Community seminar 01-04-2026 - Show and tell and future directions

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No formal seminar this week but instead a show and tell plus open discussion on future community directions (3pm UK time today!)

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We had a good discussion. There were some high-level thoughts:

  • Themed meetings with user-submitted themes and then the organisers find someone to lead the discussion
  • A journal club
  • I would like to run a talk submission form
  • I would like someone else to give a talk submission form
  • Setting up a mailing list or at least giving guidance on how to use the forum to do so
  • Making the private list of planned speakers public in some way. Using this to communicate with more lead time who is speaking.
  • Trying to better connect the seminar and forum populations
  • Reorganising the forum categories
  • Rewording the forum and epinowcast.org information to better capture the aims of the community i.e real time modelling of infectious disases and connected topics.
  • Potential for an org level name change. There was a suggestion this might make people feel more welcome as they donā€™t currently feel comfortable as they donā€™t contribute to the software

The high level was the best bits of the meetings are the open discussion and the behind the scenes elements of the talks. Not so much when we get a very focussed here is my paper style talk.

I took from that we should work on how we communicate that more clearly and structures we can set up to promote it.

To do all of these suggestions I think we might need to move to more than one meeting a month but I would think we should go slowly slowly with that to make sure we can handle it capacity wise.

Personally, I think there are quite a few downsides to an org level name change as it has some recognition and is at least somewhat descriptive. We could maybe change a tag line as a half way house? That being said I am open to doing so if others strongly feel it is a good way to go and have some good suggestions (with cheap to buy domain names).

Please post any thoughts here!

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Thanks Sam! Sorry I couldnā€™t make it.

I donā€™t feel strongly about any of the naming - but that may be because Iā€™m an active user. A tagline / clearer description sounds sensible.

A better lead time on presentations / plans would be very helpful, I often book over the slot as I am not sure if thereā€™s going to be a talk.

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Grouping the suggestions above into themes, and then roughly ordering by effort, and then adding my opinionated comments underneath.

  • Meetings
  1. Making the private list of planned speakers public in some way. Using this to communicate with more lead time who is speaking.
  2. I would like to run a talk submission form / I would like someone else to give a talk submission form
  3. Themed meetings with user-submitted themes and then the organisers find someone to lead the discussion
  4. A journal club

maybe relevant for (3), I learned about ā€œLean coffeeā€ meeting facilitation the other day, for rapidly finding group-prioritised discussion topics in the meeting time itself.

  • Increasing accessibility for current users
  1. Reorganising the forum categories
  2. Setting up a mailing list or at least giving guidance on how to use the forum to do so

on (1) I find the forum pretty frustrating to navigate. Redoing the categories or tags around themes, rather than package dev, or perhaps using ā€œchannelsā€ would be really helpful.

  • Community outreach
  1. Trying to better connect the seminar and forum populations
  2. Rewording the forum and epinowcast.org information to better capture the aims of the community i.e real time modelling of infectious disases and connected topics.
  3. Potential for an org level name change. There was a suggestion this might make people feel more welcome as they donā€™t currently feel comfortable as they donā€™t contribute to the software

On (1) I think it will take care of itself with changes in meeting planning and forum design.

To me, (2) seems like the key (linked I think to possible forum re-categorisation above). I know it sounds like itā€™s ā€˜cosmeticā€™, but I think it would make a difference if the website could better surface some of the wider community participation discussion / initiatives / outputs that arenā€™t epinowcast software. Currently, the site is a bit of a mix of package/dev language (ā€˜do you need help running epinowcast?ā€™) and general community (the blog, forum link). I think it would be great if these two functions could be separated (ideally even a different package documentation website). For example a community focussed site could include

  • community spaces i.e. seminar series, forum
  • resources: e.g. NFIDD course, best practice guides, links out to other relevant packages (scoringutils) or communities (hubverse, WHO collabā€¦)
  • community library: e.g. relevant, new, or best practice papers
  • blog (and invite more contributions)
  • community members: a visual network of e.g. forum users / people interested (gives it a bit of an incentive to sign up)

(3) I somewhat take back my own comment about epinowcast name change because it is fair enough as a description. But I as above my main concern is clearer separation from the package.

Iā€™d also like to add back the suggestion to have an in-person community day :slight_smile: