The last week of April, I had the great opportunity to attend the CW26 conference in Belfast, organised by the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI). As it was my first time attending a SSI event, I was looking forward to what I expected would be a more interactive and community-driven type of conference. And I was not disappointed!
Those three days were packed with workshops, collaborative sessions and inspiring lightning talks. It felt like one of those events where you need a few weeks to process everything that happened, as well as all the feedback and new initiatives you learned about from the community. Here are just some of my highlights!
How one idea sparked twenty more
One of the most interesting session formats of the conference was the āCollaborative Ideasā sessions. These consisted of hour-and-a-half sessions where we were divided into groups with a wide spectrum of expertise and career backgrounds. The entire aim of the session was to come up with āideasā - just as simple and as difficult as that!
These could involve, for instance, highlighting underrepresented research and communities through digital storytelling, supporting the adoption of open-source practices and institutions that are new to them, or organising interactive outreach events such as hackathons, community coding days, or public engagement workshops.
For me, the most interesting part of this session was noticing that, at the beginning, not everyone seemed to have ideas to share. However, as people started sharing their thoughts, creativity in the room suddenly took off and, before we knew it, we were running out of space to write down all the different proposals and tangents that the initial suggestions had sparked.
So the main takeaway here was that creativity is driven by sharing. And creativity - together with safe spaces to share ideas - is key to developing new solutions and initiatives!
Oops, did we do it right?
As part of the conference, Eleanor Broadway (from CAKE) and I (representing SHAREing) delivered a workshop on how collaborations happen and what makes them successful called: āOops, did we do it right? Lessons from Successful Collaborationsā
Gathering community feedback on this is key for SHAREing, since our whole model is based on encouraging people to contribute with their own ideas and, ultimately, offering opportunities to collaborate through our flexible funds model to carry out those tasks.
During the session, we tried to identify which key elements help collaborations thrive and which factors seem to create recurring bottlenecks. Regarding how most collaborations begin, many people in the room agreed that they are normally triggered by a shared project or grant, while others highlighted the importance - and sometimes underrated value - of networking. It seems that some of the most successful collaborations may have started years earlier, when you first spoke with someone during a coffee break at a conference.
Connected to this, the importance of in-person events was also reiterated. Even though we acknowledged that attending in person is not always accessible to everyone, it was also highlighted the there is a need to put good infrastructure in place for hybrid attendance, and even organising online coffee-breaks and social opportunities. A very good example of this was the conference itself - the SSI did an amazing job of giving the same level of support, attention and effort to online attendees.
A more detailed report on this session will be published on the CAKEbox
A great week overall
As it was my first time attending an āunconferenceā, I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised to see how much creativity, collaboration, and new ideas can emerge when a safe and relaxed environment is provided. With an entire week of Northern Ireland sunshine as a backdrop, I left Belfast feeling very grateful for the conversations and the new perspectives shared throughout the week.