A week for Knowledge and Networks 

The Digital Scholarship Centre built upon the success of last year's event by extending the 2024 Digital Scholarship Days to last a full week, resulting in an engaging and productive event. The whole event saw more than 250 participants distributed over 24 workshops, filled with learning, discussions, and networking.

DSC organized a wide range of workshops showcasing digital tools and methods directed towards a wide array of participants from different disciplines, spanning computer science, the humanities, natural and social sciences. Just like last year, multiple of the workshops had waiting lists, while others were more intimate, which allowed for productive discussions and collaboration.

A significant portion of our attendees were PhD fellows (33%) and researchers (23%) (Fig 1), which makes researchers the group that has increased the most since last year’s event. 80% of the participants were affiliated with the University of Oslo, which means that the spread in participants’ affiliation is not as wide as last year. Broadening and diversifying representation will continue to be a point to work on going forward.

Overall, the feedback on the workshops has been overwhelmingly positive. “I am very happy I attended! This was great!” wrote one participant in the feedback form. Participants mostly felt that they gained some practical knowledge and that they will be able to use what they have learned and would recommend the workshop to others: “I would definitely recommend it to my colleagues and friends.”

Participants widely praised the instructors, describing them as knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and clear in their presentation. Some highlights from the feedback about the instructors describe them as: “encouraging and extremely prepared”, “pedagogical and engaging”, and simply “the lecturer was really good.”

Networking across workshops and disciplines is an important aspect of the whole event, and lunch time is a great opportunity for this. Despite long lunch queues on some of the days, participants appreciated the opportunity to network during the free lunch. We heard many interesting discussions about the workshops and other engaging topics.

DSC would like to thank all the contributors, instructors, assistants, and everyone who helped make the DS Days 2024 such a great event. And a special thank you to all the participants who braved the coldest week of winter to attend this year’s event.

You can access the program and material from the #DSdays24 workshop