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carrots.txt
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carrots.txt
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This is a preliminary list of potential rewards/incentives. It is deliberately
not simply a list of "prizes" but largely includes monetary components; how these
would be funded is something the CB would need to think about in due course if
any of this takes off. I just note that in the general context of LHCb expenditure, the
sums mentioned amount to a few thousand CHF, i.e. peanuts. Frankly we could take this
money out of the M&O which is normally spent on the farm, since we know that improving
our software has already saved hundreds of thousands of CHF in servers.
The funding to attend non-HEP meetings or conferences is also very deliberate, because
physicists don't have enough opportunities to engage with software professionals. It is
good both for the physicist's ability to transfer to industry if they so choose, and good
for bringing advanced coding methods back to our collaboration.
I am of course aware that all the prizes in the world won't make up for how software skills
get valued by job selection committees, and I am not pretending having these prizes will
automagically make everything better, but we have to start somewhere.
In all cases the nomination process will be open to the whole collaboration and announced
well in advance of any prize being awarded.
In order to encourage collaborative behaviour and discourage the lone genius syndrome,
the following general rules will apply
A) Any nominated piece of software will have to include a full test suite covering all foreseen
use cases, and have been reviewed by one person other than the author prior to being committed.
B) Any nominated piece of software will have to be fully documented (whether in a note, TWiki,
etc.) including, where appropriate, clear examples on how the code can be (re)used. In the case
of technical improvements which, for example, speed up exisiting pieces of code, the author(s)
should provide a clear explanation of why this specific change made things faster, and at least
attempt to give rough examples of how a similar technique might be applied elsewhere.
The proposed rewards are :
1) An annual thesis prize for "most innovative contribution to LHCb software by a PhD student",
a reward of 500 CHF plus funding for one trip to a non-HEP conference/hackathon/whatever
of the winner's choice. To be awarded by the computing project management.
2) A prize for any code improvement which speeds up the reconstruction or trigger configuration
by 5% or more, a reward of 1000 CHF plus funding for one trip to a non-HEP
conference/hackathon/whatever of the winner's choice. To be awarded by the computing&trigger project
managements.
3) An annual prize for collaborative programming, for initiatives which make a significant improvement
to LHCb software and are seen as having improved community participation in the software
design. Funding for one trip to a non-HEP conference/hackathon/whatever (per team member)
of the winning team's choice. To be voted on by collaboration members.
4) A quarterly award for contributions to improving the programming culture of the collaboration. This
is of course somewhat subjective but example nominations might be : a team which produces
a piece of code or package with particular evidence of a collaborative test/review/open-issue-discussion
based approach; reviewing other people's code; committing tests for other people's code;
giving helpful comments on other people's code. The winner would be presented and recognized at a
Tuesday meeting and asked to give a short presentation on their work. To be awarded by the
computing&trigger project managements. Winners would not be eligible for a repeat award for
one year.