Fedora Science SIGs: bringing them together

[Ankur Sinha]

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone had an amazing Flock this year! I was hoping to discuss
this there in-person but I couldn't make it this year :(

I've recently resurrected the NeuroFedora SIG (it's my area of research
so I'm quite happy to maintain it), but while I was looking around I saw
that we already have a few science related SIGs in Fedora---I was aware
of maybe one or two, but not all of them, in spite of one or two being
featured on labs.fp.o!

- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/bigdata
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Astronomy_SIG
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/ML
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/FedoraMedical
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/NeuroFedora
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Robotics
- https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/SciTech

Now, mostly, these are groups of people who come together and package up
software that is relevant to the particular field, and the SIGs work
independently of each other. However when one looks at them, one
realises that lots of work that each SIG does overlaps with other SIGs.

I think it's quite within our community goals to further Open Science.
So, I was wondering if we could organise the SIGs better under a common
umbrella: "Fedora <3 science" or something of the sort. It'll give all
SIGs a common theme, it'll also enable us to market science in Fedora
better (or so I think), and it'll enable other community members
interested in other sciences to start their own SIGs in the future.

What do folks think? Would this come under CommOps? I'm happy to help
with this, of course---I'd really like to make Fedora a "go-to"
distribution for whatever sciences the community can support, not just
Neuroscience.

[Brian (bex) Exelbierd]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 2:01 PM, Ankur Sinha  wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I hope everyone had an amazing Flock this year! I was hoping to discuss
> this there in-person but I couldn't make it this year :(
>
> I've recently resurrected the NeuroFedora SIG (it's my area of research
> so I'm quite happy to maintain it), but while I was looking around I saw
> that we already have a few science related SIGs in Fedora---I was aware
> of maybe one or two, but not all of them, in spite of one or two being
> featured on labs.fp.o!
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/bigdata
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Astronomy_SIG
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/ML
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/FedoraMedical
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/NeuroFedora
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Robotics
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/SciTech
>
> Now, mostly, these are groups of people who come together and package up
> software that is relevant to the particular field, and the SIGs work
> independently of each other. However when one looks at them, one
> realises that lots of work that each SIG does overlaps with other SIGs.
>
> I think it's quite within our community goals to further Open Science.
> So, I was wondering if we could organise the SIGs better under a common
> umbrella: "Fedora <3 science" or something of the sort. It'll give all
> SIGs a common theme, it'll also enable us to market science in Fedora
> better (or so I think), and it'll enable other community members
> interested in other sciences to start their own SIGs in the future.

I like the idea of a meta-science SIG that could help each other.  I
suspect that many of these have small memberships.
> What do folks think? Would this come under CommOps?

I think CommOps may be able to help, but isn't where this should live.  If
we need a body for this to have a dotted line too, I suggest Mindshare.
See Globalization here:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/orgchart/

regards,

bex

I'm happy to help
> with this, of course---I'd really like to make Fedora a "go-to"
> distribution for whatever sciences the community can support, not just
> Neuroscience.
>
> --
> Thanks,
> Regards,
>
> Ankur Sinha "FranciscoD"
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ankursinha
> Timezone: Europe/London
>
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[Ankur Sinha]

On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 12:52:47 -0400, Brian (bex) Exelbierd wrote:
> <snip>
>
> I like the idea of a meta-science SIG that could help each other.  I suspect
> that many of these have small memberships.
>  
>     What do folks think? Would this come under CommOps?
>
> I think CommOps may be able to help, but isn't where this should live.  If we
> need a body for this to have a dotted line too, I suggest Mindshare.  See
> Globalization here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/orgchart/

Ah---yeh, that seems like a good way to go. I'll get in touch with
Mindshare and see what we can do.

[Justin W. Flory]

On 08/16/2018 08:33 AM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 12:52:47 -0400, Brian (bex) Exelbierd wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > I like the idea of a meta-science SIG that could help each other.  I suspect
> > that many of these have small memberships.
> >  
> >     What do folks think? Would this come under CommOps?
> >
> > I think CommOps may be able to help, but isn't where this should live.  If we
> > need a body for this to have a dotted line too, I suggest Mindshare.  See
> > Globalization here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/orgchart/
>
> Ah---yeh, that seems like a good way to go. I'll get in touch with
> Mindshare and see what we can do.

I think a regularly-meeting group of related SIGs is a helpful idea. I
think this is a good example of a task for CommOps to assist with. I
have never known a formal process to declare a SIG (also how some
fluctuate in activity over time, e.g. Games SIG). So I am not sure if we
should block this on a process if the process is not intentionally adopted.

My suggestion is to open a new CommOps ticket similar to our past
tickets for helping other teams get started, such as Modularity¹, Python
SIG², and DotNet SIG³.

¹ https://pagure.io/fedora-commops/issue/69
² https://pagure.io/fedora-commops/issue/84
³ https://pagure.io/fedora-commops/issue/95

I'd like to discuss it further and see how we can help!