Hilmar Lapp on The Carpentries

A Look Back and A Look Ahead from the Data Carpentry Steering Committee

Mon, 15 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

On May 8-9, 2014 Data Carpentry hosted its first workshop at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent). That workshop came out of an identified unmet need for the skills and perspectives to work effectively and reproducibly with data, as data became more pervasive in many areas of research. The biggest difference from other trainings, including Software Carpentry, was not so much what we taught (specific tools), but how we taught it – with a focus on data management and analysis rather than writing software. In all our workshops, we use real publicly available data and the workshop is a narrative, going from start (data and project organization) to finish (analysis and visualization) through the course of the workshop, providing an onramp to using data skills in friendly, accessible workshops. The goal is to teach skills, and even more importantly, to show people what’s possible, and that they can do it, so people have the confidence and enthusiasm to go on to learn more and use these skills in their own research.

Timeline for the Data Carpentry & Software Carpentry Reorganization

Sat, 17 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On Jun 8 & 9, we met in-person to continue discussing how to proceed with the merger of the Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry organizations to best achieve our strategic goals and serve our communities. We are happy to report that is was a very productive meeting.

We spent most of the meeting discussing the structure of the future organizational leadership. We have drafted a number of motions that we will present to our respective steering committees for approval at our next meetings. Among the motions, we will propose that the combined Carpentries governing structure be made up of both appointed and elected members. Additionally, we propose that it is in the best interest of the organization to seed the future steering committee with bylaws, which will be enumerated, written, and approved in the coming months.

Timeline for the the Data Carpentry & Software Carpentry Reorganization

Sat, 17 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Reproducible Research using Jupyter Notebooks: Curriculum Development Hackathon

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Goal: Develop the content of a two-day Data Carpentry workshop teaching how to conduct research reproducibly using the Jupyter notebook
Location: Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS), Berkeley, CA
Dates and times: January 9 - 11, 2017; 9 am - 5 pm each day
To apply: https://goo.gl/aPO71f; deadline December 5, 2016. Successful applicants will be notified by December 12.

Synopsis

Making science more reproducible has enormous potential to accelerate research advances, including for practicing individuals. Despite this, the tools and approaches that are already available are rarely taught. To address this, we are organizing a 3-day hands-on hackathon aimed at developing, and later teaching, a short-course curriculum on using Jupyter notebooks for reproducible research practices. The event will be held January 9 - 11, 2016, in Berkeley, CA, at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS). We aim to assemble a diverse and interdisciplinary group of participants, and invite those interested to apply by December 5, 2016, at https://goo.gl/aPO71f.

Survey on workshops for for-profit organizations

Mon, 25 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry’s vision is “building communities teaching universal data literacy”. All our activities are focused on working towards this vision.

One of our signature activities is running and teaching workshops. Except for two, we have so far run such workshops only for non-profit organizations - universities, non-government non-profits and government organizations. We have also been assessing the idea of running workshops for for-profit organizations. One goal would be to raise additional revenue to subsidize workshop fees at non-profit institutions and to support long-term sustainability for Data Carpentry. Another is to provide Data Carpentry training and perspectives to people conducting research in industry. We’re still evaluating this idea, and before making any long-term policy we wanted to run pilot workshops and survey the instructor community on their thoughts about workshops for for-profit organizations.