The POSE Training Program supports awardees of the US National Science Foundation’s Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) program. It is co-facilitated by staff at the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (CSCCE) and the US Research Software Sustainability Institute (URSSI) at the University of California Berkeley.
The program is designed to create a robust training and peer support system for leaders in open-source software, open-source hardware, and open data as they work towards building sustainable open-source ecosystems (OSEs).
An OSE is a sustainable organization that enables the ongoing, collaborative, asynchronous development of an open-source product, such as data, software, and hardware, that is designed to be publicly accessible, modifiable, and distributable by anyone under an open-source licensing model.
The curriculum
This multi-week training curriculum synthesizes and explores overlapping themes essential to the development of an OSE, including:
- Governance
- Organizational structure and management
- Community engagement
Course content focuses on strategic implementation and best practices, providing frameworks that help POSE awardees identify solutions relevant to their specific context. We are working closely with experts in OSE maintenance and evolution as we deliver the training, and will provide ongoing coaching and mentorship opportunities for POSE awardees.
A new community of practice
Participants in the POSE Training Program will join a Slack-based online community of practice. Throughout the training, they will connect here with their cohort of POSE awardees, instructors, and open source experts. They will retain access to this space after the training concludes, and the community will gradually grow as more cohorts take part in the program, creating a peer-to-peer learning environment for scientific open-source practitioners.
Shared resources
While the training program is currently for POSE awardees only, we will be making resources available on this website as they are created. This will include case studies of existing successful projects, recordings of talks from experts, and other artifacts, such as a glossary of terms.
We’ll also be coordinating the first of what we hope will become an annual unconference for POSE awardees and others interested in the sustainability of open-source projects, ensuring program participants have multiple ways to connect and learn together. The first unconference is tentatively planned for 2024. More information will be posted as the program is launched.