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Carpentry Clippings, 9 January 2019
Happy New Year! With our first newsletter of the new year, we're departing a bit from our usual format to share what some of our various teams look forward to working on in 2019. As The Carpentries grows, so do opportunities for all of you to be involved. Below is a preview of just some of what is planned for 2019.
Community Calls
Our weekly Instructor Discussion sessions are being replaced by a set of Community Discussions - including pre/post workshop discussions, themed discussions, and Carpentries Conversations. The slots to join the pre/post workshop discussions are now open on the community-discussions Etherpad through March 2019. The first Carpentries Conversation, What Happens During a Code of Conduct Investigation?, will be on 31 January. If you would like to host a Themed Discussion or Carpentries Conversation, you can watch a video of our host onboarding and complete this form.
Curriculum Advisory Committees (CAC)
The Genomics CAC, Maintainers, and other community contributors are working on a major overhaul to the Genomics lesson. Changes will include a new dataset (with longer, paired reads), incorporation of newer alignment software (bwa mem instead of bwa align), and integration of R lessons into the curriculum. The Genomics Maintainers will be meeting at the end of January to discuss planned changes. Read minutes and detailed notes from past meetings.
In the past year we also began running Geospatial and Social Sciences Data Carpentry pilot workshops. The CACs for those curricula have been gathering feedback about those pilots and will be meeting in the next few months to discuss how to incorporate that feedback into the lessons.
Instructor Training
We continue to grow our Instructor Trainer community, with one cohort having completed Trainer training in late 2018, and another cohort starting Trainer training in early 2019. Instructor Trainers have also built an informal mentoring network, to support our new Trainers in their new roles. We’ve also made significant changes to the Instructor Training workflow, making it easier for trainees from member sites and from our open application process to join events that best suit their schedules.
Executive Council
The Executive Council begins a new year getting ready to welcome two community-elected members (Amy Hodge, Elizabeth Wickes) to their second terms and three new council-elected members (Mesfin Diro, Joslynn Lee, Juan Steyn) joining Karen Cranston, Kate Hertweck, Lex Nederbragt, and Raniere Silva. Together they will continue to support the work of The Carpentries community and staff. They will also engage in further discussion from all the feedback from the recent election ballot question about the vision statement for The Carpentries. The new Executive Council term will begin on 1 February 2019.
Library Carpentry
Library Carpentry will be onboarding Lesson Maintainers the week of 14 January as we continue to welcome Library Carpentry as an official lesson program of The Carpentries. Look for additional updates over the next few weeks to the Library Carpentry Lesson Implementation plan on the Library Carpentry website.
CarpentryCon 2020
CarpentryCon 2020 will be here before we know it! The task force will be hard at work over the next few months selecting a venue, a date, a theme, and so much more. Stay tuned for more information from the task force as we begin making preparations for another fantastic event! If you are interested in getting involved, please email carpentrycon@carpentries.org or check out an upcoming meeting.
Code of Conduct Committee
The Code of Conduct Committee continues to make updates to the Code of Conduct Enforcement Manual and Reporting Guidelines. They will develop an outline by 10 January which will be open for comments until 25 January, and the final documents will be released February 7th. For more information on this project, see the Code of Conduct Guidelines Taskforce Repository. We welcome your questions and comments as an issue on the repository, or by contacting kariljordan@carpentries.org.
Learner and Programmatic Assessment
We will continue to publish learner and programmatic assessment reports, allowing us to document and explore the impact of The Carpentries on our community. We will be using these reports to consider changes to our programs, lessons, and activities. We will also be revitalizing the Virtual Assessment Network this year, to engage people interested in discussing best practices in assessment within The Carpentries and beyond. Interested in joining any of these efforts? Contact us at team@carpentries.org.
Staff Updates
We welcome two new staff positions – Talisha Sutton-Kennedy as our Administrative Specialist, and Serah Njambi Rono as our new Community Engagement Lead. They will join the rest of The Carpentries staff at a week long team building retreat in January 2019. We look forward to the new directions and opportunities this presents to our staff team.
As always, you can stay connected with The Carpentries through any of these channels:
Have something you’d like to have included? Send it to newsletter@carpentries.org.
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