This is our last newsletter of the year 2019. We want to thank you for your valuable input, tireless contributions, and positive engagement in The Carpentries community. We are truly grateful for what we as a community have achieved together this year.

We want to highlight a few events and projects as important milestones of the year 2019: the Carpentries vision was developed with the contribution of the community, the core team developed an Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Roadmap, the first British CarpentryConnect took place in Manchester, the CarpentryCon 2020 plan was solidified by announcing its theme and location, we published the Curriculum Development Handbook, Data Carpentry's Genomics curriculum was officially released, the Code of Conduct committee added the Code of Conduct (CoC) Committee Membership Agreement, the Code of Conduct Mandate Task Force released their recommendations, the format and leadership structure of community-led committees were redefined, and The Carpentries was awarded funding of $2.65M from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).

We wish you a wonderful end of the year and all the best in the new year!

The newsletter will be taking a week off for the holidays, so look for our next newsletter on 8 January 2020.

If you have participated in The Carpentries Instructor Training already and still have not completed your checkout process, you don’t have to wait for next year. See our community calendar. There are several slots at different dates and times for the community discussions and teaching demos available to choose from. Sign up for community discussions on this Etherpad, and for teaching demos on this Etherpad.

Executive Director’s Transition

Dr. Tracy Teal will be moving on from her Executive Director role with The Carpentries in January 2020. More on the transition here. Dr. Kari Jordan will serve as the Acting Executive Director and the Executive Council will launch the search for the new Executive Director soon (be on the lookout). Tracy shared in a community post: “I have truly valued the opportunity to work with all of you throughout my time as Executive Director. With The Carpentries Executive Council at the helm, and given our current team, structures, community and resources, I am confident in the continued success of the organization. I have been so grateful for the opportunity to be a steward for the Carpentries, and I look forward to seeing this amazing community continue to grow!"

 

The Gratitudes Project: #GreenStickies Month
The Carpentries team is taking time to reflect and share what we are grateful for in our community. December is our #GreenStickies month on The Carpentries blog, and you will have the opportunity to read about what individual contributors, people in local and regional Carpentries communities, and our sub-communities like Maintainers, Instructors, Trainers and others have been up to, and the many ways they have stepped up and contributed to making our community what it is today.  You can read more about our Carpentries Gratitudes blog post series, use this set of prompts to start drafting a post of your own, share shorter versions of what you are grateful for under issue 23 in our conversations repository, send a tweet to The Carpentries account or reply to this post.

Job Opportunities with The Carpentries
The Carpentries is searching for four full-time team members to join our core team: Deputy Director of Instructor Training, Curriculum Community Developer, Lesson Infrastructure Technology Developer, and Communications Manager. In this post, find an overview of these job opportunities and read the details here: https://carpentries.org/jobs/.

Regional Coordinator for the Nordic and Baltic Countries
Naoe Tatara is our Regional Coordinator in the Nordic countries, including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. She is ready to help you with any questions you have about running Carpentries workshops or any other ways you can get involved with The Carpentries in the Nordic countries! Contact her at admin-nordic@carpentries.org. Read more here.

Instructor Training Team
The Carpentries has collected applications from people wanting to be a Trainer and will be reviewing them for a new round of Trainer training to begin in early 2020.  Find the details here.  At the December Trainers meeting, the team discussed their plans to review applications for new Instructor Trainers. In the past this has been a loosely guided process; therefore they are testing a rubric that may make the selection more transparent in the future.

Executive Council
The Executive Council is actively working on the search for the next Executive Director. The elections for Community-Elected members closed at the end of the day Friday 6 December; results will be announced in January after the Executive Council confirms the appointment of the Council-Elected members. In this time of leadership transition, the Executive Council remains grateful to the efforts of the community and is excited about planning for the future.

In this month’s gratitudes blog-series, read these posts: Executive Council Gratitudes, CarpentryCon TaskForce Gratitudes, Thanking Communications and Outreach Supporters, and Code of Conduct Committee Gratitudes.  In the TopicBox Discuss channel, join the following conversations: Undergraduate Workshop on Topology for Data Science and Instructor Led xarray Tutorial.

Tweet of the Week

Bioinformatics Engineer, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany 
Python Software Developer, Open Knowledge Foundation, Remote

The de.NBI/ELIXIR-DE training platform - Bioinformatics training in Germany and across Europe within ELIXIR, Wibbeerg et. al. 2019

Toolshed (Posts from our Past)
In December 2018, The Carpentries welcomed our current Community Engagement Lead Serah Njambi Rono to help create a more cohesive and collaborative environment for our community initiatives, build and engage local and global Carpentry communities, and develop a program to support regional Carpentries community leaders.  The 2018 Community Service Award Winners were Tim Dennis, Margareth Gfrerer, Toby Hodges, Fotis Psomopoulos, and Malvika Sharan for their various involvements and contributions in community projects.