Edinburgh Research Software Engineering (RSE) meeting at Edinburgh College of Art

The meeting was attended by around 50 participants, an interesting mix of researchers, software developers, systems admins and research support/management staff, from the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University. It is intended to keep these gatherings open to all Higher Education and research institutions of the Edinburgh area.

As attendees came in they self-identified in the Venn diagram below by adding a sticker to indicate where they saw themselves. This helps to provide an understanding of the base membership of the community we are trying to build.

Neil Chue Hong, Director of the Software Sustainability Istitute, gave a presentation about the wider RSE context in the UK; Fraser Muir, CIO of the College of Art, Humanities and Social Sciences, presented an overview of what is going on in terms of digital research, software development and informatics support in his College (whose size is such that if it were to stand alone as an independent institution, it would still be one of the UK largest universities)! Geoffrey Lee illustrated how himself and his team are trying to implement ideas and best practices gathered at previous UK RSE conferences.

After the talks, there was a series of six lightening talks and finally ample time for coffee and networking. Networking is a core part of these events as they are especially meant to offer a space for people in the field to meet one each other and identify common grounds for interactions/collaboration/knowledge exchange.

The next meeting will likely happen some time in January 2019. CERSE are eager to engage with as many people as possible. If you think this initiative is something with which you might want to get involved, please see the links below to see what is going on and to keep in touch.

• Slack: Subscribe to the UK RSE Slack account https://ukrse.slack.com/ and join the #edinburgh channel

• Jisc Mail: Ed-rse-community@jiscmail.ac.uk

• GitHub: https://github.com/cerse

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/cerse7

​Or get in touch with me.