Gateways 2018

As access to data is becoming central to scientific research, data repositories are becoming a critical component of the research infrastructure. Today's data repositories are not simply a place to store data, but rather they offer a rich set of features to facilitate data sharing and data management. For more than a decade, the Dataverse project has been providing an open-source platform used to build today's data repositories. In this talk, I will present current Dataverse work that aims to provide a solution for tomorrow's data repositories: 1) integrating the data publishing process with replication tools, 2) supporting sensitive data, 3) unifying repositories with multiple cloud storage and computing options. 

While interest in new technologies can be immediately apparent, barriers to access are not always clear. Iterative, participatory, interface design is one approach to bridging disciplinary barriers to democratizing new technologies. Here we discuss what we learned applying these methods to the development of Immerj, an application to simplify the post-production of immersive video content, developed by students at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Much like gateways, Immerj provides easy access to high-end technologies. Students had the opportunity to engage with stakeholders including journalists at the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and many other local and national organizations in order to guide the design of their Knight Foundation funded prototype. We will discuss what we learned and how stakeholder input helped our engineers understand and meet the stakeholders' needs, offering implications for gateways of all types.