We, the de-RSE association and its surrounding community, use Matrix for our online community to enable us to bring together people doing Research Software Engineering across Germany. This online community is provided to encourage networking, sharing good practice and advertising events and jobs. We ask that you use your real name when joining the space.
On this page, we document how you can find our rooms and give a few pointers to get you started using Matrix chat, in case you are new to the ecosystem.
We have a code of conduct for all the members on the matrix space which can be found here and we encourage everyone to read it.
We grouped our rooms using a space: https://matrix.to/#/#de-rse.org:matrix.org (also join the space itself, not just individual rooms).
Currently, we are moderating the following rooms:
deRSE-general: For general discussions that are de-RSE related, but fit in no other room.
deRSE-introductions: For (new) community members introducing themselves.
deRSE-jobs: For RSE related job announcements from the community.
deRSE-events: For RSE related event announcements from the community.
deRSE-offtopic: For anything not related to de-RSE, but that one might want to discuss with the de-RSE community.
When you join the space, we kindly ask you to introduce yourself in the introductions room. Tell us your name, where you live, where you work, what kind of RSE work you do and about your hopes and dreams for the deRSE community.
On Matrix everyone can create their own rooms. We are happy to add appropriate rooms to the de-RSE space, for instance rooms for local chapters or on specific RSE topics. For this, rooms must fulfill the following requirements:
Once all the requirements are fulfilled please contact de-rse-matrix-support@de-rse.org to request addition of the room to the de-RSE space.
Matrix is a decentralized communication protocol that supports chat, voice and video calls. The protocol is an open standard and — similar to email — there are multiple clients available. A key feature of Matrix is that every chat, including group chats, can be end-to-end encrypted (but we recommend against it in some cases, see above).
You need a Matrix account to use it. Since Matrix is a decentralized system, there is no single place to create an account.
If your institution hosts a Matrix server, you might want to create your account there (or it might already exist). The TU Dresden maintains a map of scientific institutions in Germany (and some abroad) that host Matrix servers. Currently, de-RSE e.V. does host a Matrix server, as we consider the existing infrastructure as sufficient and we also do not have the administrative capacities. Every member of the association is invited to change that by joining our infrastructure group.
Otherwise, you can create an account on the generic instance matrix.org on https://app.element.io. You can find further information on the sign-up process in the documentation of matrix.org.
We recommend to use the Element client for all major computer and mobile platforms. It supports most features of the Matrix protocol, but is somewhat resource hungry. If the latter is a problem for you, you might want to have a look at other clients.
If you do not want to or cannot install a client on your platform, you can use a web client. Your institution’s server, if it exists, might host a web client itself. Otherwise, you can use the web client hosted by the developers of Element: https://app.element.io/
If you would like help getting onto matrix or have questions about how matrix works you can write an email to de-rse-matrix-support@de-rse.org.