This summer, I attended the N8 CIR RSE Annual Meetup. I was there primarily to discuss my SSI Fellowship, where I am continuing the conversation around mental health in our community. However, it was also an opportunity to meet other RSEs from across the N8 network, find out about some of the work they’re doing, and collaborate on a range of projects and challenges.
About the N8 CIR
The N8 is a collaboration between the eight research-intensive universities in the north of England, a partnership that includes my home institution, Newcastle University. The N8 CIR is a Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research, focusing on “CIR methods, skills and facilities to reinforce the N8 Universities’ strategic research objectives”.
There is currently a focus on addressing several challenges in the research software community. These include personal challenges, such as mental health; social challenges, including inclusion, diversity, recognition, and isolation; organisational challenges, like funding and career progression; and technical challenges, including maintenance, green RSE, and working with non-technical teams. I had previously given a talk about mental health at an online event, which was part of a series discussing the challenges as a precursor to this meetup. You can read more about this on the N8’s RSE Community Challenges wiki.
My talk
I had a ten-minute slot to talk about my SSI Fellowship work. I told the story of how I burned out and had an anxiety attack after becoming a father in lockdown, and how that inspired me to apply for the Fellowship. I then summarised my work so far, including the launch of the ConveRSE website, and repeated the call for blog posts and other contributions to the project.
I presented a longer version of the talk at RSECon25, but this was an excellent opportunity to discuss my work with the community. With 40 people in attendance, it was one of the largest audiences I’ve presented to so far, and it seemed to go well; the response was positive and encouraging.
The rest of the event
The opening talks, which included Oscar Seip discussing the SSI and its activities, were followed by a series of lightning talks. Highlights included Ava Dean talking about how she uses Notion to organise her work, which was particularly interesting given my involvement in the Task Management for Humans as Self Care project. I also particularly enjoyed Samantha Finnigan nerding out about how she did some hardware and software hacking to solve a problem with the Carpentries Offline project, which included some fun props. All the talks were excellent, covering a broad range of interesting topics.
After the talks, there were some discussion sessions and opportunities for networking. In our group, we discussed some of the challenges faced by the community and explored ways to address them. I also had a number of interesting conversations about mental health, the importance of the work we’re doing with the ConveRSE project and even had some people volunteer to share their stories and tips on the blog.
Final Thoughts
It was my first time attending this meetup. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth and accessibility of the talks and conversations. I’m delighted that I was able to attend and that I could not only encourage people to get involved in supporting better mental health in the community, but also make some progress towards addressing some of the other challenges we all face.