10 things i've learned from 3 years with the turing way

Note: Back in August of 2022, I wrote a blog that aimed to summarise some personal reflections about digital life, community management, and researcher/praxis reflections a year into my role with The Turing Way. As Jia Tolentino wrote in her book Trick Mirror: “I write to think”, and for me, this is true as well. Journalistic or creative writing uses a very different set of muscles than documentation or academic writing, and as I finish off three years with the project, I wanted to document these broader reflections.

For now, I’ve just added the list as it’s more important to get out there. But I would love to be able to expand upon each of these points.

1. Community-building is not the same as understanding the practices of community management.

2. Scientific research is not the same as technological development – their cultures, norms, and practices are different

3. Teaching and facilitation is an art and a practice

4. Balancing the requirements of maintenance and the generativity of creativity is hard.

5. Difference matters as much as it has the space it has to flourish.

6. Intergenerational histories and myths are really important in sustaining the culture of an open source project.

7. Being in community with each other requires suspending some amount of disbelief – and critique. It requires simply being together.

8. Transparency and trust are interlinked, but are not the same thing.

9. Sustaining third spaces for others does not necessarily create a third space for yourself.

10. Community building is in the small things: rituals are important

A few runner ups (that didn’t make the list)

• What you share is as important as how you share
• Openness alone isn’t enough (what about translation and accessibility?)
• So many movements have so much to learn from open science
• Integrating critique can render solution making difficult
• Balancing maintenance and generative creativity
• Who is heard (and who is not) is
• You cannot be everywhere at once – all information in partial
• why is art always cornered into a “let’s think about ethics” corner?
• The behaviour of being open is a habit - and a practice
• Open “AI” has shifted the landscape and priorities of openness - not necessarily for the better
• You cannot manage a community from the margins (as a community manager) – but you can seek to bring other perspectives in support it.
• Being “in the arena” looks very different depending on your discipline (and requires very different muscles!)
• Education is liberatory – but that liberation looks very different for different people.
• Open science for many is a deeply personal experience.
• Transparency and trust are interlinked, but are not the same thing
• Going beyond traditional research outputs looks very different depending on the space you are in
• The Turing Way is a pulse on the wider research field