Tracy Teal on The Carpentries

Job Opening to Develop an Astronomy Curriculum for Data Carpentry

Thu, 26 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Datasets in astronomy are ever larger and more complex, and data analysis and visualisation is now essential for astronomical research, yet there are few opportunities for astronomers to become experts in working with these large datasets. An Astronomy Curriculum Development Committee (Azalee Bostroem, Rodolfo Montez, and Phil Rosenfield) has been working for several years, teaching and developing curriculum to meet that need. They have taught Software Carpentry workshops for astronomers at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Winter meeting for the past five years and through surveys and working with the community, identified core modules that need to be developed to teach astronomers relevant foundational skills.

Executive Director Transition

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Announcement from The Carpentries

We are sharing the bittersweet news that Dr. Tracy Teal is moving on from her role as Executive Director of The Carpentries in January 2020 to pursue other opportunities. Dr. Kari L. Jordan, our current Senior Director of Equity and Assessment, will be serving as the Acting Executive Director until the next Executive Director has been identified.

“Tracy’s dedication to the mission and vision of The Carpentries and her embodiment of the values of the organisation have made her an exceptional and inspiring leader for The Carpentries,” said Amy Hodge, Chair of The Carpentries Executive Council. “She has deftly guided The Carpentries through its first years as a larger organisation, as well as through our transition to a new fiscal sponsor, Community Initiatives.”

Extending Gratitude to the Executive Council for Governance in 2019

Tue, 03 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Executive Council is the governing body of The Carpentries responsible for its strategy and sustainability. As a community council, they are the true stewards of the organisation, guiding the project, listening to, reflecting on and making decisions on behalf of the community. That is a big responsibility!

The Carpentries Executive Council established in 2018 with the formation of the project. From the onset, it had community-elected and council-elected positions to both represent the community and ensure a set of diverse perspectives and skills necessary for the functioning of this council.

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Partner to Support The Carpentries

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We are generating vast amounts of data, but it is not the data itself that is valuable—it is the information and knowledge that can come from this data. However, we are limited in translating this sea of data into discovery and solutions, because we have a limited set of diverse groups of people with the skills, perspective, and access to work effectively with data. We need to bring people to data—rather than just bringing data to compute or compute to data—and empower them to address their questions, reach their potential, and solve issues that are important in science, scholarship, and society.

The Carpentries Vision Statement

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In January 2018, The Carpentries was formed as a unifying organisation for Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry and other lesson programs. Over time, we have built awareness for foundational coding and data science skills through our workshops, instructor training program, and community events, but we have not yet made clear our vision - What type of organisation do we want to be? Who and what do we represent? Our vision is more than just a statement; it spells out where we see The Carpentries in the future and guides our decision making and priorities in the present. Over the past two years we have developed programs and grown as a community. Today, thanks to everyone’s work co-creating these messages through conversations, discussions, and requests for comments, we are proud to release our vision statement.

Call for Candidates for the 2020 Carpentries Executive Council

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentries leaders are needed! Do you have:

A desire to join Carpentries leaders from around the world in shaping the future of The Carpentries and assuring our continued success?
A desire to expand your sense of contribution to The Carpentries by doing it at a global level?
A desire and willingness to work hard and to represent the entire organisation?
Knowledge and experience that will assist The Carpentries Executive Council in strategically leading and guiding the organisation?

If yes, then The Carpentries needs YOU!!

Invitation to The Carpentries Sponsorship Programme Task Force

Mon, 22 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In May, we shared our 2018 Finances with you. The Executive Council determined that one way to increase our capacity by bringing more income is via a Sponsorship Programme.. We are looking for four members of our community with previous experience regarding sponsorship to help develop The Carpentries 2020 Sponsorship Programme. To volunteer, fill the Google Form before 9 August 2019 Anywhere on Earth.

As an organisation with strong values, we want to be intentional about organisations we take in as sponsors, so in creating a Sponsorship Programme for The Carpentries, we would like to establish a process and way of evaluating potential sponsors. Members of this Task Force will engage in two virtual meetings (one hour long each) in September 2019 to discuss The Carpentries Sponsorship Programme.

Recruiting Task Force Members for Incidents Outside the mandate of The Carpentries Code of Conduct Committee

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

With a growing community and an increasing number of Carpentries spaces (online and in-person), The Carpentries is encountering circumstances where we feel we should respond to cases of inappropriate conduct that happen outside of our formal guidelines and processes. Our Code of Conduct (CoC) and Code of Conduct committee are now quite mature with a fairly tightly defined scope. There is less clarity around incidents outside the Code of Conduct committee’s current mandate, including incidents that may have occurred outside of Carpentries spaces, incidents that happen within Carpentries spaces that are not reported, or where people would like to share information or get feedback, rather than formally report an incident. These incidents may impact the ability of members to feel safe working in our community. We want to respond to these events in a timely manner and in a consistent way that balances transparency, confidentiality and legal considerations.

The Carpentries Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Roadmap

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries envision a world where all people have access to data and a true understanding of the software skills they need to address questions that are important to them, bringing diverse perspectives to challenges in science and society. We understand that comprehensive knowledge is not enough, however. Creating an environment where contributors have access to the tools they need, and feel included in the open science/open data community is imperative. This is where equity, inclusion, and accessibility come together.

Workshop Participant Fees

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Workshop Participant Fees

A frequently asked question by people running their first Carpentries workshop is whether or not they can (or should) charge people to attend.

This blog post outlines some of the workshop organisation logistics that can help determine whether or not it makes sense to charge for a workshop.

Workshop Costs

One of the major reasons to charge for a workshop is to cover costs. Common costs for a workshop can include:

Financial Updates

Tue, 28 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We have completed our first year as a joint project, The Carpentries, and now have more concrete information we can use to evaluate and plan for our long-term sustainability. Financial sustainability is a primary consideration in keeping our programs going, as financial resources allow us to pay for people and infrastructure, support our community and Member Organisations, teach workshops, connect with each other and develop local capacity for training, update resources, and develop new programs. You can see more details about our projects and personnel time in this blog post.

Standing with our Code of Conduct

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We operate in a broader ecosystem of training in digital skills and do, in our lessons, provide recommendations to other training resources. The recommendations that we make should also be consistent with our organizational values. We had previously recommended DataCamp in our lessons, so we want to respond to the recently-disclosed incident of sexual assault at DataCamp. References to DataCamp materials had previously been removed as we were made aware of the incident before it became public, and we noticed and removed a final instance this week. The Carpentries does not have any formal relationship with DataCamp, nor will we pursue any relationship while this incident remains unresolved.

Growing The Carpentries Community in Africa: Hiring a Regional Coordinator

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

The Carpentries activities in Africa have been growing through exemplary volunteer work of the community and outstanding workshop coordination and community leadership from Anelda van der Walt. We are now looking to hire a Regional Coordinator to continue this work and support the community and workshops as activity in Africa grows. This position will join our team of Regional Coordinators - read more about that group and the work they do to support their regional communities.

Code of Conduct Documentation Revised for Transparency and Clarity

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In September 2018 the Code of Conduct Committee released revisions to The Carpentries Code of Conduct. The updated Code of Conduct now provides straightforward examples of both beneficial and unwanted behaviour in order to clarify expectations for our community members. The committee quickly realised during this process that updates to our reporting guidelines, and enforcement manual were needed as well. The Executive Council authorised a small committee to make updates to these documents, and to our Incident Response Procedure. A request for comments for the drafts of these documents was open from 31-January through 17-February, and the documents have been revised. Check out the documentation in [our handbook]({{ site.code_of_conduct_url }}).

Job Plans, Teams, and Projects!

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

During our recent in-person meeting, we thought about what we valued most in our work: teamwork and community. Themes that were discussed frequently were ‘inclusivity’, ‘growth mindset’, ‘engagement’, and ‘collaboration’. We want to be intentional in the work that we do to support and help each other grow, and to support our programs and community.

This community has grown so much over the last year! From 43 Trainers at the start of 2018 to 74 now, from 1649 Instructors to 2294 now, and with many new members of committees, task forces, and the Executive Council. There continues to be a lot of great ongoing work, as well as a need to innovate and build infrastructure that scales. The great thing about our community is we always want to do better and try new things.

Code of Conduct Documentation Open for Comments

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Updates to The Carpentries Code of Conduct Documentation

The Carpentries Code of Conduct is core to who we are, because it describes how we interact with each other in our community. The Code of Conduct isn’t just a piece of (virtual) paper though; it’s how we communicate about it, the guidelines for how we handle reports, and how the Code of Conduct committee - a group of volunteers committed to working with staff and the Executive Council - responds to incidents and updates guidelines as needed.

Announcing The Carpentries Community Discussions

Wed, 19 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR
Thanks for all the discussion on discussions! Based on your great ideas and feedback, we’re creating a set of Community Discussions - pre/post workshop discussions, themed discussions, and Carpentries Conversations - that will all qualify for the ‘discussion’ component of instructor training checkout and provide opportunities for more topics, more people to participate and small group discussions. Read more below for all the details!

The discussion about updates to instructor checkout requirements and the recent RFC Regarding Instructor Discussion Sessions has sparked the interest of many community members who value the importance of communication and collaboration, sharing resources and experiences, and advocating for who we (The Carpentries) are and what we do. Recommendations have been pouring in involving a new discussion session schedule and even discussion sessions on Slack to accommodate those who have difficulty participating in discussions on Zoom. Additionally, there was an overwhelming desire to revive Communty Calls!

2018 Community Service Award Winners

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Executive Council is happy to announce that Tim Dennis, Margareth Gfrerer and Toby Hodges received the 2018 Community Service Award and Fotis Psomopoulos and Malvika Sharan the special CarpentryCon Community Award. Thank you for contributions to the The Carpentries community!

Community Service Award

The Community Service Award was created to recognise some of the exceptional work by volunteers in our community. These awards are nominated by the community and selected by the Executive Council. “Exceptional work” can mean many things, for example, attending community calls when you have poor internet connection, changing your calendar to attend committee meetings or finding the time to not only teach but help support and coordinate workshops or Instructor training events. Some of this work is more visible in our community and others is more ‘behind the scenes’. All have made exceptional contributions, not just to activities, but to supporting and developing others in the community. The Executive Council is pleased to award the 2018 Community Service Award to Tim Dennis, Margareth Gfrerer and Toby Hodges for their tremendous work that together represents what The Carpentry community is and exemplifies our spirit of ‘further together’.

More than Workshops

Fri, 07 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

There are a variety of ways people find The Carpentries. Belinda Weaver, of Griffith University and until recently, The Carpentries, blogged about her path. At CarpentryConnect Davis 2018, some of us discussed the different paths we had when joining this community. As you may see from the image below - no two people find their way into or around The Carpentries following the same path (zoom in to see details)…

Library Carpentry Is Now Officially a Lesson Program!

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

By Tracy Teal and Chris Erdmann

Library Carpentry is now officially a Lesson Program!

On 1 November 2018, The Carpentries Executive Council voted to officially approve Library Carpentry as a Lesson Program. It now joins Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry as official Lesson Programs. While the vote was quick, the work to become an official Lesson Program spans across many years involving many community members and their contributions. As noted in a recent blog post, over two hundred instructors and helpers have contributed to hosting, teaching, mentoring, developing, and maintaining Library Carpentry since 2015. Nearly three hundred events have been hosted by libraries since 2015 and interest from libraries in Library Carpentry and The Carpentries continues to grow. The library community’s contributions to The Carpentries is an important piece of our continued success and we too see their strategic value to growing our efforts at organisations across the world!

Curriculum Development Goals for the Rest of 2018

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As we are entering the last quarter of 2018, and following up on our Curriculum Development Vision post, we want to outline plans for the rest of the year and the beginning of 2019. We plan to post regular updates on curriculum development plans as updates and calls for participation in particular activities or teaching updated materials. For each set of curriculum there are Curriculum Advisory Committees and there is an overall Lesson Infrastructure Committee. If you are interested in being involved in lesson activities, please check out the issues on any of the lessons, send an email to team@carpentries.org, or join one of the lesson-specific email lists for more information or questions.

Library Carpentry’s Next Step Towards Becoming a Carpentries Lesson Program

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

By Chris Erdmann, Tracy Teal, John Chodacki

What Does It Mean to Be a Lesson Program?

When Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged to become The Carpentries, one of the important things we needed to figure out was what it meant to be ‘a Carpentry’ within The Carpentries. Originally called Lesson Organisations in the merger discussions, they have been updated to be called ‘Lesson Programs’ in the current draft of the bylaws.

The idea for the Lesson Programs is that The Carpentries as an organisation can provide the operational and governance capacity and framework, and the Lesson Programs can focus on the goals, audience, and content of the curriculum within their program. This meant that Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry could retain the spirit of their lessons and community enthusiasm for those areas, while aligning operations around Membership, workshops, instructor training and other capacity building activities. It also created a pathway for new Lesson Programs, particularly for Library Carpentry, which was already an active community with a developing curriculum and interim governance group. We knew that working with Library Carpentry was on the short-term horizon.

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.

We’re Hiring Two New Staff. Join Our Team.

Sat, 29 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for two new full-time staff members to join our global, mission-driven organisation. These new roles will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of our 35,000 learners, 1,500 Instructors, 70 Trainers, and 75 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

Our new Community Engagement Lead will oversee The Carpentries’ efforts to develop and support our global, inclusive community - creating pathways for participation and increased communication. They will be key in developing strategies and support for local community leaders and Carpentries Champions and support our global community. They will disseminate updates about our projects and activities to diverse communities via blog posts, Twitter, and related outlets and engage with the community on discussion forums and through meetings.

Thank You Belinda!

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Belinda Weaver has been the Community and Communications Lead first with Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry and then with The Carpentries for over a year, and has been a long time community member, Mentor, Instructor, Trainer, Software Carpentry Steering Committee member and champion. She helped found Library Carpentry, which creates a bridge between libraries and The Carpentries, and organised three annual global Mozilla sprints for Library Carpentry from 2016-2018. She was a lead on our inaugural CarpentryCon, and has taught one of the highest number of workshops of anyone in our community (43!). She’s refreshed our newsletter (taking it twice-monthly and adding great content) and built and maintains The Carpentries website, so we know that many of you have met, worked with, read the writings of, and learned from Belinda.

ELIXIR Teams Up With The Carpentries to Boost Its Training Programme

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

ELIXIR and The Carpentries initiative have agreed to extend their collaboration in organising and delivering training in ELIXIR Nodes. As part of the collaboration, The Carpentries will organise close to 20 Software and Data Carpentry training workshops across ELIXIR Nodes, and two Instructor Training workshops to train a number of specialised instructors. This collaboration is funded by EU Horizon 2020 project ELIXIR-EXCELERATE (676559) as part of the training activities (WP11).

The agreement will allow researchers in ELIXIR Nodes to fully benefit from the popular and proven model of hands-on teaching of research computing and data manipulation. ELIXIR and The Carpentries are already working together, with many ELIXIR people engaged in all areas of The Carpentries from Executive Council and Trainers, to lesson developers and maintainers. Allegra Via, Mateusz Kuzak, Fotis Psomopoulos and Paula Andrea Martinez are in the ELIXIR training coordinators group as well as active Carpentries trainers and instructors. Already 10 Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry workshops and one Instructor Training workshop at EMBL are planned as a part of this collaboration.

Vision and Plans for Curriculum Development with The Carpentries

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries has seen a growing interest in individuals, research groups, and institutions wanting to develop lessons for their own domain of research. We are very excited by the potential brought by this growth. Diversifying our lesson offerings means we can extend our reach to new communities, and further disseminate our practices of teaching and collaborative lesson development. We also want to ensure that the lessons we offer remain as the high quality level as our members, Instructors, and learners expect. Here, we outline our vision and plans to support this growth in curricula while sustaining existing lessons and our organisation. Between now and early 2019, we will be focusing on establishing the infrastructure needed to support lesson development and scaling up our lesson offerings. Starting in January 2019, we’ll have new pathways to onboard lessons.

The Carpentries' Virtual Listening Tour

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentries Listens

“You Belong in The Carpentries”

The Carpentries is a community organisation, and we want to hear from our community.

As a part of developing Mission and Vision for The Carpentries, we, the staff and The Executive Council, are embarking on a virtual listening tour. Starting at CarpentryCon 2018 on May 30, 2018 and running until June 14, 2018, we’ll ask our community some short questions. You can respond via Twitter (Tweet to @thecarpentries) or, if you prefer to be anonymous, you can answer through a survey where you do not have to identify yourself.

Updates to Privacy Policy

Fri, 25 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Individual control and transparency are core Carpentries’ principles, and we have gone through an evaluation of our privacy policy to update it for the merged Carpentries organisation as well as for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We want to share updates in the privacy policy and use this as an opportunity for Instructors to update their records and opt-in to being included on our new website.

Updating Instructor records and being added to The Carpentries Instructor website

With the move to our new website, we want to provide an updated list of Instructors. Instructors who opt-in will be included on the website. To protect privacy, any Instructor who does NOT opt-in will not be listed. We’ve added a ‘consent to publish profile’ checkbox to Instructor profiles, and we’ll use that information to update the Instructor list on our website.

Opening discussions about Library Carpentry being a Lesson Organisation with The Carpentries

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On 1 January, 2018, Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry officially merged to form a new project called The Carpentries.

The original projects remain as distinct lesson entities, but governance, staffing, assessment, and a range of other matters now come under the merged identity - The Carpentries - which is typified by the new website and handbook.

Many in our community might have heard of Library Carpentry, a project that began when Dr. James Baker and others adapted Software Carpentry workshop materials to teach librarians software and data skills at a London workshop in 2015.

Opening discussions about Library Carpentry being a Lesson Organisation with The Carpentries

Mon, 21 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Tracy Teal and Belinda Weaver.

On 1 January, 2018, Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry officially merged to form a new project called The Carpentries.

Launching The Carpentries Website

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Website Launch

We are excited to announce that The Carpentries website is now live!

The new website celebrates our merged identity as The Carpentries.

The new website will give you access to all things ‘Carpentries’, in other words, it will give you easy access to what is common information across the merged organization. The sorts of things you will find there include our Code of Conduct, information about instructor training and assessment, a range of shared policies, including our privacy policy, details of staffing and project governance, and a whole lot more.

Launching The Carpentries Website

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to announce that The Carpentries website is now live!

The new website celebrates our merged identity as The Carpentries.

The new website will give you access to all things ‘Carpentries’, in other words, it will give you easy access to what is common information across the merged organization. The sorts of things you will find there include information about instructor training and assessment, a range of shared policies, including our privacy policy, details of staffing and project governance, and a whole lot more.

Building Library Carpentry Community and Development

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

We are excited to announce that Chris Erdmann has been hired as the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director starting on 4 May, 2018.

Chris has worked in libraries for more than 21 years to integrate data management and workflows in database and library systems. Through training, consulting and tool development to build programs, he has tried to empower people in research and library communities to work effectively with data. Chris received his MLIS at the University of Washington iSchool while working at the University’s Technology Transfer Office, where he helped automate workflows and develop the unit’s web presence and analytics. He spent roughly ten years working alongside astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to advance library data-mining and linking services, e.g. ESO Telescope Bibliography. Also during this time, he led an experimental training series called Data Scientist Training for Librarians (DST4L) geared towards teaching librarians data-savvy skills to help transform their library services to meet the needs of their research communities. He recently joined the Library Carpentry governance group.

Building Library Carpentry Community and Development

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce that Chris Erdmann has been hired as the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director starting May 4, 2018.

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

Call for Code of Conduct Committee Volunteers

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are dedicated to developing and empowering a diverse community of data enthusiasts. Whether you are an Instructor, learner, Maintainer, Mentor, Trainer, Executive Council member, Champion, or member of our Staff, you belong to this community. We are committed to creating avenues for you to contribute that are welcoming and inclusive, whether in-person or online.

Our Code of Conduct (CoC) serves a vital role in this commitment, as it outlines our commitment to provide a welcoming and supportive environment to all people regardless of who you are, or where you come from. Our CoC outlines very detailed reporting guidelines and an enforcement policy, so that, should violations occur, members of our community can rest assured that their concerns are being handled appropriately and in a timely manner.

Call for Code of Conduct Committee Volunteers

Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are dedicated to developing and empowering a diverse community of enthusiasts around computational methods for research and data science. Whether you are an Instructor, learner, Maintainer, Mentor, Trainer, Executive Council member, Champion, or member of our Staff, you belong to this community. We are committed to creating avenues for you to contribute that are welcoming and inclusive, whether in-person or online.

Scaling Collaborative Curriculum Development for Data Skills Training

Mon, 12 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce that we have received a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to train researchers in essential data skills and build a general framework for collaborative lesson development to scale data training. This grant will allow us to create general infrastructure, guidelines and pathways for community engagement to establish open source lesson development as a practice and enable scalable, collaborative data training. Curriculum developed through this grant will include economics, image analysis and chemistry. This work will be a proving ground for the establishment of infrastructure and processes for collaborative and open lesson development in other domains and topics.

Expanding Library Carpentry: Hiring a Library Carpentry Coordinator

Fri, 02 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

California Digital Library is hiring for a Library Carpentry Project Coordinator!

Job posting and application

The deadline for the Library Carpentry Project Coordinator position has just been extended. New deadline February 21, 2018.

California Digital Library is looking to hire a Library Carpentry Coordinator who will work with The Carpentries to further develop Library Carpentry and continue to build a community and curriculum. A successful Library Carpentry Coordinator is passionate about bringing data skills and perspectives to the library community and supporting libraries in building local capacity for training. The Library Carpentry Coordinator will use product management skills, project management skills, software/data skills, and knowledge of the Data Carpentry & Software Carpentry community to promote and expand the reach of the Library Carpentry across the US. While this is a US based position, the work done will be integrated with and support the efforts of the global Library Carpentry community. Applications are open, and the deadline is February 21, 2018.

Carpentries Transition From Fiscally Sponsored Project to NumFOCUS Community Alliance Member

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry have combined their separate projects into a new project, now known as The Carpentries.

As part of this transition, Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry are moving from Fiscally Sponsored Projects with NumFOCUS to The Carpentries with Community Initiatives, whose fiscal sponsorship administration services are better aligned with our emerging needs. The Carpentries looks forward to new opportunities with NumFOCUS and will continue to participate in the NumFOCUS Community as a new member of the NumFOCUS Community Alliance.

Carpentries Transition From Fiscally Sponsored Project to NumFOCUS Community Alliance Member

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry have combined their separate projects into a new project, now known as 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.

New Year Message from the Carpentries' Executive Director

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

One of my favorite sticky note moments involved two sticky notes, red and green, folded into origami cranes, that I received after a workshop. Maybe it was just idle hands working away during an explanatory section, but it seemed to me to be a quiet ’thank you’ for the workshop, one that recognized that there were both good things and bad things in the process of learning, but that they could balance out and create something new and beautiful.

Our long-term assessment results are in!

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A discussion of learner outcomes more than six months after attending a Carpentries workshop

What concrete changes are people implementing in their computational research practices as a result of completing a Carpentries workshop?

Our long term survey report shows that two-day Software or Data Carpentry workshops are effective for increasing skills and confidence, and the adoption of reproducible research perspectives. We see gains in our survey measures for learners’ motivation to continue their learning, change in reproducible research behavior, and frequency of use of computational skills and tools. We find this very exciting, especially since a recent general survey of bootcamps and short-format trainings reports no measurable impact on skill development or research productivity.

Our long-term assessment results are in!

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website What concrete changes are people implementing in their computational research practices as a result of completing a Carpentries workshop?

Carpentries Mentorship Program - 2.0

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re starting a new round of mentoring groups, centered on specific lessons

Mentorship is an important part of the Carpentry experience. As Instructors, we both teach and mentor our Learners. We also mentor each other as Instructors, learning something new from each other every time we teach and interact with one another. The Mentoring Subcommittee offers guidance to new and continuing Instructors through weekly discussion sessions, where Instructors from the global Carpentry community gather to share their experiences and learn from each other. This is a fantastic opportunity to interact with other Carpentry Instructors from around the world.

Carpentries Mentorship Program - 2.0

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Introducing Elizabeth Williams and Karen Word

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At our recent in-person staff meeting in Davis, California, we introduced three new members to the team, SherAaron Hurt, Elizabeth Williams and Karen Word. All will be working with the Carpentries part-time.

Elizabeth has joined Software and Data Carpentry in a part time role as Business Administrator to assist with onboarding and supporting Member organizations and general business and financial operations.

Here’s what Elizabeth has to say about herself:

Introducing Elizabeth Williams and Karen Word

Tue, 19 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Here’s what Elizabeth has to say about herself:

Genomics Bug BBQ

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Bug BBQ starting today, Monday, September 18th!

Be a part of the Genomics Data Carpentry lesson release! We held an Issue Bonanza last month to identify everything from typos to updates in code blocks and had some discussions on broader re-organization. Our next step is to go through and resolve those issues and determine ordering of the lessons.

To help us get over the finish line we’re having a Bug BBQ September 18th - 19th (whatever this is in your time zone!) to squash as many of these bugs as we can, and continue discussions. The Bug BBQ is also an opportunity for you to engage with our world-wide community. For more info about the event, read-on and visit our Bug BBQ Etherpad.

New Staff Member

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are delighted to announce that SherAaron Hurt has accepted the job of Workshop Administrator with the Carpentries. SherAaron is joining our team of workshop coordinators who manage workshop logistics, communicate with hosts and instructors, and respond to general workshop inquiries.

SherAaron lives in Detroit, Michigan, USA. She has been very active in the National Society of Black Engineers, and has a strong background in logistics, marketing, and training and managing both staff and volunteers. Not only has she planned and run events both large and small, but she has a Masters in hospitality management to back up her experience. She is passionate about Software and Data Carpentry’s mission of teaching foundational computational and data skills to researchers, and is keen to help ‘lighten the load’ for instructors and workshop hosts.

Introducing SherAaron Hurt

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Joint future for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry

Sat, 02 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry are sister organizations focused on teaching computational best practices to scientists. They are currently independent organizations with their own fiscal sponsorship, Steering Committees, governance model, and bank accounts. However, as is perhaps no surprise the organizations’ operations have evolved to share memberships, infrastructure for workshop coordination, an instructor training program, and even some staff members. This ‘separate but collaborative’ organizational structure has allowed us to build a shared community of instructors with more than 1000 certified instructors and 47 current Member Organizations around the world.

Joint future for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry

Sat, 02 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

The Magic of Minute Cards

Thu, 29 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

They only take a minute (hence the name: minute cards), but their benefits last a lot longer. During instructor training workshops, we use minute cards to get feedback from learners. They provide formative assessment for the instructors since the cards tell instructors what they are doing well (or not so well) so class teaching can be adjusted accordingly.

Minute cards can alert instructors to questions and misconceptions that have arisen. They are also useful post-workshop to help instructors reflect on how they teach, and what improvements they might need to make in the future either to the lesson itself, or to how they teach it.

Genomics Interest

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Last month, we announced an upcoming revamp for the Data Carpentry Genomics lessons and asked you to let us know how you would like to be involved. We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest from the community, with 78 people indicating their enthusiasm for being a part of this effort.

Twenty-nine people volunteered to serve as Maintainers for the Genomics lessons. You will all be receiving an email shortly with more information about this role. Welcome to the Maintainer team!

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

Call for Contributions: Moving Ahead with Genomics Data Carpentry

Wed, 03 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Way back in March of 2015, a group of 27 Carpentry community members gathered at Cold Spring Harbor for the first Data Carpentry Hackathon on a set of lessons and assessments for Genomics Data Carpentry. From the beginning, we wanted these lessons to be driven by, and useful to the large community of biologists who are (or will be) working with large genomics dataset datasets; perhaps as many as 90% of biologists.

First Data Carpentry Lesson Publication

Tue, 02 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry has published its first set of lessons on Zenodo! The path to get here has included hundreds of people who contributed to these lessons, taught them, used them and learned from them. All the feedback, perspectives and contributions have gone back into the lessons to make them better and keep them updated and relevant. With the Issue Bonanza and the Bug BBQ, the community became the reviewers and editors of these lessons before publication. True peer review!

Instructor Training in Puerto Rico

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On March 24-25, Rayna Harris, Sue McClatchy, and Tracy Teal co-taught an instructor training workshop at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). This was a very special workshop in many ways, and we are excited to share some of the highlights with you.

Also, be sure to check out an accompanying blog post by Humberto Ortiz Zuazaga about the combined Replicathon and Instructor Training events.

Instructor Training in Puerto Rico

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Also, be sure to check out an accompanying blog post by Humberto Ortiz Zuazaga about the combined Replicathon and Instructor Training events.

Bug BBQ squashes bugs!

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In preparation for Data Carpentry’s first lesson release, we hosted a Bug BBQ last week to resolve outstanding issues and issues identified during the Issue Bonanza.

The Bug BBQ and Issue Bonanza were a great success with 40 contributors in 8 countries holding lively discussions in the gitter chat room and submitting over 75 pull requests!

Throughout the event, the lesson maintainers commented on issues and pull requests, merged PRs and resolved merge conflicts. Francois Michonneau created a milestone in the R lesson with relevant issues for the BugBBQ, which will be a great model for future events. A huge thank you to all of our lesson maintainers who constantly demonstrate their commitment to keeping Carpentry lessons amazing!

Data Carpentry supports I4OC

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Our increasing capacity to collect data is changing how we can look at the world. This data we’re collecting has the most promise when it is accessible to all researchers, for all types of inquiry and wherever people do work and ask questions. Open data not only increases the potential for discovery, but also adds to the research’s impact, resulting in more citations and attention to the work. It is also a fundamental element of reproducible research, allowing others to better understand the research and build on the work that has been done.

Be a part of Data Carpentry’s first lesson release!

Wed, 05 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Bug BBQ starting tomorrow, Thursday, April 6, 2017 at 22:00 UTC

Be a part of Data Carpentry’s first lesson release! Data Carpentry is aiming to release its Ecology lessons on April 21st. We held an Issue Bonanza last month to identify everything from typos to updates in code blocks. This was a great success, with over 130 issues generated by 17 members of our community! Our next step is to go through and resolve those issues and finalize the Ecology lessons for release.

Updates from the Data Carpentry Steering Committee annual in-person meeting

Thu, 02 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Every year the Data Carpentry Steering Committee members and Executive Director meet to review the previous year and strategically plan the next one. This year’s meeting was January 31 - February 1, 2017 in Durham, North Carolina, USA.

We started with a review of the previous year, and Data Carpentry has grown in all of our areas of focus, including number of workshops, number of instructors, types of curriculum, increased output of communication, assessment efforts, mentorship, partnerships, development of policies, involvement in grants, hiring of staff, and moves towards financial sustainability.

Ecology Issue Bonanza!!!

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’re excited to announce our first lesson release! Data Carpentry is preparing to publish our Ecology workshop materials on Zenodo this Spring. Software Carpentry regularly publishes their lessons to provide stable identifiers for polished versions of the lessons. This enables referenced discussions of the lesson materials and gives contributors a verifiable product to cite on their CVs or resumes.

This lesson release will include the following repos:

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!

Feedback on Communications

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software and Data Carpentry have at their core a collaboration-driven ethos, and communication is key to that collaboration. We’re reaffirming our commitment to open and transparent communication, because we know we can do better! We want to give community members opportunities to talk to each other, staff and Steering Committees, to get updates on efforts and activities and to generate ideas and participate in discussions.

Feedback on Communications

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A Year in Review: Annual Moore Progress Report

Mon, 05 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A year ago we were fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Data-Driven Discovery initiative to support Data Carpentry to develop and deliver data skills training to researchers in the life and physical sciences. See our original proposal here. Thanks to the Moore Foundation, this support has allowed us as a community to run more workshops, develop new materials, develop infrastructure and advocate for the importance of data skills training for more effective and reproducible research.

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.

September Carpentries Community Call

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Our next Carpentries Community Call (formerly called Lab Meeting or Town Hall meeting) will be Thursday, September 15 (September 16 Aus/NZ). These meetings will now be monthly on the third Thursday of every month. It would be great to see instructors there! These calls are a great chance to connect with other Carpentry instructors and get updates and information on important and interesting topics for the community.

September Carpentries Community Call

Fri, 09 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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.

A Roadmap for Lesson Development

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Our Lessons Roadmap

Development of domain-specific lessons in data literacy is part of the Data Carpentry mission. Data types, language (both computer and vocabulary), the types of questions that people ask, and underlying assumptions differ between fields and communities. Therefore when learning about data analysis, it’s easiest to translate what you’ve learned to your own research when you’re being taught from the perspective of your own domain. This means that we are committed to developing lessons in new fields, with a variety of data types and on new topics.

Welcoming our new Associate Director

Tue, 10 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce that Dr. Erin Becker has accepted the position of Associate Director for Data Carpentry! Erin did her PhD in computational genomics and her postdoc at the Center for Educational Effectiveness at UC Davis. Her postdoc focused on bringing evidence-based teaching strategies to teaching assistants, and she developed and implemented training programs, supervised and mentored instructors and assessed the effectiveness of training practices. Her computational background and experience with educational pedagogy and communities of instructors are skills and perspective she will bring to the Data Carpentry community, and we’re delighted to have her join the team!

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.

Announcing Partnerships

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

This post originally appeared on the Data 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.

New Joint Partnerships with Data Carpentry

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hiring a Deputy Director of Assessment

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website Data Carpentry is hiring!

Data Carpentry seeks to hire a full-time staff member to direct its assessment activities. This person will design, implement, monitor, analyse, and report on a comprehensive system of metrics to help the Data Carpentry project and its sibling organization, Software Carpentry, evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the training they offer, to both learners and instructors.

As the Deputy Director of Assessment, you will have primary responsibility for developing methods and standards for the evaluation of all aspects of Data Carpentry’s training including relevance of curriculum, learning experience, long-term adoption of tools and skills and impact on productivity and reproducibility. You will also work with the Software Carpentry Foundation to build evaluation of the instructor development program, including effectiveness of instructor training and mentorship and the longer term impacts of instructor training on career development for instructors. You will also have the opportunity to collaborate with the training coordinators from related organizations to coordinate strategies and initiatives.

Starting off Data Carpentry in 2016

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In 2015 we were just starting out as an organization and ran limited workshops as we were working to scale. With many Software Carpentry instructors now certified as Data Carpentry instructors, our Program Coordinator, Maneesha Sane, coordinating workshops, a new website and an instructor database, in 2016 we’re set to do a lot more!

The website was a bit behind our 2016 activities, so we’d like to highlight some workshops that have happened already.

Assistant Director Position with Data Carpentry

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Data Carpentry seeks a full-time Associate Director to lead the organization’s community engagement and education activities, to cultivate a healthy supportive community and provide mentorship and training to current and future instructors. The Associate Director is one of the two key roles providing leadership to Data Carpentry’s core efforts and is expected to shape the organization’s operational functioning, influence training, and contribute to strategic planning.

Data Carpentry is a not-for-profit organization developing and teaching workshops on fundamental data skills needed to conduct research. Its mission is to provide researchers high-quality, domain-specific training covering the full lifecycle of data-driven research. Data Carpentry lessons are intentionally domain specific, and span the life, physical, and social sciences. Data Carpentry workshops create an environment friendly to learners who have little to no prior computational experience, and are designed to empower researchers to apply the skills learned to data driven discovery in their own research.

The Associate Director position is initially funded for 2 years through a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. They will be hired and paid as a contractor of NumFOCUS, Data Carpentry’s fiscal sponsor. Review of applications will begin December 18th, 2015, and the position will remain open until filled.

Hiring an Associate Director

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry is hiring! http://www.datacarpentry.org/jobs/

With the support of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, we now have the opportunity to hire an Associate Director. The Associate Director is one of the two key roles providing leadership to Data Carpentry’s core efforts and is expected to shape the organization’s operational functioning, influence training, and contribute to strategic planning. The main focus of the Associate Director’s role will be in community engagement and education as well as overseeing communications.

Workshop in Brussels, 2-3 Nov 2015

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Belgium has a flourishing biological research community and skills in data handling have become an essential tool for anyone conducting biodiversity science. The workshop was jointly organised by the VIB and the Botanic Garden Meise as part of a series of “Empowering Biodiversity workshops” supported by the Belgian Science Policy Office.

The thirty-five attendees of the workshop came from a wide variety of backgrounds in biology, including marine biology, bioinformatic, plant biology and ecology. They were also at many different points in their career, some were students wanting to gain experience, while others were established scientists looking to learn new tricks. Nevertheless, this diversity was not a problem for the workshop as everyone came with enthusiasm and an interest in improving their knowledge. We were instructed by Leszek Tarkowski and Frederik Coppens with support from Dima Fishman and Christof De Bo.

Collaboration with rOpenSci on training for working with open data

Thu, 19 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Congratulations to rOpenSci for their grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust! Through this grant, Data Carpentry will be able to work with rOpenSci to develop and deliver lessons on R tools for data sharing, acquisition, retrieval, and visualization to support the use and publishing of open data.

rOpenSci aims to create tools and a community for working with and producing open data. Data Carpentry starts with data, and our goal is to enable researchers to turn data in to knowledge. This joint effort will allow us to provide training on how to work with the increasing amounts of publicly available data as well as how to effectively publish data for reproducibility and re-use. We’re excited about this opportunity and the support of rOpenSci through Helmsley for this effort!

Data Carpentry Instructor Certification
for Software Carpentry Instructors

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry has been growing over the last year, and now with the addition of Maneesha Sane as Program Coordinator, we have the chance to run even more workshops in more domains. To date, we have used some great instructors from the Software Carpentry community as teachers; what we would like to do now is put that on a more regular footing.

Data Carpentry Instructor Certification for Software Carpentry Instructors

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Re-posted from the Data Carpentry blog.

We want to update the instructor records to see who’s interested and qualified to teach Data Carpentry, so we’ve created a Data Carpentry Instructor FastTrack certification. If you have already taught a Data Carpentry workshop, you’re registered as a Data Carpentry instructor and don’t need to go through the FastTrack certification process. If you are currently a Software Carpentry instructor and would like to teach core data wrangling skills to people who are new to computing, this program is for you!

Grant from the Moore Foundation

Wed, 12 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are extremely pleased to announce that Data Carpentry has received $750,000 in funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

With more than $6.4 billion in assets, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is the ninth largest foundation in the United States. The Science Program accounts for approximately 40 percent of the foundation’s annual grant making, making the foundation one of the largest private funders of science nationwide.

Data Carpentry Workshop Fees

Mon, 20 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

After discussion with our Steering Committee and the Software Carpentry Foundation, we have decided to increase our workshop coordination fee in order to better reflect the real cost of our staff’s time, our overheads and the value of the training. This is part of our broader efforts to make sure that Data Carpentry provides the best training possible and is sustainable long into the future.

Data Carpentry Goes to the Netherlands

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Last week, between 22nd and 25th June, we ran a Data Carpentry hackathon and workshop at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. Both events were a part of ELIXIR Pilot Project aiming to develop Data and Software Carpentry training across the ELIXIR Nodes. The project is coordinated by ELIXIR UK and a number of other Nodes are partnering up, including ELIXIR Netherlands, ELIXIR Finland and ELIXIR Switzerland.

Data Carpentry Genomics and Assessment Hackathon

Wed, 28 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you're working or interested in genomics or assessment, we hope you'll consider applying for our upcoming Data Carpentry Genomics and Assessment hackathon. We're very excited about this event and the opportunity to develop lessons targeting genomics researchers and build assessment into the Data Carpentry curriculum. Travel support is available, so please apply to participate! It's a short application, and the deadline is this Friday, January 30th. If you have any questions about the event, please let us know.

Dates: March 23-25, 2015
Location: Cold Spring Harbor Labs, NY
Call for Participation
Application

Data Carpentry Genomics and Asssessment Hackathon

Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Through the support of SESYNC, BEACON and iPlant we are holding a hackathon for the development of lessons for a Genomics Data Carpentry and to develop assessment for these lessons as well as an assessment framework for all Data Carpentry lessons.

Dates: March 23-25, 2015
Location: Cold Spring Harbor Labs, NY

Goal: Develop materials and assessment for a two day Data Carpentry workshop focusing on the skills needed to work with genomic data

Guiding Data Carpentry

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Guiding Data Carpentry

We’ve been excited to see the enthusiasm of the community for Data Carpentry workshops and materials, and in the months ahead want to be able to engage all the people who are interested in participating as instructors, developers, hosts, sponsors, learners or anything else. We want to have good infrastructure and guidelines that can help make efforts the most effective.

Moore Foundation contribution to Data Carpentry

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce that Data Carpentry has received a contribution from the Moore Foundation to support its activities and growth. Data Carpentry teaches researchers skills for working more effectively with data - skills that enable the paradigm of data-driven discovery being advanced by the Moore Foundation. With the Moore Foundation’s support, we will be able to help researchers in all domains accelerate their research.

Data Carpentry Blog

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry has now established a blog for announcements or posts on topics of interest for Data Carpentry enthusiasts. If you have a topic for a post or would like to guest post here, please let us know!

Learn more and contribute on GitHub.

Browser support

This should work on all browsers

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who’s been enthusiastic about Data Carpentry or contributed so far!