Code for Thought

Meet Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) 2022 Fellow Connah Kendrick as he tells SSI Communications Officer Jacalyn Laird about his plans for his fellowship relating to digitising museum artefacts. 

You can contact Connah by email [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @connahkendrick.

Tweet your comments or questions @SoftwareSaved using #CodeForThought!

(Apologies for the audio quality issues at the beginning).

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Meet James Baker, newly appointed director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton in the UK. Digital Humanities covers a wide area of different disciplines and James has his work cut out for him to help and bring it all together. 
By creating "collaborative spaces" we can bring experts together from different disciplines. An opportunity to innovate and create. But facilitating this is hard and in our conversation we touch on some of the challenges.

• http://digitalhumanities.soton.ac.uk The Digital Humanities  at the University of Southampton, UK
• https://twitter.com/sotonDH Follow Digital Humanities tweets
• https://twitter.com/j_w_baker James Baker on Twitter

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

The term research software engineering is celebrating its 10th anniversary today. It was coined during a Collaborations workshop on 21 March 2012. I was privileged to meet with 7 of the participants who took part in this workshop and together we talk how it all came about.
My guests are:

• Neil Chue Hong MPhys FBCS, Director, Software Sustainability Institute and Senior 
• Prof. Simon Hettrick, Deputy Director, The Software Sustainability Institute
• Robert Haines, Head of Research IT, Uni Manchester
• Dirk Gorissen, Product Manager
• Rob Baxter, Director of Data Services, EPCC, University of Edinburgh
• Ilian Todorov,  STFC UKRI
• James Hetherington FBCS, Director, Advanced Research Computing Centre, University College London

But it's not just walking down memory lane. Even though, RSEs are now found in a number of research centres and universities across different countries, there is still lots to do. The challenges ahead range from creating attractive and sustainable career paths, securing funding, improving on diversity and others.

• https://software.ac.uk/cw22  Collaborations workshop of the Software Sustainability Institute in the UK for 2022 (April)
• https://software.ac.uk The Software Sustainability Institute UK
• https://society-rse.org The Society for Research Software Engineering in the UK

And finally, after 2 years of pandemic, it is great to see the announcement for an in-person RSE conference again. And this year, it will be in Newcastle, UK.

• https://rsecon2022.society-rse.org 

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Yo Yehudi, Executive Director at Open Life Science,  joins Selina Aragon, Software Sustainability Institute Communications Lead and host of the series, as the first guest of Software Horror Stories.

Yo talks through one of the scariest moments of her life as an RSE, how she fixed it, and her tips to overcome your very own horror stories.

Based on the Coding Confessions project, Software Horror Stories shares people’s unintended oversights when coding and how this impacted their research. The aim is to help normalise mistakes and emphasise how they’re a necessary evil of the learning journey in developing software for research. Look out for new episodes each month!

Tweet your comments or questions @SoftwareSaved using #CodeForThought!

Would you like to share your very own horror story? Get in touch at [email protected]

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Agile software development practices and methodologies have been around for a while and have indeed become mainstream. In particular Scrum and its many variants. In this episode I talk to Raj Heda, who helps organisations roll out agile methodologies. I was interested to find out, why "Agile" has become so successful, and what it is organisations need to look out for when they roll it out.

I also wrote a brief blog post on Medium on the subject: https://medium.com/@pweschmidt/is-agile-still-agile-a13b20230bc 

There is plenty of material on agile methodologies out there. But here are a few pointers, some of which were also mentioned in the interview

• Agile Manifesto https://agilemanifesto.org 
• Scrum https://www.scrum.org 
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) https://www.scaledagileframework.com 
• Kanban https://businessmap.io/kanban-resources/getting-started/what-is-kanban 
• What is Lean? https://theleanway.net/what-is-lean 
• Toyota Just in Time manufacturing https://www.rcbi.org/updates/lean-manufacturing-made-toyota-the-success-story-it-is-today/ 
• John Kotter: 8 steps to lead change https://www.kotterinc.com/8-step-process-for-leading-change/ 
• Simon Sinek: empathy and perspective https://github.com/dwyl/leadership/issues/4 
• Business Agility Institute: https://businessagility.institute 
• Digital AI (publisher of the State of Agile annual survey): https://digital.ai  (go to Resources in the nav bar and select State of Agile)

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Code for Thought is one year old! (Did I hear anyone say - Hurrah?)
Time to think what we can do for you in the coming weeks, months and beyond. In this short trailer, Selina and Jacalyn from the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) https://www.software.ac.uk
and I talk about some of the new content that will be heading your way.

In future we will be ca 10min episodes as well as longer ones, the latter ca every 3 weeks:

• meet the new/existing SSI fellows
• hear some truly gruesome horror stories (albeit about software)
• get some news
• and also get more in depth and longer interviews and coverages

If you have a story you would like to share, or you want to contribute and host an episode, do not hesitate to get in touch with one of us

Selina [email protected]
Jacalyn [email protected]
Peter [email protected]

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

In this episode we take a trip into the exciting world of insects - mantises to be precise. Prof Jenny Read and her colleague Dr Vivek Nityananda from Newcastle University in the UK have been conducting some exciting research into 3D vision of these iconic animals.
I have come across their research through an article in the New York Times and was hooked.

3D vision in insects? Yes, dear listeners, you read that right. Mantises have stereoscopic vision as well but not quite like humans. 
Given the fact that mantises are so much smaller and still capable of 3D vision - is there something we can learn from them with regards to practical applications and robotics?

Here some links you might want to check out:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/science/praying-mantis-eating-birds.html the New York Times article
• http://www.jennyreadresearch.com/research/m3/media/ some cool videos including how we can trace what's going on in a mantis brain
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26740144/  the paper of the research

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Welcome to Season 3 of Code for Thought!
In this episode, I met with 7 of the new EPSRC fellows in the UK. EPSRC stands for Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The EPSRC fellowship has been pivotal in putting research software engineering (RSE) firmly on the map in universities and research centres. RSE has become a recognised role not only in the UK, but also in an increasing number of countries around the globe.

I had the pleasure and privilege to meet with some of the new fellows last autumn. 
As you will hear from my discussion with Eilis, Heather, Carlin, Tom, Jamie, Peter and Ed - they bring a lot of interesting and different hopes, ideas and aspirations to their fellowship. 

• https://www.ukri.org/councils/epsrc/ 

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Mental health in the workplace is often ignored or sidelined. Not to mention that it is difficult to talk about it in the first place.
And yet, pressures in our work environment has been rising, not least because of the pandemic. How  we can look out for ourselves and others is a question I'll be discussing with Graham McCartney and Dave Horsfall. Dave and Graham are leading the UK charity Jonathan's Voice, which was born under tragic circumstances. 

As Graham says in the podcast: if you have difficulties in coping, don't struggle alone. Reach out! 
Your employer may provide services such as mental health aiders or services provided by your HR department.
In addition to that most if not all countries provide helplines and advice on mental health. In the UK e.g. there are the 

• Samaritans https://www.samaritans.org 
• Mind https://www.mind.org.uk 

Here are a few links you might find useful

• https://jonathansvoice.org.uk  Jonathan's Voice Charity - speaking out for mental health
• https://mhfaengland.org Mental Health First Aiders England
• https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/thriving-at-work-a-review-of-mental-health-and-employers Thriving at Work: UK government's Stevenson Farmer report from 2017 on Mental Health 
• https://medium.com/newcastle-university-research-software-engineering/mental-health-for-research-software-engineers-in-academia-2a5f0274f16e Dave's article on mental health in Academia in Medium
• https://www.mentimeter.com MentiMeter a tool to gauge how your audience, team etc are doing

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Reproducibility efforts are community efforts, as this episode's guest Grigori Fursin makes very clear. But you also need the tools. 
For some time, Grigori worked on the Collective Knowledge (CK) Framework to help researchers and machine learning practitioners get the best out of their solutions. 
In this episode we talk about the challenges you face when trying to evaluate machine learning applications and taking them to production. And how tools like CK Framework and others can help.

• https://cknowledge.org - Collective Knowledge (CK) Framework web site 

• https://mlcommons.org/en/ - ML Commons, a non-profit organisation & community for tools around machine learning applications: in particular ML Perf for performance testing

• https://github.com/mlcommons/ck  - CK framework GitHub repository

Get in touch

Thank you for listening! Merci de votre écoute! Vielen Dank für´s Zuhören!

Contact Details/ Coordonnées / Kontakt:

• Email mailto:[email protected]
• UK RSE Slack (ukrse.slack.com): @code4thought or @piddie 
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/code4thought.bsky.social
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pweschmidt/  (personal Profile)
  • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/codeforthought/ (Code for Thought Profile)

This podcast is licensed under the Creative Commons Licence:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/