England

[betatim]

Notes, comments and organisational things about the event in England.

• [x] fix date ( 17th July)
• [x] fix location (B'ham, Murray Learning Centre (R28 on this map https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/university/edgbaston-campus-map.pdf) in room UG05)
• [ ] recruit helpers
• [ ] advertising

[KirstieJane]

Commenting here so I’m notified as plans develop - I don’t know what exactly I can do to support but I’d love to have a couple of research software engineers from Turing Institute at the event!! I have grand master plans with @martintoreilly to have lots of binder examples from our reproducible research champions project! :sparkles:

[npscience]

Same as Kirstie, notifications please GitHub :)

I may not have much capacity for the next month, but happy to response re dates, etc then do more where I can after mid-May.

[pherterich]

Could potentially offer a location in Birmingham (depending on the date) and definitely help advertising.

[trallard]

Jumping in here too to keep myself updated as plans develop 😄 May will be a bit hectic for me but can work around

[betatim]

Woah! Welcome everyone!

We have the possibility/option for B'ham or Cambridge in terms of location. I don't have a strong preference either way. How do we decide?

June feels very soon, should we aim for July or early August? (In Switzerland everyone will be on holiday in August, how is it in the UK?)

[trallard]

I think August is also a summer holidays kind of month in the UK so most institutions are a bit empty.

We have the possibility/option for B'ham or Cambridge in terms of location. I don't have a strong preference either way. How do we decide?

Would you have someone helping you as a local organizer? Having a local person could help with the logistics, booking rooms, etc.

If you wanted a location within the North of the UK I could help with Leeds or Manchester ( Manchester is quite well connected for people from most of the UK to travel to)

[betatim]

Would you have someone helping you as a local organizer? Having a local person could help with the logistics, booking rooms, etc.

@npscience could be that person in Cambridge and @pherterich in B'ham I think.

I have no strong feelings on where (given good connections for travel), maybe only a slight bias against London because they get all the events all the time ;) I think having someone locally who is excited (and has the time!) to help is far more important than the precise location. The ideal scenario is that you three decide amongst each other and then we do that.

[pherterich]

Birmingham is usually quite reasonable to reach from all sides with direct trains to most bigger cities. July and August would be quiet on campus as well, so room availability looks quite decent. How many people would you expect/want to attend? School holidays here start in the last week of July when it will become very quiet and I assume less people would be able to attend in August.

[npscience]

I very much agree with taking the workshop to a new audience, so would advocate for Birmingham over Cambridge if that suits?

[betatim]

Let's do a vote via emoji reaction on this comment: 👍 -> Cambridge 🎉 -> B'ham ❤️ -> Manchester

[betatim]

Should we aim for mid July? I wrote 20x lunch+coffee in the budget. That seemed like a big enough but not overwhelming number. If you'd ask me for an absolute max without regard for anything (rooms ,budget, helpers) I'd say 30.

Thoughts?

[pherterich]

20-30 sounds reasonable I think. I would have guessed 20ish if you're the sole person providing help and instructions (following the carpentry approach).

[trallard]

Seems like we're tied for votes, so we could do the following:

• Stick to B'ham as you'd originally planned
• Have one in B'ham and one in Manchester (I can provide help here with a free venue, advertising, helpers)

Note @betatim it's your project and you have the last word and I can provide support either way

[betatim]

Anyone can do their own event! I am even more happy if someone thinks this is a cool idea and wants to do their own. So yes this is totally fine with me. The only limit is in terms of using mini grant money, I'd commit to that a bit later when we have a better idea on how much everything will actually end up costing.

This suggestion made my day!

[betatim]

Next item: dates. How do we turn "mid July" into an actual date? @pherterich do you want to find out which dates would work room-wise and then we pick one of those?

I updated the top comment by adding Birmingham as location. Can I add you as a local helper @pherterich? And do you know someone else we could get onboard?

[pherterich]

I'll definitely help with logistics and be in the room all day. Don't really think I know what binder is/does, so content wise I'm useless. Will make sure I send announcements to local RSE groups when we have a date and hope I can pressure our IT group into helping out as well. @matthew-brett just started a "The Hacker Within" group here, so there's a good chance that we'll find someone willing to help.

Just did a basic check on bookings for rooms and availability seems to be quite decent around 12/13/16/17/18 July. So if there are dates that fit for you in terms of travelling @betatim I'm quite sure I can find a decent room.

[matthew-brett]

Hi - yes - that would be excellent - I'd love to see more use of Binder / Notebooks. What kind of help would help? I'm sure our RSE team would be interested too.

[betatim]

I will look into the dates from my side. Anyone else who wants to chime in please do.

In terms of help we need: right now only have generic answers of "standard stuff for a one day workshop". We still need to work on the details :) We should probably make a new issue to try and compile a generic checklist for the event that can be reused.

If anyone wants to get going and do things I think that would be super welcome as well (if we can keep ourselves coordinated so nothing gets down twice/forgotten).

[pherterich]

I made a quick list in a new issue with the things I can think of for organisation and will add to that. #7

I guess the question is if you expect some of your helpers to be like software carpentry helpers walking around and helping people with the content. That might need a different preparation that I'm less familiar with.

[matthew-brett]

I guess we could ask around on the hackers-within list to see if there are people with relevant skills. What skills are needed? Just use of Github and the Jupyter Notebook?

[betatim]

I think for a good answer to that we need to make progress on what exactly the agenda is for the day :-/

[betatim]

@pherterich how about 16 or 17th of July?

[pherterich]

@betatim works for me, rooms are available, too. I'll get one for both days and then maybe others who want to attend can voice preferences to make the final decision?

[betatim]

Sounds good. My preference is the 17th. Who should we ask for feedback on the date?

The next thing to do: mini webpage. Something with a registration link.

Then advertising. Do you want to advertise it on campus and what do we need for that? We can also use Mozilla, and twitter etc for online advertising.

[pherterich]

I guess it's up to @KirstieJane @npscience @trallard to let us know about date preferences if they would still like to attend. I can advertise on Campus with some basic text what the workshop is about and a link to registration and that can go to various mailing lists here.

Looking at #5 I guess the question is if you want to have non-academic attendees and how to invite them along except through Twitter etc.

[npscience]

Thanks for thinking of me — I'll sit back and let you work out what's best for you, then will consider whether I am able to join (if welcome!) once that's all worked out. My July commitments aren't concrete yet ;)

[rainsworth]

I meant to join this conversation a long time ago but somehow forgot. I would like to stay in the loop! Sounds like B'ham is already decided on, but @trallard I would love to organise one at Manchester at some point if you're interested! (Also even if you're not 😂 )

[trallard]

I might have some plans @rainsworth so I'll keep you posted

[KirstieJane]

Hey @betatim et al - I think I'm going to have to step back from helping out with the Birmingham event - I'm a bit over stretched at the moment 😭

I would LOVE though for members of the research software engineering team at the Turing to attend so please keep me on the list for promotions and I'll send it around!

Sorry for the radio silence and for bailing on the plan.

[betatim]

@pherterich do you have a suggestion what we do for coffee break and lunch?

My default would be to ask the university to make an offer for catering the coffee breaks and lunch in the canteen for attendees (we then give a voucher to people). If you have a favourite place that does delivery and we can organise plates+cutlery etc that would also work for lunch.

[pherterich]

@betatim I have no idea if our canteen does lunch vouchers but I will ask around and also get an overview of prices and offers of the standard buffet catering they do. I'll also check what's available for delivery, let me ask around and I will present the options here.

[pherterich]

@betatim Was told our canteen doesn't do vouchers any longer but it might be quiet enough on campus that we could just go into the main canteen (https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/community/university-campus/retail/food-and-drink/Noble-Room-Staff-House.aspx) and get everyone onto one bill. The standard University catering is this one https://www.freshthinking.uk.com/ (it's okay, the vegan option is decent - except for the horrible guacamole wrap). Deliveroo seems to have quite a range that they deliver to campus as well (https://deliveroo.co.uk/restaurants/birmingham/university-of-birmingham?postcode=B15+2TT+). The Falafel Munch stuff is amazing (and cheap) if you like falafel, but I there are a few more (the main Italian restaurants) that cater for most of the dietary requirements.

[betatim]

Trying to pay for everyone on one bill will be hard (because people will have stuff beyond what we can fund) so if there is no way to do vouchers/meal tickets we should go with some other setup.

https://www.freshthinking.uk.com/ looks good to me. We have a total of $25 per person to buy coffee and lunch (GBP18.79 according to google). Should we email them and ask for an offer for 23 people at that price?

[betatim]

Just sent an email to Fresh thinking to ask for an offer.

[pherterich]

@betatim Cool, let me know if you need an internal to take over and I can take over if needed.

[betatim]

Their menu is here: https://www.freshthinking.uk.com/downloads/Fresh%20Thinking%20Menu%202017.pdf

P16 for tea&coffee p18++ for sandwiches, platters and finger food p26 for special diet

Can we pick a nice collection for lunch?

Coffee breaks: 22 1.65 2 (morning and afternoon) = 72.60

[pherterich]

I can only comment on vegan food, as I really struggle to map the booklet to stuff I've seen at buffets and what is usually popular. I think you mostly get chef's choice wrap and sandwich platters, so maybe the odd combo platter could be nice (Indian?) I think the "Bulgur wheat, fresh mint, parsley, spring onion, vine ripened tomatoes, pomegranate & lemon" salad is fine and usually quite popular. Maybe also the potato salad? I think we can do final adjustments for dietary requirements quite late if needed.

I'm happy to contribute biscuits and other snacks for coffee.

[betatim]

There is still ambiguity over the date, so I picked one 17th July 2018. This is written on the registration form. Should we finalise our room booking?

[pherterich]

@betatim if no one else wants to comment, let's go for it :smiley:

[betatim]

The website is now live and open for signups: https://build-a-binder.github.io/

[betatim]

Should we do something about the fact that so far there is only one sign up?

More advertising needed :-/

[yochannah]

post tweet link, I'll RT from the biological accounts I control....

edit: I realise "biological accounts" sounds weird - I mean intermine and gmodproject on twitter, both bioinformatics / possibly followed by people who would be interested ;)

[trallard]

I will send an email so that this is added to the SSI website as news and will distribute in the RSE slack channel too

[npscience]

@betatim I've scheduled a tweet from eLifeInnovation and will RT from npscience too.

Of note, I can't seem to find the workshop date on the website, and the deadline for applications is quite hidden. Are you able to make these more prominent please?

[RaoOfPhysics]

@npscience I flagged the date issue as well but couldn't submit a PR at the time. it appears on the main page but not on the city pages. The England session is on 17 July.

[RaoOfPhysics]

@npscience: And fixed (via #27): https://build-a-binder.github.io/England/

[betatim]

Thanks for the publicity everyone and fixing the webpage. We are up to four responses.

I massively overestimated how interested people would be. What do people think is the reason people aren't signing up? Some thoughts:

• summer :-/
• too many questions in the form
• don't know what they'd get out of the workshop

Should we decide a minimum number of participants to run the workshop?

[matthew-brett]

Has anyone advertised yet on the research software engineers mailing list?

[pherterich]

@betatim I'm wondering if people are scared by "application" rather than registration. If you're not 100% sure this is for you, an application process might be scary (I totally get why you did it though). I just send the message out to a Midlands network explaining that the application is just a longer registration form.

Summer might definitely be an issue, but then when do people ever have time...

[matthew-brett]

Do y'all want me to email the RSE mailing list about the workshop?