Carpentry Clippings, 7 November 2017
Highlights from the Software and Data Carpentry Community Calendar
Community News
Assessment Survey Focus Group Outcomes
Kari Jordan reported on the feedback she has received from the pilot focus group she has been working with on Data Carpentry’s assessment surveys. The group has been helping Kari identify ways we can gather demographic information without our learners finding that intrusive. The issue of skills-based questions in surveys was also raised, as these tended to create an impression that our workshops are intimidating. Read Kari’s full blog post.
Meet the Candidates
Our 16 November community calls will feature Nominees for the new Board of Directors of the merged Carpentries. (The merged organization officially begins on 1 January, 2018.) Nominees are welcome to introduce themselves at one or both calls, saying why they are nominating and, if elected, what they hope to achieve during their term. Nominations are currently open and will close on 1 December. This post has all the details of what the role entails, and who is eligible to nominate and vote.
Equity and Inclusion Repository
Kari Jordan created an equity and inclusion repo to provide the community with resources regarding our diversity and inclusion strategies, programs, policies, and metrics. These resources are being compiled to help us attract and promote a diverse community of instructors and foster an environment of inclusion. If you are interested in contributing resources and/or being a part of the conversation, create an issue on the repo.
Subcommittee Activity
CarpentryCon2018 will be in Dublin!
We are excited to announce that the 2018 CarpentryCon will take place from 30 May - 1 June, 2018 at University College Dublin (UCD). We are confident that this will be a fantastic venue, and a great event for our community. To be inclusive, we hope to keep registration costs low and to provide travel scholarships. To get a rough idea of numbers, please let us know whether you are interested in attending. Read more.
Mentoring Groups Update
The second round of our mentoring groups program has started. Kari Jordan has created a new web page to describe our mentoring groups (along with our standard mentoring program activities). She has also put out a call for resources that the existing mentoring groups can use for the four themes groups will work on - teaching workshops, community building, organizing workshops and lesson maintenance. Please share resources you have created or found useful.
Infrastructure Committee Meeting
The next meeting of this committee will happen on 16 November at 15:00 UTC. ( Check date and time where you are). Two things up for discussion by maintainers will be the addition of non-English language lessons now that some material has been translated into Spanish and also further discussion of lessons and maintenance post-Carpentries-merger. Sign up to attend on the etherpad.
What you may have missed on the blog and mailing lists
Favorite Tool Blog Thread
Community members have been keen to share information about My Favorite Tool and Why I Love it in a series of posts. There have been several posts already, covering R, IPython, OpenRefine, Git/GitHub and the Jupyter Notebook, and there are more in the pipeline. Feel free to contribute your own tool tips (which we will turn into a blog post for you to review). Please consider making a contribution even if someone has already nominated your favorite - you may have an interesting perspective on the tool or use it in a very different way.
Mailing List Threads
Offcuts
Tweet of the Week
Congratulations to Anelda Van der Walt for her inspiring work in pushing the Carpentries throughout Africa.
Joinery
Start a Local HackyHour
Amanda Miotto posted to the Discuss list about the HackyHour Handbook she has created for people keen to run their own HackyHour. HackyHour is an informal event, generally in a coffee shop or bar, where researchers can bring research IT questions and get advice and help from volunteers. Amanda runs one in Brisbane, where there are several others, and the idea has got as far as Tucson. Contributions to the handbook are welcome.
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner of Champions
Our next Carpentries’ Champions' call will take place at 8pm UTC, 15 November, 2017. Champions are Carpentries’ supporters who want to build strong local communities. Check the local date and time where you live. Champions calls are run quarterly on a tick/tock cycle:
Tick - Community champions discuss community building strategies
Tock - New community members can pick the brains of existing community champions
The 15 November meeting will be a 'Tock', with the next ‘Tick’ meeting in February 2018. Details of sign-up and connections are on the Champions etherpad. New and budding champions are welcome!
Papers & manuscripts from the community
Community Job Postings
- Assistant Professor in Environmental Data Science/Informatics, Earth Research Institute, University of California at Santa Barbara
- Assistant Professor in Cell Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Closes 17 November.
- Manager, Digital Observatory, Institute for Future Environments, QUT, Brisbane. Closes 26 November.
- Library Carpentry Co-ordinator/Research Data Specialist, Oakland CA, closes 1 December, 2017.
Other places to connect
If you can't get enough Software and Data Carpentry, here are some other places to connect with our community.
Have something you’d like to have included in our next newsletter? Please send items to newsletter@software-carpentry.org
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