Oscar Masinyana on The Carpentries

Share Your Feedback in The Carpentries 2026 Community Survey

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last week, we launched The Carpentries 2026 Community Survey and invited community members to share feedback about their experiences in our community. If you have not yet completed the survey, there is still time to participate.

The survey helps us better understand how community members engage with The Carpentries, the benefits they receive from participating, and how the Core Team can better support our global community. The results will inform future planning and help us identify areas for improvement in programs, communications, resources, and community support.

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community members with a profile on AMY to please take a few minutes to update your airport location and any other outdated information on your AMY profile.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’ New Partnership Program is Launching in April!

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing the new Partnership Program

With much-valued input from our community, we have been working over the past few years on ways to improve our Membership program to meet the needs of our community’s partner organisations and institutions. After considering and engaging with feedback from our community surveys from September 2024 and again in September 2025, we are so pleased to announce that we have redesigned our Membership program into a new model called the Partnership program that can be tailored to suit varying institutional needs. Plans are underway to launch the redesigned program in April this year!

Design your subcommunity's logo by modifying The Carpentries logo!

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Community,

We would like to encourage our local, regional and special interest Carpentries subcommunities that do not yet have a subcommunity logo to design one! A logo is a wonderful way for our subcommunities to visually “brand” their activities. Once designed, please share it with the The Carpentries Community Engagement Team for approval and to add it to our growing list of subcommunity logos. This, in turn, will help us visually showcase the global diversity of our subcommunities!

Reflecting on Five Years: Publishing The Carpentries Strategic Plan Evaluation Report (2020-2025)

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As The Carpentries community, we have spent the past five years working towards six ambitious goals to strengthen our global network of learners, Instructors, Maintainers, and Member Organisations. Our Strategic Plan Evaluation Report (2020–2025) is now published and archived on Zenodo, providing a comprehensive review of the progress we made together.

You can read and download the full report here: The Carpentries Strategic Plan for 2020-2025 Evaluation Report (Zenodo).

The report highlights achievements such as:

Publication of The Carpentries 2024 Annual Report

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The past year’s Annual Report and Financial Statement are now available on The Carpentries website. Continuing with the approach we adopted for reporting in 2023, we have dissolved the distinction between the 2024 Annual and Financial Reports and merged both into one Annual Report, accompanied by a Financial Statement.

The 2024 Annual Report can be found on our website’s Impact page, and the 2024 Financial Statement is on our website’s Financials page.

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.

Support The Carpentries’ Transition to Greater Autonomy With Your Donations

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you

#GivingTuesday, the global “movement that unleashes the power of radical generosity around the world” is once again upon us. We turn to you, The Carpentries community, first to thank you for all that each of you has done for The Carpentries and our global community. We always say this, and we cannot stress it enough: at The Carpentries we are all that we are because of the generous contributions of our volunteer community members. We deeply appreciate and wish to express our gratitude often for the contributions and support we receive from our Instructors, Instructor Trainers, Lesson Developers, Maintainers, Curriculum Advisors, Lesson Program Governors, Code of Conduct Committee members, our Advisory Committee and Board of Directors, and all other members of our community. In whatever capacity you have given and continue to give to us, we thank you!

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.

Publication of The Carpentries 2023 Annual Report

Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that The Carpentries 2023 Annual Report is now available on the Reports page, our central resource for all reports including yearly reports, grant reports, and assessment reports released by The Carpentries.

This year we dissolved the distinction between the Annual and the Financial Reports and merged both into one Annual Report. The Annual Report provides highlights of the work the Core Team and community achieved in 2023, and also provides some priorities for 2024. It includes messages from our Executive Director, Dr. Kari L. Jordan, and from our newly-constituted Board of Directors. It also shares key financial data on our income and expenditures over the course of 2023, giving insight to our continued financial stability for supporting our mission. Additional details about our 2023 financials can be found in our Financial Statement.

Postponing the Hybrid CarpentryCon 2025 Event in South Africa

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Community,

Over the past few months, The Carpentries Core Team members have been discussing our team’s capacity to support a hybrid CarpentryCon event for 2025. CarpentryCon is our biennial community-building and networking event, and the last event was the virtual CarpentryCon @Home event in 2022. We had already announced in February last year the decision to host the next CarpentryCon in South Africa as a hybrid event in 2025 instead of 2024 after an assessment of our community’s needs and priorities, and our organisation’s capacity at that point.

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.

Sharing the 2023 Community Survey Evaluation Report

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 2023, The Carpentries launched a community survey to inform and prioritise our work and that of the Core Team so we can better serve the community. We asked community members to take 5 minutes to provide feedback on their experience as Carpentries community members, seeking feedback that will help us better understand the benefits community members get from their participation and inform areas of improvement.

We received 200 responses to the survey. It is difficult to identify a response rate without an exact count of the number of active community members. However, this represents 5% of The Carpentries Slack workspace members and 7% of those subscribed to Carpentries Clippings, our newsletter.

Re-introducing The Carpentries Core Team

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Until recently, The Carpentries and its community were supported by a 16-member strong Core Team, but due to financial constraints, the organisation let go of seven members of this staff cohort, reducing the Core Team members to nine. This reduction in staff has necessarily entailed a reduction in the programs and activities the team can continue to lead and support, and tomorrow, 1 February 2024, we will share what continued work for the Core Team will look like moving forward. However, we are confident about and committed to carrying forward our vision and mission; this is not the first time a small team has supported The Carpentries, and for 25 years the organisation has grown into its vision of being the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills.

With Gratitude to our Legacy Core Team Members

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the ever-changing landscape of the non-profit sector, we often find ourselves faced with unexpected challenges, like the recently announced layoffs at The Carpentries. These moments are never easy to deal with, and striking the perfect balance between pausing to reflect on what has been lost and moving forward soon enough to maintain stability and build on what remains is a struggle that persists for months afterwards. All the colleagues who have transitioned from our organisation were very valuable members of the Core Team, and their contributions over the years to the long-term sustainability of our mission have left an indelible mark on our programs and operations.

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.”

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.

Publication of The Carpentries 2022 Annual and Financial Reports

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The past year’s Annual and Financial Reports are now available. They can be found on the Reports page, the central resource for all reports including yearly reports, grant reports, and assessment reports released by The Carpentries.

The reports highlight all the work that the Core Team and community have done in 2022, and in addition the Annual Report also outlines some priorities for 2023.

2022 Annual Report

The Carpentries 2022 Annual Report contains a joint message from our Executive Council and the Executive Director of The Carpentries, Dr. Kari L. Jordan. It also reflects on the achievements of the organization and the whole community in responding to the year’s organizational priority of addressing the accessibility needs of our global community.

Introducing The Carpentries Communications Manager, Oscar Masinyana

Tue, 09 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to welcome Abdul-Malik Sibabalwe Oscar Masinyana to The Carpentries Core Team! Oscar is our new Communications Manager and has extensive experience in academic and literary publishing, writing, translating and editing. We asked Oscar to share a bit about themself, read on to learn more!

My name is Abdul-Malik Sibabalwe Oscar Masinyana (he/him/they/them), and you are welcome to call me by any of these names. Most people call me Oscar. I am based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and it is such a pleasure to join The Carpentries community as a member of its Core Team.