SURFnet, Community Manager Research Exploring the Sociological and Cultural Challenges of International Research Engagement Mary Hester SURFnet, Community Manager Research Introductions What do you think we are going to talk about today? What are your impressions or expectations for this session? Set the stage for sociological and cultural examination of what we do with research engagement Whats “new that we want to discuss”? -- Jakob What we can get out of engaging Why are we reaching out to the different/unusual communities? Jakob Tendel, The Unusual Suspects—focusing on Summarize experiences Marine Fisheries, socioeconomcis researchers Increase the use of R&E network usage Employ infrastructure in unexpected ways Methods of engaging—interdisciplinary projects, specialized conferences, face to face conversations Representatives of the research communities Work with subject matter experts to describe things in their own research fields. When describing case studies: Language and discussion obstacles We need to make the technology work for them Sylvia (molecular imaging, NMR) Life sciences clusters Closer to the more fundamental research Exploring the not-so-fundamental fundamental life sciences research Central repositories are available but these repositories are at capacity Why are you still using these hard drives It just has to work they don’t ask for help with this to solve these issues—challenge for our community Data transfers are still done by hard drive because its faster—bad performance Requirements gathering to connect the dots Kate Data management and data access Cost of genomes Post mortem approach—reactive networking needs Putting the right people together—using interdisciplinary skills Materials and resources to support a community Rapid change in technology—hard to keep the knowledge of what the standard or best way to do something Key components equal access organization we need to be flexible Large undertaking and will take time and small steps David Under resources Important to discuss the coherence between the different e-infrastructures Top level vision Not silos Mutual understanding and conversations poor planning miscommunication/misunderstanding Whats hindering good progress? Range of services are increasing researcher not having the right level of engagement NRENs we don’t properly understand research groups Network level services are off-putting Big gap between researchers and what they can do Misunderstandings on our part—how do we fix that? Avoiding doom and failure—a few key remarks on working with researchers What are people really trying to do? Pan-european projects—some are asked to respond Human-focused issues Managing expectations and diplomatic advice Project briefings and communication between partners Looking to the future… Case studies Strides: WHAT ARE OUR STRIDES and WHAT ARE OUR CHALLENGES? Hiring people who can adapt to the research domains Collaboration (with compute and storage experts) What are the takeaways we want to give them? Communicate, communicate, communicate! (Get out there and talk to people.) Advocacy from research groups Community involvement from other R&E networks and collaborating resources (compute/cloud) © 2016 Internet2

Importance of Sociological and Cultural Observations “Sociology is unique in its recognition not only that societies shape us, but also that we shape our societies.” Discuss observations from these experiences Can we take steps to help shape our e-(cyber)infrastructure communities? We want to say yes… which we will discuss some of those topics today. http://www.rider.edu/academics/colleges-schools/college-liberal-arts-education-sciences/liberal-arts-programs/sociology/why-study-sociology © 2016 Internet2

Disclaimer We aren’t sociologists... I’m sure this will come as a surprise… Disclaimer: we are not sociologists! But we certainly see trends in these areas that we would like to discuss We can’t study research engagement; It’s a topic and area that we have learned through experience and conversation © 2016 Internet2

Today’s Topics & Takeaways What do we want from you? Invite you to think about your own examples for overcoming sociological and cultural challenges working with research domains Come to the Task Force on Research Engagement Development (TF-RED) meeting in Room 3 after this Some Topics Language barriers Perception of unstable/unreliable resources Cross-institutional collaboration What do we want from you? While we’re presenting, we want you to think about your own cases and examples for overcoming sociological and cultural challenges in engaging researchers Interactive conversation and panel discussion Come to the TF-RED meeting in Room 3 directly after this Its about 15-20 years later and we are still seeing the same problems Language barriers Unstable/unreliable resources (or the perception of this) Not meeting their requirements Importance of examining social and cultural challenges and how we can move forward with some of these trends. Takeaway messages for the session Advocacy FROM research groups are really important Communicate, communicate, communicate! (Get out there and talk to people.) Community involvement from other R&E networks and collaborating resources (compute/cloud) © 2016 Internet2

Exploring the Sociological and Cultural Challenges of Research Engagement Session Organization Presentations (40 min) Jakob Tendel, DFN, “The Unusual Suspects” Sylvia Kuijpers, SURFnet, “Exploring the not-so-fundamental Life Sciences Research Fundamentals” Kate Petersen, ESnet, “Connecting the Dots” David Salmon, JISC, “Organizational & Collaboration issues” Panel Discussion (30 min) lead by Enzo Capone, GÉANT We want your input in this session. We will give 4 short presentations to prepare for the panel and audience discussion—we want your input The structure for today’s session is 4, 10 minute presentations Followed by the panel discussion lead by Enzo Capone What do we want from the audience? © 2016 Internet2