projects that will capture the public’s attention. Namely, they have used Big Computing to re-create the voices of opera singers from the past who were never recorded. This is interesting work, and it appears to be successful in capturing attention. I talked to person D, project manager at Group A, who told me that the group will soon be featured on national radio in the UK.