1. 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

2. 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.
© 2016 Internet2

3. 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

4. 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 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

5. 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