QWiDA Journey by the Director – Reflections on our first in-person workshop

Written by ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Sharon Parker

After an extended period of virtual collaboration, our 17 Chief Investigators from eight Australian university partners gathered in-person in Melbourne to discuss and plan all things ARC Centre of Excellence for Quality Work in a Digital Age (QWiDA). This was our first in-person workshop since our success in securing funding through the highly competitive Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence scheme.

I thought it might be useful, both for other future research centres and our own reflection, to capture what we set out to achieve in this initial workshop and some of the highlights along the way. This will be my perspective, and I am hoping that other attendees will share their views in the comments too!

We had an excellent 2 days with lots of energy, planning and conversation. A personal highlight for me was that every single one of our CIs came!

✅ Day 1

After a welcome from me in which I shared my main aspirations for QWIDA, we worked with Blake McMillan from Synact to build our collective identity by creating our “personal history trips”.

Two themes that emerged were ‘serendipity’ (somewhat random choices shaping our journeys) and ‘serenity’ (reaching a point of enjoyment in our careers). We then looked at different ways we can build a collective identity, which generated lots of cool ideas. The one sticking most in my mind is a suggestion from Professor Toby Walsh to create a similar Dagstuhl model here in Australia – Dagsthul is a castle in Germany where researchers can go to work on specific intellectual challenges. Love it!

In the afternoon, we moved into some serious research planning within our Streams, facilitated by Pete Townson who will act as Principal Designer in the Design in Action Hub. We are all striving to create a centre with genuine collaboration across disciplines, especially across the ‘socio’ and ‘technical’ divide. Not easy, but we have the aspiration, and that’s a critical start.

I am reminded of John Homer Scharr’s words:

“The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity.”

I believe we have a sociotechnical future very much created in our collective minds!

✅ Day 2

After a fabulous dinner in the evening, it was an early start the next morning for Day 2. Most of us had already done our homework, which was to complete a brief survey created by Professor Dean Lusher to assess our current social network amongst us, which will help us track how our network evolves over time. So it was straight into a packed day. We began by delving into some logistics topics that we were keen to get <collective> input on, including on our platform for collaboration, recruitment strategies, how to connect with our many partner organisations, our KPIs, brand identity and engagement activities across our various nodes.

Much useful input was gathered! I was super pleased we came to an agreement to use teams for our communication – not because we love it (many of us don’t like it much at all!), but because we opted for a one-stop solution that we would be more likely to actually use rather than a better technical solution that we don’t use. I believe this is sociotechnical theory in action!

To close out our workshop, we trialled a Reverse Pitch, which is an approach that Professor Marek Kowalkiewicz and Pete Townson have used extensively in their work, and we were keen to give it a go. Professor Karina Jorristma brought in our Partner Organisation PwC Australia, who “pitched’ to the academics some of their AI-related challenges. We then, in turn, responded with some ideas for research to help address the problems. Wow, what a terrific activity – for many attendees, it was the highlight of the workshop and an excellent way to foster authentic collaboration.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this important early milestone for our Centre, including our Chief Investigators:

Andrew Neal, Tim Miller, Marek Kowalkiewicz, Jeannie Marie Paterson, Maureen Dollard, Frank Vetere, Tim Ballard, PhD, Mark Griffin, Karina Jorritsma, Wafa Johal, Mark Billinghurst, Catherine Collins, Toby Walsh, Dean Lusher, Eva Kyndt and Char-lee McLennan

Along with our facilitators and industry partners: Pete Townson, Blake McMillan, Nicola Lynch, Karen Lonergan, Gayan Benedict, Emma Hardy, Emma Perry and Josh Boyle.

A special thank you to Kamila Kramarczyk for superb planning and organisation of the workshop.

PS: I plan to share updates on our QWiDA journey during each quarter, so stay tuned for the next one!