CodeRefinery2-SG-meeting-2020-06-11

Steering group meeting 2020-06-11

Time

• 2020-06-11, 12:30 - 14:00 CEST, 13:30 - 14:30 EEST

Location

• Video meeting: https://uit.zoom.us/j/67575319834

Invited

• Kristoffer Laigaard Nielbo
• Michaela Barth
• Pauliina Somerkoski
• Radovan Bast
• Rossen Apostolov
• Thor Wikfeldt
• Jon Kerr Nilsen
• Terje Vellemaa

Meeting minutes (approved)

Welcome, presence, and approval of agenda

• Present: Michaela, Radovan, Rossen, Jon, Terje, and Kristoffer.
• We have quorum.
• Approval of agenda: Radovan added one item on a possible instructor training event after a meeting on Tuesday with persons interested in instructor training for HPC Carpentry.

Information: NeIC announcements

• New project on Nordic COVID-19 research PaRi answering https://neic.no/news/2020/04/20/COVID-19-call/, starting after summer.
• NeIC board meeting moved from June to August.
• Many good articles available on NeIC web site https://neic.no/#latest-news.

Information: Project status

Reacting to travel restrictions and COVID-19:

• We had to cancel postpone all in-person events before the summer.
• We have quickly transitioned to teaching online.

4 online workshops delivered:

• https://coderefinery.org/workshops/past/#past-3-day-workshops
• Over 100 participants at https://coderefinery.github.io/2020-05-25-online/
• “Bring your own breakout-room” worked very well, about 20 break out rooms.
• The idea of encouraging learners to participate as teams worked well.
• 2 helper from this workshop will also participate in upcoming instructor training.

Lessons learned from running our first online workshop: https://coderefinery.org/blog/2020/04/14/first-online-workshop/

Online instructor training in collaboration with TU Delft June 24-25

• 22 participants
• https://coderefinery.github.io/2020-06-24-instructor-training/

Recordings will be made available on the CodeRefinery Youtube channel after some editing.

Discussion: Can unused person months be transferred to volunteering partners?

Situation:

• Radovan: I have not managed yet to bring staff from ETAIS into the project (two contacts have reported that they are busy with other projects except July and August).
• Radovan: Also team members from DK are a bit disconnected both from the perspective of the project manager but also from their perspective (possibly not clear enough task assignment from the project manager).
• Problem with transferring funds is the time-shifted funding model which may make reallocation of funds difficult or impossible.

Comments:

• Participating in meetings, discussions, filling out time sheets, etc. is all part of the work as well and this also needs to be acknowledged.
• Moving funds away from a country/partner is also strategically problematic in the long term for the sustainability of the project.
• How can we find a model where the team members contribute in a way that is meaningful to the project and to them?
• We continue the current setup but maintain and improve the dialogue to improve the situation for the project and the project members.
• Terje and Radovan will discuss next week how we can integrate ETAIS into the project after the move to online teaching.

Independently of specific discussions above, if we have unused person-months in the project, is it even possible to move funds to a new partner?

• Problematic with timeshifted funding model? This would only apply to future effort, not retroactively to spent effort.

Decision: Concerning DK and ETAIS contribution, we keep the model as is but improve the dialogue and try to find a solution that is meaningful both for the project and the project partners. As to moving funds: In principle okay to move the unspent effort, if we see that one partner is not delivering.

Discussion: Instructor training for HPC Carpentry

• Radovan: On Tuesday we had a discussion with few members from CodeRefinery and colleagues from FocusCoE (centers of excellence) coordinating HPC Carpentry training across HPC centers of excellence. They approached us whether we could instruct a 2 x 0.5-day instructor training where group examples are about HPC Carpentry. We are 4-5 persons interested in this from CodeRefinery side but unsure yet whether we go in as CodeRefinery or as HPC staff.
• There is some budget which we (NeIC?) could invoice them for.

Recommendation from the steering group: NeIC invoices FocusCoE for CodeRefinery to deliver this training in autumn 2020.

Discussion: Feedback from provider forum

• ETAIS communicated tentative interest in taking over the GitLab service in case we cannot secure financing/support within the current framework
• https://wiki.neic.no/int/Provider_Forum:meeting/2020-05-20
• Radovan to establish contact, while also keeping DeiC in the loop.

Discussion: Input for mid-term report and questions for NeIC board meeting

• Radovan needs to present a draft by Aug 24.
• Any input from SG on what we should not miss to report?
  • Partners shouldn’t come with small contributions per person, no less than 20%. This will also be taken up under the NeIC strategic aspect of Nordic added value.

Information: Organization of Nordic research software engineers conference 2020

• Dec 1-2, Stockholm
• Organization committee and program committee: https://nordic-rse.org/conference/
• We will reallocate unused travel budget from 2020 for the conference budget.
• Call for contributions will go out in July.

Information: Draft for the NeIC-commissioned news article about the project

The draft is not ready yet and will be circulated at a later time.