In October 2022, I was one of the lucky people invited to explore a Resident Fellowship with OLS. In the announcement blog, I claimed that I wanted to achieve the following with my Fellowship:
“Patricia will work on a new module on open source software and growing the OLS fellows community. She also plans to explore consultancy services and is always up for well-facilitated and interesting virtual events.”
So 10 months later, how did it go? What have I achieved and learned? This blog summarises my Resident Fellow journey.
Achievements
- We piloted the first Open Source Software skill-up session in OLS-6. I created the session draft based on the feedback the OLS community had provided and sourced speakers. As this session is now a fixture in the Open Seeds cohort schedule, I think this was a success.
- I did the final reporting for OLS’s very first grant!
- I ran part of the mentor onboarding for OLS-7 and a mentor training session for the Alan Turing Institute’s “Data science and AI educators’ programme”.
- I supported the recruitment for the Programme Manager position for a new funded project.
- I also worked on some submissions to introduce OLS at conferences and events, with the submission to Collaborations Workshop being successful.
- Together with Mayya, we worked on some ideas around wellbeing. We co-hosted a The Turing Way fireside chat on community care and burnout and I’m really proud of the conversation!
- We do have OLS/SSI Fellows! I loved selecting them (what a great bunch and awesome ideas) and hope we have put processes in place so they feel supported by the OLS team.
Personal development
- I was lucky to be invited to train as an Ally Skills trainer and (co-)facilitated some of the OLS Ally Skills workshops.
- With some budget set aside to spend on resources for professional development (without having to ask and argue!) I managed to work through Priya Parker’s Art of Gathering course and The Hum’s Patterns for Decentralised Organising. I enjoyed both of them - especially having the time to work through all exercises thoroughly. Some of them might even have inspired sessions at the OLS team retreat.
- I also learned a lot about grant proposal writing. While I was involved in grant proposals in previous jobs, it was always at very late stages for small specific tasks, so seeing grant proposals develop and learn to budget them (even on a small-ish scale) is incredibly beneficial. I’m very happy that my referencing didn’t make the NASA proposals unsuccessful and I’m keen to get feedback on the other submissions ;-).
In May 2023, I also started supporting OLS with some financial administration. I’m very glad that my Fellowship performance meant I was trusted with paying honoraria and taking on the processing of microgrants.
The one area in which I was not successful (yet) is developing a consultancy offer for OLS. I have started working with Malvika on ideas though, so this will come, I just did not quite manage in my Fellowship period. In parallel to my Fellowship with OLS, I started as an independent consultant and working with OLS really helped with my first consultancy project. I can say that OLS certainly delivered in preparing me for leadership as I’m much more confident and clear about what I want to do in the Open Science space in the future. And I hope it will continue to include the awesome community here :-).
The image is courtesy of the Software Sustainability Institute and licensed CC BY 4.0.