Attending RSECon24 as an early-career research software engineer
10 September 2024
The Eighth Annual Research Software Engineering Conference (RSECon24) took place in Newcastle from 3–5 September. I attended as part of the EPCC team, and here I share my experience of the conference as a first-time attendee.
RSECon24 provided an invaluable opportunity to connect with the wider research software engineer (RSE) community. As someone relatively new to this field, I was keen to find out more about work going on outside of EPCC, both at other HPC centres, and beyond.
Some of my time was spent running the EPCC booth. This was a great opportunity to talk to other RSEs and conference attendees about the work I do at EPCC, as well as to hear more about work by other members of the community.
Highlights
One of the highlights for me was the session on ‘Agile Methods for RSEs’ presented by Ann Gledson and Adrian Harwood from the University of Manchester. Agile software engineering approaches are something industry has successfully embraced for a long time now; however, I had not previously come across it being used explicitly by RSEs.
It was interesting to hear how they have adapted methods such as “Scrum” to meld with the unique challenges of research software engineering. This is allowing them to better manage a wide range of projects and adapt effectively as requirements and priorities change, something that is common in both software engineering and academia.
Discussion of agile methods, along with other topics, continued in the ‘Project Management in Research Software - People and Processes’ Birds of a Feather (BoF) session. I’m excited to see how this part of the RSE community develops and hopefully adopt some of what I learned in my own projects!
Social responsibility
It was clear from the conference that the RSE community cares about being inclusive and welcoming, as well as encouraging social responsibility, particularly around the environment. While I didn’t get to the Green RSEs BoF session, Andy Turner’s presentation on the environmental impact and social responsibility of large-scale HPC services used ARCHER2 as a case study to highlight a lot of the key challenges specifically facing HPC in this area. As someone who regularly works on ARCHER2, it was fascinating to see how different aspects of the system (eg hardware manufacture, cooling, or powering the compute nodes) contribute to the total environmental impact of running an HPC service.
Beyond the talks and workshops, the organised socials (including a distributed socials event on the Wednesday evening) were a fantastic addition to the programme. They provided a relaxed atmosphere to network, share experiences, and forge new connections with fellow RSEs from around the UK and beyond.
Conclusion
If you’re also fairly new to working as an RSE (or even not), I highly recommend attending future RSECons. I certainly learned a lot and it’s a great way to connect with the RSE community. As RSEs we tend to work in small project teams, or even individually, so it’s a great network to have, particularly if you’re not part of a wider RSE team.
Further information
