“I entered into the data profession about three and a half years ago. I found the community to be very welcoming. The ideas of ethics and sustainability are starting to be brought forward more strongly now. Data aren’t just digits in the memory. They have real world effects in real world situations.

One of the things that drew me particularly to the idea of preserving data, is to build on the research investments that people have made. People spend their lives exploring questions. If the information and data those answers are based on, aren’t kept useable in an understandable way, then the answers themselves are also lost. The end result is so many wasted lives when you add it up. It’s the time invested in the exploring these questions, but even more in a broadly humanitarian way, these answers are pursued to improve the lot of humanity. If the data collected through research are lost, the answers themselves are lost, and so the people, the environmental effects are also lost. So I think that’s my most important concern.

Look, I like efficiency. I like effectiveness. Not taking care of things you’ve spent time making, not making sure they can be used effectively – that’s a waste of everyone’s time and effort. It just bugs me. Data is the starting point for any answers we achieve through research. Let’s not waste that effort. If there’s anything this community could respond more in, it’s the human-related areas – the marketing and advertising of the importance of data and the importance of making sure the data is there to go back to. There’s no reason to reinvent wheels, but improving them is vital.”

“So when I was a kid, obviously Star Trek was the thing, because it was our better selves in the 23rd century. Civil rights, women’s rights, all those issues that were happening at that time in the 1960s were simplified in that show. But the thing that got me was the computer. Spock would have this conversation: ‘Computer, what is this thing? What was the global temperature in 1934?’ And there was always an answer. My start with data was looking at how instruments recorded it. As I’ve started to get into managing people, writing code, I’ve realised that we’re the people in someone else’s past. If we don’t get it right, they will suffer. They’ll ask the question, and the computer won’t have an answer. These people are all trying to get to that better 23rd century. It’s slow progress, baby steps. But being able to make sense of the research results that we take now, consolidating that, is really important to me.”

“I find it relaxing to work with data.  I’m a mathematician by training and much more into applied mathematics, so I find recursive formulas very relaxing and linear algebra is like a fun puzzle, like a crossword.  I like problem solving.  ‘Big data’ is an excellent field for problem solving.  I like finding elegant solutions to complex problems.  I approach problem solving slightly off-kilter from others – I would often get weird grades in school, but it also means that if people give me problems they’re struggling with, I could look at it and come up with something different from them.  This is my first data science meeting.  I’m enjoying the opportunity and being around mathematicians and database people and folks who get excited by data.  And I’m pleased that there are other women I can talk to.”

“One of the coolest thing is starting out as a student in the research data management field, being early in my career, and then being able to interact with the same people over time. I feel like I’m kind of growing up as an individual. I feel I can say, hey, you guys made an impact on what I do, and now I can give back.”

“I think you need to express yourself the way you feel you should, because what really matters at this conference is that we’re all interested in making data available, accessible and preserving it, and we shouldn’t feel that we have to sacrifice who we are in part or whole, in order to do our work.

I hear far more people who are complimentary about the way I dress than not, so it’s not like it’s problematic. But it shouldn’t matter anyway. We have to just keep being who we are, and the other people will catch up.”