Do you have an exciting announcement or news article that you would like to disseminate to the RSE community?
If so head to our news submission form and submit your news items by the 20th of November!
society-rse.org/calling-for-...
Boatman - the first 50 reportedly makes a great present or holiday read, exemplified by this image of the book opened to show the story behind the Shipping Forecast puzzle, on display on Brighton beach. Reviewing Boatman - the first 50, Alan Connor (The Guardian's crossword editor and the brains behind many of BBC2’s quiz programs) says: "This is one to savour. Boatman's puzzles are witty and ingenious. It is an extraordinary pleasure to read how his unique mind works. The first 50 is a book I never knew I needed in my life. Gift it to yourself and to the word-lovers in yours". Hugh Stephenson (Alan’s predecessor at The Guardian) says: "This is a unique book of crosswords" and Henry Morris: "a Boatman crossword is like a theme park. Each daunting line is a rollercoaster ... He scares you witless. But you can't wait to do it all over again".
Boatman - the second 50 contains another 50 puzzles from The Guardian, with five bonus puzzles previously only available online and including puzzles, solutions and the ideas and stories behind them, exemplified by this image of the book opened to show one of the stories, which is accompanied by a picture of a large cow. Reviewing Boatman - the second 50, Gyles Brandreth says: "If you want a fiendish crossword, you want the best - which means you want Boatman, because he is the best" and Brian Bilston: "Cracking crosswords - each puzzle a delightful daily workout for the brain and a welcome tonic for the soul".
It's the Seasonal Reposting Competition! Repost this over the weekend, and on Sunday one lucky person will win a signed copy of one of my books. For you or the #crossword addict in your life: 50 fiendish @theguardian.com #puzzles and all the stories behind them:
boatmancryptics.co.uk/crossword-bo...
🌊 Do you have an idea for a mini-workshop, demo, or a lightning talk? This is your chance to take the stage and present your work at #CollabW26.
The deadline for applications is Friday 16 January 2026. We can't wait to see all your amazing proposals!
www.software.ac.uk/news/take-st...
The DisCouRSE Network+ has launched its first Flexible Fund, offering up to £10,000 to support projects that strengthen leadership training and career pathways for digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTPs). Closing date for applications is the 14th Nov.
New blog post: The Digital Humanities & Research Software Engineering Summer School took place at King’s College London earlier this year.
Read more: society-rse.org/digital-huma...
The NHS app is a great existing example of accessing multiple different services provided by different organisations under a single app and login. This does require provision of your NHS number, but that's exactly what this more targeted identifier is designed for.
I also regularly report missed bin collections with no need to prove my identity. There may well be value in providing a "one stop" app for a lot of interactions with different parts of government but very few of those interactions would *require* verifying ID rather than e.g. an email address.
🎯 The next International RSE Survey will launch in January 2026.
Building on the 2018 and 2022 surveys, this iteration will continue to capture the growth and diversity of the global RSE community.
Find out more at www.software.ac.uk/news/next-in...
Have you enjoyed RSECon either this year or in the past?
Would you like to be involved in organising RSECon26 which is taking place 9-11th Sep 2026?
We have a call out for Committee Members, for details and application see
society-rse.org/rsecon26-com...
(Call closes 10th Oct 2025)
#rsecon26
Digital signatures from microscopes could also help with tackling fraudulent manual image editing. However, we'd want to still also support legitimate edits such as image cropping / colourisation / denoising / contrast enhancement. Perhaps requiring original raw images + code that made the edits?
Slides from my #RSECon25 workshop "From Code to Contributions: Exploring Open Source in Academia" are now up on Zenodo: zenodo.org/records/1709...
Excited to share the write up once I've digested all the miro board notes and HackMD contributions - thanks to everyone who participated!
Yes, RSECon is a hybrid conference so all sessions are live streamed and recorded. Recordings are available immediately to attendees on the streaming platform and will also be made publicly available on the @society-rse.org's YouTube channel later once we've got them all downloaded and processed.
Great closing quote from Graham Lee in this mornings Track A talk on Where do people come from?
"RSE is more than a technical discipline, its a social movement aiming to revolutionise how research engages with software." - Graham Lee
#RSECon25
The eScience Lab is delighted to be here at #RSECon25, co-leading several activities such as:
- introduction to accessibility testing for RSEs
- introduction to the Digital Researcher Competencies Framework
- training and community satellite day esciencelab.org.uk/announcement...
Great talk from Marion Weinzierl (Let's stop pretending to be unicorns!) about better management of expectations of RSEs
In case you wondered where the RSE unicorn came from there is the quote from Cristin who designed the logo.
#rsecon25 #unicorns
At #RSECon25 gently encouraging people to complete the Society survey.
There haven't been a huge number of responses yet and they are really keen to hear from members AND non-members alike.
So if you write software as part of your research and can spare 5 mins please fill it in!
Next years #RSECon26 will be 9-11th September 2026 &co-located with the inaugural International Research Software Conference 7-8th September 2026 (www.researchsoft.org/irsc/ ) in Sheffield.
Want to help organise RSECon26 see society-rse.org/volunteer-at...
#RSECon25 #RSECon26 #IRSC26
Photo of me giving a talk. Title slide is visible in the background, saying “Python Profiling & Optimization … & Other Activities of the RPC SIG”
Photo of me giving a talk. Slide is visible in the background, saying “You're not doing a PhD in astrophysics; you re doing a PhD in problem solving as applied to astrophysics.” and many examples of random bits of knowledge you might pick up during a PhD.
A panel of five people sitting at the front of the room. I’m gesticulating, obvious in the middle of talking. The question up on screen in the background is “Do you have a view of how much of this change is discipline-specific? Some fleids have had large collaborations with many co-authors on each work for decades; others may still be stuck in the single-author model.”
I spoke at the HPC RSE training and community session at #RSECon25 today. Introduced the Reasonable Performance Computing SIG and our “Python Profiling & Optimization” course first, then had good discussions on the panel afterwards!
Simon Hettrick in front of a bar chart showing numbers of each REF output type. 97.6% are publications.
@simonhettrick.bsky.social on the problems with the Research Excellence Framework in the UK. Software (and many other outputs) should be considered - but very few universities include them. 97.6% of submitted outputs were publications.
#RSEcon25
kicking off day 2 of #RSECon25 with a fantastic keynote on the power of recognition - if you've ever needed three different metaphors for the difference in scale between publications and software submissions to REF, this talk is for you!
slides.com/simonhettric...
Ana Rodrigues Cavalcante from UCL hospitals on the challenges of managing clinical data in the Emerging Voices plenary #RSECon25
Piper Fowler-Wright from the Rosalind Franklin Institute argues the case against skills specialisation as a research software engineer in the second Emerging Voices plenary 🤔 #RSECon25
📣 🎉 RSECon25 - Day 2 🎉 📣
Day two of RSECon starts with a keynote talk from Simon Hettrick.
- Programme on Oxford Abstracts virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/75166/...
- Conference announcements @rseconbot
- RSECon25 Slack : rsecon25.slack.com
- Use #rsecon25 hashtag
#rsecon25 #conference #rse
Next week is #OpenScienceWeek! Here's how you can celebrate wherever you are. 🧵
Solid walk-through of using GItHub Actions to undertake Continuous Integration in your repository from William Haese-Hill
Check out the template repository at github.com/haessar/rsec...
#rsecon25 #githubactions
Speaker standing in front of giant presentation screen, with text "Reflections on cross-cutting software tools borne out of project work"
👋 Are you at #RSECon25 this week? Watch out for ICCS team members including Joe Wallwork, who spoke today about cross-cutting software tools. Come and say hi if you're in Warwick too!
Great talk by Riva Quiroga on taking research data from >644000 papers with over ~5.5million rows and making it accessible and reusable. Take-away : they're not the same thing!
Thanks @rivaquiroga
rivaquiroga.cl
#rsecon25
Great to hear from Alessandra Esposito about the work at Kings Digital Lab (kdl.kcl.ac.uk ) on improving and supporting digital research outputs so they are more widely recognised and align with REF.
Thanks Alessandra.
See...
zenodo.org/records/1514...
github.com/kingsdigital...
#rsecon25
Logo of RSECon25
RSECon25, the conference for Research Software Engineering, kicks off at the University of Warwick today. EPCC is a bronze sponsor, and we'll have a stand in the main foyer of the Occulus building. Come and say hello! We'll also be busy across the programme: edin.ac/46pIpd9
#rsecon25
Photo of lightning talk. Slide title in the background says “Software Sustainability Institute”.
Kirsty Pringle presenting @SoftwareSaved at the #RSECon25. They’ve sponsored every single RSECon so far, which got some spontaneous applause from the audience! 👏
