Alycia Crall on The Carpentries

Engaging with a Cross-NASA Subcommunity

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In a recent Carpentries Community Session a set of three programs with Carpentries memberships within the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shared a bit about how they currently engage with The Carpentries. The purpose of the session was to explore opportunities to support the activities of these programs through formation of a Carpentries subcommunity. A Carpentries subcommunity is defined as “a subset of our global community that can be local, regional, domain-specific, or a group of community members sharing a common language or interests.” Anyone interested in developing an engaged network of Instructors was invited to attend the session, resulting in 56 community members representing multiple US government agencies, state governments, universities, and non-profits.

The Carpentries retires its X/Twitter accounts and Facebook profile

Fri, 20 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Late last year we released a statement in which we stated that we will continue “to monitor changes at Twitter in conjunction with internal discussions about whether our presence on the platform will continue,” and we can now announce that as of today, 20 October 2023, we will no longer be active or engaging on any of our accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter).

The developments at X that we have tracked over the past year have left us with no hope of its compatibility, as it is currently configured, with our core values, and the platform fosters engagements that run counter to our Code of Conduct. It is no longer a safe space for many members of our community, and our continued presence on the platform is not reflective of our organisation’s commitment to “building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community that values all individuals and their unique identities.”

Opportunities and Challenges in Localisation: The Carpentries Perspective

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In the realm of open science, the power of collective knowledge is magnified when it’s accessible to all, irrespective of geographical or linguistic boundaries. Localisation, in this context, is not just about translating scientific content, but about adapting research, methodologies, and data to resonate with diverse cultural and regional nuances. This series of blog posts, Opportunities and Challenges in Localisation, will dig into the world of localisation from the vantage point of various open science communities of practice. Representatives from these communities will share their unique efforts in championing localisation, the opportunities they’ve unearthed, the challenges they’ve grappled with, and pathways for you, the reader, to engage and collaborate. Join us in this exploration, as we underscore the importance of localisation in making open science truly inclusive, bridging knowledge gaps, and fostering a global community of collaborative inquiry. If your organisation also has localisation efforts, and would like to share your story on a future blog post in this series, please do so following these formatting and template guidelines and send your contribution to balmarzouq@turing.ac.uk.

Celebrating The Carpentries Workbench

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In May 2023, a significant milestone was reached as The Carpentries transitioned all 43 of its official lessons to a new lesson infrastructure, The Carpentries Workbench. This project, led by Zhian Kamvar our Lesson Infrastructure Developer, was a three-year coordinated effort requiring input and contributions from many members of our community. We asked six of them to provide their reflections on the project, its impact, and Zhian’s leadership.

Jennifer Stubbs, Assistant Professor, Bradley University

Community Roles: Community Session Host, Instructor, Maintainer

Celebrating 25 Years of The Carpentries

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

On 24 July 1998, the first Software Carpentry workshop, led by Greg Wilson and Brent Gorda, came to a close. The workshop aimed to teach researchers skills to work more effectively with their data.

Image by Greg Wilson of attendees at the first Software Carpentry workshop in 1998.

New opportunities to lead Carpentry-Con-type programming year-round

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A blog post published in February 2023 highlighted findings and four key recommendations from the most recent CarpentryCon evaluation report. In this post, it was announced that CarpentryCon would be pushed back by one year and would be hosted in South Africa in 2025 instead of 2024. The post also noted that, due to this schedule change, we would be introducing new opportunities to lead CarpentryCon-type programming year-round. We are excited to announce that the time has come!

The Future of CarpentryCon and Community Programming

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon, The Carpentries’ conference, was initiated as a biannual event to offer professional development and networking opportunities for our community members. The first in-person event occurred in Dublin, Ireland in 2018 and the next one, planned for Madison, Wisconsin in 2020, was transitioned to a virtual space in response to the pandemic. The most recent CarpentryCon was also held online and occurred from 1-12 August 2022. Over the years, we have learned a lot about the ways in which virtual and hybrid events significantly increase accessibility and how we can best support the community through our event offerings.

Register your Carpentries Subcommunity

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Community Development Program was launched in 2022 to support The Carpentries subcommunities. A subcommunity is a subset of the larger Carpentries community and can be local (e.g., University Carpentries Club), regional (e.g., Carpentries in Africa), domain-specific (e.g., HPC Carpentry), or a group of community members sharing a common language (e.g., Carpentries-es) or interests (e.g., Carpentries Offline). Communities of practice built around formal Carpentries roles (e.g., Instructors, Maintainers) are not included in this definition and are not considered subcommunities. The Community Development Program has been slowly taking action on addressing fourteen recommendations that emerged from conversations with a number of leaders of Carpentries subcommunities throughout 2021 and 2022.

Building and Sustaining Carpentries Subcommunities

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In October of last year, the Community Development Team (CDT) announced that it would be launching a new effort to support community building across The Carpentries organisation. The primary goal of the Community Development Program is to improve how The Carpentries’ subcommunities are supported to maximize benefits to our community members and to ensure the long term sustainability of the organisation as we continue to grow globally. We define a subcommunity as a group of community members serving in the same role within the organisation, located in the same geographic region, or who come together because they share common interests.

The Instructor Development Committee is Moving and Needs YOUR Help

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2019, the Instructor Development Committee (IDC) has supported Instructors as they transitioned from Instructor training to becoming actively engaged in community activities such as teaching and curriculum development. They have supported community discussions and mentoring programs to offer opportunities for Instructors to learn from each other and have identified projects that will support Instructors in their work. Between 2018 and 2021, the committee was led by a number of our community members (2020-2021 cohort, 2019-2020 cohort) and supported by a liaison from The Carpentries’ Community Development Team.

Share Your 2021 Gratitudes with Our Community

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In 2019 and 2020, The Carpentries published a series of posts thanking the various parts of our community. Since that time, the community has supported The Carpentries through tumultuous times - from transitioning to online workshops and a virtual conference in 2020, to new and revitalized programs like the Curriculum Advisors Committee and the Community Facilitators Program. To be sure, there is no end to what we are grateful for from our community.

Join Us to Learn More about CarpentryCon @ Home in 2022

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In October, The Carpentries Core Team announced that we will be hosting a virtual CarpentryCon next year. Since then, we have identified four volunteers from the community to serve as Task Force Co-chairs:

Annajiat Alim Rasel is a certified Instructor with The Carpentries and is located in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Rabea Müller is the Regional Coordinator for the DACH region and is located in Köln, Germany
Trisha Adamus is an Instructor Trainer and is based in Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Jesse Johnston is a Library Carpentry Instructor and is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Annajiat and Rabea will be leading planning efforts in the eastern hemisphere with the support of Angelique Trusler, African Capacity Development Manager for The Carpentries. Trisha and Jesse will be leading efforts in the western hemisphere with the support of myself, Director of Community for The Carpentries. This will ensure we accommodate all time zones in our planning so that everyone in the community can fully participate no matter where they live.

Announcing CarpentryCon @ Home in 2022

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It has been almost 20 months since the COVID-19 pandemic hit our communities. This resulted in significant changes to our personal and professional lives and, even now, impact how we manage our day to day activities. The Carpentries was not immune to these changes, especially in how we support our workshops and events. It was announced in April 2020 that our bi-ennial, in-person CarpentryCon event, which was to be held in Madison, Wisconsin, had been cancelled. It was not until May 2020 that the organisation decided to move forward with a virtual event that we named CarpentryCon @Home. It was the first 100% virtual conference hosted by our organisation, and we made significant efforts to ensure the event was inclusive and accessible to any community member who wanted to participate.

Announcing The Carpentries Community Development Program

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Community Development Team (CDT) is excited to announce the launch of its Q4 project to develop the Community Development Program, a program that will build capacity in community management to support our subcommunities. Subcommunities currently exist to bring our members together who are in the same regions of the world, who have an interest in the same field of research, or who have interest in other focus areas that have emerged over time. The project will launch with the project team conducting interviews and focus groups with leaders of a number of these subcommunities to inform the development of this new program.

Hacktoberfest 2021 - Glosario Contribution Drive

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, members of The Carpentries community came together during Hacktoberfest to contribute to Glosario, an open source, multilingual glossary of data science terms. Hacktoberfest is a “month-long celebration of open source” run by DigitalOcean, during which participants can register their contributions to open source projects on GitHub and qualify to have a tree planted in your name.

We need you!

This month, as part of Hacktoberfest, we are encouraging all members of our community to contribute to the expansion and internationalisation of Glosario. So far, the glossary includes definitions in 17 languages and has been designed to include definitions in any language. We would love to see our international community come together to provide definitions and translations in these and other languages, to increase the value of this resource for everyone, regardless of the language(s) they use.

The Carpentries Community Facilitators Program: 6-months in

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In September 2020, The Carpentries introduced the Community Facilitators Program. This new initiative sought to create new pathways for active involvement in everyday community activities by more community members. This program was developed to sustain the growing Carpentries community and support other core programs that contribute to the advancement of our mission. In November 2020, we met The Carpentries Feedback Facilitators, who were onboarded as our first cohort of Community Facilitators, focussing on feedback facilitation.

Introducing The Carpentries Director of Community, Alycia Crall

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Alycia Crall to The Carpentries Core Team! Alycia is our new Director of Community and has extensive experience serving diverse communities. We asked Alycia to share a bit about herself, read on to learn more!

I’m very excited to be joining The Carpentries as your Director of Community! I have known of The Carpentries since I started my last position with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a program that collects and provides open environmental data to advance the field of ecology. Since that time, the positive reputation of the organization has been underscored through my work within the data science community and through my interactions with members of The Carpentries Core Team and the organization’s volunteers. It’s an amazing community and one I cannot wait to be fully engaged with.

Pilot Survey Focus Group Update

Mon, 30 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In April 2017, Data Carpentry began to pilot a survey that includes skills-based questions. Check out the blog post about our assessment strategy, and the work involved leading up to this effort.

The survey includes the following statement:

 Please enter a unique identifier as follows: Number of siblings (as numeric) + First two letters of the city you were 
 born in (lowercase) + First three letters of your current street (lowercase). This identifier will be confidential to 
 you and will help us pair your results with the post-assessment.

 Example: If I have 4 siblings, was born in Arlington, and live on Creekwater Street, my unique identifier would be 
 4arcre

This unique identifier is asked of respondents so that our staff can run paired analyses of the pre- and post-survey results to measure significant gains post-workshop.