The Foundry’s User Executive Committee followed its annual tradition of hosting a town hall session to give users an opportunity to ask questions of the UEC and to hold a discussion amongst Foundry users and staff.
This year, prime topics of discussion, derived from comments made in last year’s User Questionnaire, were on the issues of staff responsiveness and the speed at which new users can get up and running at the Foundry.
On the first topic, the main recommendation was to try to make it clear to new users that sometimes, persistence is needed to make sure a single email doesn’t get lost in the shuffle when trying to contact a Foundry scientist.
On the second topic, UEC Chair Francesca pointed out that the newly redesigned Foundry website does have some resources available on the website that acts as a checklist for new users, but that the Foundry is always accepting feedback on how those pages actually work for people. Users should feel free to use the Thumbs up/down buttons on the bottom of each page of the Foundry site to leave specific comments about usability or to suggest changes.
All in all it was a great discussion and the UEC and User Program Office will take the feedback and work to improving the information that’s available for new users to help get them started at the Foundry. Thanks everyone for your participation!
