About CodeRefinery

History

CodeRefinery began as a Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC) based off of some previous workshops at the KTH, Stockholm. The first round of funding was from 2016 - 2018, and a second round is going from 2018-2021. Thus, so far, it has always had some paid staff (each up to 0.5 full-time equivalent of their primary jobs). Most of these staff are from some sort of computing center.

Over time, it has evolved into a more open project direction.

Governance

There is a steering group within NeIC which governs the CodeRefinery project. However, strictly speaking that mainly covers activities done via NeIC funding. The materials and open-source project is open to all.

There are currently no formal decision making processes. Typically, decisions related to some repository go through the process of…

  • Submit an issue or pull request

  • Discuss in the issue and/or

  • Discuss in a CodeRefinery team meeting

  • If there is rough consensus, then commit it.

In general, most decisions (of the open project) result in some sort of commit in git. If the reaction is positive in a CodeRefinery meeting, then it’s accepted. (Most day-to-day things aren’t discussed in the meetings, only major things affecting the whole project.) In general, if you are open and discuss, then do what will improve the project for you.

Communication methods

This is an exhaustive list of our communication methods

  • CodeRefinery zulipchat

  • CodeRefinery team meetings (announced in zulipchat)

  • Team email list (in practice, only used for calendar invites)

  • Github repositories issues and pull requests

Chat

Zulipchat is our primary means of communication. Subscribe to at least the #coderefinery, #lessons, and #workshops, #general, #announce, and #help channels to fully integrate to the CodeRefinery side of things.

Team meetings

These tend to happen every ~2 weeks. Mainly, we discuss NeIC project, workshop organization matters, and how to organize ourselves. Most work on actual lessons happens in Github issues.

You can find upcoming meetings by TODO.

Github

We are focused around the material we make, and for that, most discussion happens in Github issues. For more abstract discussion on lessons, there is a topic in the #lessons chat corresponding to each lesson.

Decisions

There is no formal process of decisions. It should be brought up in chat, then brought up in a meeting. In the meeting, be very clear about what you need a decision or advice on.

Core team

There is currently no formal “core team” - only those who are most active. If you hang around, contribute a lot, you will end up being seen as “core”.

Joining

There is currently no formal joining process. Take part, and contribute as you would like.

The usual way of joining would be to decide how CodeRefinery has to adapt to serve your needs, and start proposing ways to do that. Reading existing pull requests and giving a comment of “approve” is a great way to get noticed.