Next week, I will have been working for the Australian Research Data Commons for a year. I am having a ball and really enjoying the work/life balance. I also answer to “Kit” there. You can see why here Changing names. Blogjune 10/24
Lots on this week that I thought I would share in a series of posts.
Want to see me fling my hands about again as I host another Zoom webinar?
Then, you can, and should, register for the 1 hour ARDC National Skills forum on Wednesday 4 December at 1pm AEDT
This is the second of a monthly series of conversations my team is hosting around research skills in Australia. The Australian National Skills Forum (yes, we are working on that template we need to submit for the webpage, so no link yet…) aims to shine a spotlight on the skills researchers need to use national research infrastructure and participate in a national research data commons.
We are rotating topics and hosts monthly. This month I am hosting a session to discuss research skills takeaways from the recent conference in Melbourne, eResearch Australasia 2024. The ARDC Skilled Development Workforce team and guests will recap some of the sessions they presented, and highlight sessions that caught their attention.
Speakers will be:
- Nisha Ghatak, Research Communities Advisor – Training, New Zealand eScience Infrastructure . She presented three sessions: The Carpentries Unconference and Networking ; Navigating New Frontiers: Mapping NeSI’s progress with the new Open OnDemand Training Environment; Skills gap for AI-enabled research: What is available and what must be done?
- Kit Greenhill, Skills Development Lead (HASS and Indigenous), ARDC who presented eResearch skills for HASS and Indigenous data: what the ARDC learned from co-design workshops
- Amany Gouda-Vossos, Skills Development Lead (People), ARDC who presented Ten Simple Rules for Researchers: Upskilling for a Rapidly Evolving Workforce
Maybe see you next week.
It occurs to me that this job has all the good bits of an academic’s job: learning and thinking about stuff, sharing stuff and teaching skills, good discussions, connecting with others – without all the painful bits: answering endless student email, marking, bureaucracy and endless administrivia of the contemporary Australian university.
Not a bad way to think about it 🙂 University of Melbourne actually have a class of academic which is not teaching or research, but does this kind of thing. Think the people with disciplinary and tech knowledge who help academics use code in their work.
The main difference is that the subject of the research I discuss does not originate with me… so in that way it’s more like Extreme Academic librarianship…without having to advise about publication or research assessment metrics or ask people whether they cleared their cache before they tried to access that database.
I think of it as creating the right discussions among the right people at the right table to promote research using data as infrastructure. Sometimes, I think we create spaces that researchers just don’t have time/resources to create, so the discussions and mentoring between them can happen.