Community Building, Training, Dissemination, Exploitation, and Outreach
WorkPackage Report - Viviane Pons
3rd reporting period
## Our role
This workpackage has been the **link** between the work we do at OpenDreamKit and the **scientific communities**.
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## Our role
- **Community building**: Organizing workshops and conferences to reinforce our communities
- **Training**: Widespread our shared technical knowledge especially concerning new OpenDreamKit development
- **Dissemination and outreach**: communicate about our achievments, foster larger communities
- **Exploitation**: make effective use of OpenDreamKit development in science and research
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## Communication
**How to convey what has been done by the OpenDreamKit project?**
We describe technical solutions through various use cases.
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## Communication
* Creation of explainer comic strips (drawn by Juliette Belin from Logilab)
* Creation of stop-motion videos with Pix Videos. **2 videos published on Youtube** and more to come
## Some other web related numbers
* about 580 visits per month on the website in 2018-2019
* 35 blogposts
* 563 twitter followers: more than 4000 views on our video tweet (fast changing numbers!)
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## For teachers
* Teaching with Jupyter (Southampton, Paris-Sud, Gent, Versailles, Silesia, USTAN, Sheffield, AIMS), **more than 5000 students**
* Teaching material: interactive lecture material, 4 interactive textbooks, templates, etc.
* Local consulting (especially at Sheffield)
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## Community building and dissemination
* 30 events in period 4
* 110 events in total (workshops, conferences, tutorial sessions, etc)
* Some nice success stories
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### Women in Sage
* In 2017 (presented at the first project review)
* Again in 2019, co-organized by Eleni Tzanaki, a former participant
* Also an occasion to add Sage to the curriculum at University of Crete
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* 22 participants
* Only 3 had attended Sage Days more than once; 12 had never attended
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**How did the fact that the event was targeted to women impact your decision to come?**
Some answers given from participants: (post workshop questionnaire)
* *It helped, made me feel more encouraged to apply*
* *It was my first workshop in Europe so I felt more comfortable working with women first but now I think I can go to any kind of workshop.*
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From a participant:
*This was the first time I didn’t have imposter syndrome since starting my PhD. Everyone was so welcoming and there was an understanding that we were all from different backgrounds and with different levels of experience. It felt very easy to make suggestions and ask questions without the fear of being judged.*
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### CIMPA ECCO school in Colombia
* Sage sessions in 2016 and 2018 funded by OpenDreamKit
* Viviane Pons is an organizer of the next school
* Sage sessions are now officially part of the conference
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### CIRM conference Free Computational Mathematics
* 58 participants
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### Sage Days 102 Nigeria
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* A result of synergy with attendees from University of Ibadan at
aforementioned CIRM workshop
* First workshop devoted primarily to open source mathematics software,
esp. Sage, in Nigeria; first in West Africa since 2011 (Burkina Faso)
* Combined with a Software Carpentry training
* Enormous demand impossible to meet with one workshop: 80+ attendees and
over 100 applicants (5 instructors; only 3 with Sage experience)
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* In addition to Sage, also taught successful sessions on GAP and R
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* Despite technical challenges (physical infrastructure, attendees' personal
computers), we helped install Sage and GAP on nearly everyone's computers
and got people excited about using them; mere installation has often been
a significant hurdle to getting people using this software
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*The workshop was very enlightening and the facilitators were very patient
in teaching us how to actually do (implement) the interesting things that
Sage does. I look forward to applying Sage to my research.*
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* Most attendees felt that knowledge of these new tools was valuable to them
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* Lecturers and students alike expressed gratefulness that we organized this
workshop, but also concern that bias against their country makes such
workshops all to rare, and that they can't rely on such rare opportunities
alone--there is a need for a sustainability effort
*I will beg that this workshop continues on annual basis so the knowledge
keeps spreading.*
*On the iniative I have which will be useful for expansion of this
experience in Nigeria.... I, with my team, established a PROFESSIONALS
SCHOOL FOR MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES... Aimed at promoting mathematical research
in Africa... This is to have a frontier for sustainability and advancement
of mathematical research skills among Nigerians and Africans.*
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### Events in developing countries
in: Algeria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Colombia, Mexico, Nigeria
about 460 trainees
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## Conclusion
* We do more than organizing events, we foster a community
* We developped and shared technichal solutions for training sessions.
* These events will continue after the end of the project, depending on local resources, other projects, etc.
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## Some remarks
* These events **don't cost a lot** in terms of money. Ex: Women in Sage Archanes, lodging+food = 3000 euros, travels: 12000 euros)
* But they cost in terms of **time** and **administration**
* The easier the access to the money, the easier the admin, the easier it is to make these events accessible to those who really need them.
## Difficulties
* admin for paying / reimbursing individual trips
* Visa
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**About 25 ODK members active in dissemination / workshop orga: 110 events, 1800 trainees**
We need **active actions** to create diversity, we need **motivated people** and we need to **support them**.
