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On the 27th of May, David Flanders and I were invited to speak at @unimelb’s “Social Media Professionals” about how @ResPlat can help researchers engage in social media.
We’re here with the social media professionals of @unimelb! @dfflanders and @heyDejan are speaking soon! pic.twitter.com/TUqUwzEPo7
— ITS Research (@ITS_Res)
May 27, 2014
Our slides can be found here, and most of the content I spoke on is repeated in these blog posts: 1, 2, 3.
So why should you, as a researcher, start tweeting? Well first, because it aids the public understanding of science. Twitter is that magical bridge between the academic and public.
Second, you only have 140 characters to express yourself. No time for jargony, convoluted speak. Twitter sharpens your writing! (this was written in less than 140 characters).
.@AstroKatie +1. Twitter is therefore a fantastic tool in sharpening academic writing.
— Dejan (@heyDejan)
July 1, 2014
Katie Mack agrees.
Third, Twitter is academic currency. Can tweets predict citations? (that caught your eye, didn’t it?) Why not check this study and find out? Also check out LSE’s Impact Blog. LSE love Twitter. As an academic, you become your own (usually) self-managed brand. Twitter is the perfect way of spreading your ideas, your research papers and forming collaborations. Jump on board!
An infographic outlining the role of Twitter in Science Publication & Communication - source at bottom of image.
Fourth, everyone’s on it - or at least they’re starting to. Stay ahead of the curb. You’d be surprised at how many of your colleagues are furiously tweeting away.
Making a master spreadsheet of all unimelb academics on Twitter. Glad to see my school, @Government_UoM, leading the way.
— Dejan (@heyDejan)
July 1, 2014
Want to be included in my beautiful spreadsheet? Ping me!
Closer to home, Dr Katie Mack, with more than 12,000 followers, has had enormous success navigating the twittersphere. “AstroKatie” (as she’s known more commonly in her community), writes:
I jumped right in and found it to be an excellent resource for keeping up with astrophysics and the world-wide academic community… When a scientist on Twitter veers away from the pure science and talks about the life they’re balancing with (or building around) a research career, it helps break down stereotypes and increase public trust in science. I think it can be an especially good opportunity for women or minorities in science to become role models for young people hoping to follow the same path.
Read the rest of “Unlocking the secret of tweet success” here.
The academic community is growing. Interest in science is growing. Twitter is growing. I urge all researchers, academics, and University students to get on board and join the movement. Let’s make it trend-y!
What can you do? Forward this blogpost to colleagues, friends and other community members you think need a little Twit nudge. I have about a million other resources which might aid in this Twitter revolution, so ping me! I’m also more than happy to provide some Twit-Lit (Twitter Literacy).
Tweet ya later!
It’s been a big week for Open Science in Melbourne! Last saturday saw Melbourne’s first ever Open Science workshop, organised by Noon Silk, a Mathematics Masters student studying Quantum Physics at the University of Melbourne.
Fourty-five researchers and advocates of open science turned out for an early Saturday morning start to learn about various open science tools, including git and github, SciRate, Authorea, the SageMathCloud, and the NeCTAR Research Cloud.
Claire Sloggett talking about NeCTAR https://t.co/SQxRoaIQGH cloud computing resource for Australian researchers #OpenScienceMelb
— OKFN Australia (@OKFNau)
July 19, 2014
After a series of interactive workshops, the afternoon wound down with of presentations from organisations and proponents of Open Science, including our very own Scott Ritchie, Maia Sauren from the Open Knowledge Foundation, and Ian Mulvany from the eLIFE open access journal.
“Are you a researcher? Have you had formal training in software or computer science? You should!” #OpenScienceMelb
— OKFN Australia (@OKFNau)
July 19, 2014
Here at the Research Bazaar we are heavy enthusiasts of open science, understanding that it helps foster collaborations and produces tools to make researchers’ lives easier. We were thus excited to get involved with the Open Science Workshop. I went along to introduce Software Carpentry along with the our upcoming bootcamps - training researchers in the basic labs skills required for scientific computing.
I also had the pleasure of announcing our Research Training Conference coming up next year, where we will run interactive workshops for many of the widely used open science tools.
Researcher training conference in Melbourne, Feb 16-18 #OpenScienceMelb
— OKFN Australia (@OKFNau)
July 19, 2014
A summary of the day, along with all of the presentations can be found here.
We are pleased to announce that on September 19th we will be hosting an Open Publishing conference.
In the morning, we will be hearing from David Vaux, Ross Lazarus and the GigaScience Journal Editorial team on how to extract the most impact from your research data.
The afternoon will feature multiple workshop streams, with workshops on the Galaxy platform for biomedical data analysis, and Authorea for collaborative open publishing.
Further details will be released via the event page at the Australian Bioinformatics Network, or you can contact Nick Wong via email directly in the meantime.
To register for the event, visit our eventbrite page.
This event is kindly sponsored by Australian Bioinformatics Network, Illumina Australia, VLSCI and GigaScience, and run in partnership with the Australian Bioinformatics Network.
by Paul Mignone
After the highly successful, world first, 3D Printing Summer School earlier this year, we were inundated with requests from students and researchers to do an encore event. Based on this interest and feedback, the team at #ResBaz decided not to disappoint, and held the 3D printing Winter School (#WinterIsComing) from June 30th - July 2nd.
Bernard and Blender: Back with a vengeance!
Students and researchers from various departments came together once again to learn a broad array of skills from CAD, 3D scanning, material awareness and proper 3D printing techniques. Some highlights included the following:
1.0) A great workshop by scanning aficionado Ben Kreunen. Ben gave a fantastic demo on how to do proper 3D scans, followed up with a meshlab workshop on preparing scanned models for 3D printing.
Ben giving a meshlab workshop on mesh repair.
2.0) The Digital Blacksmith alumni return! A massive shout out to 3D Printing Summer School students Catherine Wen, Nicholas Pollard, Chris Murphy and Robbie Fordyce. These superstars passed on their 3D printing skills and experiences to the next group of digital blacksmiths in style!
Clockwise from top left: Catherine, Nicholas, Robbie and Chris
3.0) A surprise visit from 3D Printing Evangelist Tyler Benster. Tyler works with manufacturers, startups, incubators, politicians and economic development groups worldwide in using 3D printing and related technologies. Here for #3DPrintConf, Tyler gave a few moments of his time to discuss the future of the 3D printing industry, which was well received by the students.
The newest members of the Digital Blacksmith community!
Needless to say, the 3D printing winter school was once again a major success. Another batch of digital blacksmiths are now out there, ready to take on the world. With training events such as these, combined with funding opportunities proposed by the 3D Printing Research Working Group (3DPWG), students and researchers at #unimelb have reasons to feel optimistic about the future of research both locally and nationally.
Watch this space…
by Paul Mignone
Earlier this month, I had the fantastic opportunity to attend and present at the Inside 3D Printing Conference and Expo (#3DPrintConf). #3DPrintConf is the largest professional 3D printing and additive manufacturing event worldwide. It’s Australian premier was an unqualified success, and was held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on July 9th and 10th. A massive shout out to our very own Bernard Meade who was program chair, and one of the main organisers of the event!
#3DPrintConf heads to Melbourne! (Source)
Industries and universities from around the country participated in the inaugural event, with attendees treated two fantastic keynote speakers. Professor Milan Brandt discussed the latest developments in additive manufacturing technology, while Terry Wohlers gave insight as to where the 3D printing industry is heading.
Professor Milan Brandt delivering the keynote (Source)
In addition to the keynotes, some fantastic presentations were given by local champions in the maker community. A massive shout out to April, Paul and Daniel for their efforts in presenting! All in all, #3DPrintConf was a fantastic event and definitely worth attending. Looking forward to the next one in 2015!
My presentation, “Hack and Seek” from #3dprintconf is available here http://t.co/91QleXkWRw #digismith #creativecommons #3dprinting
— Paul Mignone (@paulmignone)
July 11, 2014
Here at the Research Bazaar, we think of ourselves (sometimes) as matchmakers or even relationship counselors. We love to introduce Melbourne’s researchers to the perfect research tool and help patch things up when researchers and their topics aren’t getting on so well. As part of this strategy, we’re kicking off semester two with two events to help researchers get to know our suite of tools and training a little better.
Just like the other sort of speed dating, on each occasion researchers will have five minutes or so to meet some of our tools, like Python, CartoDB, Omeka and LimeSurvey. If they like what they see, there will be the opportunity to sign up to get to know the tool a little better.
On Thursday July 31, we’ll be running an event with the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences. GSHSS students can register here:
http://arts.unimelb.edu.au/research-tools-speed-dating
On Wednesday August 13, we’ll be doing it again with the Graduate Student Association, where we’ll be showcasing tools for both the sciences and the humanities. More information and registration is here:
http://www.gsa.unimelb.edu.au/events/2014/research-tools-speed-dating
So come along and meet the research tool of your dreams!
We are happy to announce the dates of the first ever #ResBaz Conference!
Get out your diaries (or phones or laptops) and mark your calendars for February 16-18, 2015.
(Or just click these handy links to add #ResBaz to your calendars: 
We’re all longing for long, hot days, and now we have an even more exciting reason to look forward to summer. Stay up to date at our conference page here. Registration will open soon!
Over the last 18 months, the academic community at The University of Melbourne has taken a keen interest in the use of 3D printing in research, enabling the rapid prototyping of ideas, small scale fabrication of components, and reproduction of teaching aids. Real-world usage and examples have come in from all corners of the University, with Engineering being a major user. A real world example from the University was recently reported in The Age, both online and in print.
3D Printing and related rapid prototyping technologies are making significant contributions to the research community both nationally and internationally. Through effective coordination, The University of Melbourne is determined to provide the best possible infrastructure, expertise and training to our research community, making it far more valuable and used more widely.
Check out our #unimelb #3dprinting adventure on #storify https://t.co/XPsQK5kn2J via @storify. We’ve come a long way in a short time!
— Paul Mignone (@paulmignone)
May 29, 2014
In order to advance 3D printing on campus, the 3D Printing Research Working Group (3DPWG) has been established with its inaugural meeting being held this August 7th, 2014. The group will comprise of senior academics from relevant departments to discuss the following:
Needless to say, the next 12 months will be an interesting time for the University’s 3D printing and research communities. Check out #res3DPWG for more updates in the future!
By Damien Irving.
Back in February 2013, Greg Wilson (Software Carpentry founder and computer programming educator extraordinaire) came out to Australia to host the first ever Software Carpentry bootcamps outside of Europe and North America. That visit inspired a few Aussies (myself included) to undertake the 12-week online instructor training course, and over the subsequent months a few more bootcamps were held around the country.
.@swcarpentry @MozillaScience Working on getting a few more of these certificates headed Down Under… #HackerWin pic.twitter.com/keAWnCtErC
— Damien Irving (@DrClimate)
January 22, 2014
By late 2013 the demand for bootcamps in Australia was far greater than the small pool of volunteer instructors could handle, so we (the Research Bazaar project) decided to start supporting the regular delivery of bootcamps in and around Melbourne. We’ve been blown away by the number of people who have been willing to donate their time as part of our Software Carpentry teaching teams, but it’s fair to say that we still aren’t keeping up with demand.
We’ve got quite a few @swcarpentry bootcamps coming up, so here’s a page to help you keep track: http://t.co/J4o02gBKiB #ResBaz
— ITS Research (@ITS_Res)
June 17, 2014
To remedy this problem, we’ve invited Bill Mills (Community Manager for the Mozilla Science Lab; a.k.a Greg’s protégé) to come down to Melbourne to train up a new cohort of 40 instructors. Instead of the usual 12-week online training course, the successful applicants will complete an in-person training course over 3 intensive days (11-13 Feb, 2015). They’ll then get a chance to apply what they’ve learned by instructing and/or helping at our doctoral training conference (16-18 Feb, 2015), where we’ll running 3 bootcamps simultaneously (one in Python, MATLAB and R). To find out more, check out the FAQ page and/or head over to the Eventbrite page and fill out an application. We hope to see you in February!
Research can be ‘bazaar’, we’re here to help! Don’t understand how? Read our mission statement. Flick us a tweet, watch a video, check out our page and follow our blog posts - both formal and fun. Even better than the virtual, meet like minded researchers at one of our events. Come engage with the Melbourne research community!
Get started by contacting your discipline’s 'Research Community Coordinator’, who can help you learn new tools and have fun collaborating with fellow researchers. Here’s the full list.
As a researcher, you probably read Wikipedia articles regularly, and you might even rely on it. But have you ever thought about editing it, or writing articles from scratch? The Wikimedia Foundation, which manages Wikipedia and related projects, wants you!
What’s in it for you? You can fix the public record in an area that matters to you, address bias by covering under-represented areas or just improve your own knowledge. Or, if it’s useful to refer to certain Wikipedia articles regularly, why not improve them for your own and others’ benefit? A large number of university and school courses around the world have even incorporated it into their curricula.
Until recently, though, editing Wikipedia has been pretty tough. It required writing wikitext, an arcane markup language which starts simple (“italics”, ==headings==) and quickly becomes an unreadable mess for tables, infoboxes, and templates. However, thanks to the significant resources dedicated by the Wikimedia Foundation to this problem, the Visual Editor has finally arrived. So writing an article is now more like using a word processor.
So, to take advantage of this, ITS Research is teaming up with the University Library to run an experimental workshop. We hope to teach humanities researchers how to edit articles, while staying on the right side of Wikipedia’s rather complex set of policies. You’ll learn how to make minor corrections, start articles from scratch, use categories, infoboxes and images, in areas of interest to you. And in return, we hope to learn whether editing Wikipedia is a valuable research tool for others.
by Fiona Tweedie and Paul Mignone
For many of us, the fascination of archaeology is the knowledge that we can hold an object made by another human being thousands of years ago in our hands. There’s something magical about the connection to the people of the past that comes through handling an artefact and wondering about its journey, whether it’s a precious artwork or an everyday utensil. But for numerous reasons, we can’t always get to grips with archaeological finds in the way we’d like to. Some are very fragile while others are hugely valuable. Many can’t be removed from the country where they were excavated. All of these factors limit the ability of archaeologists to work with artefacts but also mean that students seldom get to handle them.
Seventh century CE shoulder-clasps from the Sutton Hoo burial ship - kept behind glass
There’s much more value in being able to touch and feel artefacts than just feeling like Lara Croft. When studying many objects that were used in everyday life, it’s important to understand what they feel like. How heavy is it? Do you need to be very strong to use it? What’s the most comfortable way to hold it? It may sound silly, but often the best way to really understand how artefacts were used is to try them out.
If you follow this blog, you’ll know that we love 3D printing over at the Research Bazaar, and not just because it makes cool stuff. As we’ve already explored, creating custom equipment can save researchers huge amounts of time and money. 3D printing can also be used to reproduce historic artefacts and we’ve been working with some archaeologists to do just that.
3D printed enlargement of a Roman period Greek coin
Of course, people have creating reproductions of ancient art and artefacts since antiquity, but there’s some great potential in 3D printing and scanning. By creating scans of objects in the field, archaeologists can then reproduce artefacts at home, while the originals remain in their country of origin. They can produce multiple copies for use in teaching and, if the scan is of sufficient quality, can enlarge objects and reveal tiny details. Archaeologist Simon Young made this short video about his experience scanning and printing an ancient coin with the help of Fiona, Paul and University’s digitisation service.
While there were some challenges getting a scan of sufficient resolution to show all the fine detail of the reverse side of the coin, high resolution printing showed that there’s real promise in using this technology to recreate ancient artefacts for study and enjoyment. In addition, technologies such as the Mcor IRIS can 3D print antiques in full colour, allowing for near perfect replication.