Maneesha Sane on The Carpentries

Please Update Your AMY Profile!

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We have recently released some updates on AMY, our community data management software. We are calling on our Instructors, Instructor Trainers, Maintainers, and all other Carpentries community members with a profile on AMY to please take a few minutes to update your airport location and any other outdated information on your AMY profile.

Active Carpentries community members can log in to AMY via GitHub. The AMY Community User Guide provides step-by-step instructions for logging in to AMY and updating your profile.

The Carpentries’ Handbooks Relaunched!

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today, 9 December 2024, we relaunched The Carpentries Handbooks! The Handbooks are compiled for the following community roles: Community Session Hosts, Curriculum Advisors, Instructors, Instructor Trainers, Lesson Developers, Lesson Program Governors, and Maintainers. Each Handbook provides detailed information for our volunteer community members to fulfill the duties of each role, and includes steps to follow when onboarding onto and offboarding from the role, the responsibilities and duties for each role, as well as a list of resources available to members to fulfill those responsibilities.

The Carpentries’ Websites Relaunched!

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that today, 18 November, we have relaunched the main Carpentries website and the three lesson program websites! All four websites have been redesigned to allow for integrated navigation between them, allowing the viewer to navigate to any other one of the websites from another. The URLs for the main Carpentries website, as well as the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry websites all remain the same.

Recently, we outlined how the websites were redesigned to provide an overview of The Carpentries, primarily for the general public, Carpentries member organisations, funders, and sponsors, as well as new members to the community or members who would like a refresher on The Carpentries’ core operations and community structure.

Almost Ready: The Carpentries’ new websites and Handbooks

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We shared that The Carpentries is on a journey towards consolidating its resources and lesson programs - Data Carpentry, Software Carpentry, and Library Carpentry - under one unified identity. To achieve this goal, we migrated the blog posts from the three lesson program websites to The Carpentries main blog. Shortly after that, we announced that the content on these lesson programs’ websites was pared down to only display each lesson program’s lessons, past and upcoming workshops, and its governance structure, with all other content incorporated into the main website of The Carpentries.

Lesson programs' websites content pared down

Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The content on the three Carpentries lesson programs websites - Data Carpentry, Software Carpentry, and Library Carpentry - has been pared down to only display each lesson program’s lessons, past and upcoming workshops, and its governance structure. All other content pertaining to each lesson program has been incorporated into the main website of The Carpentries. Users of the satellite websites can be redirected from the lesson program websites to The Carpentries website. This change was effected on 29 July 2024.

Lesson programs' blog posts migration

Wed, 20 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As of today, blog posts will no longer appear on the three lesson program websites. All blog posts that were on the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry websites are now merged with the blog posts at The Carpentries blog.

In addition to this change, you will also see a pagination feature at the bottom of the list of blog posts to cycle through the list of posts. Also, you will see a new sidebar that lets you view the entire blog archive or browse posts by author or browse posts by tag.

Announcing our new Deputy Director of Technology

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

I am thrilled to announce that Maneesha Sane is advancing to a Junior Team Lead role and will now be serving as The Carpentries Deputy Director of Technology. Maneesha has been part of The Carpentries team since the very beginning - initially serving as a workshop coordinator and later moving into an infrastructure-focused role as Quality Assurance Manager. For the past 6+ years, Maneesha has served as a living example of The Carpentries values, bringing them to bear in everything she does. She brings a vast wealth of experience and historical knowledge to the organisation. In this new role, Maneesha will support the incoming Director of Technology (to be announced at a later date), and the growing Infrastructure Team. Congratulations Maneesha!

We Appreciate Instructors and Helpers!

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We would like to express our deepest appreciation to instructors and helpers in The Carpentries community. Instructors and helpers all over the world include researchers, librarians, scientists, students, and many others from a wide range of backgrounds, disciplines, career stages and counties. Instructors and helpers not only teach workshops but also inspire others to share their knowledge, skills, and even to become a part of The Carpentries community or to become an instructor or helper themselves.

Gratitude from the Infrastructure Team

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The infrastructure The Carpentries Team manages is mostly invisible to its users, and yet it provides critical services to our community members.

To name a few, we run our own Etherpad instance, we have scripts that ensures that our websites display up-to-date information about our [workshops]({% link pages/upcoming_workshops.html %}) and our [community members]({% link pages/instructors.html %}), and we [generate reports]({% link _posts/2019/10/2019-10-21-transition-to-typeform.md %}) based on the results of the pre- and post-workshop surveys.

Introducing The Carpentries' Regional Coordinators

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

There are many roles in The Carpentries community. You may be familiar with some of them: Instructors, Maintainers, Trainers, and Mentors, just to name a few. What about Workshop Administrators?

The role of Workshop Administrator may seem obvious: they organise The Carpentries workshops. While that is true, they do far more than that. They are the face of The Carpentries in their region - building local communities and promoting the work of The Carpentries.

To communicate better about the work they do and how integral they are to community building in their respective regions, we are announcing the title change of our Workshop Administrators to Carpentries Regional Coordinators, and sharing a new way for you to connect with them.

What’s New in Our Programs?

Tue, 07 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We put out what was the first of our programmatic reports in May, 2018. These reports bring our community up to date on how many workshops have been run, and where they took place (especially highlighting new places), and what other new milestones we have reached together in our teaching and community-building work around the world.

These reports will now appear quarterly. The first report of each year will provide a review of how far we have come, while reports for the subsequent three quarters will focus on specific themes after giving a quick summary update.

No More Self-Organised Workshop Fees

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

To bring Software and Data Carpentry Self-Organised workshop fees into agreement with one another, the 2018 Executive Council passed a motion to eliminate the $500 fee charged to host organisations for Self-Organised Data Carpentry workshops.

Why eliminate the Self-Organised workshop fee?

Until 2018, Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry operated side-by-side but independently, each with their own governing bodies and executive directors. While the two organisations shared some processes and staff, decisions about things like workshop fees were made independently. Along with the 2018 merger came a need to unify and streamline operations. Data Carpentry required a $500 fee, while Software Carpentry required no fee for Self-Organised workshop but rather requested an optional $500 donation. To eliminate the confusion this has created within our community and to encourage Self-Organised workshops, we have brought these two policies into alignment by eliminating the $500 host organisation fee from Self-Organised Data Carpentry workshops as well as the suggested $500 donation for Self-Organised Software Carpentry workshops.

The Carpentries' Programmatic Assessment

Tue, 19 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Starting this year, we are releasing quarterly programmatic assessment reports (see this blog post). These reports will share information about the growth rates of our workshops and instructor training programs, our geographic impact, and other metrics. We are happy to announce the publication of our first report.

This first report follows activity around Carpentries’ workshops, Instructors, and Trainers from 2012 through the first quarter of 2018 (January - March). From 2012 through March 2018, 58 Trainers badged 1,480 Instructors. Carpentry Instructors taught 1,332 workshops, reaching more than 37,000 learners in 44 countries. The report also highlights our significant geographic expansion, such as the growth of an active community of Instructors and Trainers in eight African countries.

The Carpentries Programmatic Assessment

Tue, 08 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The first quarter of 2018 brought many changes our way – including a merged Carpentries under the fiscal sponsorship of Community Initiatives, new staff, and a new Executive Council. As our community develops and grows, we want to be able to understand the kinds of growth we are experiencing so we can share our successes and direct our resources to best support and sustain this growth. In the past, our assessment efforts have focused on understanding the impact of our workshops on learners. We’ve learned that our workshops are successful in improving learner confidence in the tools covered in their workshop and increasing daily programming usage. Knowing that our workshops are effective, however, is only part of the story. We also need to understand how our programs as a whole are functioning to know whether our community is growing in a balanced and sustainable way, and to be able to direct our resources effectively.

Launching our New Handbook

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

As The Carpentries, we’re excited to announce that we have consolidated and updated many materials and resources to more easily share them online and be a community resource.

Today we are launching an all-new The Carpentries Handbook. We will also be tweeting regularly through a new Carpentries Twitter account.

The Carpentries Handbook

We are excited to release our new Carpentries Handbook! Historically, information and resources have been spread across various websites, Google docs, GitHub repos, and more. We now have a one-stop shop that consolidates all these resources. In one place, you can now find information on how to run a workshop, how to develop and maintain lessons, and how to participate in an instructor training event. You’ll also learn about getting the word out about Carpentries activities through our communication channels, and how to get involved in our global community. Many, many thanks to all the community members who helped develop this site.

Launching Our New Handbook

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As The Carpentries, we’re excited to announce that we have consolidated and updated a whole raft of materials and resources that we want to share online with our community.

Today we are launching an all-new The Carpentries Handbook. We will also be tweeting regularly through a new Carpentries Twitter account.

The Carpentries Handbook

How do instructors get placed at workshops?

Sun, 14 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you are a badged Carpentries Instructor, you have most likely received emails about upcoming workshops that need Instructors. After the emails go out, we sometimes get questions about how Instructors are actually chosen and placed, so we want to share our methods with you.

First, it is not first come, first served.

That would not be fair, as that just shows who was lucky enough to be online and able to check their calendars at the moment my email went out. Rather, we give it a few days, or sometimes even a couple of weeks, depending on how quickly the workshop may be coming up.

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

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry on Podcast.init

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by the Podcast.__init__ team to talk about Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry. The request for an interview actually came in a couple of months ago and I asked Greg Wilson about doing it, telling him I was a big fan of the podcast. He said he'd be happy to have me do it myself, giving me the chance to star in one of my favorite shows. I decided to do it, in pursuit of my goal of promoting Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry (and maybe more public exposure for myself).

Introducing Maneesha

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This is a long overdue post introducing myself to all of you. I've met many of you (at least virtually!) over the past few months but I wanted to formally introduce myself to the Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry community.

Maneesha Sane on The Carpentries

Please Update Your AMY Profile!

The Carpentries’ Handbooks Relaunched!

The Carpentries’ Websites Relaunched!

Almost Ready: The Carpentries’ new websites and Handbooks

Introduction

Lesson programs' websites content pared down

Lesson programs' blog posts migration

Announcing our new Deputy Director of Technology

A Message from Erin Becker

We Appreciate Instructors and Helpers!

Gratitude from the Infrastructure Team

Introducing The Carpentries' Regional Coordinators

What’s New in Our Programs?

No More Self-Organised Workshop Fees

Why eliminate the Self-Organised workshop fee?

The Carpentries' Programmatic Assessment

The Carpentries Programmatic Assessment

Launching our New Handbook

The Carpentries Handbook

Launching Our New Handbook

The Carpentries Handbook

How do instructors get placed at workshops?

Instructor Access to Workshops

Instructor Access to Workshops

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry on Podcast.__init__

Introducing Maneesha

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry on Podcast.init