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03/10/2025

Agenda

  1. Welcome: Introductions to CAKE, CoSeC and fellow group members
  2. Group Overview
  3. Discussion: Sharing positive EDI experiences
  4. Any other business
  5. Next steps

Minutes

  1. Welcome

    • Joint collaboration between CAKE (Computational Abilities Knowledge Exchange) and CoSeC (Computational Science Centre for Research Communities).

  2. Group Overview

    • Motivation and goals
      • Group will focus on delivering practical, tangible actions and recommendations that benefit our communities
      • Aim is to not duplicate existing work but to build on these efforts, collect successful practices and lessons learned, and address ongoing challenges not yet resolved.
      • Goal to create a central hub of resources and curated information, designed to be easily actionable and reusable.
      • Also an important forum to raise community-specific opportunities or issues.
    • Terms of Reference
      • Available here
      • Members asked to review full ToR after the meeting, with attention to the roles and responsibilities, ethics and meeting arrangements sections.
      • Member’s 1-year renewable term starts at this meeting 03/10/25
      • Currently have an acting initial Chair to get the group up and running. In a couple of months, an election process will be initiated -> hoping to elect 2 Chairs.
      • Meetings are closed to non-Members, but nominations for new members are welcome.
      • Minutes:
        • Detailed internal notes stored on Google Drive (members only).
        • Public-facing summary published on CAKEbox, to ensure transparency while maintaining a safe discussion environment.
    • Outputs
      • CAKEbox (working group page): central hub for outputs, best practices, guides, templates, and shared resources.
      • Planned community engagement opportunities:
        • Durham HPC/AI Days 2026.
        • CoSeC Community Forums.
        • Other future events where relevant.

  3. Discussion: Sharing positive EDI experiences

Topic: Sharing positive EDI experiences to highlight successful practices from other communities or initiatives, with the aim of inspiring and adapting good ideas for our own context.

External expertise and EDI training:

The group emphasised the value of bringing in external EDI experts and structured training to strengthen understanding and implementation. Experiences showed that this can help committees focus their efforts, understand why some initiatives succeed or fail, and identify realistic next steps.

Training is effective when delivered at all levels of an organisation, which makes sure everyone is equipped with the toolkit to challenge things that aren't right.

Improving EDI at events & securing funding to do so:

This is successful when EDI is intentionally built into planning and funding. Some highlighted successful practices were: offering bursaries, childcare and carer support, and visa funding to reduce hidden participation costs.

The group noted that accessibility and inclusion measures are often treated as optional extras, particularly when funding is limited or reliant on sponsorship. There was agreement that inclusion costs should be built into grant budgets and supported by funders as standard practice. Clarity from UKRI on what can be funded for accessibility and inclusion was identified as a key action point.

The group identified an opportunity to raise this to stakeholders, the communtiy and UKRI at the upcoming DRI congress. CAKE will be hosting a knowledge-exchange-focussed session that could progress this discussion.

It was also recognised that conferences and research events are essential working environments and should therefore meet the same accessibility expectations as office spaces.

Capturing impact and evidence:

The discussion highlighted the importance of collecting evidence and case studies, both where things were successful and those that did not work as intended. Capturing this will help the group learn from existing work and focus on impactful, evidence-based action. This is a great area where we can make an impact!

Date of Next Meeting (DONM): 07/11/2025, 10am, Online via Teams

(please contact cake-management@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk for any queries about these minutes)