In March 2025, director Alan Greer together with six OSL engineers travelled to Eindhoven in the Netherlands to participate in the 26th PI (Program Increment) planning event for SKAO. This was an ‘all hands’ face-to-face event, which saw 256 people from teams all over the globe coming together to plan our work for the next three months.
The week got off to an interesting start; the annual Dutch Carnival was in full swing as SKAO delegates started to arrive! The party atmosphere was a nice way to celebrate SKAO’s progress, and the plenary sessions which opened the week-long event acknowledged the fantastic achievements which have been made so far as a result of everyone’s hard work.
As well as the all-important team breakout sessions where the bulk of the planning work gets done, the week also featured a number of productive workshops, including one on leveraging Artificial Intelligence in the software development process, and another on the CI/CD (continuous integration/deployment) infrastructure.
It is a particularly exciting time for SKA-Low (the low-frequency telescope being constructed in Western Australia), which now has four stations undergoing science commissioning. Five OSL engineers are working on the calibration and control system software for this telescope and collaborating closely with the integration team in Australia. This face-to-face meeting was a good opportunity to discuss various design issues and to ensure the work being planned addresses their needs for the coming months. Two OSL engineers have already spent some time in Australia working directly with this team, and we are looking forward to strengthening the relationship further over the coming year, with another engineer due to fly out this month.
Photo credit: SKAO