Openscapes Champions Cohorts

This is the page in preparation for the 2024 cohort; check back as we prepare for fall 2025!

The NMFS Openscapes Mentor Community led 3 Champions Cohorts in Fall 2024! Read on to learn what this is and cohort pages to learn stories of what the teams have accomplished.

We will lead 3 more Champions Cohorts in Fall 2025.

What is the Champions Program?

40 staff from across NMFS come together bi-weekly to work on goals related to data science workflows. Do you want an opportunity to make progress on a project you are already working on? Do you or your team have a ‘big goal’ that involves changing how you work and you want to make progress on making your data and science workflows more efficient and reproducible (however you define that)? Do you want to migrate to new data and science workflows, like cloud-based workflows, but don’t know how to get started? Do you want to connect with others across NMFS who are interested in Open Science, Open Data and Open Source? The Fall Openscapes Champions Cohorts are for you (and your team)! Make progress on those goals that seem so intangible and hard to get traction on by working in facilitated sessions with your peers and the Openscapes team. Scroll the blogs on what NMFS teams and individuals have accomplished in the 10 NMFS Champions Cohorts over the past 3 years.

Openscapes Champions is a remote-by-design, cohort-based mentorship program that helps teams re-imagine data analysis and stewardship as a collaborative effort, develop modern skills that are of immediate value to them, and cultivate collaborative and inclusive communities. It is focused on open science and data modernization via biweekly curriculum that Openscapes has improved over 24 Cohorts 2019-2024. The goal is strengthening a teaching and learning culture within teams and organizations. This program is not only for scientists: admin, IT staff, and beyond are welcomed. Individuals and teams do not have to have familiarity or expertise in open science, data science, or coding, to benefit from the Openscapes Champions Program.

Champions Program Details

Fall NMFS Openscapes Champions Cohorts ran from October-December 2024! We met as a cohort five times over two months, on alternating weeks, with additional optional coworking times.

  • Date-Times:
    • Cohort-A: Oct 8, 22, Nov 5, 19, Dec 3. Alternating Tuesdays from 11:00am - 12:30pm PT.
    • Cohort-B: Oct 9, 23, Nov 6, 20, Dec 4. Alternating Wednesdays from 10:00 - 11:30am PT.
    • Cohort-C: Oct 9, 23, Nov 6, 20, Dec 4. Alternating Wednesdays from 1:00 - 2:30pm PT.
  • Where: remotely, via Zoom
  • What we learn: Champions program core lessons, with NOAA Fisheries examples
  • Cost: Free; this opportunity is supported by NOAA funding to Openscapes
  • Expected time commitment: 8hrs/month for 2 months is a minimum expected time commitment. This accounts for 3 hours/month of synchronous Cohort Calls, optional Coworking hours, and team Seaside Chats where you plan with your research group to strengthen shared workflows.
  • Who: NMFS staff, affiliates, contractors, and others who are interested in improving their data science workflows. We aim to remove barriers to outside collaboration. It is important that those who participate can do so in all or most sessions, and are energized to be interacting with like-minded individuals across NOAA Fisheries. Sign up to participate individually, with a colleague or your team.

Champions Cohort Timeline

This image gives a visual sense of time span, cadence, and time commitments for an Openscapes Cohort

What is a team?

How you define ‘team’ is completely up to you and having one person be in the cohort and using in-between session ‘seaside chats’ to bring back the information to another group is 100% fine. That is common in the cohorts. In my first Openscapes cohort, I was the only person from my project. My personal goal was to use the Openscapes structure to help a team that I am on figure out how to tackle some off-boarding tasks due to a retirement. During my second cohort, there were 2 team members in the cohort and 2 not in the cohort. We focused on standardizing our data to get ready for our GitHub served data package. For the 3rd cohort I am doing, 2⁄3 of our team is in the cohort as we start to get organized for a major revamp of our report into a reproducible workflow. - Eli Holmes (NMFS Open Science, NWFSC, NMFS Openscapes)

Teams do not need to be a formal research group; they can be collaborating in other ways. Team members do not all need to have technical or data interests, but share a curiosity and interest in improving something about how they work.

Q: What if I don’t have a team?

A: That’s ok, please sign up! We’ll help you connect with participants who share some of your goals or needs.

Q: If a team is participating together, how important is it for them all to be in the same cohort?

A: Not too important. Sometimes people feel more ‘connected’ if they see people they know in the virtual room. The activities during the cohort calls are not by ‘team’; they are in random breakout groups. Participants are expected to have ‘Seaside Chats’ together with their teams in the weeks between Cohort Calls. It’s more important that participants are committed to attending all sessions in the time slot they have chosen.

Q: Can I sign up if I have participated in a previous Openscapes Champions Cohort?

A: Yes. If Cohorts are oversubscribed, this would be discussed by a small selection committee.

See Frequently Asked Questions for more guidance on teams.

Stories from past participants

Kourtney Burger, Biological Science Technician, SWFSC Acoustic Ecology Lab.

Kourtney participated in a PIFSC-SWFSC Cohort in Fall 2022. She shared her experience in a post for the NOAA Fisheries blog: Sound Bytes: Championing Open Science. In it, Kourtney describes how she transferred a field methods manual from a set of disparate files on Google Drive to a Quarto web book on GitHub.

“Seaside Chats with our SAEL team allowed those of us attending the Openscapes workshop to share our newfound knowledge and experience so we could make our science more open. During these sessions, we streamlined our science pathways, documented our methods through GitHub, and had general team strategy discussions.” - Kourtney Burger, SWFSC

Marine Mammal Laboratory (MML) Stock Assessment Report team from AFSC.

Rod Towell, Nancy Young, Tony Orr, Erin Richmond, and Brian Fadely participated in an Openscapes Champions Cohort in Winter 2022 and shared the story of the impact on their reporting and team culture (13-min recording | slides with detailed notes).

“Learning WITH each other, FROM each and FOR each other” - Rod Towell, AFSC

Impetus - SAR process is overwhelming and inefficient.

  • Annual process with overlap between years 
  • Large project: >400 pages
  • Multiple authors, collaborators, and internal/external reviewers 
  • Version control issues
  • No easy way to track discussions, decisions, ideas for future years
  • No cohesive or formalized on/off-boarding, protocols

MML SAR Team goals

  • Reframe SAR development as a collaborative effort
  • Incorporate new tools but meet staff where they are
  • Maintain consistency with NMFS SAR approach

Reflections

  • Motivated team, commitment, endurance, good communication and collaboration 
  • This is a fluid, adaptive and dynamic process
  • Used skills and problem-solving processes learned from Openscapes; the status quo was not acceptable so change was necessary
  • Change is incremental - it doesn’t have to happen all at once!
  • Time, energy, commitment -> Reward!

A Year of Open Science Community Building at NOAA Fisheries

Lightning talks for the Year of Open Science Culminating Conference, March 21, 2024 (recording | slides). Eli Holmes (NOAA Fisheries Open Science), Evan Howell (Director of the Office of Science and Technology), Megsie Siple (Alaska Fisheries Science Center), Amanda Bradford (Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center), Brian Fadely (Alaska Fisheries Science Center Marine Mammal Stock Assessments), Vivian Matter (Branch Chief of Southeast Fisheries Science Center), Kathryn Doering (Office of Science and Technology), Christine Stawitz (Office of Science and Technology), Carissa Geravsi (Gulf of Mexico Integrated Ecosystem Assessment), Lynn Dewitt (California Current Ecosystem Assessment Team).

Mentor roles

The growing NMFS Openscapes Mentor community — staff from across NOAA Fisheries interested in supporting others with teamwork and open science — will be increasingly involved with Champions Cohorts, and point-people for questions about what is involved and how to sign up. Mentors play different roles during different phases of Champions Cohorts.

Pre-cohort engagement: Mentors are empowered to encourage their colleagues to sign up for Openscapes Champions Cohorts. The Openscapes team will support you in preparing to present to an all-hands or brown bag session, or you can invite us to present.

During cohort: Mentors participate in the Champions Program (in fact, Champions cohorts are scheduled as “takeovers” of regular Mentors calls to be mindful of Mentors’ time commitments). Here are several roles where Mentors can contribute:

  • Meta-listeners (role model psychological safety, live notetaking; review 2023 Mentor skills we developed; contribute to 20-min post-cohort debriefs as you can to help surface ideas and set direction (stay in Zoom after the Cohort calls)
  • Content experts (responsive during Cohorts Calls, Seaside Chats, Coworking to help Champions with their goals)
  • Helpers (during Coworking / Seaside Chats, screensharing to fix merge conflicts, add documentation)
  • Participants (learn with your team as a Champion, focus on your work in Seaside Chats and Coworking)
  • Teachers (teaching specific Champions lessons, pre-arranged)

Selection and how to participate

We selected participants for the 3 Cohorts with transparent decision criteria co-designed with the NMFS Mentors (see below), knowing that with 194 total signups for 120 seats (which is fantastic!), there is no one perfect way to select. Openscapes is about workflows shifts and movement building, and the Champions Program is designed with intentional structure to balance specific roles/boundaries while also being lightweight/reduced process so you all can focus on your science.

Openscapes will remain strict to the 40 participants per Cohort for the 5 synchronous Cohort Calls with no “drop ins” – this is by design for active engagement (Champions Calls are not webinars where you sit back) and to build psychological safety within the group (being safe to be vulnerable is part of learning). We balance openness with trust building; we share all lessons and slide decks via the Champions Lesson Series, but we do not share the call agendas with live notes outside of the Cohort.

Seaside Chats are the way for people outside the Cohort to participate. Part of the Champions program design is that participants have “Seaside Chats” in the off-weeks during the 2 months, where they focus on applying what they learned into their own work and include other colleagues or team members. In many cases, not all team members who signed up will be selected to participate in the 5 Cohort Calls. These will be organized and led by the Champions using guidance from Openscapes, and there is no “prework” to attend.

Decision criteria

We selected the Cohorts with transparent decision criteria that were developed with the Mentors, Eli Holmes, and the Openscapes team.

We prioritized participation by:

  • People who committed to a Cohort date-time by marking “Yes” in the spreadsheet
  • People who have not previously participated in an Openscapes Champions Cohort
  • Strategic Initiative groups: Passive Acoustics (PAM), Active Acoustics (AA), Climate and Fisheries (FDD). Genomics (’omics).
  • Office that has never participated or participated little: OPR, OST, NEFSC, AKRO, GARFO
  • New hires
  • Teams with NOAA staff
  • Caps on count totals across Centers: High: no more than 18 participants per division; Low: if < 5 signed up for one Center, accept all.

Criteria that did NOT affect selection:

  • People who signed up as individuals or as part of a team were considered equally;
  • Date of signup.

Waitlist decisions:

  • If people declined, we selected people from the waitlist, prioritizing same cohort, same division, not participated before, same team, availability for Cohort date-time.