{"id":6474,"date":"2018-08-24T08:04:18","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T07:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingrandomly.com\/?p=6474"},"modified":"2018-08-24T08:08:38","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T07:08:38","slug":"video-of-my-talk-rise-of-the-research-software-engineer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/walkingrandomly.com\/?p=6474","title":{"rendered":"Video of my talk: Rise of the Research Software Engineer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audiences can be brutal<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 I spent weeks preparing…practicing…honing my slides…hoping that it would all be good enough.<\/p>\n

The audience was not kind to me! Even though it was only a small group of around 12 people,\u00a0they were brutal! I felt like they\u00a0leaped upon every mistake I made, relished in pointing out every misunderstanding I had and all-round gave me a very hard time.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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’.\u00a0 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].<\/p>\n

Everyone agreed and so my torture continued for another 15 minutes or so.<\/p>\n

Practice makes you tougher<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 I always enjoy them…always!\u00a0 Even when they go badly!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But what if it was recorded?!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

JuliaCon 2018 and Rise of the Research Software Engineer<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the organizers of JuliaCon 2018<\/a> 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\u00a0all\u00a0<\/strong>talks, however, my enthusiasm was greatly dampened.<\/p>\n

‘Would you mind if my talk\u00a0wasn’t live streamed and recorded’<\/em> I asked them.\u00a0 ‘Sure, no problem’<\/em> was the answer….<\/p>\n

Problem averted. No need to face my fears this week!<\/p>\n

A fellow delegate of the conference pointed out to me that my talk would be the\u00a0only<\/strong> one that wouldn’t be on the live stream. That would look weird and not in a good way.<\/p>\n

‘Can I just be live streamed but not recorded’<\/em> I asked the organisers.\u00a0 ‘Sure, no problem’<\/em>\u00a0[2] was the reply….<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Maybe this would be a nice first step in my record-a-talk-a-phobia therapy he\u00a0suggested.<\/p>\n

So…on I went and it turned out not to be as terrible as I had imagined it might be.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Rise of the Research Software Engineer<\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Slide deck at mikecroucher.github.io\/juliacon2018\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Feel free to talk to me on twitter about it: @walkingrandomly<\/a><\/p>\n