RSSE Africa (website & community development)

[pvanheus]

Project Lead: pvanheus

Mentor: mesfind, rgaiacs

Welcome to OLS-2! This issue will be used to track your project and progress during the program. Please use this checklist over the next few weeks as you start Open Life Science program :tada:.

---

Week 1 (31 August - 4 September 2020): Meet your mentor!

• [x] Create an account on GitHub
• [x] Check if you have access to the HackMD notes set up for your meetings with your mentor
• [x] Prepare to meet your mentor(s) by completing a short homework provided in the HackMD notes
• [ ] Complete your own copy of the open leadership self-assessment and share it to your mentor If you're a group, each teammate should complete this assessment individually. This is here to help you set your own personal goals during the program. No need to share your results, but be ready to share your thoughts with your mentor.
• [x] Make sure you know when and how you'll be meeting with your mentor.

Before Week 2 (7 - 11 September 2020): Cohort Call (Welcome to Open Life Science!)

• [x] Create an issue on the OLS-2 GitHub repository for your OLS work and share the link to your mentor.

• [x] Draft a brief vision statement using your goals

  This lesson from the Open Leadership Training Series (OLTS) might be helpful

• [x] Leave a comment on this issue with your draft vision statement & be ready to share this on the call

• [x] Check the Syllabus for notes and connection info for all the cohort calls.

Before Week 3 (14 - 18 September 2020): Meet your mentor!

• [ ] Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their vision statement
• [x] Complete this compare and contrast assignment about current and desired community interactions and value exchanges
• [x] Complete your Open Canvas (instructions, canvas)
• [x] Share a link to your Open Canvas in your GitHub issue
• [ ] Start your Roadmap
• [ ] Comment on your issue with your draft Roadmap
• [ ] Suggest a cohort name at the bottom of the shared notes and vote on your favorite with a +1

Before Week 4 (21 - 25 September 2020): Cohort Call (Tooling and roadmapping for Open projects)

• [ ] Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their open canvas.

Week 5 and later

• [x] Create a GitHub repository for your project
• [x] Add the link to your repository in your issue
• [ ] Use your canvas to start writing a README.md file, or landing page, for your project
• [x] Link to your README in a comment on this issue
• [x] Add an open license to your repository as a file called LICENSE.md
• [x] Add a Code of Conduct to your repository as a file called CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
• [ ] Invite new contributors to into your work!

This issue is here to help you keep track of work as you start Open Life Science program. Please refer to the OLS-2 Syllabus for more detailed weekly notes and assignments past week 4.

[pvanheus]

README for RSSE Africa website: https://gitlab.com/rsse-africa/rsse-africa-website/-/blob/main/README.md RSSE Africa website: https://rsse.africa/

[pvanheus]

Code of Conduct (displayed on the website) is: https://gitlab.com/rsse-africa/rsse-africa-website/-/blob/main/content/services/code_of_conduct.md CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md (https://gitlab.com/rsse-africa/rsse-africa-website/-/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md) is a link to the above file

[paulowoicho]

This is a very cool project!

[pvanheus]

The RSSE Africa vision statement can be found on the website and is copied below:

"The 21st century has seen computing and data sciences play an increasing role in the pursuit of science (and more recently, the social sciences and humanities). On the African continent, the years since 2010 have seen major developments in bioinformatics and astronomy, as well as computation chemistry, physics and other fields. Alongside new equipment, new skills are required: software engineers to build scientific computing software and systems engineers to configure, deploy, manage and monitor equipment. With these new skills and new roles come new challenges: charting a career paths for research software and systems engineers, creating opportunities to learn and upgrade skills and working to improve equity, diversity and inclusion with the research software and systems engineering (RSSE) space.

The Research Software and Systems Engineers of Africa (RSSE Africa) forum grew out of the experience of RSSEs (primarily at SANBI at the University of the Western Cape, in Cape Town, South Africa) in supporting colleagues across the continent. It was launched in November 2019 (at the ASBCB 2019 conference https://www.iscb.org/iscbafrica2019) as an informal skills sharing forum. Our aims are to raise awareness of the specific contributions that RSSEs make to research in Africa, to organise events for RSSEs on the continent and the provide a forum for sharing skills and opportunities within the community."

[pvanheus]

See Open Canvas: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EIZsw_MWkCpxBgrn4mBQipRHtDXfIVIFLvMXoYAUQqY/edit#slide=id.p

[pvanheus]

Note on Open Leadership Self- Assessment: this has not been completed because the project is still too new, but it has useful ideas for how to work in future.