FOSS in Science
Managers : @rahulporuri and Jaidev Deshpande
Intro
The Scientific community is often considered a passive observer within the broader FOSS community. In our experience, this is far from the truth. Numerous successful FOSS projects originated in the Scientific Community. The “FOSS in Science” devroom enables the Indian scientific community to come together.
Motivation
The SciPy India conference enabled the Scientific Python community in India to come together but after 13 editions the conference was sadly discontinued in 2021. I attempted to reignite this community at a Birds of a Feather session at PyCon India 2023 with Jaidev Deshpande (a regular reviewer of the SciPy India conference). We were successful in bringing together 10+ people for more than 1 hour to discuss how they were using Python in Science & Tech. We sadly weren’t able to replicate this at the 2024 PyCon India.
We believe that there is pent-up demand for such a gathering in the Indian Scientific Community and the devroom will hopefully address this.
Feasibility
SciPy India regularly attracted 100+ audience and 10+ speakers so we believe a 3-hour devroom is easily doable - especially because we’re not limiting the gathering to the Scientific Python community.
Volunteering
We believe that 1 additional reviewer and 1 additional volunteer should be sufficient. Please note that the two devroom managers (including me) will also do reviews and handle on-day logistics (e.g. MC).
CFP
Scope
Please submit proposals that discuss “FOSS in Science”. Please limit the domain of your proposals to “Pure Science” e.g. Astronomy, Biology, …, Zoology. Meta proposals on “FOSS in Science” are also welcome e.g. roadblocks/challenges regarding FOSS adoption in Science, lessons learnt from training Scientists to adopt FOSS, Open Science.
Selection/review
Crude order of preference for proposals (first is highest preference)
- FOSS creation for Science in India
- Meta-proposals on FOSS in Science from those with hands-on experience
- Significant* hands-on FOSS usage in a Scientific domain in India
- FOSS in a Scientific domain coming from the inexperienced
- All other proposals
** Significant refers to anyone with greater than 1-2 years of daily hands-on experience with the FOSS software. In practice, this translates to graduate students being given preference over bachelors/masters students.