Centralisation vs Decentralisation of Skills: Lessons from the Growth of RSE Community

Abstract: The growth of the RSE community has been driven from the ground up as a grassroots initiative, however centralised funding and the emergence of centralised groups has been transformative in gaining recognition for the role. This talk will draw analogy with the HPC community to explore impacts and issues that may develop when amassing a large number of HPC staff into a small set of HPC centres.Bio: Paul Richmond is a Professor of RSE at the University of Sheffield. He founded the Sheffield RSE group and previously bootstrapped a domain specific group (ICCS) at the University of Cambridge. He is a former RSE Society president with an ambition to improve the quality of research software by creating opportunities for the people who develop it. I.e. RSEs.