Ten simple rules for curating and facilitating small workshops

As a participant, workshops are by far my favorite scientific event. Compared to conferences, the interactions can be more intense, discussions can be deeper, and the resulting collaborations are often stronger. Working with 10–30 attendees over a few days can lead to a more open and integrated event than a conference. At workshops, you are a participant in the whole event, and you can make many direct contributions to its goals. In contrast, at conferences, the aim is for a broad informational in which you are part of the audience and contribute comparatively little content

Co-designing grounded visualisations of the Food-Water-Energy nexus to enable urban sustainability transformations

In the past few years, the Food-Water-Energy (FWE) Nexus has emerged as a key concept to address the complex relationships and interdependencies between food, water, and energy systems. Cities are an important context for understanding the FWE nexus given their significant footprints and complex socio-ecological systems, but researchers have only recently started to explore an explicit urban perspective on food, water, and energy interrelationships. This paper tackles a particularly significant knowledge gap in this context by introducing an approach to co-design visualisations of the FWE nexus that are understandable and actionable for the various stakeholders involved in urban governance such as citizens, communities, governments, non-governmental and private-sector organisations. Drawing on user-centred design and inspired by the dialogic pedagogy of Paulo Freire, we present and evaluate the co-design process of a FWE nexus visualisation tool for stakeholders engaged with pre-school education in Słupsk, Poland. Our results provide evidence that this co-design process has been effective to developing a new critical consciousness in the participants about how their everyday choices are related to the FWE nexus, enabling them to change perspectives, leading to more sustainable choices. We propose that our co-design process can be used to develop 'grounded visualisations' of the FWE nexus, i.e., visualisations that are grounded in the experiential situations and lived realities of stakeholders, thus offering an effective support for decision-making that could open pathways to sustainability transformations

Ten Simple Rules for Effective Computational Research

<p>Ten Simple Rules for Effective Computational Research</p

Diez reglas sencillas para una exitosa colaboración transdisciplinar

El presente artículo es la versión en castellano de la publicación: KNAPP, B.; BARDENET, R.; BERNABEU, M.O.; BORDAS, R.; BRUNA, M.; CALDERHEAD, B. ET AL. (2015) “Ten Simple Rules for a Successful Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration”. PLoS Comput Biol 11(4): e1004214, disponible en: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004214. La traducción, autorizada por la entidad editora, ha sido llevada a cabo por Ona Lorda Roure y Leila Adim, colaboradoras del Instituto de Investigación TransJus y supervisada por el Dr. Juli Ponce Solé, Director del TransJus. En la misma se han incluido algunas notas aclaratorias para el lector en español, así como bibliografía complementaria en español.[spa] En el auge de las colaboraciones interdisciplinarias entre los distintos campos científicos, la transdisciplinariedad se presenta como la clave para encontrar soluciones a una variedad de problemas globales. Este trabajo, situado en el marco de la biología informática, se centra en exponer una lista extensa de reglas y consejos útiles para lograr una exitosa sinergia entre los varios colaboradores de un proyecto transdisciplinar. Se trata, de hecho, de una guía que pretende dirigirse tanto a investigadores noveles como a aquellos investigadores consolidados que se adentran en un espacio transdisciplinar por primera vez. En particular, este trabajo expone los beneficios principales de establecer una colaboración transdisciplinar, así como los problemas que de ella puedan surgir.[cat] En l'auge de les col·laboracions interdisciplinàries entre els diferents camps científics, la transdisciplinarietat es presenta com la clau per trobar solucions a una varietat de problemes globals. Aquest treball, situat en el marc de la biologia informàtica, es centra en exposar una llista extensa de regles i consells útils per aconseguir una reeixida sinergia entre els varis col·laboradors d'un projecte transdisciplinar. Es tracta, de fet, d'una guia que pretén dirigir-se tant a recercadors novells com a aquells recercadors consolidats que s'endinsen en un espai transdisciplinar per primera vegada. En particular, aquest treball exposa els beneficis principals d'establir una col·laboració transdisciplinar, així com els problemes que d'ella puguin sorgir.[eng] At a time of increasing interdisciplinary collaboration between different scientific fields, cross-disciplinarity represents a key for finding solutions to a variety of global problems. This work, located within the framework of computer biology, focuses on exposing an extensive list of rules and useful tips to achieve a successful synergy among the various collaborators of a transdisciplinary project. It is, in fact, a guide aimed at addressing both first-time researchers and consolidated researchers who enter a transdisciplinary space for the first time. In particular, this work exposes the main benefits of establishing a cross-disciplinary collaboration, as well as the problems that may arise from it

Ten Simple Rules for a Successful Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

Cross-disciplinary collaborations have become an increasingly important part of science. They are seen as key if we are to find solutions to pressing, global-scale societal challenges, including green technologies, sustainable food production, and drug development. Regulators and policy- makers have realized the power of such collaborations, for example, in the 80 billion Euro "Horizon 2020" EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. This programme puts special emphasis on “breaking down barriers to create a genuine single market for knowledge, research and innovation

New quantitative methods for SDM and making them relevant to users

<p>Species Distribution Modelling (SDM) is fascinating. It is a prolific, multi-faceted and often controversial research domain for which a best practice remains un-resolved. SDM faces difficult challenges in ‘hard’ topics such as statistics, computation & data, and also faces difficult challenges in ‘soft’ topics such as philosophy, software design practices & culture. In this talk I will describe new research in: (1) ‘hard’ topics (the motivations and details of two new methods that address major sources of uncertainty for SDM [Fine-Scale Environmental Variation & Biotic Interactions]); and (2) ‘soft’ topics (the most underexplored and perhaps most controversial issues– ‘Software Usability’). I will also explain why these research areas are intimately linked and suggest that adopting a more joined-up approach to these diverse challenges will aid progress for SDM.</p

What aren't you seeing? Advance in visualisation reserach.

<p>A commentary on some excellent visualisation papers form Vis14 and Chi 15....</p

Best Practice in SDM - Interpreting and visualizing outputs

<p>A quick presentation for http://bir.biometricsociety.org/events/sdm.</p> <p> </p

Branding needn’t be demanding.

<p>The “Death of the Desktop” workshop (see: <a href="http://beyond.wallviz.dk/" target="_blank">http://beyond.wallviz.dk/</a>, <a href="https://vimeo.com/102527731" target="_blank">https://vimeo.com/102527731</a>) had a strong brand that was intriguing, evocative, and memorable. The twitter account (@visfutures) revealed information and contributions in the lead-up to the event. The brand helped to set a tone for the preworkshop submissions and the workshop activities. Consider how effective the brand would have been if the workshop was just called “Consequences of a concerted community focus on visualization technologies and the impact on interaction and display techniques.” Would this have been easy to remember or Google? Would this have set a theme that was easy to follow?</p

Sketchnotes (http://www.flickr.com/photos/francisrowland/6944419112/lightbox/ | @francisrowland).

<p>Sketchnotes (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/francisrowland/6944419112/lightbox/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/francisrowland/6944419112/lightbox/</a> | @francisrowland).</p