BoF Discussion Panel: Jim Bottum (Clemson University), Melissa Cragin (Midwest BDHub), Dave Lifka (Cornell University), John Towns (XSEDE). Moderator: Phil Blood (Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center).
Over the past few years, we have witnessed the emergence of numerous active efforts that have been established with the goal of preparing and supporting cyberinfrastructure professionals encompassing campuses, nonprofits and government agencies across the nation. These professionals are essential for raising awareness of and access to advanced digital resources among faculty, researchers, students, and staff within their organizations. Examples of these types of organizations include the Campus Champions, Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Education Facilitator (ACI-REF), the Great Plains Network, Software (and Data and HPC) Carpentry, as well as professional societies including SIGHPC. One of the most prevalent recurring questions among these and other efforts, including the agencies and projects funding these efforts, is “What does it take to build a persistent community of cyberinfrastructure professionals?”
While there is tremendous support for these professional support organizations, there are also a number of challenges they face. These include reliable long-term funding that is not tied to a specific project and the difficulty in structuring an organization to meet the needs of a wide range of CI professionals, among diverse environments ranging from small campuses to large research universities, and national labs, as well as organizations that span geographic regions and time zones.
The goal of this BoF is to identify the above mentioned challenges, seek potential solutions, and establish collaborative efforts for instituting the groundwork to persistently support fostering of communities comprising CI professionals. The objective is to bring together a variety of projects and organizations working together to serve the unique needs of CI professionals.
