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How to build a Digital Crust

Unfortunately, we canceled this course due to insufficient interest. We will run an online version in early 2024 to allow broader participation, especially from students. Stay tuned here and on Slack for more information.

DigitalCrust's inaugural workshop will be held at GSA Fall Meeting 2023!

How to Build a Digital Crust. Sat., 14 Oct., 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m. US$60 (general); $20 (students). Limit: 40. CEU: 0.8.

Instructors:

  • Daven Quinn, University of Wisconsin – Madison
  • Snir Attia, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
  • William Gearty, American Museum of Natural History
  • Benjamin Linzmeier, University of South Alabama
  • Lucia Profeta, Columbia University
  • Akshay Mehra, University of Washington.

Course Endorsers: GSA Geoinformatics and Data Science Division; GSA Structural Geology and Tectonics Division; GSA Geochronology Division.

Abstract

Increasingly, the future direction of geoscience depends on how we design and use computational tools. A multiscale, time-integrated “digital crust” that can be explored, visualized, and integrated into Earth system models is necessary for future scientific work and requires sustained investment in software infrastructure, data resources, and community practices. In this course, we will introduce skills that can help researchers contribute to this vision. We will cover foundational skills for sustainable digital systems, including software design, GitHub collaboration, and database management. Furthermore, we will examine how to integrate such work into a geological research career.

Schedule

Welcome and introduction

9:00 am
  • The digital crust: a descriptive/process model of the crust through time
  • What skills and community structure do we need to get there?

Core skill: How to collaborate on code

Objectives: Use the Git version control tool and the GitHub platform to share and collaborate on geoscience software.

Setup

9:15 am

Module 1: Share

9:45 am
  • Create some useful code
  • Commit your changes and push them to GitHub

Module 2: Contribute

10:30 am

Build on the contributions of others

  • Identify a potential improvement, and discuss it with the author (GitHub issues)
  • Fork and clone a repository (get your own local copy)
  • Make changes to expand functionality
  • Push your changes to GitHub

Module 3: Synthesize

11:30 am
  • Create a pull request
  • Review a pull request
  • Merge the updated code into the original repository

Wrap-up: How is software collaboration like scientific collaboration?

Lunch

12:00 pm

Open-source workflows

1:30 pm
  • Contributing to prose (e.g., this website!)
  • Managing large/long-term projects
  • Making bite-sized contributions (the open-source process)
  • Next steps: Software libraries

Community-building

panel discussion, 2:00 pm
  • The need for software-driven collaboration in science
  • Organizations currently working on the Digital Crust
  • What is going well and what is not?
  • How do we build the right community structure?

A science + software career

panel discussion, 3:00 pm
  • Benefits and challenges of software-driven science
  • Breaking out of domain-specific silos
  • Alternative career opportunities
  • Guest speakers (TBD)

Wrap-up discussion

4:15 pm