sciencegateways - Sustainability Training

Sustainability Training

Details: Published on Sunday, 05 July 2020 18:55

Gateway Focus Week

Looking to build a sustainability plan for your science gateway? Planning to write your next funding proposal?

Join us at the next Focus Week to create your starter sustainability toolkit!

Gateway Focus Week is an intensive week-long workshop designed for innovative research teams to work together on producing a strong sustainability plan. You’ll leave Focus Week with a clearer definition of your project's value, its audience, and its positioning in the competitive landscape along with tools you can use to continue as your project continues to mature. Take the time to step away from your desk and invest in your future!

Thanks to the generous support of NSF, we are able to offer this workshop with no registration fees for attendees. Attendees will only need to cover their own travel, lodging, and meal costs.

San Diego Supercomputer Center

The next session will take place:

When: May 22-26, 2023
Where: San Diego Supercomputer Center, 9836 Hopkins Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093

We look forward to seeing our accepted teams at Focus Week!

If you would like to join us for the next sustainability training, subscribe to our newsletter to hear about the next offering.

Focus Week Agenda

Day 1 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
1:00 PM	Introductions Goals of Program
1:45 PM	Napkin Drawing
3:00 PM	Break (Break Coffee, Tea, & Snacks Provided)
3:15 PM	Value Proposition
4:00 PM	End of Day One

Day 2 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
9:00 AM	Day Two Warm Up
9:15 AM	Market Landscape
10:45 AM	Break (Break Coffee, Tea, & Snacks Provided)
11:00 AM	Competitive Assessment
12:30 PM	Lunch (Lunch Provided)
1:30 PM	Audience & Stakeholders
2:00 PM	Audience Segmentation Exercise & Discussion
3:30 PM	Wrap Up
4:00 PM	End of Day Two

Day 3 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
9:00 AM	Day Three Warm Up
9:15 AM	Sustainability/Revenue Overview
10:45 AM	Break (Break Coffee, Tea, & Snacks Provided)
11:00 AM	Target Setting & Measurement
12:30 PM	Lunch (Lunch Provided)
1:30 PM	Usability & User-Centered Design
3:30 PM	Wrapping Up
4:00 PM	End of Day Three

Day 4 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM
9:00 AM	Day Four Warm Up
9:15 AM	Assessing Audience Information Needs
10:45 AM	Break (Break Coffee, Tea, & Snacks Provided)
11:00 AM	Methods for Gathering Info on Your Audience(s)
12:00 PM	Lunch (Lunch Provided)
1:00 PM	Interview training
2:30 PM	Break (Break Coffee, Tea, & Snacks Provided)
3:00 PM	Next Steps: Finding Interviewees; Analyzing Findings
4:00 PM	End of Day Four

Day 5 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM
9:00 AM	Welcome to the Last Day
9:15 AM	Metrics Case Study: nanoHUB
10:15 AM	Break (Break Coffee, Tea, & Snacks Provided)
10:30 AM	Pitches
12:00 PM	Wrap-up Survey/Discussion & Lunch (Lunch Provided)
1:00 PM	End of Day Five

Plan your travel to SDSC

Hotel: Sheraton La Jolla Hotel, $219 room rate

To apply the discounted rate, navigate to the Sheraton La Jolla Hotel listing on Marriott.com, select your dates and then select the "Special Rates/Points" drop-down.
Under "Corp/Promo Code" enter: UC0

Airport: San Diego International Airport (SAN) -- 15 miles away from SDSC

Parking: Parking permits are required to park on UC San Diego campus

Visiting UC faculty and staff who hold annual permits at their home campuses are eligible for up to 5 consecutive days of complimentary parking at UC San Diego. Visit for more details: https://transportation.ucsd.edu/visit/visitor/reciprocity.html
For non-UC visitors, please see more details here: https://transportation.ucsd.edu/visit/visitor/index.html.
The most convenient parking location is the Hopkins parking structure located on Hopkins Dr and Voigt Dr, just south of SDSC
- Alternatively, Pangea parking structure is also available.
- Both parking locations offer spaces in "B" (Green), "S" (Yellow), and "V" (White) spaces.
Parking legally is the attendee’s responsibility. The penalty for an improperly parked car is at least $65 per day. We cannot be held responsible for citations issued for parking in an incorrect space or improperly displaying your permit.
Due to challenges with parking on-campus, we do advise using other methods such as some noted below if possible.

Transportation:

Ride share services are recommended if you chose not to drive onto campus.
- Lyft or Uber enter “San Diego Supercomputer Center” as destination
Bus Routes serving La Jolla campus:
- 30: UTC, La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Old Town, downtown San Diego
- 41: VA Hospital, UTC, Clairemont, Fashion Valley
- 101: UTC, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas, Carlsbad, Oceanside NCTD
- 201/202 SuperLoop: UTC area
- 237: UC San Diego - Rancho Bernardo Transit Station
- 974: UC San Diego Coaster Connector; campus, Sorrento Valley Station
- 978: Torrey Pines, Sorrento Valley Station
- 979: North University City, Sorrento Valley Station
UC San Diego also has new trolley service through MTS Blue Line Trolley. (https://www.sdmts.com/getting-around/departures-and-schedules/schedules/510)
More details on public transit at UC San Diego can be found here.

General Logistics:

Food: Light refreshments will be served through out the week with lunches provided Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Laptop optional: The workshop is designed to be interactive without the need for a laptop. We will encourage you during the workshop to keep your devices stored away during the lectures and activities, but they can be useful when taking notes or doing quick research during an exercise. We will provide physical materials (paper, markers, etc.) for you use during the hands-on exercises. Power cord charging will be made available during the workshop.

What will you learn?

Focus Week is a five-day program that walks teams through a sustainability toolkit and wraps up with a "Pitch Day" focused on each participating team delivering a presentation encompassing their sustainability planning done so far.

You and your team will work through the following activities during Focus Week:

Napkin Drawing
- Learn how to effectively communicate your project.
Understanding Your Audiences & Key Stakeholders
- Identify who cares about your project, and potential new user groups.
Environment: Mapping the Landscape
- Whether you started in 1995 or 2015, it doesn't take long for new competitors to emerge. Spend time researching and mapping out your known and new competition.
Marketing Tactics & Tools
- Learn how to communicate your project's value to your audiences with selective marketing through tools like social media, newsletters, outreach at booths, and conference presentations.
Goal Setting
- Think about the big picture ideas. Learn how you can set the right goals for the right reasons, and learn how you can measure your success.
Value Proposition
- Why should someone be interested in your project? Build a concise value statement that will inform your audience and retain their interest vs. hitting the back button.
Budgeting
- You have goals to expand your gateway or bring on new team members. Discover how you can forecast a budget that will get you the right resources without breaking the bank.
Market Development
- Explore the possible customer groups and subgroups that will find value out of your project other than the original audience your project is intended to serve.

Hear about the Focus Workshop from past attendees

Instructors

Sustainability trainings are taught by our lead instructors, Juliana Casavan and Nancy Maron.

Juliana Casavan is a program designer and facilitator and teaches others how to build and implement strategies for success.

Currently, she is a program manager for MatchBOX Coworking Studio, the leading coworking space in Greater Lafayette, Indiana, where she coaches local startups and entrepreneurs through strategic planning and product development.

Prior to joining MatchBOX, Juliana was a founding member of the Purdue Foundry, an internationally recognized leader in university startups and technology transfer. During her time, she created Firestarter, the premier startup workshop of Purdue University, leading over 500 teams of researchers and students through the ideation process.

Nancy Maron is founder and principal of BlueSky to BluePrint, a strategic research and consulting organization. She is the author of several research reports and guides on business strategy and sustainability including A Guide to the Best Revenue Models and Funding Sources for your Digital Resources (2014), Sustaining the Digital Humanities: Host Institution Support Beyond the Start-up Phase (June 2014) and many case studies of sustainable initiatives. She created and regularly leads workshops in sustainability and business strategy, including the Sustaining Digital Resources course.