Core Lessons
Better science for future us
A guiding principle for Openscapes is “setter science for future us”.
Better science is science that is more open, reproducible, efficient, interoperable, and also more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and kind.
Future us is the idea of considering ourselves, our teams, and communities - those who will be joining and continuing our work - whether that is in the next hour, week, or decades – and with a focus on onboarding ourselves and others to ongoing work.
Together better science for future us is an important mindset for science and society at large, and particularly important as we face global challenges in Earth & environmental science and society that are intensified with climate change. Better science for future us is a real time investment, particularly for data-intensive research. And it is something we can do together.
Why we’re here
We are passionate environmental scientists and researchers studying important, time-sensitive topics using data of all kinds. And we were never taught to work efficiently with data.
We are here because I know these files are on your computer — we all have them.
data_final_final.xls
data_final_usethis.xls
...
thesis_v16_new_ch1.docx
thesis_v16.docx
...And we also send and receive emails with subject lines like:
Re:FWD:Fwd:Data question
Re:Sending again with the correct versionWe are going to talk about how to make the data experience better, for you, your team, your center, and beyond.
Data analysis can be inefficient and demoralizing when you’re without the right tools/skills and you feel alone.
But! Open tools, practices, and communities exist that are powerful and empowering, and game-changing for science. And we can learn and use open practices for science.
They are like the Force from Star Wars:
- More powerful than you ever imagined
- Helps you solve your current question powerfully – but also broadens the scope of the questions you can ask
- Learn from jedis, pass on what you have learned, have a ton of awesome allies (and not all allies are jedis)
What to expect
This is going to be fun and empowering!
We are going to be discussing a wide range of topics and working to seed habits for you to engage and learn with them with our research team and others in your environment.
Exposure to relevant tools & practices, confidence & agency to engage, community to learn with
The plan is to expose you to a lot of great tools and practices that you can have confidence using in your research. We will also spend time helping you plan how to actually incrementally weave them into your existing workflows.
The point is not to overwhelm you or make you feel like it’s too late for you or that you would need to throw out and redo everything you’ve ever done in order to take the first step. No. By seeing what’s possible and how shared practices can make your own life easier, and life easier and more streamlined and fun with your team and beyond, you’ll start experimenting with these practices and in a few years you will be working in a completely different way.
No skills required. We will strategize about general approaches, specific examples using R/RStudio and GitHub
There are no skills required to participate, and we will not be teaching hands-on how to code or set up databases. But we will be talking about how these are important and fit together in the big picture, and how to get started learning the skills you need. This is an opportunity to discuss existing tools and how to engage, meet other research teams, discuss next steps, and stay accountable.
We’ll talk about tools and practices broadly, but also with specific examples using R and GitHub. “Won’t that software eventually become outdated?” you say — is it worth learning them over something else? The answer is yes, software will change and become outdated; it always has. But seeing what is possible and becoming versed in embracing existing architecture and practices will set you up to make whatever transition comes, and you will make this transition with the community, not alone. Your skills will be transferrable skills as the actual software changes. Analogy: if you learn one musical instrument, you will be able to learn another one more fluidly than if you have never learned one to begin with because maybe you can read music, understand something about timing and rhythm, etc.
Everyone is coming with different experiences & expectations
Everyone in this workshop is coming from a different place with different experiences and expectations. But everyone will learn something new here, because there is so much innovation in the data science world. You are encouraged to ask questions and answer those of others.
We are all learning together
These tools are new to all of us, and the best ideas come from questions from anyone. If you are already familiar with some of this material, think about how your experience was learning it, and how you might teach it to others. Use these workshop materials not only as a reference in the future but also for talking points so you can communicate the importance of these tools to your communities. A big part of this Series is not only for you to learn these skills, but for you to also teach others and increase the value and practice of open data science in science as a whole.
Vulnerability: yes! Shame: no.
We work on releasing any shame we feel around these topics. We avoid sentiments like “I already have well-established coding practices that don’t involve GitHub…is it too late for me to change?”. We have never had the opportunity to learn these things, there should be no shame on your part for that. It takes a lot of time and dedicated effort to learn and employ these practices, and they should be valued and taught. That’s why you’re here now, you should be proud that you are taking the initiative and your time to do this. No shame.
Vulnerability, however, will be involved in this Series. Vulnerability is a big part of learning and trying new things — this is a safe place for everyone to learn. Vulnerability is taking stock of where you are now and help you map out where you want to be. Being vulnerable is scary. But it shouldn’t be lonely: we all have data confessions that we would love to talk about and get help with, if only our scientific culture said that was OK; if only we knew how to articulate our questions and have someone to ask. This is a place to share our vulnerabilities to ignite real change. Ask questions. Whether it’s a keyboard shortcut or philosophy of data workflows, ask and let’s talk about it.
Everyone is welcome here
You are all welcome here, please be respectful of one another. We are setting a tone of mutual respect and a space place for learning where we assume good intentions and interact with kindness and empathy. Pass it on.
What we’ll learn
Expect that there is a better way
Seeing what’s possible opens up what you expect. There is a bit of a chicken and egg issue here: you need to be exposed to things so you know what’s possible and what skills to develop, but you need to kind of know what to look for so you can absorb what you are exposed to.
Have agency to find it
Break down that “I teach you learn” model. We are all here to learn and improve. Learning horizontally.
This series is not about micro-managing your work but about providing guidance & structure so that everyone on your team is not silently struggling to reinvent the wheel and coming up with weird homegrown data approaches.
What skills you should have and what you should be thinking of, along with some of the tools you can use. Will be building out the Resources page on the website for this purpose. And search the blogs.
Have community to learn with
No more silently struggling & reinventing the wheel & creating weird, homegrown workarounds.
Embrace emerging and established community best practices. And find/grow community within your organization, which especially helps with remote/hybrid work and onboarding new hires.
Identify what skills and tools you need, map next steps & learn
We will introduce concepts, tools, and workflows and start creating a shared culture around them. That can mean knowing what skills or tools to learn or how to help someone else.