Welcoming Remarks and Keystory
By Louise van der Werff
The tea and coffee stations are a welocome sight before ResBaz17 kicks off in full swing. Check out that lens flare!
The bedouine tent is filling up with participants and organisers alike waiting for the welcoming remarks and keystories to begin. I can hear friendly chatter all around me, people meeting each other for the first time and swapping their research experiences, discussing their projects, and getting excited for the day to begin. The relaxed atmosphere has people happy to discuss both their passions and challenges.
Waiting for the opening remarks.
Dejan Jotanovic is giving the welcoming remarks. “ResBaz is a campaign, a community and a conference.” It allows researchers to do their research better, faster stronger. ResBaz is an event that is now running across multiple sites all over the world.
ResBaz thrives for Diversity, Community and Open Access.
“In a world of alternative facts, research knowledge is important.”
The keystory speakers are our very own Kim Doyle and Nikki Rubinstein.
Kim is a PhD student in Media and Communications and team lead of our Data Mining and Visualisation team. Kim is speaking about Research Platforms, where our services reside. Our philosophy is that research should be open, multicultural, and filled with colourful people. It shouldn’t be isolating, it should bring people in from all corners of the university to form a supportive community for all. Our major focuses are upskilling, community support, and social events. We run training workshops and special events throughout the year.
Kim started out in her journey with Research Platforms as a Helper, has worked her way up team lead within the group, and has nurtured coding skills within herself that she’d never thought she would learn by teaching Natural Language Toolkit.
Nikki is a final year PhD student in the Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, managing the Research Commuity Coordinators for R, MatLab and Python. Before joining research platforms Nikki had a research questions: Can she improve current clinical algorithms for vision field tests?
Nikki attended ResBaz2015, with the expectation if learning some new skill in R, but was blown away by the much wider community feel of the conference. She then signed up as a Helper at ResBaz2016, and very much enjoyed sharing her growing knowledge with coding newbies. Soon after she joined the group as a Research Community Coordinator.
The primary focus of this role is community. You can build community by engaging people in workshops, and empowering them to ‘pay it forward’, sharing the knowledge that they have gained to help others within their community. Our workshops are free, and all we ask is that you share your experiences and knowledge gained Research Platforms with your peers, and maybe even volunteering to be a Helper for a free workshop, or for one of our bigger events such as the Research Bazaar. You never know, you may just land a role within our team.
Contact us at Research.bazaar@gmail.com if you are interested in joining our team.
