A few thoughts on community
It is widely accepted that in the modern era, scientists cannot work in isolation. Collaboration is essential to achieving the level of productivity expected of a 21st century researcher.
I believe this is a beneficial development of modern science. Several fields, such as economics and psychology, have concluded that groups are smarter than individuals (see the popular book The Wisdom of Crowds by journalist James Surowiecki for a synthesis).
As a budding scientist (I'm still getting comfortable calling myself this, since I'm not too sure what I really am), I understand the importance of building a strong network of collaborators. They are essential in helping to refine your thinking, providing productive criticism to improve your work, and keeping your enthusiasm for your discipline alive.
This is why I was extremely eager that my employer agreed to send me to the 2018 meeting of the Biodiversity Information Standards group (TDWG). TDWG is, to my knowledge, the only group of people working on the same niche biodiversity informatics work that I now conduct.
We were fortunate enough to begin the conference with a talk that, in my opinion, set the tone for the meeting. A trained scientist, and now member of the leadership team of a non-profit teaching software and data carpentry skills to the masses, gave us an inspirational presentation on social intelligence and team building, among other topics. The word being thrown around by conference attendees from that point on was community.
The talk primed me to view ensuing presentations and group discussions with a critical lens. What I noticed was a serious lack of an effective community.
Building effective collaboration and community is hard, and it is even harder for researchers. Firstly, workers are spread throughout the world. This creates limitations, as communication must be conducted across time zones and in-person work, which usually accelerates project progress and builds a sense of belonging, is costly and rare.
Secondly, the incentive system of science (e.g., reputation building, see Howison & Herbsleb, 2013) ensures that researchers must focus on their individual achievements, which can sometimes lay in contrast to collective goals.
Thirdly, decision-making is decentralized. While this aspect of research may attract its practitioners, it can lead to difficulties in moving towards a collective goal. A top-down approach to planning is most definitely useful (i.e., What is our objective? How can we move there together? What are our priorities? Who will take the lead on this task?). Otherwise, community buy-in is essential and must be achieved, typically taking a long period of time.
Effective communities must be welcoming. They should "build scaffolding" to allow new members to quickly contribute (acc. keynote talk). What I felt at TDWG was a noticeable lack of thought given to welcoming new members of the community.
I believe TDWG is trying to do the sort of work that absolutely necessitates effective teams; i.e., building academic software. However, in contrast to private companies building software tools, who spend a significant amount of time hiring project managers, crafting positive team dynamics by putting the right people together, developing codes of conduct that establish team norms, the teams that are working together to build software for natural history collections professionals and exploring biodiversity data to find knowledge (ie., biodiversity informatics), are assembled organically.
This leads to age-old problems, like repetitive discussions, lack of decision-making, stalled progress, wasted resources.
I will end this rambling post with a few questions I am wrestling with. What responsibility does an international group of scientists have to develop an intentional sense of community, so that they can improve their effectiveness as a group? How do community norms develop, and how can they be best crafted for team effectiveness? I am sure these questions will lead me into the abyss of the social science of teams. For now, I hope I can productively add my voice to the international noise of the scientific community.
I believe this is a beneficial development of modern science. Several fields, such as economics and psychology, have concluded that groups are smarter than individuals (see the popular book The Wisdom of Crowds by journalist James Surowiecki for a synthesis).
As a budding scientist (I'm still getting comfortable calling myself this, since I'm not too sure what I really am), I understand the importance of building a strong network of collaborators. They are essential in helping to refine your thinking, providing productive criticism to improve your work, and keeping your enthusiasm for your discipline alive.
This is why I was extremely eager that my employer agreed to send me to the 2018 meeting of the Biodiversity Information Standards group (TDWG). TDWG is, to my knowledge, the only group of people working on the same niche biodiversity informatics work that I now conduct.
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| Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash |
We were fortunate enough to begin the conference with a talk that, in my opinion, set the tone for the meeting. A trained scientist, and now member of the leadership team of a non-profit teaching software and data carpentry skills to the masses, gave us an inspirational presentation on social intelligence and team building, among other topics. The word being thrown around by conference attendees from that point on was community.
The talk primed me to view ensuing presentations and group discussions with a critical lens. What I noticed was a serious lack of an effective community.
Building effective collaboration and community is hard, and it is even harder for researchers. Firstly, workers are spread throughout the world. This creates limitations, as communication must be conducted across time zones and in-person work, which usually accelerates project progress and builds a sense of belonging, is costly and rare.
Secondly, the incentive system of science (e.g., reputation building, see Howison & Herbsleb, 2013) ensures that researchers must focus on their individual achievements, which can sometimes lay in contrast to collective goals.
Thirdly, decision-making is decentralized. While this aspect of research may attract its practitioners, it can lead to difficulties in moving towards a collective goal. A top-down approach to planning is most definitely useful (i.e., What is our objective? How can we move there together? What are our priorities? Who will take the lead on this task?). Otherwise, community buy-in is essential and must be achieved, typically taking a long period of time.
 |
| Unrelated greenhouse photo. Photo by Alberto Bobbera on Unsplash |
Effective communities must be welcoming. They should "build scaffolding" to allow new members to quickly contribute (acc. keynote talk). What I felt at TDWG was a noticeable lack of thought given to welcoming new members of the community.
I believe TDWG is trying to do the sort of work that absolutely necessitates effective teams; i.e., building academic software. However, in contrast to private companies building software tools, who spend a significant amount of time hiring project managers, crafting positive team dynamics by putting the right people together, developing codes of conduct that establish team norms, the teams that are working together to build software for natural history collections professionals and exploring biodiversity data to find knowledge (ie., biodiversity informatics), are assembled organically.
This leads to age-old problems, like repetitive discussions, lack of decision-making, stalled progress, wasted resources.
I will end this rambling post with a few questions I am wrestling with. What responsibility does an international group of scientists have to develop an intentional sense of community, so that they can improve their effectiveness as a group? How do community norms develop, and how can they be best crafted for team effectiveness? I am sure these questions will lead me into the abyss of the social science of teams. For now, I hope I can productively add my voice to the international noise of the scientific community.
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