The Research Software Engineer AGM and Hackday

Back in March 2012, we began raising awareness of the research community's reliance on RSEs. In the last last year, we have made excellent progress in gaining recognition for the role. In the coming year, we want to continue this work, and attract more people to the community so that we have the weight of numbers to change how academia deals with its software developers.

Register now! There are only 80 places available at the AGM and 60 at the hackday. If you want to attend, please register for free on our registration page. You can elect to attend either the AGM, the hackday or both events.

The AGM and Hackday will take place at Ortus, which is based at King's College London on 15 and 16 September 2014. More details are available on the registration page. The AGM will feature various sessions designed to bring RSEs together, to swap expertise and to discuss how we can improve the situation of RSEs in academia The technology showcase provides you with time to discuss technology that you've developed, or just a technology that you like to use. Training sessions let you pass on expertise that you've developed to other RSEs. Finally, discussion groups let us pick your brains about issues that affect the RSE community so that we can better represent those views to research stakeholders

In collaboration with our sponsor, Maudsley Digital, we will run a hackday on 16 September which will focus on how activity data can be used to help understand and diagnose mental health issues. We will provide activity data and monitors, cloud resources, food, coffee and - of course - plenty of RSEs to hack with. We'll be asking clinicians to provide some pointers about the help that they need, but what you work on will be completely up to you. The best hacks will not only receive prizes, but will also get the chance to engage with Maudsley Digital to ensure that their work can be used to help the community.

Finally, if the RSE Community is to last, it should be self-governing. For this reason, we will soon be holding elections for places on the committee that organises the community. The people who are interested in running the community will get the opportunity to present a lightning talk about why you should vote for them.

Our thanks to Maudsley Digital who have provided us with an excellent venue and catering for the event. We would also like to thank Microsoft Research for providing tablets and passes for Azure Cloud. Other sponsors will be announced soon!