18  Part 4: Future Plans, Suggestions and Wrap-up

18.1 Potential Future Coding/Writing Sessions

Nic asks if anyone is interested in having coding or writing sessions, either online or in-person. He personally doesn’t find them very useful but thinks others might.

Jen describes her experience with Zoom writing sessions - having check-in times, timed writing blocks, sharing writing for feedback, setting goals for next session. She finds them useful for accountability and community. Sessions can be tailored to the group’s needs.

Adrian describes his experience in Jonathan’s group which had weekly check-ins, quarterly offsite work retreats, and good collaboration. Adrian sees value in getting peer feedback and help. Jane’s group does not have any regular sessions currently.

Nic suggests trying a small weekly Zoom session for the spring with a Pomodoro timer. It could help collectively solve problems. He asks for input, particularly since he likely won’t be as available to help with coding issues.

18.2 Collaborative Platforms

Nic and Nora have been testing Posit Cloud, a collaborative scripting platform. It allows simultaneous editing of the same R script. Changes sync through Github. This avoids issues with one person screensharing and coding while the other watches. However, some kinks still need to be worked out.

Adrian suggests Google Colab for Python, which also enables live collaboration through Jupiter Notebook. Nora indicates it can sync with Git. Adrian says Colab has version history like Google Docs.

18.3 Open Science Ebook Updates

Nic plans to continue updating his open science ebook over break. He reflects on “pre-data” collection structures to facilitate projects before data is collected. He realizes most students are too far along to reconstruct things but aims to help future students.

He plans to add content on publishing reproducible science, archiving/storing data, licenses, formats, etc. He’ll include more style guidelines like Markdown and tabular data standards.

He put personal reflections on what he’s learned from struggles with writing practice and productivity the last two years. He dumped out everything he could to perhaps help others.

18.4 Using Obsidian

Obsidian is an interconnected notes system that’s like a personal Wikipedia. It uses markdown text documents that link to each other. It helps cite sources while writing. The graph view can show linked note clusters. Mentions of a term across notes can be pulled into a single note.

Obsidian is free, open source, platform agnostic, and future proof - the underlying text files can outlast the app. Proprietary tools like Evernote risk losing data if they cease support.

The vault contains all notes in one place instead of a hierarchical folder structure. Nicholas uses iCloud to sync his vault across devices.

18.5 Wrap Up

Nic will send a summary with links. He requests adopting the Github project structure moving forward. Regularly pushing changes helps make version control habitual.

He thanks Adrian for joining remotely and ends the recording.