Mentoring?

[rlpowell]

(From the harvesting room:) I think it would have really helped a lot to assign someone who had done this sort of thing before to a number of other people as their resource and mentor. No idea if that's actually possible in context.

[rlpowell]

Specifically, it would have been really nice to see someone go through the whole research/harvest process (obviously with the harvesting being pre-coded or handwaved) on a really archetypal example of some kind. By the end of the event I still wasn't even sure what sort of data we were after, because I'm not tapped in to any of the relevant scientific communities (I came as a coder) and never saw a concrete example.

[ottumm]

That's a great idea -- maybe we could put together a video of the whole process, although that could get out of date quickly as tooling changes.

[suchthis]

Thanks for this great feedback!

Did you have a chance to work with a domain expert in the data archiving track? These people were alternately called mavens or researchers, and the intent was that they would work with technologists to identify and describe the pertinent datasets for the technologists (harvesters) to then scrape. One of the things we're thinking about is how to ensure that those two skillsets have access to and complement each other (e.g. in pairs or perhaps one researcher in a group of 2-4 harvesters, depending on workflow/timeline).