Society of RSE Feedback Event (2026) - Society of Research Software Engineering

On 10th March, we held an online feedback event, where members of the community could get updates from the trustees on Society activities, and get involved in conversations about the future of the research software community. In this blog post, we are going to summarise the key updates and discussions from that meeting. Updates Our main updates were on our CoARA Action plan and the results of the recent vote on the Society’s Ethical Sponsorship Policy. CoARA Action Plan In case you missed it, we have published our CoARA Action plan. CoARA is the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment, which aims to reform the ways that research is evaluated. Our planned activities this year include creating specific pages on our website for our CoARA activities, running an RSECon workshop and collating examples of current practices and case studies. Please read the action plan, and contact us if you have any questions or comments. Also, join the mailing list or follow us on social media to stay in the loop about future events or consultations. Ethical Sponsorship Policy Vote The Society has been working to develop an Ethical Sponsorship Policy. This is intended to define how we interact with certain sectors and organisations, particularly when it comes to conference sponsorship and corporate partnerships. Over the last six months, we have been engaging with the community to help inform that policy. After several rounds of consultation, we held an online vote. We had quorate participation from 21% (166/764) of our members during this final stage of the consultation. 62.7% voted “Yes” to only include legally required areas of exclusion. Empowering the trustees to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, without having a pre-defined list. None of the subsequent votes for each suggested area reached the 50% threshold. Proposed trustee actions: We hope our members and the wider community can trust us to make appropriate decisions about the future of the Society on their behalf. The trustees also want to reiterate that we have complete faith in the relevant teams and committees to run the various activities of the Society in the best interests of our members. We hope these changes will help address any concerns and help us mature as a Society as our membership and activities continue to expand. Call to action for members: Breakout Sessions Next, we split into different breakout rooms to discuss a number of topics about the future of the Society and the community. What should the Society be spending its money on? Mike Simpson chaired this breakout session, which discussed different ways that the Society might spend some of its surplus funds. We’ve been fortunate that the RSE Conference has made a profit over the last few years, and as a charity, we aren’t allowed to hoard money. For reference, 88% of the Society’s income comes from conference ticket sales and sponsorship. 11% comes from membership fees, and 1% comes from donations and merchandise sales. A lot of that money gets spent on RSECon, and we already support various activities such as the Events and Initiatives Fund and the Mentoring Scheme. But what else can we do? Various suggestions were discussed, including: We will consider all of these suggestions in future trustee meetings, as we decide how best to spend our surplus to support the RSE Community. What’s the society’s role in a maturing community? David Beavan chaired this breakout session, which first discussed whether the Society is primarily a professional body, an advocacy organisation, or a community hub, and if trying to be all three dilutes its effectiveness. Attendees thought the RSE movement, as well as the society were an advocacy movement and not a professional body, as they don’t accredit anything. The society runs the conference, funding schemes, etc., but there are still lots of communities within it. The current model works well, and there is no need to force a monolithic community; we are an umbrella. The next question was: what are we doing well, and what could benefit from improvement? The question was raised of how well the society is doing at spending its money. The society has been increasing its spending on the community, but not fast enough to completely counter-balance its increased income. As a charity, we must ensure that any incoming money will be put back into our membership. We also want to fund a diverse set of activities, not just the same initiatives or people. One option might be an individual-level bursary. It was suggested to encourage individuals to ask for some creative uses of grants, while also enabling travel money and conference attendance. On the other hand, concerns were raised about the incentives of covering travel, because it might set a precedent, as cash-cut universities might become over-reliant on the Society. In order to encourage different kinds of proposals: The third topic covered the target member profile and the inclusivity of the term “RSE”.  We estimated that 80% of the Society’s members are from academic institutions. In the past, some events were explicitly for academics, and we might want to check the language and terms used. Professional identity appears to be important. Some noted a possibly increasing fragmentation in the field: there are new roles emerging like Digital Research Technical Professionals, more research infrastructure roles (cloud, K8s) coming up, and how computer science and software engineering distinguish themselves. Does the Society want to embody all these roles? We seem to have been vague/very open about the definition of our target members in the past. There seems to be a need to clarify within the Society, if our focus is too broad. If we do refine our aims, we should be willing to let people go. We do want to attract people from industry, though. It might be more challenging to reach people working in industry if they do not come originally from academia, since they might not be aware of the ‘typical’ RSE career, including the issues with temporary contracts, nor the society itself or the RSECon. […]