Autumn updates from The Turing Way Community
Explore The Turing Way Book and connect with us via our start page.
Hello Turing Way friends!
One thing you don’t want to miss is this month's Community Forum, happening on the 24 September at 14:00-15:30 UTC+1. Community Forums bring together members of The Turing Way Community, including people who have not yet contributed to the project. Modelled off a political town hall event, these online sessions are an opportunity to better understand activities across the project and how decisions are made. In this month's forum, we will be discussing and getting feedback on the 'in-development' Turing Way AI Policy. Register here to participate!
Other things also going on are:
📢 The Turing Way Book Dash November 2026 applications are now open!
📢 Community members at conferences - PyCon and RSECon
📢 Apply for the Institute of Research Software Fellowship
📢 Join the first RCM Cooperative Meetup
Enjoy and keep the conversations coming!
To keep up to date with community events, you can also subscribe to our shared calendar here. 📅
If you're interested in keeping up in real-time, don't forget that you can always join our Slack workspace, follow us on LinkedIn or join us on Fosstodon.
Community News and Updates
🎤 Upcoming Community Forum and AI Policy development - Have your say
This month, we're gathering our community to get input on our AI Policy at the Community Forum on 24 September 2026, 15:00-16:30 UTC+1 (see in your time zone).
Our forum will be chaired by Arielle Bennett.
We encourage you to read and comment on our AI policy before the forum. See links below:
🗒️ Draft of AI Policy - Pull request # 4691
🪄 Discussion of Gen AI in the Turing Way - Discussion #4502
To join the community forum, please register on zoom here.
📚💨 Applications Open for our November Book Dash: 30 November to 4 December 2026!
Applications are now open for our 16th Book Dash!
The Turing Way Book Dash is a bi-annual collaborative event where you'll work with others to add to and improve The Turing Way book or contribute to the project in another way and become a part of its community. Find more details about the Book Dash in The Turing Way Community Handbook.
Our forthcoming Book Dash will happen during the week of 30th November to 4th December.
This time, we will start the week with two days of online contribution sessions on 30th November and 1st December. The following two days, 2nd and 3rd December, will have various local in-person hubs located around the world - London, UK, the Netherlands, and Memphis, USA.
We are very grateful to be supported at this Book Dash by the Institute of Research Software, which allows us to provide an accessibility fund for participants. More details of our accessibility fund can be found on the application form.
Applications are open to first time book dashers (those that have interacted in some way with The Turing Way Community but not attended Book Dash) or returners - you just need an idea of what you would like to contribute or how you could help out the project. It's only a short application form.
If you have any questions about the Book Dash or your application, please come along to our Collaboration Cafe on the 16 September 2026 at 2pm-4pm UK time (UTC+1).
To apply for the Book Dash, please fill in [the application form linked here: https://forms.gle/TS7Js1ZNNMJ2pHCc9
Please apply by 28 October 2026 (midnight anywhere on Earth).
👏 Scriberia is back at the November Book Dash!
We are excited to announce the return of Scriberia to our forthcoming Book Dash.
Scriberia are the amazing illustrators that we have collaborated with to develop our science communication illustrations. These images are used throughout our book, project and this newsletter!, but they are also reused by thousands of people in the open research and data science ecosystem. The illustrations have been downloaded over 67,000 times and our archive of images can be found on Zenodo at this DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3332807.
Book Dash participants will get the chance to work with a Scriberia artist to develop new illustrations for The Turing Way.
Apply to the Book Dash to have this unique science communications experience.
The Book Dash application form can be found at this link: https://forms.gle/TS7Js1ZNNMJ2pHCc9.
✍️ Survey on contributions to The Turing Way - Still open!
We have a survey about your engagement with The Turing Way!
Please take ~5 minutes to fill out the questions, which should help us to identify better ways to support The Turing Way contributors in the long haul (and help publish this article by Esther Plomp & Denise Bianco: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18624335- in which you can also find more information about the study).
Fill out the survey form is here
The Turing Way Community Out and About
Used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3332807.
💬 Keynote Speech at PyCon Columbia
Dr Malvika Sharan, the Chair of our Steering Committee, travelled to Medellin, Columbia, in late July to give a keynote speech at PyCon Columbia 26. Her talk, titled 'What we carry forward', focused on the research, community and sustainability under change, particularly the changes we are all seeing now in our research practices due to AI. Find out more about the conference on the webpage here and also this LinkedIn post about Malvika's keynote talk.
🙌 Turing Way Community Members at RSECon
The Turing Way community members (Oscar Seip, Precious Onyewuchi, and Maryblessing Okolie) joined the flagship event of the Society of Research Software Engineering and the research software community, RSECon.
The conference provides a forum to share ideas, debate strategies, and develop collective visions for the future of Research Software Engineering and recognition for those behind it.
We loved seeing members of the Turing Way participate in delivering the conference, contributing to discussions and helping shape the trajectory of research software, research software quality, performance, and evidence.
📅 Recurring Community Events and Calls ☕
Hosted all throughout the month, our recurring community calls are important and engaging spaces where you can learn more about The Turing Way!
Some require sign-ups (📝) and some don't (✅), but absolutely all are welcome to these calls! ✨
📝 Community forums: The next call is on 24 September, 14:00-15:30 UTC+1 (in your timezone. See below for more information.
✅ Collaboration Cafe: The next call is on 16 September, 14:00-16:00 UTC+1 (see in your time zone).
Feel free to drop in to meet the community, do some focused writing, or otherwise -- more information on Framapad.✅ Infrastructure Maintainers Monthly Meetings: every second Tuesday of the month, at 16:00 UK time. These calls are for co-working on infrastructure support, and for learning more about the work of the team. Join the #infrastructure channel on Slack for more.
✅ Community Management Working Group Meetings: every Tuesday at 14:00 UK time.
✅ Funding and Sustainability Meetings: every second Friday of the month, at 15:00 UK time.
In The Turing Way Orbit
👏 Name change for Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) and Fellowship applications open!
Big congratulations to the Institute for Research Software (fka Software Sustainability Institute) on their change of name!
For over a decade, the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) has worked to make research software more sustainable and properly recognised.
Their name and appearance have now changed to the Institute for Research Software, but it remains the same Institute, building on the same relationships, programmes and commitments. Learn more: https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/introducing-institute-research-software.
🚀 And Fellowship applications open!
The Turing Way Community has many Institute of Research Software Fellows as the two organisations are very aligned in their visions and so we are excited to see the applications for the 2027 round of their Fellowship Programme are now open.
The Fellowship Programme aims to improve and promote good computational practice across all research disciplines and support those who are doing this important work. Each year, the Institute select around 20 Fellows, including up to three international Fellows. Each Fellow receives a £4,000 budget to organise or attend activities that promote good software practice, and joins a wider community through mentoring, cohort-based learning, monthly community calls, study groups, and attendance at the annual Collaborations Workshop.
The programme is open to applicants at any career stage and from any background: PhD candidates, junior research software engineers, professors, directors of research computing, and anyone who supports research, training, or research infrastructure, including those without a formal software background.
Find more details on the webpage here and feel free to put a comment in our #askaway slack channel if you want to know more about the experience of actual fellows.
💫 RCM Cooperative Monthly Meetups starting 15 September
This September, RCM Cooperative is launching its monthly meetup series, creating a recurring online space for anyone who supports, manages, or is curious about research communities.
They are kicking off the series on 15th September, 13:00–14:00 UK time, with a session on 'what is RCM Cooperative and how you can get involved', led by RCM Cooperatives Co-Executive Directors, Dr. Cassandra Gould van Praag and Dr. Emma Karoune. From there, they will run monthly sessions with themes shaped by the community.
The Turing Way is pleased to be working in partnership with RCM Cooperative by providing support for their meetups and Emma is currently bringing her RCM skills to The Turing Way by helping to co-lead the Community Management Working Group while Sara Villa is on maternity leave. It is great to see such productive collaborations happening in our open research ecosystem.
Find out more information about the RCM Cooperative meetups by reading their blog and registration is open now: register here!
For more open science focused events, subscribe to the Open Research Calendar.
Get involved + Connect with us!
You are welcome to join The Turing Way community, and learn more about the project.
If you'd like to contribute to the next newsletter, please contact the Community Management Working group on Github or Slack! Email [email protected] for more information.
Did you miss the last newsletters? Check them out here.
Please note: We are no longer affiliated to The Alan Turing Institute and hence would not be using [email protected] email.
Please use [email protected] email to reach out to the project in the future.