Defining open infrastructure in different contexts

The Turing Way

The Turing Way Fireside Chat series features people, ideas and projects in open and reproducible research.

On 26 August 2022, 15:00-16:30 UTC (<a href="https://arewemeetingyet.com/UTC/2022-08-26/15:00" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">in your timezone</a>): the next Fireside Chat will take place on the topic: “Defining ‘open infrastructure’ in different contexts”.For researchers, particularly those working in computational environments, the term “open infrastructure” has emerged to describe the tools and services needed to enable them: from IT systems to funding bodies, research data management protocols to open source software, just to name a few. As these systems have found their home in academic institutions, roles have emerged alongside them to enable innovation and maintenance: roles such as data stewards, research software engineers, and research application managers. With this being said, these socio-technical definitions of infrastructure extend beyond the research community to our broader societies at large: from digital identification to internet connectivity more broadly. This fireside chat brings together different perspectives on ‘open infrastructure’ within and around research environments in order to ask the question: what is open infrastructure anyway, for researchers and otherwise? How do these narratives and definitions of open infrastructure affect what kind of work is valued within them?Chaired by <a href="https://www.rayyasunayma.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Rayya El Zein</a> (Code for Science &amp; Society) and <a href="https://www.aleesteele.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Anne Lee Steele</a> (The Turing Way), this panel will feature insights from <a href="https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/how-we-work/https%3A%2F%2Fhackmd.io%2F%40investinopen%2Fwho-is-who#Richard-Dunks" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Richard Dunks</a> (Invest in Open Infrastructure), <a href="https://accesspluss.org/author/achom-lillian/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Lillian Achom</a> (Access Plus) and <a href="https://sgibson91.github.io/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Sarah Gibson</a> (2i2c). These individuals represent different expertise, industries, and understandings of ‘open infrastructure’ (read their bios below). We will also facilitate open discussions with attendees to learn about their perspectives on the topic via a shared document (links shared upon registration).This event is hosted by <a href="https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/welcome" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Turing Way</a> - a community-led handbook on data science and research and <a href="https://codeforscience.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Code for Science &amp; Society</a> - a nonprofit supporting open collaboration in public interest technology.The Fireside Chat series features experts, champions and their projects from across different international communities in reproducibility, open research, ethics, collaboration and everything in between. We invite interested communities to get in touch with us to host a next session (email: theturingway@gmail.com) and help catalyse<a href="https://codeforscience.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"></a> cross-community collaboration and knowledge sharing.

<h2>About the speakers</h2><a href="https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/how-we-work/https%3A%2F%2Fhackmd.io%2F%40investinopen%2Fwho-is-who#Richard-Dunks" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Richard Dunks</a> has spent 20 years helping organizations perform to their best with more and better data. Working mostly in the public and non-profit sectors, he has helped government at both the city and federal level better leverage data to achieve mission success. For the past 7 years, Richard has provided training in open data, information visualization, data analytics, and data strategy to civil servants across the country through his company Datapolitan, and continues working with local community groups to leverage open data for social and political change. As an adjunct professor, he has also taught graduate-level classes covering mapping with open source tools at Pratt Institute and machine learning at Columbia University. He currently teaches data-informed leadership in the Master of Public Administration program at Tulane University. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Ithaca College and a masters degree in Applied Urban Science and Informatics from the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. Originally from Las Vegas, NV, he now resides in Dallas, TX with his 2 year-old son.<a href="https://accesspluss.org/author/achom-lillian/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Lillian Achom</a> is a tech enthusiast with extensive experience in ICT for Development. Ugandan by nationality, Lillian believes an inclusive Information Communications Technology (ICT)-empowered society brings about more opportunities for employment, economic growth, and better livelihoods. She has worked with the grassroots communities, consultants &amp; service providers in at national and international levels. Her past experience includes leading the implementation of women-led community networks (CNs) to connect women (and men) in rural and peri-urban communities of Kenya, Namibia, Senegal and Morocco. She is currently leading the implementation of a community network project in Soroti, North Eastern Uganda, a project funded and supported by Association for Progressive Communications (APC). <a href="https://sgibson91.github.io/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Sarah Gibson</a> is an Open Source Infrastructure Engineer at 2i2c, an non-profit organisation that deploys, manages and maintains cloud-based, data-science-ready JupyterHubs for research and education groups around the world. She holds more than two years of experience as a Research Engineer at a national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, as well as holding a core contributor role in the open source projects Binder, JupyterHub, and the Turing Way. Sarah is passionate about working with domain experts to leverage cloud computing in order to accelerate cutting-edge, data-intensive research and disseminating the results in an open, reproducible and reusable manner. Sarah holds a Fellowship with the Software Sustainability Institute and advocates for best software practices in research. She is a member of the mybinder.org operating team and maintains infrastructure supporting a global community in sharing reproducible computational environments. You can connect further with Sarah on twitter: @drsarahlgibson and follow her work on GitHub: @sgibson91.<h2>About the facilitators</h2><a href="https://www.rayyasunayma.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Rayya El Zein</a> is the Program Manager of the Digital Infrastructure Incubator at CS&S. She comes to the position after a decade of conducting interdisciplinary ethnographic research among artists and activists in Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. Drawing from performance studies, media studies, and engaged anthropology, her research has centered on creative communities undergoing structural change and examines how practitioners imagine, articulate, and enact futures for their work. She is committed to learning how to decolonize her research and practice and to a continual exploration of how to build solidarity. Rayya is also the Forum Editor at Lateral, the open-access journal of the Cultural Studies Association.<a href="https://www.aleesteele.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Anne Lee Steele</a> is the Community Manager for The Turing Way at the Alan Turing Institute, where she facilitates a collaborative resource for reproducible data science, and supports an open source community in developing practices for researchers and practitioners around the world. She has worked on a variety of projects remotely in the open ecosystem, including at the Internet Society, Wikimedia Deutschland, and Open Knowledge Foundation.<h2>About the hosting organisations</h2>Code for Science &amp; Society (CS&S) supports communities and organizations committed to open data and public interest technology, through funding mechanisms, governance structures, educational resources, and more.<a href="https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/welcome" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Turing Way</a> is an open source, open collaboration, and community-driven handbook on Data Science. We involve and support a diverse community of contributors to make research and data science accessible, comprehensible and effective for everyone. Our goal is to provide all the information that researchers and data scientists in academia, industry and the public sector need to ensure that the projects they work on are easy to reproduce and reuse. The Turing Way book currently hosts five guides with over 250 live pages as chapters and subchapters on best practices, co-developed by 325 contributors on <a href="https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/the-turing-way" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">GitHub</a>.For more information, or to express your interest to join as a speaker or host, please reach out to The Turing Way team by emailing theturingway@gmail.com.

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