Highlights from the Software and Data Carpentry Community Calendar
A Code to Live By
As we move forward to the merged Carpentries, it is timely to reflect on what has got us here. We have started a new series on the teaching methods that have served us so well. The first post deals with our Code of Conduct, without which the other practices, good as they are, might count for very little. Read more.
How Statististics Teaching has Changed
Greg Wilson discusses changes in how statistics is being taught, with some teachers moving away from the old model of ‘when data was scarce and calculation was hard' to a new, 10-step, calculation-first approach. Know about innovative approaches yourself? Add them to the comments on this blog post.
Our Favorite Things
The My Favorite Tool thread keeps on going, with the sixteenth post just up. Recent posts have highlighted the benefits of using repl.it as a coding sandbox for Python, comparing two files with different geographical coordinates with QGIS and staying up to date and connected using Twitter. Post your own tip via this form and we will make a blog post out of it.
Community News
Four Big Years
Data Carpentry hosted its first workshop in May, 2014, in response to an 'unmet need for the skills and perspectives to work effectively and reproducibly with data, as data became more pervasive in many areas of research'. With 193 workshops since taught across six continents, members of Data Carpentry’s outgoing Steering Committee look back, and also discuss new directions in the merged Carpentries. Read more.
Matching Instructors to Workshops
With ever-increasing numbers of workshops happening right round the globe, the logistics of finding Instructors to teach them all is complicated. Maneesha Sane explains how we match Instructors to workshops.
Embedding the Carpentries
Alice Allen brought the Carpentries into the Federal Reserve Board to skill up the workforce in computational and data science methods. In her post, A Week o' Carpentry, she explains the thinking behind her strategy, how material was adapted for FRB and economics research, and the methods she used to keep people working over a whole week (21 pounds of tangerines helped). Read more.
Research Software Engineers
We have just reposted the report from the second successful Research Software Engineers conference held in the UK last year. Blog post author Tania Sanchez gives a good account of using Jupyter notebooks for reproducible research. Read the post.
Subcommittee Activity
CarpentryCon - Latest News
The task force are currently finalising the program, and will invite keynote speakers this week. We have put out a call for sponsorship - please encourage your institution to support this event. Ticket sales should open soon. The poster competition to design a promotional poster for CarpentryCon is still open. The winning designer will win a bunch of swag and free registration to the event. Competition entries (email them to team@carpentries.org) close at 5pm UTC on 31 January, 2018. We will announce the winner on 10 February, 2018. Read more.
Mentoring Update
The Mentoring Subcommittee will host a Virtual Showcase on 6 February. The showcase is open to the community. Mentoring groups are putting the finishing touches to their tasks and cannot wait to share what they’ve accomplished. Sign up to attend the showcase on this etherpad. Kari Jordan has also created a mentoringgroups channel to foster networking and discussion on Slack. Email Kari to be added to the channel.
Assessment Webinar - Sign Up To Attend
Save the Date for a Webinar and chat with Dr. Rochelle Tractenberg. This event is being hosted by the Carpentries Virtual Assessment Network. Learn about assessment as it relates to short-format training. Bring your questions - it's going to be a great discussion! Register to attend here. Before you attend, you might want to read our response to the 'Null Effects' paper that sparked off this event.
Date Claimer - Community Champions call
The next Champions call will take place on 14 February at 8pm UTC. These calls allow local community builders to toss great ideas around with like-minded people. See the time and date in your zone. Check out the etherpad nearer the time to see what’s being discussed and to sign up for the call.
What you may have missed on the blog and mailing lists
On the Discuss list, Shoaib Sufi raised the question of how to cite Software and Data Carpentry. Staff plan to work on that issue shortly. Azalee Bostroem raised the issue of creating a Data Carpentry lesson for astronomy. There is now a new mailing list for those interested. Nathan Moore started a thread about behaviour that has morphed into a Code of Conduct conversation. On the Maintainers list, Raniere Silva started a thread about using Git for Windows to replace the current installer. Lots of thumbs up for that in the subsequent thread.
Papers & manuscripts from the community
