ResBazQld proves its value
13 December 2022
This year’s three-day Research Bazaar Queensland (ResBazQld) event featured 34 workshops, providing the equivalent of a total of approximately 750 days of training for researchers.
“These figures really highlight the value of ResBaz,” said QCIF Skills Development Manager Dr Mark Crowe, who was one of the QCIF co-organisers of the event.
“QCIF is one of Australia’s most active providers of digital research skills training, yet in three days ResBaz provided as many training places as we would normally offer in three months,” said Mark.
ResBazQld, held 1–3 November at Griffith University’s Nathan campus, attracted 300 participants: 128 from Griffith, 74 from UQ, 51 from QUT, with the remaining numbers from QCIF’s other Member institutions.
Workshops covered coding, machine learning, cloud computing, text analytics, science communication, and more. At least 10 QCIF staff led or assisted with these workshops.
Speaking of text analytics, the Australian Text Analytics Platform (ATAP) was officially launched during ResBazQld with more than 50 people in attendance to celebrate.
ATAP is an open source platform that provides researchers with tools and training for analysing, processing and exploring text.
ResBazQld also featured six talks, including one by QCIF Bioinformatician and Software Engineer Dr Cameron Hyde about his journey as both a consumer and developer of genomics software.
As well as the workshops and formal talks, Mark said “there were excellent facilities [at Griffith] for networking with fellow attendees, leading to lots of new connections and great scientific discussions.”
Some of these discussions may have resulted from ResBazQld’s “Ninety Seconds of Research Impact” event, a no-preparation, no slides presentation of a research project delivered in 90 seconds or less. Six researchers undertook the challenge in front of an enthusiastic audience.
QCIF would like to congratulate Amanda Miotto, our Griffith University-based eResearch Analyst, as the lead organiser of ResBazQld 2022.
“Amanda did a fantastic job of attracting an exceptional line-up of speakers and workshop instructors, had to deal with a COVID-enforced change of date and location, and coordinated the organising team so well that even when she had to isolate halfway through the second day of the event, everything continued to run completely smoothly,” said Mark.
“We’d also like to thank our Gold Sponsor AWS and our Silver Sponsors GALE and AARNet for helping us keep the registration fees so affordable [only $35 for access to everything at ResBazQld], and for supporting our accessibility program with three travel bursaries and 11 volunteer helper registrations.”
QCIF is hopeful that ResBazQld will return next year, most likely at another QCIF Member university.