Jonah Duckles on The Carpentries

The Carpentries Community Champions Call - September 2019

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentry Champions - September 2019

After a bit of a hiatus, we held the first Carpentry Champions call of the year. This sub-community of The Carpentries works to support new and experienced community champions at research organisations around the world. Some champions are their membership’s coordinator, while others are community advocates and volunteers with no active Carpentries membership. They all share the goal of bringing more skills workshops to more people.

Jonah Leaving for New Role in New Zealand

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

It is with mixed emotions that I announce I’ll be stepping down as Director of Membership and Technology of The Carpentries. Some of you know that two years ago my family moved from the United States to Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand. My family and I have come to truly enjoy our life in Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand). Given the international nature of my work for The Carpentries, I haven’t had as much time as I would like to focus on the local and regional community.

Re-evaluating the Anonymity of Our Workshop Survey Data

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Recently we discovered some potential issues with our survey data, and we are re-evaluating how we store, share, and analyse answers from our pre- and post-workshop surveys. While data from these surveys is anonymised, we realised that there are situations where demographic data can be used to identify a participant’s individual responses. We have taken steps to update our workflow and ensure a stronger anonymisation of the workshop survey responses. Below, we document the issues and how we are changing our processes moving forward.

Dunedin ResBaz

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Two Days of Skills Workshops

When we learned that Belinda Weaver was coming to New Zealand to deliver a Library Carpentry roadshow to academic libraries in New Zealand, we decided to run a second ResBaz of the year in Dunedin, involving librarians and expanding the ResBaz community at The University of Otago. Mik Black, Murray Cadzow, and Jonah Duckles worked to put together a three-day event. Two days of workshops, and a day of community-building talks.

Organisational Memberships and the Future of the Carpentries

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past three years, we’ve used annual organisational memberships as a way to build long-term relationships with Universities and other research institutions. Through these memberships, we have worked to define and shape a shared future where The Carpentries activities are beneficial to our instructors as well as to our member organisations and their needs. We now have more than 60 member organisations in 10 countries. Collectively these memberships generate 59% of our revenue. Workshop fees bring in 19% of our annual revenue, and grants and donations account for 22% of revenue. Through these recurring annual membership fees, we have been able to secure a future where The Carpentries is a significant ally in the spread of skills and impactful digital skills teaching at many of the leading research institutions in the world.

All Carpentries Mailing Lists now moved to TopicBox

Fri, 18 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

After a number of issues with spam, The Carpentries have moved all mailing lists away from Mailman to a new service called TopicBox.

Anyone on discuss or other mailing lists we manage should have received an email by now to alert them to the switchover. You should now be receiving all posts to lists you have joined through the new TopicBox mailing list service.

TopicBox will consolidate all of our public email lists to be accessible and browsable in one place. If you visit the web interface for TopicBox, you will see that we have moved over the archives of all former Mailman lists. Threads and individual emails have permalinks that can be used to share threads and specific posts. We hope that this simple and clean user interface will help us more readily link to and share the interesting conversations of our past, present and future together.

Carpentry Champions Call

Wed, 07 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At the 14 February Carpentry Champions call we’ll be talking about the development of a new resource called the Carpentries Cookbook.

This is an open contribution, community-developed document to help members and supporters share strategies to build local Carpentries communities. We’ve begun this work here.

The Champions call is scheduled for 8pm UTC, 14 February, 2018. The meeting agenda, connection details (via Zoom) and sign up are on the etherpad, and you can check the local time and date for you.

Community Building Catchup

Thu, 30 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The last Carpentries’ Champions call led by Jonah Duckles was well attended, with representatives from Australia, South Africa, Ethiopia, the US, the UK, New Zealand and Norway.

After the introductions and a review of the last call, attendees were divided up into four breakout rooms to discuss (while keeping the following three questions in mind) an event that promoted a sense of excitement about new research tools.

Announcing Belinda Weaver as our Community Development Lead

Wed, 07 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re excited to announce Belinda Weaver has accepted our offer to become the Community Development Lead. Belinda will join the Carpentries staff later this month, please give her a warm and enthusiastic community welcome!

Many of you may already know of Belinda from her work all over the community as a Software Carpentry Steering Committee Member, the Mentorship Subcommittee, the Trainers Subcommittee and a champion and leader of Library Carpentry. As part of our bylaws Belinda will be stepping down from the Software Carpentry Steering Committee on Friday June 16th and the Committee will finish the 2017 term with a membership of 6. For those of you who don’t know her yet, look for her introductory blog post later today. In short, Belinda is a very active community member and a delight to work with, we’re incredibly excited to have her contributing to our community full-time very soon!

Announcing Belinda Weaver as our Community Development Lead

Wed, 07 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Instructor Access to Workshops

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software and Data Carpentry share a mission to spread computational and data literacy to the broader research community at a wide range of institutional types across the world. We also share core community values of openness and inclusiveness.

Recently, we learned that some of our host sites have selective criteria that limit physical access to their sites on the basis of nationality. These policies have the effect of excluding some Carpentry instructors from teaching at these sites. We recognize that often these criteria are imposed by the broader security and bureaucratic apparatus at the organization that the host operates within and are beyond the control of our contacts at those sites. Nevertheless, these policies can cause conflict with our mission and core community values.

Instructor Access to Workshops

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Job Opportunity: Community Development Lead

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry are hiring a Community Development Lead!

We are excited to announce a position as a full-time staff member to lead community development activities! Software and Data Carpentry have an active global community of researchers, volunteers, learners and member organizations. This person will cultivate and grow this community, developing communication strategies and opportunities for the community to connect with and support each other. You will become an active member of our team of staff and will work with people around the world to advance our mission of building a community teaching digital research skills to make research more productive and reproducible.

Job Opportunity: Community Development Lead

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry are hiring a Community Development Lead!

Announcing the 2017 Steering Committee

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I’m pleased to announce our new steering committee for 2017.

The new steering committee is comprised of

![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/hertweck_kate.jpg) Kate Hertweck
![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/harris_rayna.jpg) Rayna Harris
![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/koch_christina.jpg) Christina Koch
![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/kuzak_mateusz.jpg) Mateusz Kuzak
![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/lagesen_k.jpg) Karin Lagesen
![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/mcclatchy_sue.jpg) Sue McClatchy
![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/weaver_belinda.jpg) Belinda Weaver

Turnout and Voting Tallies

We had 31.6% turnout representing 176 of the 557 eligible voters casting a ballot in this election. Official election results are available from electionbuddy.

Software Carpentry Steering Committee Candidates 2017

Sun, 15 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2017 Steering Committee elections and January Community Call

We are pleased the announce the 2017 Steering Committee elections, which will occur from January 23-27. All members will receive a ballot via email to cast their vote via electionbuddy. Be sure to look at the membership list and let us know if you feel you’ve been left off by mistake; membership details are here.

Community Call

As a preface to the election, we are using our January Community Call to allow the candidates time to introduce themselves. We have seven outstanding candidates to fill the seven Steering Committee seats. Our governance rules require us to hold the election, albeit uncontested, but we also feel this is a vital way for the community to exhibit commitment to the organizational leadership. Please sign up to attend one of two meetings on January 20 to hear about our candidates’ plans for 2017. What would you like to see the Steering Committee accomplish? What are you excited for Software Carpentry to tackle this year?

A Welcoming Community

Mon, 09 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The amazing Software and Data Carpentry community of instructors and learners is the foundation of our organizations. We have more than 500 instructors from 30 countries and have had over 20,000 learners in our workshops.

Software and Data Carpentry are community driven organizations. We value the involvement of everyone in this community - learners, instructors, hosts, developers, steering committee members, and staff. We are committed to creating a friendly and respectful place for learning, teaching and contributing. All participants in Software and Data Carpentry events or communications are expected to show respect and courtesy to others.

Our Code of Conduct

Mon, 09 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

New Joint Partnerships with Data Carpentry

Mon, 02 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’ve been hearing of the interest of organizations to build local capacity for training and to be able run both Data and Software Carpentry workshops. We are excited to announce that Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry are now offering joint partnerships! These partnerships will give member organizations the benefits of running workshops from either the Software Carpentry or Data Carpentry community. At the Silver and above tiers there will also be instructor training and capacity building services provided.

Communities: The Foundation of Impactful Workshops

Tue, 01 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I spend a good deal of my time trying to communicate with member organizations about what it is that the Software Carpentry Foundation can do to help them meet their own goals. It is part of my job to showcase to them the return on investment that they’ll see in various areas. The three areas in which this is most apparent are impacts on skills transfer to learners who attend workshops, the lesson material that is publicly available and built by the community, and the capacity building that comes from mentoring instructors who are thinking about impactful instruction in short workshops.

Welcome to the 2016 Steering Committee!

Sat, 20 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The results are in. Your 2016 steering committee, in alphabetical order by last name is:

Rayna Harris
Kate Hertweck
Karin Lagesen
Bill Mills
Raniere Silva
Belinda Weaver
Jason Williams

Thank you to all of the candidates for standing for election. We look forward to an exciting year of the new committee’s contribution and leadership.

For those interested, the raw results are available here.

Instructor Survey Report

Wed, 27 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back in the fall we surveyed our then 450-strong instructor community for feedback on what being an instructor has done for them.

To recap, we asked the following questions:

How did you get interested in doing Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry?
How do you use the skills you teach in Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry in your daily work?
What is the benefit (personally and/or professionally) to you in being involved with the Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry Community?
What examples do you have of how the Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry Community have benefited others (students, labs, university groups)?
What suggestions do you have for improvement?

There is a ton of great information in this report that can be useful for building momentum for Software and Data Carpentry instructor training and workshops at your own institution. It is clear that we have a very active and driven pool of instructors. This is a large part of what made me so excited and passionate about the community when I first became an instructor. I hope that we can learn from each other and broaden the impacts that this community is having around the world!

Meet the 2016 Election Candidates

Thu, 21 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The candidates for the 2016 election are set. The election will take place during the week of February 15th-19th. Look for electionbuddy ballot information in your email if you’re a member.

Meet the candidates at the February 9th Community Lab Meeting Calls (14:00 & 23:00 UTC). Call coordinates will be posted to the etherpad when they’re finalized.

In alphabetical order by last name the candidates are:

Call for Candidates for the 2016 Steering Committee

Tue, 08 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

From February 15-19, Software Carpentry will hold its annual election for the Steering Committee of The Software Carpentry Foundation. The inaugural Steering Committee has been an incredible team of dedicated community members working to position Software Carpentry so that it has a strong foundation and continued impact in scientific communities around the world. Please consider giving back to the community by standing for election!

December Instructor Training Selection Debrief

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Many of you who applied for instructor training in December are undoubtedly receiving disappointing news. We had 250 applicants on 45 teams from a wide range of locations. I'd like to talk through a few things about this process and how it played out as I think it will help the community understand the situation we were in with instructor training demand and our ability to meet demand.

Recent Statistics

Sun, 25 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At some point in the last few weeks, we ran our 500th workshop for our 16,000th learner:

More About Jonah Duckles

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm thrilled to be stepping into the role of Executive Director of the Software Carpentry Foundation. I come to you as an experienced instructional community member excited to share my administrative, grant writing and professional background to help the Software Carpentry Foundation become sustainable and reach exciting new goals.

2015 Election: Jonah Duckles

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hi, I'm Jonah Duckles, I have been active in teaching Software Carpentry workshops (seven so far) and have found a joy in teaching and learning this curriculum that has made me passionate about the mission of the organization. In my job, I work to spread knowledge, skills and competency in wide ranging areas of scholarly computing. Serving on the Software Carpentry Steering Committee would be a natural extension of my current job, dovetailing well into my current responsibilities and I'm excited to be considered.

Cape Town South Africa Workshop

Thu, 04 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week we ran the biggest software carpentry workshop in South Africa to date. We had more than 80 participants in two rooms, each using the novice Python material. Pre-workshop assessment surveys showed that we'd have a mostly novice crew, but with a few outliers on the upper end. We accepted slightly higher than 80 enrollment cap and encouraged those with more advanced skills to evaluate their interest in becoming SWC workshop instructors themselves and help us out as helpers.