tl;dr Check out the table below for Bio-IT activities that we'd love to see community members contribute to in 2019.
We have a lot of exciting things planned for the Bio-IT Project in 2019, both new and old. You might be aware that the project tries to build and support EMBL's computational biology/bioinformatics community, but did you know that most of our activity is driven by voluntary contributions from our wonderful community members? As the number of Bio-IT resources and events continues to grow, we'd love to hear from people who'd be interested in helping us provide for the community (see some highlights from 2018).
Not sure how you can help, or how much time you can spare for this kind of activity? No problem! We've tried to compile a list, detailed in the table below, of all the activities that we have planned for the coming months. From opportunities to teach in both formal and informal settings, to administration and maintenance of some of the community resources, you can see ways to get involved below.
As coordinators of the project, our goal is to enable our community members to do the things that they want to do, and gain the experience that they want to gain, by making volunteering as easy as possible. We've tried to provide details below, including an estimate of time commitment involved in each activity, but we'd be very happy to meet for a coffee if you'd like to know more about what's involved in any of the things listed below.
Thanks for reading,
Malvika & Toby
| Activity | Estimated Time Requirement | Contact | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Become a maintainer for a Bio-IT resource | 30 minutes per week | Git Admins | git.embl.de; chat.embl.org |
| Teach a course* | Between 2 days & 2 weeks | Malvika Sharan | Time commitment depends on whether mature material already exists for the course. |
| Lead a User Group or Coding Club session | 2-4 hours | Toby Hodges | There is also the option for running a longer series of sessions if you want to. |
| Write a blogpost/short tutorial | 2-4 hours | Malvika Sharan | Contributions welcome on any topic you like! |
| Ask & answer questions on chat.embl.org | 10 minutes | n/a | Help out and/or get help from your EMBL colleagues! |
| Join the Bio-IT Taskforce | 1 hour every 2 months | Toby Hodges | The Taskforce meets to discuss and inform Bio-IT strategy. |
| Join the Research Data Management Interest Group | 1 hour every 2 months | Toby Hodges | Discussions around strategies, tools, and training for managing research data. |
| Help us promote Bio-IT in your unit/EMBL station | 1 hour - 1 day per month | Toby Hodges | Use existing Bio-IT material and resources to organise and run courses and events within your unit/station. Tell us what is needed in your unit/station and how Bio-IT could support you better. |
*Courses planned for 2019 include:
- Introductory/Intermediate R
- Introductory/Intermediate Python
- Introductory/Intermediate Cluster Computing
- Version control
- GitLab Pages
- Unit Testing and Continuous Integration
- Image Analysis
- Machine Learning with R
- Research Data Management
- Software Carpentry
- Data Carpentry
- Working with relational databases and SQL
and probably more! You would be very welcome to join the team of instructors for any/all of the above and/or for a new course/workshop on a topic of your choice. Bio-IT already has mature, high-quality material for a lot of these courses - teaching one of these wouldn't necessarily require a huge time commitment on your part.