INCF/OCNS Software WG

The INCF/OCNS Software Working Group

WG meeting 19 September 2022

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash.


These are the meeting logs (and additional progress notes) from the Software WG meeting that was held on 19th September, 2022. The next progress meeting will be held in October. For any clarifications and suggestions, please open a new ticket.

Attendees⋆

0800

  • Ankur Sinha (UCL/Open Source Brain/NeuroML)
  • Dinara Issagaliyeva (INCF/Charite Universitätsmedizin Berlin)
  • Malin Sandström (INCF)
  • Shailesh Appukuttan (CNRS/EBRAINS)
  • Chitaranjan Mahapatra (CNRS/EBRAINS)
  • Stewart Heitmann (Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute)

1700

  • Ankur Sinha
  • Reema Gupta (LMU/In2PrimateBrains Consortium)

Agenda⋆

Tasks from last meeting⋆

  • No pending tasks from last meeting (or to be discussed in their own topics)

Updates from CNS 2022⋆

  • Stewart: software showcase very useful (only one showcase this year)
  • Showcases: excellent opportunity to quickly introduce tool to community
  • Lower turnout at Melbourne
  • Will be good to see how next year at Leipzig is attended
  • People seem to prefer learning in their own time rather than attend live tutorials—-also because we’re spending more time on documentation and improved video tutorials
    • Try flipped classroom format?
    • pre-recorded videos/tutorials, and the live meting would then be to work interactively on something bigger/student projects etc.?
    • unclear how much work this would be to organize
    • standard tutorial not very useful if also already available as video
  • Idea: include showcases in next year’s satellite tutorials (online)
  • Question: will CNS2023 have an online component?

Brief update from the OCNS Board Meeting (Malin)⋆

  • discussed diversity
  • satellite tutorials were good to improve diversity
  • SIGs/WGs are good for diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI)
  • endorsement of tools
    • good to do but the board doesn’t have the bandwidth to take this on
    • sensitive issue: must focus on positives
    • Software WG would be the logical place for endorsement; we have related tasks in the pipeline:
      • guidelines (WIP): set of principles that everyone agrees on as required for a good tool
      • page on picking tools, which lists featured (WIP)
    • software prizes?
      • similar issues with not stepping on toes
      • could have many prizes in many different categories to cover lots of different software
    • possible collaboration with pyOpenSci?
  • best to set up a task force for longer WG activities that works intensively on the selected task (guidelines/form)
    • incentives
      • CV: task forces are important volunteering/service opportunities
      • learning/participation experience
      • possible citation: could be published in the F1000 INCF journal or pre-print/Zenodo/etc.
  • ACTION: Ankur send out e-mail to try and set up task forces for the two long running tasks
  • NOTE: new guidelines/etc. must be kept up to date
  • Also ask wider community for task force contributions
  • Make DEI regular event at OCNS conference: Board positive response
    • have a community development component at each annual conference
      • DEI
      • student/post-doc development
      • software showcases
      • grant applications
      • software best-practices
    • larger discussion that needs to be held at Board level

Updates from INCF assembly⋆

  • videos publicly available before end of the year
    • DEI sessions to be publicised widely
  • need more time for DEI discussion
  • good session for start
  • lots of good points (but overlapping also)
  • Gather: limitation: cannot directly record, had to use specific tool
  • Ask INCF if possible to prevent clash with Bernstein/other conferences

Satellite tutorials feedback form⋆

  • small data set
  • people seem to be happy to pay a small amount
    • have waiver in place similar to NeuroMatch conference
    • organization that funds the platforms will receive the registration fees
  • find sponsors to reduce the token registration fee?
    • WG unlikely to have bandwidth to look for sponsors
    • will need to lean on OCNS/INCF sponsors (OCNS has a sponsorship chair on the board)
  • see how much INCF ended up paying for the platforms at the Assembly (Malin will see if this info is available)
  • registration fee important to get better idea of actual attendance numbers.

Other⋆