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Vimeo)Abstract:
Data is no longer the bottleneck for discovery. Instead it our ability and capacity to work with data, to turn data into information and knowledge, that is limiting. The question then becomes, how do we empower researchers and enable discovery, by scaling people's capacity to work with data? First we must recognize the importance of valuing the people by investing in training and valuing the people who create the tools and software. We need to view software not as a service to research, but an integral part of the research process. Then we must develop and provide training, access to computational resources, and give credit for and support research software development. With this support and training, everyone can have the tools and perspectives to work effectively and reproducibly with data. People are empowered to answer the questions that are important to them, allowing us to address more and more diverse questions, and broadening the impact on science and society. We talk about bringing compute to data or data to compute. We also need to bring people to data. It is only by democratizing data that it will reach its potential.
Tracy's keynote is sponsored by BOSC.
