Highlights from the Carpentries Community Calendar
RSE Community in the Netherlands Gets Underway
The first meetup of the Netherlands Research Software Engineer Community will take place on 20 September, 2018, at Jaarbeurs Innovation Mile (JIM) in Utrecht, from 13:00 - 17:30. The program will include short keynote speeches, interactive sessions, and plenty of time for discussion and networking. One of the goals of the event is to bring together everyone in the Netherlands who has an interest in research software and identify the topics that are important and of common interest to the community. Register for the meetup.
CarpentryConnect Johannesburg
The goal of the regional CarpentryConnect Johannesburg to be held 3-7 September, 2018 is Building Bridges for Digital and Computational Literacy. Trainers attending to help teach and mint new instructors include Allegra Via and Sarah Brown. The event will feature all flavours of Carpentries. CarpentryConnect events aim to build regional communities, just as CarpentryCon aims to build our global community.
Community News
Apply to become a Carpentries Instructor Trainer!
Help us grow and diversify our pool of Carpentries instructors by signing up to become an Instructor Trainer in our next round of training. Trainers are key to the continuing growth and success of the Carpentries, as the effective delivery and ongoing improvement of this curriculum relies on their skill and dedication. We are currently giving priority to applicants located in or with strong ties to countries in Africa, Latin America, Australia, or New Zealand. We are also interested in increasing representation from diverse institution types. Read more about it and apply here by August 8, 2018.
Evidence of Carpentries' Impact on Learners
Our recently published Analysis of Software and Data Carpentry’s Pre- and Post-Workshop Surveys had plenty of good things to say about how supportive our workshop environments are and how friendly and approachable our instructors are. Evidence highlights the big boost to learners’ skills and confidence levels gained from workshops. Instructors can feel justifiably proud of the impact they have had on research and researchers. Find out more.
ResBaz Report - Sydney
More than 350 people from a range of universities, research institutions and eResearch organisations flocked to Macquarie University in July for Sydney ResBaz. Research Bazaar (ResBaz) events aim to teach researchers the digital skills and tools they need to make their research faster and smarter, so Carpentries workshops generally play a starring role. Sydney's ResBaz was no exception, and nor was Dunedin's ResBaz in New Zealand. Read all about Sydney’s three-day event in this post.
Put Yourself Out There
Our new pages for Instructors, Trainers and Maintainers are now live, listing all those who have consented to appear publicly so far. If you are a badged Instructor, Maintainer or Trainer whose details do not appear, and you would like to be listed, please update your Instructor profile in AMY and agree to make your profile public. To log in, select Login with GitHub and save your changes. If your GitHub username is not already in your AMY record, you may not be able to log in. Please email it to the team so they can add it. Your profile can direct people to your Twitter, GitHub, ORCiD, or personal website URL - it all depends what information you add to your AMY record.
Subcommittee Activity
Mentoring Groups Showcase - All Welcome
The most recent round of mentoring groups will wrap up in mid-August, and groups will share what they have learned and achieved during their time together in a virtual showcase. There will be two showcases to make it easy for people to attend at least one. The first is on Monday, August 13 at 12: 00 UTC, with the second on Monday, August 13 at 22:00 UTC. Please note, this may be the next day in some parts of the southern hemisphere, so check the links for exact times where you live. Register your attendance on this etherpad, which also has information on how to join each showcase on Zoom.
Call for Co-Chair for Mentoring Committee
The Mentoring Committee are still looking for a co-chair. Consider applying - it means attending a one-hour meeting once a month and being involved in helping instructors develop skills and confidence. Mentoring is a skill that many employers want so this is a win/win opportunity to help yourself by helping others. Apply through this form.
What you may have missed on the blog or mailing lists
Is there a GitHub for data?
Data versioning has been a very well-canvassed topic on the Discuss list, attracting more than a score of responses to the original request for information. For those new to the topic, this is about managing data files which might change over time as records are added, or data files that are constantly updated as part of a research workflow. The Research Data Alliance (RDA) has set up a working group on data versioning to investigate best practice. The RDA have also developed use cases and are seeking new ones not already covered. See the discussion thread for more.
Self-organised workshops
More than a dozen people weighed in on a Discuss thread about the pros and cons of charging a fee for self-organised workshops. Carpentries’ fees for self-organised workshops were recently abolished.
Tweet of the Week
Joinery
Come to the FAIR
The first community call for the Library Carpentry community will take place on 6 August at 20:00 UTC (check local time) when Shelley Stall, Director of Data Programs at the American Geophysical Union, will give an update on Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data and software, and how librarians can get involved. All welcome. Details on this etherpad.
Offcuts
Library Carpentry Community and Development Director Chris Erdmann presented Building a Data Savvy Community with Library Carpentry to the Code4Lib South East event on 27 June. See Chris’s slides.
Toolshed (Posts from our Past)
Greg Wilson wrote a Software Carpentry blog post called How to run a bootcamp in May, 2012. There are still some great tips in there today! Another post aggregates a lot of the Ten Simple Rules ... posts put out by PLOS Computational Biology. You can browse more rules posts here, including one about academia vs. industry.
Papers & manuscripts from and for the community
