Name: Strategy & Policy-Facing Track, Jul 2023
Start: 2023-07-05T12:00:00-04:00
End: 2023-07-05T13:00:00-04:00

Join us for RCD Nexus Day at PEARC23!

Registration is now open for the second annual RCD Nexus Day, a one-day workshop and networking event just for research computing and data (RCD) professionals on Sunday July 23, 9am-7pm preceding the PEARC23 Conference in Portland, OR. It’s an official PEARC co-located event, and there’s no additional cost to attend. Connect with your peers as we explore the topics that matter to you and your RCD career, including:

Student and staff workforce development topics and practices
Understanding the RCD Capabilities Model assessment tools, and how best to use them at your institution (details below)

The event will be held at the main conference venue, the Oregon Convention Center. Space is limited and last year the event reached capacity, so don’t wait to register! Travel support is available for those who need it. Just indicate your need when you register and we’ll send further information.

Check back here for a detailed agenda — coming soon!

CaRCC Calls for May Accessibility Month

May is Accessibility Month, and your CaRCC People Network track coordinators have put together a program of topical discussions across the tracks. The Staff Workforce Development Interest Group is also inviting new participants ahead of their next call (see below)!

If you’re not on our mailing lists, just fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

People Network Calls

Open Community Discussion on Accessibility

During Data-Facing Track regular call time (1st Tuesdays)
Tue 5/2, 1p ET / 12p CT / 11a MT / 10a PT / 8a HT
Join for an introduction to the People Nework’s Accessibility Month series prior to group discussion. Participants will be invited to share the ways that they are thinking about and incorporating accessibility measures into their own resources. Discussion will include a Show&Tell of quick tips (so bring something you can share in 60 seconds or less!). The group will also brainstorm opportunities for enhanced accessibility for CaRCC activities.

Current Research on Accessible Computing

During Researcher-Facing Track regular call time(2nd Thursdays)
Thu 5/11, 1p ET / 12p CT / 11a MT / 10a PT / 8a HT
Dr. JooYoung Seo, Illinois iSchool
Dr. Seo will present on accessible computing, including: multimodal data representation (e.g., data sonification, data verbalization, and data tactilization), and inclusive and reproducible data visualization.

Introduction to Web Accessibility

During Emerging Centers Track regular call time (3rd Wednesdays)
Wed 5/17, 12p ET / 11a CT / 10a MT / 9a PT / 7a HT
Lena Bohman is Data Management and Research Impact Librarian at Zucker School of Medicine. She received her BA from Brown University and MSLIS from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Her specialties in librarianship are data and digital humanities, and she has previously worked on a variety of public scholarship projects. She has a 10-pound terrier with a spunky personality named Kenzi.

Introduction to Universal Design

CaRCC Calls in April; Ideas for May Accessibility Month!

May is accessibility month, and your CaRCC People Network track coordinators are looking for pointers from YOU for topics of importance to the community.

Don’t wait! You can contact your Track Coordinators or start a conversation within your track.

As usual, mark your calendars for the below People Network calls. For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. We also highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators, as these events touch many, if not all, in our community. (Zoom details are distributed via email and calendar details, for security.)

If you’re not on our mailing lists, just fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

CaRCC People Network Calls

Data-Facing Track, Researcher-Facing Track, & Systems-Facing Track
Joint Double Feature, Note the Dates!

2023 RCD Capabilities Model Office Hours

Have questions about how to get started with the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model? Or are you already working with it and just want to discuss the process, or a particular aspect of the assessment tool? Join working group members and your colleagues in the community at one of our upcoming Office Hours to get help, ask your questions, and share your experiences! Drop in for a few minutes or stay for the whole hour.

Office Hours for 2022 are scheduled for:

the 2nd Tuesday of each month

for 1 hour at 1pm ET, 12noon CT, 11am MT, 10am PT

For details on how to join, email the RCD CM working group at capsmodel-help@carcc.org, or subscribe to the capsmodel-discuss@carcc.org discussion list.

Join People Network Calls in March

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network calls (Zoom details via email). For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. We also highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators, as these events touch many, if not all, in our community.

If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

Strategy and Policy-Facing Track (1st Wednesdays)

Exploring factors that impact RCD strategy (part 2)
Wed 3/1, 12p ET / 11a CT / 10a MT / 9a PT / 7a HT
What programmatic and institutional characteristics affect how you make strategic decisions for your RCD program? We’ll hear from four RCD programs and then open a discussion on what’s similar and what’s not, and what the key factors seem to be. Is your program fully funded, are you self-supporting, or somewhere in-between? Do you have soft funding or core funding or a mix of both? Are you a centrally organized group or part of a partnership of service providers? How do your answers help determine what your programmatic priorities are and how you approach strategy?
This is the second in the series of meetings where we can look at factors important for growth and development of your program at your institution.

Data-Facing Track (1st Tuesdays)

People Network Calls in February

If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

Data-Facing Track & Systems-Facing Track Joint Call

Towards a Data Commons at Harvard
Thu 2/16, 1p ET/12p CT/11a MT/10a PT/8a HT (NOTE THE DIFFERENT DATE for Data-Facing!)
Presented by:
– Mahmood Shad, Associate Director of RSE | University Research Computing | Harvard University
– Emre Keskin, Harvard University Research Data Officer
For over two years, a collaborative team from divisions and schools across Harvard University has been pursuing the idea of a “Digital Scholarship Ecosystem” to support the lifecycle of research at Harvard. The Harvard Data Commons (HDC) vision is to improve the researcher experience by automating the flow of research data from research computing environments to management, publication, discovery, and preservation environments. As a result, data integrity, provenance, and reproducibility of research data will be improved in order to meet sponsor requirements. In this talk, we will present HDC’s progress toward its major objectives and our vision for the future.

Strategy and Policy-Facing Track (1^st Wednesdays)

Nexus Day Staff and Student Workforce Development Update

During the Nexus Day event, held July 10, 2022 in conjunction with the PEARC22 conference, we held an all-day workshop to address student workforce programs and staff onboarding and workforce development practices. Although we intended to spend much of the time addressing both the staff and student workforce issues together, we quickly determined that breakout sessions specific to staff or student development efforts would be more effective and provide an excellent forum to discuss common themes and exchange ideas.

There was a general recognition that common problems and challenges span the two efforts, and there is a desire to address them collectively through shared tools and methodologies and by developing a common framework. Specifically, there was an aspiration to develop a set of learning paths, starting as early as undergraduate RCD staff and continuing through senior-level RCD professionals, to identify existing gaps in training and development. However, it was also recognized that specifics would differ between staff and student development – even though many of the tools, documentation, and basic framework may be the same. Interesting outcomes included a shared desire to develop basic materials, such as a five-minute video on “What is a Research Computing and Data Professional?”, as well as a collective agreement on the need for and value of project management skills and training for those working in research computing and data (RCD).

Read more below about how each of these efforts is evolving:

CaRCC/RCD Nexus 2022 Retrospective

Greetings, research computing and data (RCD) professionals! As we usher in the New Year, CaRCC and RCD Nexus would like to take a moment to look back on and celebrate some of our community’s exciting accomplishments in 2022:

To formalize and ensure community input and evaluation, CaRCC formed a new Advisory Committee and held its first annual meeting in January, 2022. The group consists of 12 members selected for their leadership and expertise within the broader RCD and cyberinfrastructure landscape. The group is instrumental in long-term planning as CaRCC continues a period of rapid growth.

We ramped up the work of our RCD Nexus NSF Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence (CI CoE) pilot grant, and began to provide more resources than ever before to both the CaRCC and broader RCD community. The RCD Nexus website currently serves as the CaRCC Career and Resource Center.

In May, 2022, CaRCC activity leaders, advisory committee members, and peers from across the RCD community met in Denver and joined remotely for a Strategic Planning Meeting. The meeting included discussion around CaRCC’s role in defining a framework for an RCD-CI professional society.

CaRCC has helped to facilitate the RCD Community Builders Group, a collaborative effort among nine RCD-CI organizations working together to support the community at-large. The group has been meeting monthly since March 2022. Additionally, CaRCC has formalized a partnership and collaboration with the CASC organization and had two meetings and presentations during which the groups discussed opportunities for collaboration.

Annual CaRCC Party and People Network Calls in December

Season’s Greetings to all members of the CaRCC People Network!

Mark your calendars for these end-of-year People Network calls (Zoom details at the end), including the December 8 Annual CaRCC Party! For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. We also highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators, as these events touch many, if not all, in our community.

If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

Annual CaRCC Party!

Thu, 12/8, 1-2:30p ET/ 12-1:30p CT/ 11a-12:30a MT/ 10-11:30a PT/ 8-9:30a HT
Join us for a 90-minute end-of-year party! We’ll have mixer breakout rooms, voting on the most festive apparel and Zoom backgrounds (come prepared!), prizes, games, and optional reflection discussions about the People Network and SC22. More details are captured in the call document. See you there!

Emerging Centers Track

(3^rd Wednesdays; shifted for this month)
The Business Side of HPC Centers: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Scott Yockel, PhD, University Research Computing Officer, Harvard University
Wed, 12/14, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT/ 7a HT
Note the date change to Wednesday, Dec. 14 to accommodate holiday schedules!!! We are excited to have Scott Yockel share his extensive experience with the business side of running HPC Centers.

No calls in December for the Data-Facing, Researcher-Facing, Strategy- and Policy-Facing, and Systems-Facing tracks in lieu of the CaRCC Party! The Strategy- and Policy-Facing Track will not have its usual call in January (given the early-January timing).

November People Network Calls, CaRCC Winter Party Dec. 8!

Greetings to all members of the CaRCC People Network!

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network calls (Zoom details at the end). For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. We also highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators.

And mark your calendars for the annual CaRCC Winter Party, December 8, 1-2:30pm ET / 10-11:30am PT!

If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out the Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.

Data-Facing Track (1^st Tuesdays)

The ICPSR Research Data Ecosystem, Jeannette Jackson, University of Michigan ICPSR
Tue, Nov 1, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) is an international consortium of more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations. The ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community and is building the Research Data Ecosystem (RDE) funded by the National Science Foundation. The RDE will make research data accessible to broaden participation in the frontiers of scientific research. It will accomplish this goal by modernizing the existing software platform so that it supports the entire research lifecycle with an enhanced user experience to increase the ability of researchers to safely and securely access, connect, store, and manipulate data. This presentation will present some of the challenges and experience in implementation of the RDE along with details about implementation, access and usage.

Strategy and Policy-Facing Track (1^st Wednesdays)

Highlights from CASC, EDUCAUSE, and the NSF Cybersecurity Summit, reports and discussion
Wed, Nov 2, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT

Category: events

Join us for RCD Nexus Day at PEARC23!

CaRCC Calls for May Accessibility Month

People Network Calls