We need you!

A long-term goal of IDEAS is to help change the culture of scientific computing to place more emphasis on productive and sustainable software development as a critical and rewarded aspect of overall scientific advancement, rather than focusing only on science results. If you’re of a like mind and want to get involved, there are plenty of opportunities. The more people who are engaged, the bigger the difference we can make for scientific software development!

Stay informed

• Join our mailing list for announcements of upcoming webinars and other events organized by the IDEAS Productivity team. Typically 1-2 messages per month.

• Subscribe to the BSSw.io digest for a monthly update on new resources on the Better Scientific Software resource hub—a community-driven website with both original content and pointers to external resources focused on software development, productivity, and sustainability.

• Browse our event archives many of which have content available online, including the complete archives of the HPC Best Practices webinars.

Participate

• Attend events organized by the IDEAS team, including the Best Practices for HPC Software Developers webinar series, Better Scientific Software tutorials, or the other minisymposia, poster sessions, and birds-of-a-feather sessions we organize at various conferences.

Contribute

• Share your ideas and favorite resources for scientific software development, productivity, and sustainability with Better Scientific Software (BSSw.io). Its as easy as a GitHub pull request!

• Suggest a topic or a speaker (maybe yourself) for the Best Practices for HPC Software Developers webinar series by sending us an email.

• We’re always looking for collaborators to co-organize technical sessions with. Email us if you’re interested.

• Apply to become a Better Scientific Software Fellow to foster and promote practices, processes, and tools to improve developer productivity and software sustainability of scientific codes.

• Consider partnering with a software community—either joining an existing Software Development Kit (SDK) or starting another SDK in an area of interest to you.

  • The Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit (xSDK) is a spin-off of the IDEAS project. Members of the xSDK community are working toward a community software ecosystem, including packages developed by diverse, independent teams. If you develop a numerical software package, consider contributing. Or have a look at the community policies and consider starting another SDK in an area of interest to you.
  • Check out SDK-Tools, a collection of documents that support planning for and maintaining the vibrancy of Software Development Kits (SDKs).
  • Learn about the Extreme-scale Scientific Software Stack (E4S).

Find other communities

Many communities are part of the effort to change the culture of scientific software development. Here are a few of the communities IDEAS has collaborated with over the years…

• Get involved with the growing number of professional associations for research software engineers (RSEs). These groups are raising awareness of software’s vital role in research and advancing advocacy and resources for those who regularly use expertise in programming to advance research. If you’re based in the U.S., check out US-RSE. For RSE organizations in other countries, check out Research Software Engineers International.

• Check out resources and activities of the UK Software Sustainability Institute (SSI)—an international leader in advancing software practices.

• Learn from and teach for The Carpentries—organizers of Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and the inspiration for HPC Carpentry. The Carpentries teach foundational coding and data science skills to researchers worldwide.

• Participate in events such as the Collegeville Workshop Series on Scientific Software, the Software Engineering for Computational Science (SE4Science) Workshop Series, the US-RSE Conference, or the SSI’s Collaborations Workshop or other events.

• Read and contribute to Computational Science Stack Exchange—a Q&A service that tends to be more towards methods than software per se, but many interested in IDEAS use the site and contribute.

• Explore BSSw.io, which includes pointers to many other places to get involved! In particular, check out articles about projects and organizations, conferences and workshops, and the event stream.

Contact Us!

We welcome your questions, comments or ideas. Please email us at IDEASProductivity@gmail.com.