Instances of collaborative discussion

[saloynton]

The following is a set of discussions from the ethno work that is useful for the group work.

Extract ONE

2. Sasha's attitude towards image sharing during 
work process

X: Thanks for showing me this. We are also interested 
in how to push the collaboration among people during 
the working process. For example, if you have close 
collaborators working on a same project and you want 
to share or view each other is images
S: You mean to put our images in OMERO, I think we 
can already do that.

X: I know. I am more interested in your feelings about
sharing your images with others, not necessarily just 
showing them to Miles (Sasha's PI) In what situation will
you want to show or share your images with other people &
your collaborators or your group members?

S: I don't really do that but I know it can be a good thing
that Miles can access my images, to see what I have done,
and make comments and like this. But I don't think I will
check Finn's images unless he asks me to do that. I won't 
just go there and open his images. I think if there is a 
need for me to see his images, I will ask him to send me a
Powerpoint file or something like that. For example during 
the lab meeting, he did a presentation and there is something
interesting. 

X: Is this some sort of social convention that scientists 
would rather use a more face-to-face communication to 
exchange information? Will it work better to have the choice
 of group members putting their images on a central storage place?

S: I think it is just easier. He will just send it to me. 
Otherwise I will have to look through them and find it myself. 

X: Suppose that the process of finding what you need is very
straightforward, you just type in whatever you want and the
images come out?

S: Yes The thing is As far as I am concerned, I would prefer
people to ask me rather than just going there and watching my
images without asking me. Maybe that ís just me being too personal.

X: But your own feelings are important for us to understand how
scientists feel about sharing. So please go ahead.

S: Maybe it is just me. I am not used to sharing all my images
with everybody. I guess when the lab is a good lab and people
trust each other, it doesn't really matter and somebody can 
just come to see my images. But in my previous lab I had some
trouble with someone stealing my work. I'd definitely not like
her to come to the storage and watch my images and use them as
if they were hers. I know here it won't happen. But I am a little
bit suspicious because I had this experience before. But I think
it is really healthy in this lab, people won't do that. Maybe
one person will do it one day, I don't know. People here are
good people, but you never know. So I am not very confident
about that; but it is just my own point of view.  

X: I guess what we can learn is that even with the technology that
makes this possible, there are still human factors that need to
be taken into account.

S: Yes.

X: So it is important for you as the owner of your images to decide
what do you want to do with them, to whom do you want to show them,
and when.

S: That ís why I would say that I prefer people ask me if they want
to see my images. I can send to some people, but maybe not some
others. With some people that I know, that I can trust, it is fine.

X: I guess it is important for you to have the right to make this decision. 

To highlight the contrast in reference to collaboration ticket #3612 demonstrates how
collaboration is viewed within a different laboratory in the same institution.

• The scientists in Charlotte’s laboratory people are already very used to working with a very open system. They are all happy to have shared data and because of their overlapping scientific work do look at similar projects because of their own future interest.

Extract Two

Ralf had been just in this position for a few weeks,
and he spent a lot of time fiddling with the new
equipments to prepare for his experiments. 
He didn't do a lot of imagining either Ð or, his images
were rather a reference and electophysiological 
signals were his primary data Ð similar case applied 
to part of Gottfried's and Karl's work. (See more details 
in St Kilda imaging workflow in summary).

This also raised the point of how people could use 
OMERO for collaboration on the lab level. 
In most cases, people in the same lab work on 
different projects and very rarely everybody 
'produces pretty pictures' and even for those who 
'produce pretty pictures', they very likely applied 
other methods and produced different data. I feel that
 probably OMERO should consider accommodating other
 file formats and plug-in to be co-existent with other tools.

[saloynton]

Gus could you take a look at this and decide if you want to keep it somewhere for the benefit of having/building on case studies for the group work. If not I will close.

[saloynton]

Closing no longer required.