Understanding Research Technology Support and Where it Fails

I was invited to give a talk to a newly formed IT Research Support group here on MSU campus. As the name suggests, the purpose of this group is to find the best ways to help researchers use technology to do their science.

This talk was a patchwork of many of my other talks. I motivated the discussion by talking about the history of research computing and telling a few stories about how research IT is very different than Enterprise IT. The core of the talk was a group discussion around the idea that the most common source of failure in any project is in human communication.

Then I discussed both campus and national efforts to solve the "human problem" by training a workforce of CI professionals dedicated to supporting research technology. I ended my talk with a quick review of the many national efforts and a plug for our CyberAmbassador project.

A link to my slides can be found here:

Link to pdf of slides