Community engagement is one of the cornerstones of successful science
gateways. The approach “If I build it, they will come” seldom works for
science gateways - user-driven design and development, close collaboration
with the user community offering support measures as well as outreach from
the beginning of a project are some of the measures to build and grow a
community for a science gateway. An active and growing community
contributes to its sustainability and, thus, to a sustainable software life
cycle. The goal is to enhance computational solutions instead of starting
for every project from scratch or reinventing the wheel. Typically, the
principal investigators (PIs) leading the creation of science gateways and
gateway creators are domain experts or research computing specialists and
not community engagement specialists.
This 3-hour tutorial will introduce success stories especially in the
community engagement area and their specific outreach measures and
strategies. The hands-on sessions will give the participants the ability to
discuss and work through exercises for their own projects and science
gateways and/or examples given in advance. Exercises include (i) elevator
pitches about a science gateway to different target audiences: from the
user community to stakeholders to anticipated partners in the project; (ii)
communication exercises for meetings assuming participants from diverse
backgrounds and knowledge; (iii) BrainTrust exercises in working groups
where participants can present or discuss a specific challenge they face in
their project or science gateway related to community engagement. The
exercises are inspired by SGCI’s successful Focus Week (Science Gateways
Community Institute) and the successful series of Virtual Residency
workshops led by Oklahoma University.
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Sandra Gesing
Associate Research Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Computational Scientist, Center for Research Computing
University of Notre Dame
http://www3.nd.edu/~sgesing
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