Video of my talk: Rise of the Research Software Engineer

August 24th, 2018 | Categories: Julia, RSE, Scientific Software, walking randomly | Tags:

Audiences can be brutal

I still have nightmares about the first talk I ever gave as a PhD student. I was not a strong presenter, my grasp of the subject matter was still very tenuous and I was as nervous as hell. Six months or so into my studentship, I was to give a survey of the field I was studying to a bunch of very experienced researchers.  I spent weeks preparing…practicing…honing my slides…hoping that it would all be good enough.

The audience was not kind to me! Even though it was only a small group of around 12 people, they were brutal! I felt like they leaped upon every mistake I made, relished in pointing out every misunderstanding I had and all-round gave me a very hard time.  I had nothing like the robustness I have now and very nearly quit my PhD the very next day. I can only thank my office mates and enough beer to kill a pony for collectively talking me out of quitting.

I remember stopping three quarters of the way through saying ‘That’s all I want to say on the subject’ only for one of the senior members of the audience to point out that ‘You have not talked about all the topics you promised’.  He made me go back to the slide that said something like ‘Things I will talk about’ or ‘Agenda’ or whatever else I called the stupid thing and say ‘Look….you’ve not mentioned points X,Y and Z’ [1].

Everyone agreed and so my torture continued for another 15 minutes or so.

Practice makes you tougher

Since that horrible day, I have given hundreds of talks to audiences that range in size from 5 up to 300+ and this amount of practice has very much changed how I view these events.  I always enjoy them…always!  Even when they go badly!

In the worst case scenario, the most that can happen is that I get given a mildly bad time for an hour or so of my life but I know I’ll get over it. I’ve gotten over it before. No big deal! Academic presentations on topics such as research computing rarely lead to life threatening outcomes.

But what if it was recorded?!

Anyone who has worked with me for an appreciable amount of time will know of my pathological fear of having one of my talks recorded. Point a camera at me and the confident, experienced speaker vanishes and is replaced by someone much closer to the terrified PhD student of my youth.

I struggle to put into words what I’m so afraid of but I wonder if it ultimately comes down to the fact that if that PhD talk had been recorded and put online, I would never have been able to get away from it. My humiliation would be there for all to see…forever.

JuliaCon 2018 and Rise of the Research Software Engineer

When the organizers of JuliaCon 2018 invited me to be a keynote speaker on the topic of Research Software Engineering, my answer was an enthusiastic ‘Yes’. As soon as I learned that they would be live streaming and recording all talks, however, my enthusiasm was greatly dampened.

‘Would you mind if my talk wasn’t live streamed and recorded’ I asked them.  ‘Sure, no problem’ was the answer….

Problem averted. No need to face my fears this week!

A fellow delegate of the conference pointed out to me that my talk would be the only one that wouldn’t be on the live stream. That would look weird and not in a good way.

‘Can I just be live streamed but not recorded’ I asked the organisers.  ‘Sure, no problem’ [2] was the reply….

Later on the technician told me that I could have it recorded but it would be instantly hidden from the world until I had watched it and agreed it wasn’t too terrible.  Maybe this would be a nice first step in my record-a-talk-a-phobia therapy he suggested.

So…on I went and it turned out not to be as terrible as I had imagined it might be.  So we published it. I learned that I say ‘err’ and ‘um’ a lot [3] which I find a little embarrassing but perhaps now that I know I have that problem, it’s something I can work on.

Rise of the Research Software Engineer

Anyway, here’s the video of the talk. It’s about some of the history of The Research Software Engineering movement and how I worked with some awesome people at The University of Sheffield to create a RSE group. If you are the computer-person in your research group who likes software more than papers, you may be one of us. Come join the tribe!

Slide deck at mikecroucher.github.io/juliacon2018/

Feel free to talk to me on twitter about it: @walkingrandomly

Thanks to the infinitely patient and wonderful organisers of JuliaCon 2018 for the opportunity to beat one of my long standing fears.

Footnotes

[1] Pro-Tip: Never do one of these ‘Agenda’ slides…give yourself leeway to alter the course of your presentation midway through depending on how well it is going.

[2] So patient! Such a lovely team!

[3] Like A LOT! My mum watched the video and said ‘No idea what you were talking about but OMG can you cut out the ummms and ahhs’

  1. August 25th, 2018 at 12:56
    Reply | Quote | #1

    I enjoyed your talk very much, and had no idea you weren’t a master presenter!

  2. Avik Sengupta
    August 26th, 2018 at 05:19
    Reply | Quote | #2

    Thanks for your wonderful talk Mike. I’ve heard quite a few instances of “as Mike said in his keynote” later at the conference and beyond.

  3. August 26th, 2018 at 19:33
    Reply | Quote | #3

    Hi Mike, I appreciate your talk! In 2011 I graduated in civil engineering from University of Piauí (www.uespi.br). There, at the end of the course, the students need to produce a final paper (undergraduate thesis or term paper). Mine involves the resolution and analysis of engineering problems using algebraic systems. In that time, it would be great if the university had a research software engineering department to help me in this task. So, I really appreciate your effort to advocate about this cause, that you called “The Rise of the RSE”.