Collaborations Workshop 2026

Organised by the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI).
Past outputs include the Research Software Engineering as a career path and the CITATION.cff file format.
Three day “unconference”.
Emphasis on collaborations, dynamic discussions, and hands-on problem-solving.
This year’s theme was Strengthening the Research Software Community.

Location

ICC Belfast

Our Experience

Paddy

Third Collaborations Workshop.
The unlikely weather was welcome.
Belfast is a good place to run.
Enjoy a good mural.
Discussion session was a about good practices for AI-generated software.
Collaborative idea was about better education on how to perform a good code review.
Hack day https://github.com/green-actions . A tool to compute the action usage for a given repository.

Rainbow cake.

A mural of a woman and a dog.

A building being demolished.

Beacon of Hope sculpture.

The Salmon of Knowledge sculpture.

Sunflower pub.

Belfast City Hall at night.

A physics mural.

Bluebells.

Lit up umbrellas.

Interior décor of a pub.

A high stair sculpture.

A small bandstand.

Some of the UCL cohort.

My hack day team.

Jonathan

First time invited to speak at CW, and first experience of a fireside chat (minus fire)
Helped run 2 mini-workshops despite not being involved in submitting either proposal
Plugged DisCouRSE in an attempt to get NI engagement
- Some useful chats, including with people who won round 1 projects
Distracted by ARC admin work and missed several sessions

Duncan

Second Collaborations Workshop.
Belfast has a great vibe - many murals and live music everywhere.
Ample welcome opportunities for large animal photos.
Conference itself
Speed blog: Can AI ever be ‘Green’?
Collaborative idea sessions: Domain2RSE
- Framework to help guide conversations between domain experts and RSE
Hack day: Green actions

The cathedral of the eponymous Cathedral Quarter

St. Albert monument

Mural #1

Mural #2

Delicious chips

Golden gorilla

Sheep

The Big Fish

Duck

Hollie

Second Collaborations Workshop
My first time in N.Ireland
- Austin joined me after the conference for the bank holiday weekend
Collaborative Ideas Day was a lot of fun
- Third place prize for ‘ACT Skills’, promoting research community management skills among young people
Joined up with similar group from Collab Ideas Day that got shortlisted for the Hack Day
- First place prize for Community Supporter Compass, online quiz asking: ‘what type of community supporter are you?’
Did Giant’s Causeway while Belfast marathon was on, Street Art Festival, Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival screening of Battlefield Earth

Community Supporter Compass quiz

We won first prize

Me and Austin at The Giant's Causeway

CQAF film screening of Battlefield Earth

A selection of animals I politely greeted

Jeremy

It is not a technical conference

a blackout poem describing my experience of CW26

Connor

Nice first day
- Ran to Belfast castle, walked up Cavehill, pizza and cinema.
Back to the Fortran Future Workshop
- Funding advice and Met office collaboration
Unconference
- Came third in the Discussion Sessions
- Poetic computing
- Came Third in hack day working on Fortran course
Final day
- Peace walls, botanic gardens, Ulster museum and hot chocolate

A stranger and I with the same shoes.

Belfast castle.

The path up Cavehill.

The view from Cavehill.

Cavehill cave.

My stromboli dessert.

A bad photo of Connor.

A better photo of Connor.

Poetic computing poem.

A photo realistic mural.

A graffitied no entry sign.

Map of Belfast peace wall.

Dragons sculpture from Ulster Museum.

Frontage of Daisies hot chocolate in Belfast.

Sofía

First Collaborations Workshop
- Nice to meet the SSI Fellows Cohort of 2026 in person 🤓
- The fellowship is to work further on the Charlas RSE en español

Meet some lovely people
- Led a mini-workshop with Salma Thalji on multilingualism in the RSE world 🗺️🗣️ (and went together to a Rosalía concert the following week)
- Hui Ling’s Git for researchers

And caught up with ARCians 😍
- Excellent pubs were visited

2nd prize at HackDay with Up-Goer-Five project
- (no photographic evidence 😬)

Charlas logo

SSI Fellows cohort 2026

Mini workshop

2nd prize hackday

Samantha

Came into CW26 tired, but excited
- Nice dinner with SSI Fellows celebrating DIRECT’s 3rd birthday
Unconference
- Learnt that 2hrs does not condense to 30mins well
- Came third in the Discussion Sessions
- Had hoped to revisit RunTime, but not to be
- Worked with some great folks on the Queer Coded website, creating drafts of logos
Bank Holiday weekend
- Spend the weekend visiting my Aunt
- Nice walk around Donaghadee
- Tormented in the best way by Autumn, my Aunt’s dog

David

Ninth Collaborations Workshop
- ~~Nice to see some of the 2016 SSI Fellows~~
- but many from newer generations and one from 2014 🤗
- It was nice to see 🧦 The Turing Way, OLS and SSI friends, including my RSE mentee

Great talks by