CW21 Agenda¶

As we were able to organise CW21 as an online event from the beginning (versus having to transition from an in-person event to an online event within three weeks like we had to do for CW20), we were able to be very intentional about the agenda and programme to achieve our CW21 Goals and Objectives.

One of our primary goals was to increase opportunities for socialising and networking which was sorely missed at CW20. We also wanted to make sure that we minimised the length of the day and maximised breaks to combat Zoom fatigue. In general, we had many session types with shorter lengths in order to keep participants engaged. Breaks were again strategically scheduled to allow time for the creation of breakout rooms for the next session.

Informing¶

Keynote Talks¶

For CW21, we had two keynote presentations - one for each new theme (FAIR Research Software and Diversity & Inclusion). The keynote presentations were pre-recorded by the speakers. This was done so that the talks could be transcribed and captioned ahead of time, to mitigate risk of connection failures on the day, and also because both keynote speakers happened to be located in time zones incompatible with the event. The length of each keynote session was 30 minutes, with the suggested format of up to 20 minutes for the presentation and the remainder for introductions and questions.

The Chair of the session introduced the speaker live and reminded the participants that they could take notes and ask questions in the collaborative notes or via the Sli.do website/app, and that this session would be live streamed via YouTube. The Event Lead choreographed sharing the pre-recorded presentation via Screen Share in Zoom and live streaming the session on YouTube (following this guide on Captioned video calls AND YouTube streaming by Open Life Science to get Zoom, YouTube and Otter.ai to work together via Restream - see CW21 Infrastructure for more information).

One keynote speaker was able to attend the event and answer questions live, which was facilitated by the session Chair who relayed questions submitted via Sli.do. For the case where the second keynote speaker was unable to be present, we compiled the questions from Sli.do and emailed these to the speaker to be answered in their own time. The answers were then shared with participants via the collaborative notes document.

You can view the live streamed keynote presentations here.

Lightning Talks¶

Lightning talks provide the perfect opportunity for participants and sponsors to introduce themselves at the workshop. CW lightning talks are two minutes for one slide, and can be used to showcase a project, introduce a problem, or promote a mini-workshop or demo session later in the programme.

This year, we conducted a call for lightning talks with a short Google Form to help with planning and prioritising new voices (in previous editions of CW, it was first come, first served for lightning talks). Confirmed lightning talk presenters were then asked to submit their slides to the Figshare conference portal ahead of the event following these instructions.

We then compiled all the slides into a single slide show to maximise efficiency during the session, and integrated a two-minute timer within each slide to help keep speakers to time and minimise having to cut speakers off. The session Chair shared the slides via Screen Share in Zoom, and invited each speaker to unmute when it was their turn and deliver their lightning talk. The Chair also enabled Spotlight Video for the speaker so that they were visible to all participants and in the recording.

Exploring¶

Panel¶

Because the theme of Diversity and Inclusion is so expansive, one of our Steering Committee members suggested that we also have a panel on this theme to include a variety of perspectives relating to disability and accessibility in research software. The panel session was 45 minutes in length, with three minutes for the Chair to introduce themself and set the scene for the discussion, three minutes for each panellist to introduce themselves, and 30 minutes for questions and answers. The panel met ahead of the event to discuss what each panellist wanted to highlight and bring to the discussion, as well as to come up with a set of pre-prepared questions.

The panel session took place live during the event (not pre-recorded), and was also live streamed on YouTube. The Chair facilitated the discussion using a mix of the pre-prepared questions and questions submitted by participants via Sli.do. If questions were not able to be answered during the session, the panellists answered them in writing after the session.

You can view the live streamed panel discussion here.

Discussion Groups¶

The Discussion session allows groups of people to discuss a topic that interests them in a way that furthers our knowledge of that topic. This session is a fundamental part of the Collaborations Workshop: it helps people learn about new ideas and work together on solving shared problems. The output of the discussion session is a speed blog post from each group to help disseminate the insights to the wider community.

The session was conducted the same way as during CW20 except that we were able to take advantage of the new Zoom feature that allowed participants to self-select their own breakout rooms.

Participants suggested and signed up to the topics that they wanted to discuss in a spreadsheet (example spreadsheet). This year, in addition to assigning each discussion group a Group ID, they were also assigned a more memorable Group Name. The Group IDs were once again the letters of the alphabet, and the associated Group Names were fruit names that began with that letter. For example, Group ID A had Group Name Apple, Group ID B had Group Name Banana, and so on. Breakout rooms were then created (with the option selected to allow participants to choose their rooms) and renamed to “<Group ID> - <Group Name>”, for example “A - Apple”. This not only made it easier for individuals to remember and find their group’s breakout room, but it was also more fun! The groups were directed to their discussion group reporting document via the “Groups” tab in the spreadsheet, in which they worked together on their speed blog posts.

Collaborative Ideas¶

The Collaborative Ideas session is used to get people talking about their work. They identify problems within research software and come up with a solution, usually a project that can be taken forward to the CW Hack Day.

The session was facilitated in a similar way to the Discussion session except that the group assignments for the breakout rooms were randomly generated. This time the Group Names were based on famous cats (Asparagus, Bagpuss, and Felix to name a few), so the group that was assigned to breakout room “Asparagus” retrieved their Collaborative Ideas document for Group Name Asparagus in the associated spreadsheet (example spreadsheet), and so on.

Voting was again facilitated in a “Voting” tab of the spreadsheet, where participants where asked to simply add their names below the ideas that they wanted to vote for. The votes were tallied at the end of Day 2, and the teams with the top three ideas were awarded prizes. This year, the prizes were Redbubble digital gift cards, which give the recipients the choice of millions of designs by independent artists printed on a range of products. Redbubble are committed to social responsibility and sustainability, and digital gift cards provide a more international- and pandemic-friendly prize for our participants.

You can read more details about how we run the Collaborative Ideas session in the Collaborations Workshop section of the CSCCE’s guide to Using virtual events to facilitate community building: event formats.

Creating¶

Hack Day¶

CW21 concluded with the Hack Day, where teams formed to work on projects generated during the Collaborative Ideas session and other ideas pitched during the course of the event.

Hack Day project pitches and team formation took place at the end of Day 2. Participants took turns promoting a project to attract potential team members, and then breakout rooms were opened for teams to form around the proposed projects. Many of the Hack Day projects came from the Collaborative Ideas session. A spreadsheet was used for teams to register their projects and members, assign Zoom breakout rooms and Slack channels, as well as collect project repositories.

One Zoom room was used to facilitate the Hack Day, with three breakout rooms created for each team, one for the judges, and a few extra side rooms for good measure (which was a lesson learned from CW20 - to give more spaces for meetings between team members and side meetings between people in general). The new Zoom feature that allowed participants to choose and move around the breakout rooms without having to assign them as co-hosts made the Hack Day significantly more smooth than at CW20. A schedule was scaffolded so that participants could work around suggested break times and judges’ visits, and be ready in time to demonstrate their projects.

Each Hack Day team had five minutes to demonstrate their projects and how they met the judging criteria:

Novelty, creativity, ‘coolness’ and/or usefulness
Implementation and infrastructure
Demo and presentation
Project transparency
Future potential
Team work

The judges, comprised of Institute Staff, Fellows, collaborators and CW21 Sponsors, then went into a breakout room to deliberate. The teams that came in the top three places were also awarded Redbubble digital gift cards.

Teaching¶

Mini-workshops and Demos¶

Mini-workshops and demo sessions give an in-depth look at a particular tool or approach and a chance to query developers and experts about how this might apply to participants’ areas of work.

For CW21, we set a limit of 10 mini-workshops across two 30-minute sessions. 30 minutes does not feel like a long time for a workshop or demonstration, so we highlighted to facilitators that it was important to plan how they will use the time. We suggested that incorporating a combination of presentation and collaborative group activities, discussions, audience Q&A or feedback, are great ways to engage a virtual audience, and to provide information about how participants can become involved in follow-up activities.

We used a separate Zoom account for each of the five parallel workshops in each session, with an assigned Host (and Co-host for backup) for handling the logistics of the mini-workshop (managing Zoom, recording the session, pointing to the relevant notes document) and helping the workshop facilitator with any technical issues. We generated templated Google Docs for each session that the facilitators were empowered to adapt for their use.

We directed participants to the different Zoom room links in the day’s collaborative notes document and in the Slack channel, and someone stayed in the main room to help people get to where they wanted to go.

Networking¶

Morning Coffee Chats¶

Multiple breakout rooms were made available within the main Zoom room 30 minutes before the official start of days one and two for participants to mingle, connect and chat over their morning brew. Some breakout rooms were used, but we found that most participants who joined stayed together in the main room, where we did a round robin for people to introduce themselves and respond to a prompt.

Icebreakers¶

We started each day with an icebreaker to get participants used to the infrastructure and to have a chance to chat in small groups. We asked a couple of yes or no questions for participants to respond to using Zoom’s non-verbal feedback feature, and then randomly assigned them into breakout rooms of 3-4 people to discuss the following prompts which we thought would be both fun and useful:

What are you reading, watching and/or listening to at the moment (and why)?
What advice/resources/tools/guides do you find useful for working remotely (and why)?

We then asked participants to write down their answers in the note-taking document during a few minutes of “silent documenting”, which had the added benefit of empowering people to directly contribute to the shared notes (example icebreaker document).

Lunch and Coffee Breaks¶

We encouraged participants to use the breaks to take time away from their screens, but kept the main Zoom room open in case they wanted to talk with other people. We opened a number of breakout rooms as side rooms for participants to have conversations away from the main room and as sponsor booths for participants to chat with and learn more about the CW21 sponsors. We also had an interview room where our Communications Officer interviewed participants about their experiences to use as promotion for future events.

Dedicated Networking Session¶

A dedicated 30-minute networking session was built into the main programme to encourage participants to network with each other, as we expected a large drop off in attendees to the social programme activities.

We adapted this Recipe for rOpenSci’s Unconf Ice Breaker for our community. The objective of this icebreaker was to facilitate connections between participants based on commonalities. The session Chair stated a prompt, and then asked participants to move into the breakout room that resonated with their response to that prompt. Participants had 10 minutes to talk with the people in their breakout room to introduce themselves, discuss, and share opinions around the prompt. When participants returned to the main room, the Chair asked for volunteers to introduce themselves to the entire group and share their opinions or response to the prompt.

The first prompt was, “My favourite programming language is…” and we created breakout rooms named “C/C++”, “Python”, “R”, “Other”, and “I don’t code”. This was intended to be a lighthearted and simple prompt to get everyone warmed up during the exercise.

The second prompt was more serious: “I know where I fit as a member of the research software community. For example, I have a clearly defined role and career path, and am confident about where I contribute within the research software ecosystem. (Agree vs disagree)” with breakout rooms named “Strongly agree”, “Somewhat agree”, “Neither agree nor disagree”, “Somewhat disagree”, and “Strongly disagree”. This prompt was intended to highlight that there are many pathways and emerging roles within research software, and not everyone knows where or how they fit.

Evening Quiz¶

At the end of Day One, a participant facilitated a quiz in GatherTown where other participants tested their general knowledge in various categories, including software and academia-related rounds. We chose a setup so that the facilitator was spotlighted on a platform so that all participants could hear and see them as they read out the questions. We also had private spaces as tables for participants to form teams at, so each team would be unable to hear or see the participants at other tables. The connection details were emailed to participants, and they were able to choose their own avatars and move around the space.

We also made a Zoom room available at the same time as the quiz as an alternative option.

End of event Meetup¶

Finally, to close out the event, a participant facilitated a virtual meetup in Mozilla Hubs, where participants took a virtual train ride to a venue where we celebrated all that we achieved during the workshop and Hack Day. The facilitator designed the space and added various objects that participants could interact with. The connection details were shared with participants via Slack and Zoom, and they were able to choose their own avatars and move around the space.

We also made a Zoom room available at the same time as an alternative option.