The Carpentries Team on The Carpentries

Thank You SO MUCH Carpentries Community!

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The image above is a composite of our Core Team’s photos - from left to right,
first row : Zhian, Talisha, Sher!, Angelique, Kelly, Karen, Toby
second row: Serah, Omar, Maneesha, Kari, Erin, François

TL;DR

What a year! As we come to the close of 2020, in all our reflection and retrospectives and reporting and winding-down and planning for 2021 - the most accurate sentiment to sum up how we feel about our community in THANK YOU. There is so much we can collectively say as a team, in fact, we started to co-author our thank you notes to all of you, and seven pages into our collaborative document, we still have more to say, and the wise words of many of you at the back of our minds - short and succinct, that is how all Carpentries posts should be!

Back to the future: Online Carpentries Workshops now and in 2021

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

On 13 July The Carpentries released a second version of the Official Guidelines for Taking Your Carpentries Workshop Online. The Carpentries Core Team has since then undertaken various initiatives to support remote versions of all Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry workshops.

The quarter in review

The Infrastructure and Curriculum Development teams collaborated in creating an online infrastructure to serve as scaffolds or safety nets for learners who were unable to install software onto their computers using cloud services from MyBinder and RStudio. The workshop website template was also adapted to facilitate workshops scheduled to take place over more than two days which includes a custom schedule file.

A Call for Allyship and Solidarity

Wed, 03 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Ahmaud Arbery. Philando Castile. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Sandra Bland. Atatiana Jefferson. Botham Jean.

As we consider these and countless other Black Americans who were victims of senseless acts of violence, hatred, and racism, we are emotionally drained. Their deaths have reminded us that racial amnesia causes those in positions of power to forget the systemic inequalities that built America. Persons of African descent have been disproportionately targeted by law enforcement and others in positions of privilege, as evidenced by racial disparities in America’s criminal justice system. The ripple effect of this injustice has made its way around the globe. Add to that the unprecedented challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic - We can’t breathe.

Announcing a New Series of Online Workshop Themed Discussions

Wed, 20 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As work on The Carpentries Online Workshops Pilot continues, The Carpentries is launching a new series of monthly themed discussions, led by members of The Carpentries Core Team. The goal of these calls is to discuss ongoing work around online workshops — from changes to workshop registration to best practices in using technology to manage the shift to online-only workshops.

Additionally, these themed discussions will allow time for direct communication with our community on experiences, learnings, challenges and questions arising from online workshops.

Supporting Each Other and Our Community

Thu, 30 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

How The Carpentries Core Team is adjusting to better support each other and our community at this time

Online instruction is likely to be our new normal for some months. The key priority for our Core Team has always been, and will always be supporting our community. As we shift from in-person to virtual instruction, we acknowledge that this shift will impact all of our programs, but most heavily the Workshop Administration and Instructor Training programs. To provide space for this work, the Core Team has de-prioritised non-essential work, including many projects that we are all excited to work on. With the likelihood of reduced Core Team time due to illness and caregiving duties, we will use our time in the most efficient way possible to support our community in this transition.

Q3 and Q4 Project Work at The Carpentries

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In May, we shared our vision and goals for our core team’s work in Q2. In this post, we lay out our accomplishments on that work, and also on our Q3 projects. There’s a lot that we’ve been working on! If you’re interested in a particular team’s work, you can navigate directly to their projects using the links below.

Business Team
Community Development Team
Curriculum Team
Instructor Training Team
Infrastructure Team
Membership Team
Workshop Administration Team

The projects we select for our quarterly cycles are designed to give us time to focus on our operational priorities (operational efficiency, accessibility, revenue generation, and compliance), while continuing to perform all of our ongoing work. Ongoing work includes supporting workshops, instructor training events, lesson development and maintenance, communications, and much more! Over the course of the quarter, we share our accomplishments and challenges with each other, stay in touch on how our individual work affects the whole team, and learn from each other.

Q2 Project Work at The Carpentries

Mon, 27 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Some of The Carpentries team at an Improv session in January 2019

Zip Zap Zop is a team building activity that The Carpentries team loved and stressed over in equal measure at an Improv session we all attended in January 2019. Standing in a circle, the game started out slow and we all felt comfortable with it, enjoyed it even. But as time went by and our facilitator nudged us to pick up the pace, we all experienced the adrenaline and pressure that comes with increased urgency and demand for our attention and whittled-down focus in any activity, and had the opportunity to empathise with the overwhelmed among us, and marvel at the resilience of a select few.