Lauren Michael – Carcc Dev

People Network Calls to Ring in the New Year!

Mark your calendars for the below People Network Calls in January (Zoom details at the end). For handy calendar entries, please try the CaRCC Events Calendar. We’d also like to highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators, as these events touch many, if not all, in our community.

Additionally, note that we are repeating the CaRCC Parade this year, an opportunity to learn about CaRCC and to hear directly from group coordinators on updates and advances over the past year.

Welcome to February 2021!

Please see below for People Network calls this month, and make sure to join in! (For handy calendar entries, see the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, February 2, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Casual Tuesday Community Roundtable

We want to take this month to hear a bit about what everyone is up to. This session will be a general sharing and free-form brainstorming session. We’d love to hear 3-5 minutes about projects that people are working on currently or new developments. If you’re stuck on something, feel free to bring that forward and get advice from the brain trust. We can also make breakout rooms for deeper discussions that arise.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, February 11, 1pm ET (12pm CT/11am MT/10am PT)

Supporting Researchers with Containers

People Network Calls in the New Year

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and are able to join People Network calls in January! (For handy calendar entries, see the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, January 5, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Python for Big Data

Presenter: Bala Desinghu, Rutgers University

Python is a popular programming language for developing software and data science applications. Its popularity stems from many factors such as simplicity, readability, portability, etc. As such, Python is slow compared to C or Fortran and it does not manage memory well. These limitations in speed and memory management may not be significant when analyzing small data sets, but it becomes a bottleneck when analyzing big data sets. Techniques based on vectorization, parallelization, just in time compilation, and distributed task executions have been widely adopted by the Python community to address these challenges associated with big data. This presentation will address a few techniques suitable for large scale data analysis and answer the following questions: What to do when the data set size exceeds the available physical memory? How to speed up the data analysis? How to distribute the workloads when doing machine learning for big data sets?

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, January 14, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

All about CaRCC (… beyond the R-F Track)

Presenters:
Tom Cheatham, University of Utah
Lauren Michael, University of Wisconsin
Dana Brunson, Internet2
Patrick Schmitz, Semper Cogito Consulting

Join the December People Network Calls, including a Party!

We’ll have just three community calls in December (to avoid conflicts with winter vacation plans), including a cross-network party! (For handy calendar entries, see the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

CaRCC End-Of-Year Party

Thursday, December 10, 1-2:30pm ET / 12-1:30pm CT / 11am-12:30pm MT / 10-11:30am PT

We’ll use the usual Zoom room, and Zoom’s new support for self-select breakout rooms, with rooms designated for following topics: Main Room: Greetings, Hors D’oeuvres, and Games; SC After-Party; People Network Brainstorm (share your ideas!); All About CaRCC Working and Interest Groups.

Make sure you’ve updated your Zoom client since September 21 (to version 5.3.0 or higher).

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, December 1, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Creating a standard Vocabulary: the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)

David Anderson from the National Library of Medicine will present on the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). The UMLS is a set of files and software that brings together many health and biomedical vocabularies and standards to enable interoperability between computer systems. David will provide a basic overview of the UMLS including its history and use cases.

Emerging Centers Track (third Wednesdays)

Wednesday, December 16, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT

NSF Program Directors – Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) NSF 21-528

You will not want to miss this call! The NSF CC* program is a perfect program for emerging centers to begin developing their research partnerships and center resources.

Kevin L. Thompson, NSF CISE/OAC and Deepankar (Deep) Medhi, NSF CISE/CNS, will share information about the recently released CC* Program solicitation and answer any questions you may have. Jen Schopf, Director of EPOC, will then answer some commonly asked questions that EPOC has heard from previous submitters to the CC* program. She will briefly explain how the EPOC program experts can assist you in the development of your proposal.

We encourage previous recipients of the award to share any lessons learned or tips and tricks for developing a successful proposal.

People Network Calls in November; End-of-Year Party in December

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

CaRCC End-Of-Year Party (Save the date!)

Thursday, December 10, 1-2:30pm ET / 12-1:30pm CT / 11am-12:30pm MT / 10-11:30am PT

We’ll use Zoom’s new support for self-select breakout rooms, with rooms designated for several topics, including opportunities to learn about and get involved with CaRCC Working Groups and People Network engagement, and a room for an SC20 ‘after-party’ discussion. Make sure you’ve recently updated your Zoom client (to version 5.3.0 or higher) to take full advantage.

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, November 3, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Teaching Data Skills Remotely: Check-in

This month is a check-in discussion about teaching research data skills remotely 6+ months into the effort. What have you learned about teaching R, Python, SQL, and other data programming languages and skills online? What resources (technical and people) are required to be successful? What have you changed from your initial efforts? How have your experiences influenced your thinking about workshops and training for the future? What training do you provide other than live workshops? Any experiments in remote formats? We’ll have a panel of folks willing to briefly share their experiences, but there will also be an open discussion time to share ideas and resources and ask questions.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, November 12, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Join Us for October People Network Calls

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, October 6, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

The Power of Electronic Lab Notebooks

Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) are a digital tool to help address the increasing concerns around data. Researchers are concerned about reproducibility and granting agencies are concerned about data management and availability. Labs are also collaborating with people around the world. Paper just doesn’t cut it anymore. With ELNs, researchers can capture notes about their experiments and attach the generated data files directly to them. Then, they can give their collaborators access to the data by sharing the notebook with them. Plus, many notebooks allow for metadata generation and have advanced search capabilities, something that paper notebooks cannot do.

Join us to hear about the general concept of ELNs, some of the popular products on the market today, what supporting them looks like, and a bit about how to obtain one for your university.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, October 8, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Something Different for August – Joint Track Calls!

For August, we’ll do something a little different, with two opportunities for cross-track conversation. (These are in lieu of track-specific calls, which are otherwise canceled for August.)

PEARC20 After-Party: August 4th @ 1:00pm-2:00pm ET

(at the usual Data-Facing track meeting time)

Be sure to join at the top of the hour to finalize topic-based breakout rooms. We’ll use a Blackboard Collaborate session, which has a feature for breakout rooms that participants can move between, freely. Potential breakout topics suggested by our track coordinators are listed below:

Conference Feedback
RCD Professionalization
New Applications Tech
New Systems/Services Tech
Communicating about RCD Resources
Review of Sessions about CaRCC Activities
Happy Hour (whatever that means to you)

The Blackboard Collaborate session and a Google Doc for notes have been shared via email to the entire People Network, as well as a calendar invite. If you did not receive these and would like to join the call, please contact help@carcc.org

Service Models for Researcher-Purchased Computing and Storage: August 20th @ 1:00pm-2:30pm ET

(at the usual Systems-Facing track meeting time)

Description: The term “condo” is an umbrella term for an increasingly common family of service models for research computing and data storage in higher education. However, the way this design pattern manifests can vary greatly from one institution to another, and there’s no single answer for the right way to implement computing and data capacity for-purchase. The purpose of this call will be to discuss approaches to researcher-purchased capacity from a variety of perspectives, including systems professionals, support and facilitation professionals, researchers, and other stakeholders. Discussion areas will include ownership models, funding and purchase strategies, user experience/policy considerations, hosting and operational support, etc. Discussion will consist of a panel format with a series of short site introductions by representatives of diverse service models, followed by a longer Q&A. To accommodate the multiple perspectives and facets, this call will be 90 minutes long.

Zoom coordinates (usual) have been distributed via email to the People Network email list, or can be requested via help@carcc.org.

Join Us for July People Network Calls

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries please try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, July 7, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

What data to keep? — Making decisions about confocal microscopy data

Presenters: Huajin Wang, Librarian/ Program Director for Open Science & Data Collaborations, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and Susan Ivey, Research Data & Infrastructure Librarian, NC State University Libraries

As the quantity and volume of data produced by research increases exponentially, it has become increasingly challenging to preserve and reproduce data. Traditionally, researchers have often created their own workflows and their own data storage solutions, but this is no longer sustainable, making collaborations and data sharing challenging. On the other hand, data librarians are tasked with helping researchers share and preserve their data, but understanding specific types of data and how to maximize reuse can be difficult. Large and complex data exist in a variety of disciplinary areas, and one example is confocal microscopy data. In April 2019, the Data Curation Network held their 2nd Data Curators Workshop at Johns Hopkins University. Susan Ivey, Amy Koshoffer, Gretchen Sneff, and Huajin Wang formed a group to address many of these issues associated with confocal microscopy data. During this July’s Data-Facing Call, we’ll go into detail about common workflow and challenges that researchers face when working with confocal microscopy data and give an overview of our “Confocal Microscopy Data: A Primer for Curators,” which we created to help those tasked with curating this type of data. We’ll also present some of the use cases that we used to inform this work and invite the audience to think about how to best preserve and share these data.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, July 9, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Big Data, Big Compute Solutions, a community discussion

People Network Meetings in June

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries, see the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, June 11th, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Topic: How are we doing? A discussion on philosophies/culture, approaches, and tools for understanding creation of knowledge, metrics, and impact

Our recent calls, from handling support requests via various tools/modes, to remote work for support/consultations and training, to working with your (remote) team in this unprecedented time, have been an unexpected but fruitful journey. This month we close the loop: from your overall efforts of the team — both internal- and external-facing work — and via processes and tools, what is your philosophy on and how are you measuring your activities and impact? What information do you gather around internal- or researcher-facing activities? Are you using approaches or tools that harness NLP, ML, or predictive analytics? And do you have specific goals that you strive towards? Join us and share.

Emerging Centers Track (third Wednesdays)

Wednesday, June 17, 12pm ET/ 11am CT/ 10am MT/ 9am PT/ 7am HT

People Network Virtual Meetings in May!

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings.
(For handy calendar entries please try the CaRCC Events Calendar. NEW Zoom call details distributed via email!)

Special Multi-Track Call, May 20: Student Workers: Community Panel

Data-Facing Track, Emerging-Centers Track, Systems-Facing Track

Wednesday, May 20, 12pm ET/ 11am CT/ 10am MT/ 9am PT/ 7am HT
Note: The Data-Facing and Systems-Facing calls will NOT happen at their normal times in May; please join the joint call above instead.

Join us for a community panel on effectively incorporating student workers into research computing and data groups. Topics will include: hiring, development, structuring student positions, work assignments, challenges, managing remote work, and training. Bring your questions for the panelists.

Panelists: Amy Neeser (University of California Berkeley); Tony Elam (University of Kentucky); Colby Witherup Wood and Alper Kinaci (Northwestern University); Amy Work and Stephanie Labou (University of California San Diego); Betsy Hillery (Purdue University); Joanne Luciano (University of the Virgin Islands); Brian Haymore (University of Utah); Troy Baer (OSC)

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, May 14th, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Title: Working with Your Team Remotely

Description: Let’s continue the discussion around remote support and how you make it work. This month, we’ll focus on how you work with your team – how have your collaboration objectives with your team shifted given our work-at-home reality? How effective have they been? What would you do differently? And what has surprised you? Add your comments and questions to the call document in advance of the start of the meeting or anytime throughout the call!