Highlights from the Carpentries Community Calendar
Volunteer to build CarpentryCon 2020!
At their regular call on 25 September, the CarpentryCon Task Force explained to attendees what volunteering to build the next CarpentryCon might entail. The Task Force have provided this summary of the 2018 event, and issued a call to action for the next event scheduled in 2020. Keen to volunteer? If you missed the call, the etherpad has the notes. You can volunteer at any time, and in any capacity, as all help is welcome.
Geospatial Instructor Onboarding
We started our first round of lesson-specific Instructor onboarding on 17 September to prepare Instructors to teach the newly released Geospatial curriculum. Five one-hour onboarding sessions will be offered through 27 September and a recorded session will be available afterwards for those not able to attend.
Keeping the Learning Going
Carpentries champions met on 19 September to discuss ways to help and support workshop attendees after workshops. After a round table discussion, meeting attendees talked about ways to foster learning momentum in the weeks after a workshop. Two approaches - one using open study groups and another using weekly ‘open office hours’ - were discussed. Challenges to and opportunities for growing communities locally were then canvassed. Call notes are available on the etherpad.
Community Call About Binder
All Carpentries community members are welcome to attend an upcoming Library Carpentry-organised community call. On 1 October at 20:00 UTC, Tim Head from Wild Tree Tech will speak about Binder, a tool to help researchers make their code immediately reproducible. See time and date in your zone. You can sign up for the call on the etherpad. Read more.
Community News
Inclusivity and Inclusion
Malvika Sharan, CarpentryCon Task Force co-chair and computational biologist at EMBL, gave a well-received talk entitled ‘Inclusiveness in Open Science’ at OpenCon Switzerland, a satellite event of the main OpenCon to be held in November. See Malvika’s speakerdeck from the talk, where she referenced many of her Carpentries and EMBL colleagues.
Library Carpentry Podcast
Chris Erdmann, the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director, recently talked to Open Science Radio about the Library Carpentry project. He discussed how the project came into being, who’s involved, and the road ahead. Listen to the podcast.
Staffing Changes
Belinda Weaver is stepping down as our Community and Communications Lead to take up a new role at Griffith University in Brisbane. Her last day with The Carpentries will be 5 October. Because of the importance of this role in keeping our community connected and informed, we will be hoping to fill this position quickly. Watch out for an announcement of the vacancy.
Read more.
Committee and Task Force Activity
Get More Out of Workshop Feedback
The Instructor Development Committee plan to create customised feedback "dashboards" so that instructors can better understand their post-workshop survey results. The committee is seeking two or three community members to support this project. Check out this GitHub issue for more information about what kind of help we would like, and we hope to have your involvement!
Staying Focused on Learners
Our "Topic of the Month" for the 6-7 September Trainer group meetings was managing one’s own attention when leading a training, and keeping track of both content and learners without cognitive overload. Recent trainings were also covered, and certain needs were highlighted - scheduling more Spanish language demos and training events, and the need for exercises that do not rely so heavily on coding knowledge. Trainer meetings will now be held monthly, unless otherwise announced, so we look forward to seeing everyone again in October! See the pad.
What you may have missed on the blog or mailing lists
Carlos Martinez talks image processing with Python and other tools in this blog post. Katrin Tirok has kicked off a lengthy Discuss thread about Backup options for R and python for participants experiencing technical problems. Another well-canvassed thread on Discuss is this one about Carpentry lessons material in multiple (spoken) languages. Amanda Miotto has posted some links on the AU/NZ list for people wanting to start local Hacky Hours.
Tweet of the Week
Offcuts
The ResBaz Show Reel
Heard about the Research Bazaar (ResBaz) but not sure what it is? This short video shared by Carpentries’ Instructor Amanda Miotto helps explain why these events which combine skill sharing, networking and community building are great for researchers. Carpentries community members from the USA, Canada, Norway, New Zealand, and Australia have all run ResBaz events since 2015, with 10 run this year.
Joinery
Staff Out and About
Carpentries’ Executive Director Tracy Teal attended the National Library of Medicine’s Data Science Drivers Workshop this week - see the #NLMDataSci hashtag for all the detail. Carpentries’ Director of Assessment and Community Equity Kari Jordan served on the plenary panel on teaching and education at this week’s All Hands 2018 Meeting of West Big Data Innovation Hub. Library Carpentry Community and Development Director Chris Erdmann has been in Washington teaching a Library Carpentry workshop at the Library of Congress.
Toolshed (Posts from our Past)
‘An Event by the Community, for the Community …’
That is how Task Force co-chair Fotis Psomopoulos summed up his vision for CarpentryCon 2018 in this post from June 2017 (‘The road to CarpentryCon 2018’). This post would be useful reading for anyone interested in volunteering to help organise the 2020 CarpentryCon. Some of you may have attended the Task Force’s open call on 25 September. If not, check the etherpad for the meeting notes and how to volunteer.
Papers & manuscripts from and for the community
