The RSE Mini-conference on the 21st of October 2019 in Brisbane, Queensland is the first time in Australasia that the Research Software Engineer (RSE) community will bring together its members to share experiences and knowledge at their own conference. This is important as the 2018International RSE Survey conducted among Australian and New Zealand researchers found that the majority of the respondents wanted networking as the top priority of an RSE organisation.

The term ‘RSE’ was originally coined by the UK RSE Association, who define RSEs as: “A growing number of people in academia combine expertise in programming with an intricate understanding of research. Although this combination of skills is extremely valuable, these people lack a formal place in the academic system.” In Australasia, we interpret the term RSE inclusively to encompass:

  • academics and researchers who code;
  • professional software engineers working in the research space;
  • system administrators who maintain research systems and closely interact with their researchers; and
  • generalists who bring communities together and can engage with both researchers and technical staff.

Please join us on this event to help develop a stronger community by networking and sharing your experiences, skills and knowledge with your peers.

There are travel scholarships available as this is an AeRO event. You can find out more by clicking here.

To register, click on this link to see the 2019 program and select “Register Here”.

This is the link to the abstract for the mini-conference.

Call for volunteers!

While the idea is to have an unconference type format to make organisation easier, we would love for people to volunteer to help. To make things clearer, I have provided a list of roles I think that we need help on (please let me know if you think we need more!) and some estimated hours next to it (please let me know if you think it should be more!).

To volunteer, please go to this link and add your name and email address to the Roles needed for the Mini-Conference on the first and second page of the Google Doc.