RSE Asia Australia Unconference 2023

We invite you to join us for the second online Research Software Engineer (RSE) Asia Australia Unconference from the 13th to the 15th of September 2023. This is a joint partnership between the RSE Asia Association and the RSE Association of Australia and New Zealand. The theme for this year is “Silos to Synergy - Achieving collaboration across domains”. The unconference will run online over three half-days from 13:00 to 17:00 UTC+10. 

We would like to thank our Key Partners ARDC and the Australian BioCommons for supporting us, as well as our Allied Partners, NCI Australia, QCIF, and AARNet.

What is a Research Software Engineer?

Research Software Engineer is a broad term for people who combine programming and research skills that have trouble defining their role and value within academia. e.g researchers and academics who code, generalists who bring communities together across the research and technical domains, systems administrators who maintain research systems, and software engineers who work in the research domain.

Why participate?

This will be run as a participant-first online unconference to ensure you have a say on how we develop the community and to allow you to share your valuable technical and social knowledge of research software with the community. 

Together, we can create a sustainable community that benefits research software engineers by raising recognition and building career paths for RSEs, and ultimately contributes to more efficient and reproducible research.

We also hope that this experience will identify ways to positively engage with senior leaders who are working on policies that directly affect you and the rest of the RSE community.

What is an unconference?

An unconference is where the agenda is created by the attendees at the beginning of the meeting. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space [1].

Investment

• Students $10 AUD [Link for exchange rates]
• Staff $20 AUD [Link for exchange rates]
• Scholarships are available for participants to participate for free (see Accessibility and Inclusivity).
• $50 AUD Accessibility micro-grants are available (see Accessibility and Inclusivity).

Accessibility and Inclusivity

We are committed to creating a safe, accessible, and inclusive environment for all participants. 

To this end we are offering scholarships for staff or students to participate for free, as well as a $50 accessibility micro-grant to help with internet, headphones, childcare etc. 

Eligibility for the scholarships will be based on prioritising and maximising the inclusion and participation of people who have been impacted due to the cumulative effects of discrimination on factors such as race, gender, disability, gender identity, financial status,and the intersectionality of that discrimination as well as others not mentioned here.

Eligibility for the accessibility will be based on a similar approach.

We encourage participants to apply even if they do not think they are eligible as this will allow us to prioritise and maximise diversity and inclusion. All information will be treated in a confidential manner.

You can apply for the scholarships and for the micro-grants by filling out this form. You will need to provide one short paragraph to explain how you will benefit from the scholarship or micro-grant. 

If you feel that the unconference is not matching up to the commitment of these ideals, please let us know by contacting the organising committee at rse2023 at rse-aunz.org. 

The Code of Conduct is designed to provide all participants with community participation guidelines.

More details

An overview of what the program will look like will be coming soon on the website [2]. You can sign up for updates by being part of the RSE AUNZ making list [3] and RSE Asia [4].  

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference
2. https://rseaa.github.io/ 
3. ​​https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rse-nz-au/join 
4. https://rse-asia.github.io/RSE_Asia/membership.html