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Book Dash, November 2023 Report

The Turing Way Book Dash, 13-17 November 2023: Overview and Report

Read more about The Turing Way Book Dash here

We are delighted to share that the tenth Book Dash was hosted successfully from 13 to 17 November 2023 with 32 participants.

Alt: Screenshot of 18 zoom windows of people smiling. Alex has a border of emojis around her head. The Ada Zoom Room shows 6 people seated in front of their screens along a long conference room. Anne has a zoom background from the meme "THIS IS FINE" which is a cartoon rendering of flames in a home, with smoke filling the top of the screen. She is wearing a tan jacket. Alejandro is wearing overear black headphones. He is holding Matilda beneath him, a small baby with brown hair. Batool is wearing a maroon scarf, and has her hands up. She has a filter that gives her a seedling hat and red blush on her cheeks. Patricia has a green shirt on, and is smiling with black headphones. Maria has a filter that adds christmas lights above her. She has curly hair and a grey t-shirt. Liz is wearing a red shirt, and has a white wall and bookshelf behind her. David has both hands up, and is wearing a green shirt. Alex has a ping shirt and has both hands up, while smiling. Kirstie has a grey hoodie and black glasses. She is sitting next to Mackenzie, who is wearing a green shirt. Jesica has black overear headphones and is smiling with a window next to her. Arielle has a filter that is giving her a pirate hat and eye patch. Her background is a Scriberia image of The Turing Way chapters. Anne (F) is smiling while wearing a white scarf and light blue top.

Screenshot of the second Community Share-outs, hosted on 17 November 2023. From top to bottom, left to right: Alexandra Araujo Alvarez, Anne Lee Steele, Jim Madge, Cass Goud van Praag, Ada Zoom Room, Kirstie Whitaker, Sarah Gibson, David Llewellyn-Jones, Jennifer Ding, Fran Gomez, David Sarmiento, Arielle Bennett, Batool Almarzouq, Susana Roman Garcia, Sophia Batchelor, Ceilidh Welsh, Saranjeet Kaur (not pictured).

Accepted participants, trainers and presenters in alphabetical order:

Anne Lee Steele (*), Alejandro Coca-Castro, Alexandra Araujo Alvarez (*), Arielle Bennett (*), Batool Almarzouq (*), Calum Heath (Scriberia illustrator), Cari Hyde-Vaamonde, Ceilidh Welsh, Emma Karoune (*), Eriol Fox, Esther Plomp (*), Francisco Gomez-Medina, David Llewellyn-Jones, David Sarmiento, Gigi Kenneth, Jennifer Ding, Jesica Formoso, Johanna Bayer (*), Jonny Heath (Jonny Writes words - workshop facilitator), Kalle Westerling, Kirstie Whitaker, Liz Hare (*), Malvika Sharan, Maria Cristina Nanton, Mike Nolan, Patricia Andrea Loto, Richard J. Acton, Sarah Gibson, Sara Villa, Saranjeet Kaur (*), Susana Roman-Garcia (*) and Winny Nekesa (*).

(*) Book Dash Planning Committee 2023 members.

Highlights

  • 34 issues and 42 pull requests were submitted on a spectrum of topics – from data hazards to project management, data feminism, academic-industry collaborations, mental health, accessibility, and beyond
  • We had an in-person hub in London
  • The online sessions spanned multiple time zones, with special addition for Americas friendly timezones.
  • Arielle Bennett and Emma Karoune kicked off the social sessions with an exciting session about "Adding images into the book" where participants were given templates and guidelines to help them insert Scriberia images from the archive into the book with alt text.
  • Kirstie Whitaker and Susana Roman Garcia led 'Show and Tell' Lunch sessions in English and Spanish, respectively, opening the door for more multi-lingual sessions at future Book Dashes.
  • Richard J. Acton led a social session about 'Licensing', preparing interactive materials and exercises in order to understand how they affect open source practices.
  • Two Community Share-outs were hosted by Anne Lee Steele, where Book Dash participants shared with the rest of the community and fellow Book Dash Participants what they were focused on during the week, where help was needed and to celebrate their collective achievements.

About the Book Dash Event

The Turing Way Book Dash is the bi-annual contribution event of The Turing Way Community. It is called a Dash (instead of a Book Sprint), because it aims to be a short event. During the Book Dash participants collaboratively work on The Turing Way book to propose new topics, discuss ideas, develop new chapters and review/edit existing ones to make them more accessible, comprehensive and up-to-date. Participants can also contribute to improving the ways we work in the community and take the lead on accomplishing different tasks or subprojects. For more information, look at: The Turing Way Book Dashes.

Format of the event

  • The November edition of Book Dash featured 17 invited contributors, 12 committee members, two external facilitators, 14 online working sessions, four discussions and social events, and two community share-outs.
  • In the past, we have organised 1-1.5 day-long Book Dash events in-person or partially remotely.
  • However, since November 2020, we have been hosting Book Dashes online and with multiple short co-working called development sessions spread over five days for flexible participation by members.
  • We developed this format to allow people in different time zones to participate with the same efficiency and equitable support.
  • This involved creating multiple small development sessions throughout the day, adding dedicated sessions for informal social interactions, developing shared documents with all the information, providing support funds to ensure that everyone can comfortably participate and hosting a pre-event call to communicate these resources to everyone.
  • Like the previous Book Dashes in 2022 and May 2023, this time we also had a local hub hosted in London at The Alan Turing Institute with modifications introduced for the in-person participants to plan their day offline.
  • This Book Dash also had an additional contribution session each day for the Americas timezone. This was at 20:00 to 21:30 UTC. This had only been done in an informal way at previous Book Dashes.

Application, Review and Selection process

  • As in the past, we invited applications through an open call where interested applicants could state their goals and interest in the Book Dash.
    • Previous attendees and long-term members of the community were also invited to sign up as mentors for new contributors and session leads as part of the application process.
  • Applicants were asked to describe what they wanted to contribute to the Turing Way during the Book Dash, and how they would collaborate and engage with other participants.
  • To get a sense of the time zones these applicants came from, we asked them to choose their preferred slots.
  • The Book Dash Planning Committee used the rubrics to score the applications during the review. They met online to discuss applications, frame feedback and conclude their selection process.
  • In the future, applications will include a wider range of timeslots for participation, and may also benefit from additional explanations of the type of work which is completed during a Book Dash.

Hosting sessions

  • Along with Anne, we started a new issue to create the Book Dash Planning Committee subchapter. The main idea was to create checklists for day lead(s) and session host(s).
  • We circulated these draft checklists through the planning committee so that the checklists could be tested live during the book dash itself and we also received feedback on it.
    • The checklists involved tasks for both the primary/secondary day leads and session hosts.
    • For the day leads, the checklist was divided into three parts they should lead: before the day, during the day, and after the day ends.
    • For the session hosts, the checklist was divided into three parts (for both contribution and social sessions): before session, during session, and after the session. The checklist provided a technical orientation to hosting as well as describing the role of host.

Accessibility Assessment

  • The Book Dash organizing committee sought input from the community on ways to improve the accessibility of the event for people from marginalized groups.
  • Two social events were held in Spanish.
  • Collaborative documents were moved to the Framapad platform as a more screen-reader-accessible option than HackMD. Framapad was also an improvement over the Software Sustainability Institute's Etherpad instance (which was unstable during a previous Book Dash with multiple simultaneous participants).
  • The Accessibility Working Group was joined by two colleagues from Metadocencia, Patricia Loto and Jesica Formoso, who shared expertise in leading accessible events and educational experiences
  • The Accessibility Working Group met early in the Book Dash to plan work on the TTW accessibility Policy and review the chapter "Planning Inclusive and Accessible Events" for the Guide to Collaboration authored by Sophia Batchelor.
    • Patricia and Jesica provided complete reviews of the chapter. Liz provided advice and started discussions at the Book Dash and on GitHub on the overall structure and also considerations of the identities of readers and people who will benefit from this work.

Book Dash Planning Committee

  • Anne Lee Steele is the Research Community Manager of The Turing Way. She provided the Book Dash Planning Committee operational support during the planning process, coordinated the communications campaign, and mentored contributors throughout the week. She also co-hosted the in-person hub in London, and facilitated hybrid Community Share-out and Working Group share-out sessions at the end of the week.
  • Alexandra Araujo Alvarez is the Research Project Manager for The Turing Way. She provided the Book Dash Planning Committee operational support, being responsible for managing the Book Dash budget, contracting external suppliers, processing participants expenses and organising the catering at the in-person hub in London.
  • Arielle is the Programme Manager for the Tools, Practices & Systems Programme at the Alan Turing Institute. In The Turing Way, she has worked on writing, facilitating discussion and mentored contributions in the Guide for Ethical Research and Guide to Collaboration.
  • Emma is the Senior Research Community Manager for the Health programme at The Alan Turing Institute, and an Environmental Archaeology and Palaeoecology open researcher. She has led several collaborations and discussions on chapters within the Guides for Collaboration and Communication including 'Getting started with GitHub' and chapters on writing for wider audiences such as blogs, lay summaries and social media.
  • Esther is a Data Steward at the Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands. She has been a core contributor to the project developing, guiding and collaborating on chapters related to data management and reproducibility - and leads the partnership with TU Delft.
  • Saranjeet is a Fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute and Community Manager at the Research Software Alliance. She has been a part of The Turing Way community since 2021.
  • Liz is a researcher in the working dog field. She has participated in three Book Dashes and is the Co-lead of the Accessibility Working Group.
  • Winny is the Africa Regional Secretary at International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST). She is responsible for coordinating trainings and data related activities in Africa. She has participated in two Book Dashes. She is also a certified Carpentry instructor.
  • Johanna Bayer.
  • Susana Roman Garcia is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, and was an enrichment student at the Alan Turing Institute for the 2022/23 cohort group. Her PhD involves merging topics from Neuroscience, Computer Science and Ethics. She has participated in a couple of Book Dashes, and has contributed a chapter to the TTW Book on "Data Hazards".

We want to express our gratitude for their thoughtful engagement in the project and for helping build an inclusive and safe place in the Book Dash. It is only with their help, we can host the next event in June 2024 taking careful consideration for our participants.

Timeline

  • Call for application to join the Book Dash Planning Committee and local hub start date: 10 July 2023
  • Deadline to complete the Expression of Interest to Join The Turing Way Book Dash Committee: 31 July 2023 (originally on 21 July but was extended to 31 July 2023)
  • Deadline for local hub - an expression of interest: 9 September 2023
  • Call for Applications for Participants: 24 July 2023
  • Deadline for submission: 11 September 2023 (anywhere on Earth) - (originally on 15 September 2023 but extended)
  • Decisions on the applications: Latest by 01 October 2023
  • Pre Book Dash Onboarding calls (2 x 1 hour): 30 October 2023.
    • 9:00 am session: led by Batool, Saranjeet, Emma, Anne, Alexandra
    • 17:00 session: led by Arielle, Anne, Alexandra
  • Pre Book Dash GitHub Skill-up (1 hour): 6 November 2023, led by Batool and Johanna
  • Book Dash Contribution Sessions during the week: of 13-16 November 2023
  • The Turing Way community share-out: 17 November 2023. Additions to The Turing Way Book

GitHub activities: New and existing Pull Requests and Issues that attendees worked on

  • 34 Issues
  • 42 Pull Requests
  • Several first-time contributors!
  • Six new chapters/subchapters were published and five existing chapters/subchapters were revised and updated.

New chapters published in The Turing Way book

Existing chapters updated during the Book Dash

  • Research Data Management chapter had new resources added to it, as well as new sections on methods and protocols, data visualisation, data repositories and finding data.
  • The Translation and localisation chapter in the Community handbook received some updates by María Nanton to add more detail to the use of glossaries in the translation workflow and to bring some key documentation that was in Crowdin to the main guide. Some links were made to other chapters in the book to integrate good practices when creating or updating content: in the style guide, a call to write "localisable" content was added–so that the original text in English is easy to translate–and an invitation to improve and update Alt-text that might be incomplete before translating it. The Spanish-specific translation guidelines were also created. Merged PR the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3431.
  • Added new resources to Open Education.
  • Project design guide updates the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3412.
  • Added BigCode as a case study for a real world example of ML data governance.

Our attendees also led and participated in the following informal discussions and public events:

  • On day 1, the social session was used as a short imageathon sprint to upskill participants in how to add images to The Turing Way book and then get participants to add images. This involved a presentation, and discussing and writing alt text for the images. Issues and PRs were centralised in issue #3331. We managed to add 13 images over the Book Dash week!
  • On day 2, we had two show and tell sessions - one in English and one in Spanish. These are fun, social sessions where the Book Dash participants share something from their work or personal life that they think will interest the group. Topics brought by participants in this session ranged from a love of Quarto to academic paper tracking, team building in nature in Uganda to a love of eating eggs, and sporty topics like roller derby, power lifting and charity bike rides.
  • On day 3, we had a creative writing session from Jonny Writes words.
  • On day 4, the social session was hosted by Richard Acton and he led a discussion session on Licenses, IP, & Digital Ownership. Activities from the social session can be found on a shared document and this topic links to PR #3142.
  • On day 5, we hosted two public share-out sessions!

On Day 5, during the community shareouts, The Turing Way working group representatives shared updates from their respective groups:

  • Name: Susana and Ceilidh

    • Links to Issues and PR:
    • ASK: checked by Kalle, Emma and Arielle and implemented in book!
    • ASK: saying deploy error, not sure how to fix.

  • Name: Jen

  • Name: Fran Gómez

    • Links to Issues and PR:
      • Subchapter to industry-academia collaborations titled "case studies and best practices in academia-industry collaborations". Still in progress, but this week I made progress in putting together resources in TTW and external to TTW useful for writing about best practices in academic-industry collaboration. (Thank you to Vicky, Jen, Anne, Ale, Kalle, and Alejandro!)
      • Issue #3407 and PR #2410
      • My first merge! PR #3414
    • ASK: Let me know of people who are doing research with industry and academia and might be interested in contributing to this chapter and/or benefit from this chapter!

  • Name: David Llewellyn-Jones

    • Links to Issues and PR:
    • ASK:
      • The "When Review Goes Wrong" page is still very early work-in-progress, but any high-level feedback would be appreciated. Is this a sensible addition, or just making things too complex?

  • Name: Batool Almarzouq

  • Name: Sarah

  • Name: Saranjeet

    • Links to Issues and PR: #3348 (Will be transferred into a PR soon (Ale is happy to collaborate)

  • Name: Accessibility Working Group (Patricia, Liz & Jesica)

    • Links to Issues and PR: Issue #3307 on reviewing inclusive events chapter

  • Name: Ale

    • Links to issues and PR:
      • Thanks to Kalle - reviewing PR's and pushing to review
      • Encourage Governance contributions (Anne, Esther, Anne)
      • The Turing Way Practitioners Hub: thanks Batool. Activity plan, training sessions
      • Susana: in-person suggestions for more inclusive snacks

  • Name: Arielle

    • Links to issues and PR: Reviewed the data feminism chapter: PR #3417
      • Thanks to Kalle

  • Name: María Nanton

  • Name: Esther

    • Links to issues and PR:
    • Together with Emma we did the quickest Issue/PR ever on finding data: the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3360
    • Did a big update on the RDM chapter, including new sections on data repositories, methodology/electronic labnote books and a drafty data visualisation section!
    • the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3214 (thanks Anne, Saranjeet, Arielle and Alejandro for the reviews!!). Some of the content was also worked on by Emma, Eirini and Lena!
    • Added a couple of resources to the Open Education section: the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3412 (Thanks Kale for review!)
    • Session organised by Emma on adding images was very inspiring! I added several images in the RDM update and to the cultural change section the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3408 (thanks Arielle for writing a much nicer alt-text for the image!)
    • Chatted about governance - thanks Anne/Ale for facilitating these discussions!
    • Read all the things about the inclusive event PRs started by Sophia!
    • Ask: Also opened up a new issue on the feedback process: if you have any resources/thoughts please weigh in: the-turing-way/the-turing-way#3361

  • Name: Alejandro

    • Appreciations
      • Amazing week with new and old faces in TTW book dash
      • Nice chats with Maria N and Patricia from Metadocencia about the history of the Spanish translation team and trainings on satellite image technologies
      • Calum for quickly capturing complex ideas into nice illustrations
      • Anne F for joining the Scriberia session with Calum
      • Accessibility funds of the Book Dash for the childcare support. Matilda had a great company and time with her babysitter, Marjana.
    • Gave back (PRs reviewed - all them amazing contributions):
      • Esther (Research Data Management): very interesting stuff about Data Repositories
      • Maria (TTW Spanish Translation Guidelines): thank you for bringing fresh ideas!
      • Julien C (Open Hardware): very insighful for me and pertinent for some colleagues working on Open Hardware for Environmental monitoring and education
      • Richard (Ethical Licensing): this requires further reading, but it was so informative to learn about the fundamental freedoms of free/libre software and ! This is very relevant to a project I'm participating about Open Computer Vision.

Videos:

New Illustrations by Scriberia for The Turing Way Community

Feedback

Pluses

At the end of the event, we asked our participants to share feedback anonymously in the “Pluses and Deltas” HackMD. We greatly appreciate the work that our attendees have accomplished in the project during this short event and thank them for their feedback, a few of which have been highlighted below.

  • I really loved the accessibility, the flexibility and in general the whole community VIBE. As a GitHub beginner, I really appreciated the support in every step, the celebration of the little steps I took and all the comments and help.
  • I really appreciated the onboarding session and the GitHub sessions. TTW is the biggest open-source project I have contributed to, and they made the process of contributing a lot clearer and approachable. +1+1
  • Accessibility is an asset of our vibrant TTW community. Thanks for all your effort to make Book Dash accessible. Just wanted to thank Book Dash organisers for all the exciting sessions and subsidising childcare. Fantastic to have this support!
  • Later sessions to support participation of folks in Americas timezones worked really well and we should keep these for the next Book Dash to encourage wider participation from that area. +1+1
  • The pre-prepared slides with the timer videos are great! +1
  • The later sessions were also really helpful as someone who was only able to work in the evenings in the UK. +1+1
  • It was an amazing, collaborative and inclusive event; brilliantly structured and with huge energy throughout. The energy made me feel like I was able to achieve something, however small, every day. +1
  • Working with Calum from Scriberia was a joy. He immediately took my half-baked idea, turned it into something tangible and ran with it. Everyone who teaches or does research should be doing this.
  • I had the opportunity of participating in many interesting discussions regarding the accessibility guidelines.

Deltas

  • This was an amazing week. If I get the opportunity to do another one (which I'd love to) I'd want to take the whole week off to work on it.
    • I did that -- and it was the best thing that I could ever have done!
  • Would folks based in more eastern timezones be interested in hosting earlier sessions? +1
  • Find alternatives to EventBrite that allow better integration with the calendar and planning tools. The URL of the evening share-out was different to the one shared in the slack channel.
  • The git and GitHub intro session was genuinely excellent, but I think it might also be worthwhile considering a session for people who understand git, but don't necessarily understand how TTW uses git. It's not like other projects I've worked on previously in this respect, which isn't a criticism at all, but it does take time/effort to get to grips with the conventions (even though they are largely detailed in TTW itself).+1 +1
    • I didn't attend the git + GitHub session but I imagine that this session on git would need to be extremely hands-on as well. I also think a workshop should show how we could work in an editor like VS Code (which I was using) and push our edits. It's so much nicer with a GUI that is local in your computer and not a flimsy website (like GitHub) where your edits might disappear if you accidentally reload the window or something...
  • I think that including subtitles to the sessions it would helpful for not native folks. +1 (also for those of us who are a bit hard of hearing)
  • Recording audio for videos is difficult for the share-outs

Changes Suggested for future Book Dashes

  • Changes Suggested for future Book Dashes
    • Preparing color pallete for TTW: color-blind friendly, ensures continuity in design
    • Re-doing image social session on Monday: very popular session!
    • Zoom link must be opened by a Turing staff member (need lots of alternative hosts!)
    • Review how the planning Committee is distributed throughout the sessions for different timezones
    • Review timezones for the sessions overall, and capturing that information from participants
    • We will be moving away from Eventbrite platform for future Book Dashes
    • Review application process
  • Address concerns raised on the Delta feedback
  • GitHub planning issue
  • GitHub Book Dash Governance

What is next?

  • Represent The Turing Way in your community/conference, see our promotion pack
  • Attend a synchronous coworking such as online Collaboration Cafes take place every first and second Wednesday from 15:00 to 17:00 London time. Or weekly Coworking call every Monday from 11:00 - 12:00 London time.
  • Attend a fireside chat, speak at one, or organise one in your community
  • Contribute new topics or review open pull requests
  • Wondering where to start? Join us on social media platforms or connect in other ways.

November 2023 Book Dash Links