Blog 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.

Subcommunity Spotlight: UK Carpentry Community

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Subcommunity Profile

The UK Carpentries community brings together people involved in teaching computational research skills, including Carpentry Instructors, helpers, and workshop coordinators.

The community has long-standing links with the Software Sustainability Institute, the well-developed UK RSE landscape, and several RSE groups with a strong interest in training, including the large groups that support the national supercomputing service and organisations like the Met Office. While the first Instructor Trainer Training workshop for the UK community was hosted in 2014, the UK Carpentries was formalised in 2021.

GenAI in Workshops: A Bonus Module to Instructor Training

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is excited to launch a new bonus module to Instructor Training, GenAI in Workshops, designed to empower Instructors to account for learners’ use of generative AI chatbot tools in their workshops.

Why now?

We developed the bonus module in response to the growing numbers of reports we have received from Instructors who have observed frequent chatbot use among their learners. (This is a trend across many educational settings, which is probably one reason why the new series of community sessions on GenAI and Teaching is proving so popular.)

Software Carpentry Governance Committee - Goals for 2026

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Looking for New Committee Members!

The Software Carpentry Governance Committee is excited to share our plans for this year below.

We are looking for a couple of members to join the team, as several of this year’s committee members had to step away due to other commitments. If you are excited about helping to shape the future of the Software Carpentry lesson program and would like to participate, please fill in the application form, or send an email to Toby Hodges to indicate your interest or ask questions.

RFP: Consultancy support for the Open Science Coalition

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Five leading open science organisations – The Carpentries, OLS, rOpenSci, pyOpenSci, and PREreview – are seeking an external consultant or group to facilitate several activities over the second half of 2026. Selected consultants will continue the organisational alignment and collaboration work previously announced in late 2025.

This work has three strands:

Facilitation: co-ordinating between the five groups during the grant-writing period, possibly coordinating the grantwriter and governance facilitator as well.
Governance: Creating ways of working between the five organisations (Pitches by invitation only). This would occur during the grant-writing period and possibly after.
Grantwriting: to lead-author our multi-funder grant pitch. We expect that this grant will be pitched to multiple funders to co-fund, and may involve more than one phase, e.g. discovery phase, pilot phase, and implementation phase, over multiple years.

We would be willing to consider pitches that cover multiple roles at once.

The Carpentries Forms a Strategic Partnership with datocracy AI

Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two Organisations. One Bold Mission.

The future of AI must be shaped by people who understand it and have the skills to question it. Today, datocracy AI and The Carpentries are announcing a partnership that puts people at the very centre of the future of AI training and usage. We are proud to announce this collaboration, as a meeting of two organisations with deeply complementary missions, and a shared understanding that knowledge, when made accessible and equitable, is powerful.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula, including our newest Lesson Program, HPC Carpentry. Seventeen new Maintainers participated in the two hour onboarding, with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintenance.
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community.
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors.
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template.
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee.

In addition to the onboarding sessions, Maintainers are eligible to join one of our upcoming GitHub for Maintainers and Lesson Developers professional development courses, equipping them with the skills they need to maintain an open source project effectively.

Applications Now Open for Carpentries Instructor Trainer Training Starting July 2026

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Do you look back fondly on your Carpentries Instructor Training and think, “I would love to teach that!”?

Do you want to help people learn to be more effective teachers, while continuing to develop your own teaching skill through regular engagement with our Instructor Training curriculum?

Maybe you are looking for another way to get involved and give back to The Carpentries community.

If any of these describe you, consider joining our vibrant community of Instructor Trainers. We are pleased to announce that applications are now open for anyone wishing to become a Carpentries Instructor Trainer!

Build Data Skills in Your Community: Become a Carpentries Partner

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Build Data Skills Where You Work

Modern research, teaching, and professional practice increasingly rely on data and computational skills. Yet many people are asked to work with code, data, and collaborative technologies without formal training. The Carpentries helps address this gap.

Through hands-on workshops, Instructor training, and collaborative lesson development, our global community supports organisations in building practical skills for working with data and code while fostering a culture of open, reproducible research.

Stories from The Carpentries Community: Why Skill-Building, Teaching, and Community Matter for Open Science

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Community Teaching Data Skills for Open Science

The Carpentries is a global community dedicated to teaching foundational data and computational skills for research and professional practice. Our programs help people work more effectively with data, code, and software while supporting open, reproducible science.

Today, the community includes:

5,405 certified Instructors
185 Instructor Trainers
4,965 workshops taught in 72 countries

But these numbers only tell part of the story.

The real impact of The Carpentries comes from the people who teach, learn, and collaborate through our programs. Through our Partnership program, organisations join a global network focused on building local capacity for teaching data skills.

The Carpentries Receives a Catalytic Award for Training at Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Workshops and Instruction Team is thrilled to share that our project, Empowering Indigenous Research Through Open Science: Pedagogical Training at KBOCC, has received 15,000 USD in funding in the second round of the 2026 Open Scholarship Catalytic Awards Program.

This award supports a collaboration between The Carpentries and Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College (KBOCC) to strengthen open scholarship at a rural Tribal College and expand equitable access to research training within Indigenous communities.

Why Partner with The Carpentries? Building Skills, Community, and Global Impact

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Why Partner with The Carpentries

Across research institutions, universities, and libraries worldwide, the need for strong data and computational skills continues to grow.

The Carpentries Partnership program helps organisations meet this need by building sustainable training capacity within their own communities. Rather than relying solely on external training, partners develop local and regional Instructors, contribute to shared lesson materials, and connect with a global community of educators and researchers.

Through this model, organisations are able to strengthen both their technical capacity and their teaching culture.

Our People, Our Impact: How The Carpentries Community Multiplies Skills Worldwide

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Our People, Our Impact

The impact of The Carpentries has always been rooted in people.

Across universities, research institutes, libraries, and organisations around the world, community members are working together to build capacity for teaching foundational data and computational skills. At the center of this work are the people who teach, maintain, and build community around the programs that make our workshops possible. They then go on to introduce The Carpentries to other individuals at their institutions and empower them with the same skills. This is where the multiplier effect begins - one of the main benefits of an institutional Partnership with the Carpentries.

The Carpentries Partnership Program is Now Live!

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After many months in the making, we are thrilled to announce that The Carpentries Partnership program is finally launching today!

This is an exciting outcome of efforts by The Carpentries Core Team and broader community to redesign our former Membership program into a program that is responsive and best meets the needs of our partnering organisations and institutions.

Over the coming weeks, we will release a series of blog posts expanding on the value of having a Partnership with The Carpentries. In this blog post we provide an outline of the service offerings that can be included in a Partnership agreement beginning today.

Join the 2026 Maintainer Onboarding Cohort!

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next cohort of Maintainers. We are delighted that 79 of 112 existing Maintainers have chosen to continue in their role for another year. To keep the community healthy and ensure that all lessons are well supported, we are calling for volunteers to step into the role.

This year, we are also onboarding Maintainers for our newest Lesson Program, HPC Carpentry, for the first time. Read on for details!

Instats Pilot: What and Why? (and a Call for Helpers)

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

At the end of 2025, we began exploring a partnership with Instats to offer recorded Carpentries workshop sessions. Instats is a mission-driven organisation that focuses on delivering a diverse range of seminars that inspire high-quality, ethical, and impactful research.

Why are we partnering with Instats?

The goal of working with Instats is to create more opportunities for anyone who can’t attend in-person or locally hosted workshops due to availability in their region, and circumstances such as time zone conflicts. An added benefit is the ability for all learners to engage with our lessons at their own pace.

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.

HPC Carpentry Approved as The Carpentries' Fourth Lesson Program

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 5 February 2026, our Board of Directors voted unanimously to approve the adoption of HPC Carpentry as the fourth official lesson program of The Carpentries, alongside the Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lesson programs. In this post, our Director of Curriculum and members of the HPC Carpentry Steering Committee reflect on an exciting moment and explore what is involved in operationalising a new lesson program.

End of Support for Our Previous Lesson Infrastructure

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Following the January 2025 announcement that The Carpentries would sunset support for our previous lesson infrastructure, styles, at the end of last year, the Curriculum Team has been archiving repositories that had not migrated to The Carpentries Workbench over the last few weeks.

All of our official lessons had been expertly transitioned by Zhian Kamvar, our former Lesson Infrastructure Developer and architect of the Workbench, during the initial rollout of the new tooling in 2023. By the beginning of 2025, the majority of the community’s lessons in The Carpentries Incubator and Carpentries Lab had either been created with the Workbench or already been converted to use it. This included many that were migrated to the Workbench during a hackathon session at CarpentryConnect Heidelberg 2024, led by Aleksandra Nenadic and Matthew Bluteau.

Join the Data Carpentry Governance Committee

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Join the Data Carpentry Governance Committee and help guide the strategic development of the project!

Following the successful recruitment of new members to Governance Committees for Library Carpentry and Software Carpentry, we are calling for volunteers from the Data Carpentry community to become Lesson Program Governors for the project.

What is a Lesson Program Governor?

LPGCs oversee the strategy of the lesson program, advocate for the project in their networks, and act as a point of contact for the project e.g., liaising with the Board of Directors, the Core Team, and the wider community. Learn more about the powers and responsibilities of the committees in a previous blog post and check out the Lesson Program Governors Handbook for other resources that support this community role.

One Year Independent: What We’ve Learned from Our Fiscal Sponsorship Transition

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 1st February 2025, The Carpentries completed its transition from a fiscally sponsored organisation to an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Over the past year, the Executive Team undertook a formal evaluation to understand how this shift has affected our mission delivery, governance, finances, and relationships with our community. This post summarises the main themes that emerged.

Being independent has given The Carpentries greater latitude to make decisions that reflect our values and long-term strategy. This has been particularly important in a changing funding landscape. Our experience navigating a major federal proposal independently, and ultimately declining an award whose conditions conflicted with our commitment to inclusivity, underscored the importance of organisational autonomy and reinforced the role we intend to play as a values-led organisation in the open science ecosystem. Our leadership and decision influenced the Python Software Foundation to also reject federal funding on the same grounds.

Calling Community Pilots: 14 New Open Science Lessons for Library Carpentry

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Lessons for Librarians in Open Science Principles and Methods project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), has reached an exciting milestone. Over the past two years, we’ve worked with 27 expert authors across 14 teams to develop 15 new lesson repositories focused on open science for librarians.

Introducing the 2026-2027 Carpentries Board of Directors

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

Introducing the 2026–2027 Carpentries Board of Directors

We are excited to share an update that reflects both progress and possibility. The past year marked a major inflexion point for The Carpentries as we completed our transition to an independent non-profit and began operating with a new governance model. In the future, our Board of Directors will continue to work alongside the Core Team, community, and our partners to advance our mission and deliver on the strategic priorities outlined in our bridge 2026-2028 Strategic Plan.

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!

Subcommunity Spotlight: CarpentriesOffline

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Subcommunity Spotlight blog series aims to raise awareness of the many vibrant subcommunities within The Carpentries and highlight their activities. A subcommunity brings together a subset of the broader Carpentries community. It may be local (e.g., a university-based Carpentries Club), regional (e.g., The Carpentries in Africa), or special interest-driven (e.g., HPC Carpentry, Carpentries-es, CarpentriesOffline). The series aims to foster connections among members, whether they live in the same region, speak a common language, or share similar interests. To learn more or get involved in a subcommunity, join the subcommunity channel on Slack (#subcommunity) or reach out via email at community@carpentries.org. If you lead a subcommunity and would like to be featured in a future edition of this series, we’d love to hear from you!

Ringing in the New Year: Instructor Community Accomplishments, Updates and Resources

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

2025 was a year of growth, learning, and achievement for the Instructor community and the Workshops and Instruction Team (WIT). Together, we had many accomplishments, including the delivery of 29 Centrally-Organised workshops with no cancellations, welcoming 294 new Instructors into the community, and hosting two Carpentries-sponsored workshops that were open and free to the public (a long-time goal for WIT!).

Pretix for Community Sessions is now live!

We’re excited to carry this positive momentum into 2026. We already have three Centrally-Organised workshops in progress and filled by Instructors, with more planned for March and April. We’re also happy to share that registration for Community Sessions is now live in Pretix. This includes Instructor Meetings and a new event: Instructor Practice Sessions (more on this below). Pretix is an open-source event registration and ticketing system that offers several benefits, including better privacy, automated email reminders, and the ability to easily add events to your calendar.

Our 2026-2028 Bridge Strategic Plan is here

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing Our 2026–2028 Bridge Strategic Plan

As we begin a new chapter together as a community, we are excited to share The Carpentries Bridge Strategic Plan for 2026–2028. This plan reflects where we are now as an organisation, what we have learned over the past five years, and how we intend to move forward in alignment with our core values.

The next three years are a bridge. A bridge between our recent period of organisational change and the future we are building together. A bridge between sustaining what works and investing in what is needed next. And a bridge between global growth and deeper, more equitable engagement with communities around the world.

Welcoming new Lesson Developer Trainers

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is delighted to welcome five newly-certified Lesson Developer Trainers!

Thomas Cason
Sally Chang
Johan Hidding
Nathaniel Porter
Jannetta Steyn

This new cohort of Trainers enriches the existing group teaching Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT), bringing a wealth and diversity of experience to share with our lesson developers. These five community members completed a seven-week program of Trainer Training to gain certification, combining relevant reading tasks and reflective discussions with support from members of the Curriculum Team and Maintainers of the CLDT curriculum.

Cheers to a New Year of Learning, Collaboration, and Impact

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As we ring in the new year, I want to begin by saying thank you. Our global community of learners, Instructors, Maintainers, Lesson Developers, partners, and supporters continues to be the reason The Carpentries thrives. Your commitment to teaching, learning, and sharing computational and data skills has shaped who we are today and continues to guide where we are going next.

Over the past year, we have done important reflection and planning to prepare for our next chapter, and this month we will share the bridge 2026-2028 Strategic Plan that builds on our long-standing mission while responding to a rapidly changing research, education, and open science landscape. This plan is about focus, sustainability, and impact. It is also about ensuring that The Carpentries remains a strong, values-driven organisation that can serve its community for years to come.

Introducing Cite This Lesson Pages to The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A new version of The Carpentries Workbench was released this month, and included several exciting new features.

Cite This Lesson Pages

Cite This Lesson pages will now be included in any lesson with a CITATION.cff file in the source repository. By displaying contributor information as a part of the lesson website, these pages will provide a lot more visibility to all the people who have made the lesson what it is. The Curriculum Team has been hoping to provide this kind of acknowledgement to lesson contributors for many years, and this is a major step towards the establishment of a regular release cycle for Carpentries lessons.

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!

Subcommunity Spotlight: Ukraine

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Subcommunity Spotlight blog series aims to raise awareness of the many vibrant subcommunities within The Carpentries and highlight their activities. A brings together a subset of the broader Carpentries community. It may be local (e.g., a university-based Carpentries Club), regional (e.g., The Carpentries in Africa), or special interest-driven (e.g., HPC Carpentry, Carpentries-es, CarpentriesOffline). The series aims to foster connections among members, whether they live in the same region, speak a common language, or share similar interests. To learn more or get involved in a subcommunity, join the #subcommunity channel on Slack or reach out via email at community@carpentries.org. If you lead a subcommunity and would like to be featured in a future edition of this series, we’d love to hear from you!

Teaching in Times of Crisis: Insights from CarpentryCon

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Hello Carpentries community! In this blog post, we will explore how educators can effectively teach during such difficult times, drawing insights from a virtual workshop at CarpentryCon we ran back in 2022. The challenges that Instructors are facing in 2025 are certainly different from those faced in 2022. Many of us were deeply concerned with the return to in-person activities following the pandemic-related closures. Others were embedded in discourse surrounding the 2022 presidential election in the United States. We also saw the initial outbreak of the present-day conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine.

Ten Years of Library Carpentry

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

November 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of the very first Library Carpentry workshop at the Centre for Information Science, City University London. Past and present contributors to the lesson program got together last week to celebrate the milestone, share their memories, and express their gratitude for the many successes of the project over the last decade.

What Part Two of The Carpentries' Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT) Taught Us About Sustainable Lesson Design

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was first published on LinkedIn. It is republished here with only slight formatting variations to ensure conformity with The Carpentries blog posts style guide.

Fresh off the pilot, we went into the second phase of The Carpentries Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT2), with a clearer understanding of our learners’ needs and a list of ways to make the lessons even better.

The second phase of The Carpentries training helped us fine-tune what we had started: improving lesson flow, refining exercises, and enhancing accessibility features across the board.

Join the Code of Conduct Committee: Help Foster a Welcoming and Inclusive Carpentries Community

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is committed to providing a welcoming and supportive environment for all people, and our Code of Conduct (CoC) serves as the framework for this commitment. The Code of Conduct Committee (CoCC) is responsible for managing the Code of Conduct, handling reports of conduct violations, and advocating for the CoC in the community.

The Carpentries Code of Conduct Committee is currently recruiting new members. We seek 3-4 community members who are passionate about ensuring that The Carpentries is a welcoming space, who have time to dedicate to the committee, and who bring diversity to the committee. Additionally, although it is beneficial, having previous experience with this kind of work is not a requirement.

Building a More Inclusive Glosario: Celebrating Our 2025 Milestones

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past year, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Carpentries has made incredible progress in improving Glosario, our open, multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms.

In 2025, we focused on making Glosario more accessible, inclusive, and community-driven. Guided by feedback from our community, we enhanced the ways our community members can contribute, learn, and be recognised for their work.

Join Our Final 2025 Co-Working Session

You are invited to the next and final Glosario Community Co-Working Session for 2025.
🗓 Wednesday, 5 November 2025
🕒 15:00 UTC

Subcommunity Spotlight: Africa

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

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:

Calling for Beta Pilot Workshops: Geospatial Data Carpentry for Urbanism

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Researchers from the Department of Urbanism and members of the Digital Competence Centre at TU Delft have worked since 2023 on the curriculum Geospatial Data Carpentry for Urbanism, currently in The Carpentries Incubator.

This curriculum, inspired by the pre-existing Geospatial Data Carpentry, part of The Carpentries, was designed to introduce learners from the domain of urbanism to the use of R programming when analysing and visualising vector and raster data. It also introduces basic GIS operations using R. These skills are particularly relevant when working in the field of urbanism, but can be applied to other urbanism-related ones.

Join Us in Welcoming Jose Niño Muriel as Our New Maintainer Community Lead!

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Hello everyone,

My name is Jose Niño Muriel, and I’m thrilled to introduce myself as your new Maintainer Community Lead, continuing the great work Nathaniel Porter has done over the past few years.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been deeply involved with Carpentries-related activities in my role as Data Science Community Lead at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library (UCSB). There, you can usually find me organising and teaching workshops, and supporting our wonderful community of helpers and Instructors in Carpentry @ UCSB.

We're Almost There: Share Your Input on The Carpentries' New Membership Model

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is evolving — and so is our membership program. To remain a strong, sustainable community of practice, we are finalising a new model that reflects today’s realities, tomorrow’s opportunities, and, most importantly, the needs of our community.

Last year, many of you shared your perspectives in our 2024 member survey. Your feedback was invaluable — it highlighted where our membership program could be more relevant, flexible, and supportive. That input has guided our redesign, and now we’re ready to take the next step.

From Surviving to Thriving: A Convening to Reclaim and Sustain Open Science Communities

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Open science has transformed how research is conducted, shared, and reused. Yet the organisations at the heart of this transformation are often left vulnerable, underfunded, and disconnected from one another. To move from simply surviving to truly thriving, five leading open science organisations—The Carpentries, OLS, rOpenSci, pyOpenSci, and PREreview—are convening to chart a collective path forward. We are so grateful to The Navigation Fund for supporting this work, and invite our communities to review the full proposal online.

Final Update from Outgoing Maintainer Community Lead, Nathaniel Porter

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

For the past 2 years, I have had the privilege of serving The Carpentries as Maintainer Community Lead, a role that has continued to develop and become central to the Carpentries community over the last six years as Angela, Daniel, Vini, and now me have explored what it can be. At the end of September, I am leaving the role to focus on other goals (like fully launching Open Qualitative Research with Taguette and QualCoder Library Carpentry lessons), and so, in keeping with tradition, I get to share one final blog post about my experience.

Become a Lesson Developer Trainer

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Do you have experience in lesson/curriculum development? Want to share that expertise with others in The Carpentries community? Interested in helping to build the Carpentries Incubator community? If so, apply to join the upcoming round of Lesson Developer Trainer Training!

What do Lesson Developer Trainers do?

Certified Lesson Developer Trainers teach The Carpentries Collaborative Lesson Development Training to community members who want to learn how to design and develop open source lessons in collaboration with others. They lead training events and join community meetings with other Lesson Developer Trainers to discuss topics relevant to the training and lesson development in general.

Introducing the New Instructor Trainers Leadership Committee for 2025

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In March, members of the Instructor Trainer community were invited to vote in its fifth annual election for the Instructor Trainers Leadership Committee (ITLC). ITLC provides governance and development support to our growing subcommunity of Instructor Trainers, and makes decisions on behalf of that community that affect our Instructor Training program and related policies. However, this year an election was not required because the number of candidates (four) was fewer than the number of available seats (five). All four candidates were thus appointed by default, and to ensure all seats were filled, the committee appointed a fifth member.

Incentivising the Completion of Workshop Surveys: Tips for Instructors

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As all Carpentries Instructors probably know, it is very hard to get people to complete workshop surveys. It was time to find a solution, but what can we do to inspire folks to complete yet another boring survey. Despite all my promises to learners that we look at and consider all the comments and feedback we get, it has been a miracle every time we get more than 50 per cent of attendees to complete it. Giving people time, at the end of the lesson, to complete the survey helped a bit, but not much.

Subcommunity Spotlight: Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Subcommunity Spotlight blog series aims to raise awareness of the many vibrant subcommunities within The Carpentries and highlight their activities. A subcommunity brings together a subset of the broader Carpentries community. It may be local (e.g., a university-based Carpentries club), regional (e.g., The Carpentries in Africa), or special interest-driven (e.g., HPC Carpentry, Carpentries-es, CarpentriesOffline). The series aims to foster connections among members, whether they live in the same region, speak a common language, or share similar interests. To learn more or get involved in a subcommunity, join the #subcommunity channel on Slack or reach out via email at community@carpentries.org. If you lead a subcommunity and would like to be featured in a future edition of this series, we’d love to hear from you!

On the Importance of Agility and Values-Aligned Decisions-Making

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Since we announced our withdrawal from the NSF Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) proposal we have received overwhelming support from community members, champions, and like-minded projects. Thank you for your words of support, encouragement, and individual donations. We are truly inspired by you.

The non-profit sector faces unprecedented challenges requiring transformative leadership approaches. Traditional collaboration models struggle with evolving social needs, economic pressures, and unnecessary disruption. The Carpentries is here to contribute practical solutions that address these contemporary realities. Values-driven decision making forms the foundation of effective non-profit leadership, yet implementing hard decisions takes courage. Modeling our organisation’s values in action requires navigating complex partner interests, addressing competing priorities, and facing resource constraints while maintaining organisational integrity. Since our announcement, we have been called on to help refine methodologies that enable leaders to systematically evaluate decisions against core mission and values, ensuring strategic choices advance organisational purpose rather than merely responding to immediate pressures.

Calling for Beta Pilot Workshops: Building Better Research Software

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We recently published a new version of Building Better Research Software, a lesson in The Carpentries Incubator designed to serve as a “next steps” workshop after Software Carpentry. Previously known as FAIR Research Software, the curriculum has undergone significant changes over the last few months, and we are now seeking Carpentries Instructors willing to teach it in their communities and provide feedback to further improve it.

Lesson Profile

Title: Building Better Research Software
Lesson site: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/better-research-software/
Lesson repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/better-research-software/
Teaching time: The lesson is designed to be taught in two full days or four half days

Learning Objectives

After following the lesson, learners will be able to:

AI Carpentry? Helping learners make better choices with genAI.

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In two recent community discussion sessions, we explored what mental model of machine learning/deep learning we could teach to learners already familiar with the basics of programming, to help them safely and sensibly implement these methods in their software and data analysis. Some great lessons on these topics already exist in The Carpentries Incubator and Lab, and I am excited about the prospect of adapting them into new official Carpentries workshops, either within an existing lesson program or under a completely new banner (e.g., “AI Carpentry.”)

You are Invited to Our Next Community Session Host Onboarding Call

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Are you passionate about sharing knowledge and building connections within The Carpentries community? Do you enjoy discussing open education, inclusive teaching, or community building? Are you interested in helping others learn more about how The Carpentries works and how they can get involved? Then consider becoming a Community Session Host! Join us on August 19 at 14:00 UTC for our next Community Session Host Onboarding Call.

We are seeking community hosts to lead brief community sessions:

Calling for new Lesson Program Governors

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Lesson Program Governance Committees (LPGCs) of Library Carpentry and Software Carpentry are looking for new members. This is an exciting time for both projects as they consider expanding their range of workshops. Joining the community governance body is a great way to guide the development and support the progress of a lesson program.

What is a Lesson Program Governor?

Building Skills with Generalist Repositories: An Update on the Carpentries + GREI Collaboration

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In late 2024, we launched a collaboration between The Carpentries and the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI), aiming to explore how generalist data repositories such as Dataverse, Dryad, Figshare, Mendeley Data, Open Science Framework, Vivli, and Zenodo might be more intentionally woven into the data skills we teach. Since then, we’ve taken important steps toward that vision by co-creating new lesson content, running an in-person workshop, and inviting the community into a broader conversation about data sharing and discoverability.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. Thirty new Maintainers participated in the three hour onboarding, with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintenance.
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community.
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors.
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template.
Practicing core technical skills for lesson maintenance.
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee.

We are excited to welcome these new members to the Maintainer community and look forward to working with them, along with our many committed continuing Maintainers, over the coming months.

Announcing Withdrawal of NSF Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems Proposal

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In September 2024, The Carpentries submitted a proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) Program. This project would position The Carpentries as a leading open source ecosystem and further solidify our independence as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation.

Developing a proposal of this magnitude (1.5 million USD) involved a significant amount of preparation, from conceptualisation of the idea to navigating the complex submission process. It was the first time The Carpentries did it on our own, with our Associate Director, Erin Becker, leading as principal investigator.

AI Community Discussion Session Report: Case Studies to Inform Curriculum

Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In March, The Carpentries hosted a pair of AI and The Carpentries sessions, the last we currently have planned in this series. These sessions, titled Case Studies to Inform Carpentries Curriculum, were an opportunity to hear directly from community leaders and learn from their teaching experience with and about large language models (LLMs). After several open discussion sessions facilitated by members of the Core Team, we took a deeper dive into the perspectives and expertise of particular community members.

Recognising Our Global Contributors: Glosario’s Next Chapter

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At The Carpentries, every contribution matters. Our community includes individuals from many countries, languages, and backgrounds. Together, we are building Glosario, a free and open glossary of computing and data science terms in many languages. By the end of 2024, Glosario included translations in more than 26 languages. This would not be possible without the hard work and time shared by our global contributors. As Glosario grows, we want to make it easier for more people to join in, and ensure everyone’s work is recognised and appreciated.

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.

Lessons on Lessons: How The Carpentries' Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT) is Shaping our Approach

Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was first published on Deborah Udoh’s personal blog site, and again on the Software Sustainability Institute’s news and blogs hub. It is republished here with only slight formatting variations to ensure conformity with The Carpentries blog posts style guide.

On the 25th to 28th of March, the Pre-Seeds team participated in Part One of The Carpentries’ Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT). It was an enriching experience, and we are deeply grateful to our facilitators, Toby Hodges, Aleksandra Nenadic, and the larger Carpentries leadership team. We learned a lot and want to share our reflections on what worked well, what could be improved, and how this training will shape our approach moving forward.

Announcing organisational sustainability support from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce that The Carpentries has received a two-year grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support initiatives that will strengthen our global impact and position us as a leading independent open source non-profit organisation. The project is designed to scale our mission meaningfully — building regional capacity, enhancing financial sustainability, and expanding our contributions to critical and emerging fields such as Research Software Engineering (RSEng) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Recap: The 2025 Board of Directors Annual Retreat

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The members of the Board of Directors held their annual retreat from 24 to 27 February 2025. With a comprehensive and well-structured agenda, the Board had time to connect and discuss our strategic planning, governance procedures, and organisational vision.

With a hybrid modality, the Board also had the opportunity to review, discuss, and make decisions about the composition and work of our standing committees while strengthening our collective purpose as a leadership body.

Join the 2025 Maintainer Onboarding Cohort!

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next cohort of Maintainers. We are delighted that 83 of 111 current Maintainers have chosen to continue in their role for another year, meaning that our need to onboard new Maintainers is not as urgent as it has been in previous years. Nevertheless, to keep the community healthy and ensure that all lessons are well supported, we are calling for volunteers to step into the role.

The Carpentries' Reinforced Commitment to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Community,

As a U.S.-based, global non-profit organisation serving hundreds of thousands of practitioners and advocates who emphasise the critical role of software and data in advancing research, we would be remiss not to speak up about the impact of the U.S. government’s Executive Order on DEI Programs and Preferencing. The impact has been felt globally. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a global trend of attacks on science and initiatives that champion inclusion, equity, diversity, and accessibility. We rarely make public statements, preferring to focus on daily operations that help us achieve our mission. However, the growing impact of the Executive Order has prompted us to reaffirm our position.

Community Session Report: Essential Knowledge and Common Misconceptions

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In February, The Carpentries hosted the second of three pairs of AI and The Carpentries community discussion sessions. The topic of this pair of sessions was Essential Knowledge and Common Misconceptions. For the Curriculum Team, the primary objective of these discussions was to identify the aspects of LLMs and their use in programming/data science that are most important to discuss during a Carpentries workshop. This post summarises the main points raised and the perspectives shared by community members who joined the sessions.

Help us Improve Glosario: Share Your Feedback!

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At The Carpentries, we are committed to building a more inclusive and accessible world for learners and researchers working with data and computing. One of our initiatives in this effort is Glosario, a multilingual glossary developed to help individuals understand key computing and data science terms in their preferred language.

To ensure Glosario meets the accessibility needs of our global community, we are surveying to gather feedback from current and potential users. Your insights will help us understand how to improve accessibility and enhance usability.

Updating our Lesson Setup Instructions

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Lesson Setup Instructions Task Force was established in August 2024 to review existing setup instructions for Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lessons and decide where and how these instructions should be updated. Members of the task force considered a wide range of options for installing Bash, Git, Python, and R, and engaged in many constructive discussions. The task was challenging, and the “best” option was often difficult to identify.

The Carpentries Lab: Introduction to Deep Learning with Python

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce the addition of a new community-developed lesson on deep learning to The Carpentries Lab. The curriculum was peer reviewed in the Lab Reviews repository and approved for inclusion in The Carpentries Lab on 6th February 2025.

The Carpentries Lab was set up as a space for peer-reviewed lessons developed by the community. Designed to complement The Carpentries Incubator, where the community collaborates on the development of new lessons on a wide range of topics, the Lab is intended to serve as a platform for open peer-review of these community-developed lessons and the hosting of lessons that have passed through that review process.

Expanding Our Community: Subcommunity Invitations and Progress Update

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Community Development Program, launched in 2022, continues to support The Carpentries’ growing network of subcommunities within our larger community that are local (e.g., University Carpentries Clubs), regional (e.g., Carpentries in Africa, Carpentries in the UK), domain-specific (e.g., HPC Carpentry), language-based (e.g., Carpentries-es), or interest-driven (e.g., Carpentries Offline). Subcommunities built around formal Carpentries roles (e.g., Instructors, Maintainers) fall outside this definition.

Join Our Subcommunity Registry!

Our community requested a subcommunity registry that captures ongoing activities, websites, and communication channels. We are excited to announce that our subcommunity registration form is open all year round! If you have not registered your subcommunity yet, now is the time.

Upcoming Changes to Self-Organised Workshops: Ensuring Sustainability and Continued Community Impact

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We are writing to inform the community about changes to Self-Organised workshops (SOWs). Due to rising costs, The Carpentries is introducing a fee for Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances used in Data Carpentry Genomics workshops. Furthermore, we have updated the definition and submission guidelines for SOWs. These workshops are vital in advancing The Carpentries’ mission and vision, significantly contributing to the organisation’s overall impact. We sincerely appreciate your efforts in organising and supporting them, as we recognise that they provide an accessible opportunity to teach Carpentries material.

Outcomes of the 2024 Membership Model Task Force

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Between August and December 2024, The Carpentries convened a task force comprising Core Team members, community participants, and representatives from member organisations to reassess our membership model. The group explored key questions about aligning services with member needs, defining success, and balancing revenue generation with community engagement. Learn more about the task force’s work in our charter on GitHub.

Thank You

We extend our deepest gratitude to the dedicated individuals who served as task force members, sharing their expertise and valuable insights to advance our mission and the task force’s goals. Their contributions have been instrumental in shaping the future of our membership model. Special thanks to Steve Diggs, Cody Hennesy, Paola Corrales, Rob Davey, Toby Hodges, Angelique Trusler, and SherAaron Hurt. Your commitment and thoughtful engagement have been vital to this effort, and we are sincerely grateful for your time and dedication.

Community Session Report: The Ethics of Teaching LLMs in Carpentries Workshops

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In January, The Carpentries hosted the first of three pairs of AI and The Carpentries community discussion sessions. The topic of this first pair of sessions was The Ethics of Teaching Large Language Models (LLMs) in Carpentries Workshops. They featured an exploration of various ethical implications of the development and use of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and GitHub Copilot, and a conversation about the scope for engaging with those implications while teaching Carpentries workshops. This post summarises the main points raised and the perspectives shared by community members who joined the sessions.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee Approves the Introduction to MarcEdit lesson

Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We are excited to share that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) announces the new beta Introduction to MarcEdit lesson. The lesson demonstrates using MarcEdit to profile, manipulate, and enhance library data in the MARC 21 format. It introduces the tools and functionality needed for many processes required for library and information workers working with library MARC data. This lesson is for those who have never used or have a rudimentary knowledge of MarcEdit. The primary learning objective is to provide learners with the necessary foundation to use MarcEdit and know where to seek more advanced skills.

Debugging Lesson Website Builds

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Workbench is a collection of tools that help community members build accessible websites from a collection of Markdown or R Markdown files. Lesson Developers and Maintainers can use the Workbench to build a version of the lesson site on their own local system, and a set of workflow descriptions allows the site to be built on GitHub’s cloud servers and served to the internet through GitHub Pages.

This is what a successful lesson build workflow looks like on GitHub. If your lesson builds do not look this, the rest of the blog post is for you!

Carpentries Core Team Promotions: Congratulations Angelique and Danielle!

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A Message From SherAaron Hurt

Cheerfully, I get to share some exciting news! Two of our outstanding and well-deserving Core Team members have advanced in their roles at The Carpentries, Inc.

Danielle Sieh, Workshops & Training Manager

Danielle Sieh, who joined The Carpentries in February 2021 as a Workshop Administrator, has been promoted to Senior Program Manager for the Workshops and Instruction Team. Over the past year as Junior Program Manager, Danielle has showcased exceptional leadership within the Instructor community, demonstrated outstanding organisational skills in shaping content for our new website and Handbooks, and successfully managed the Self-Organised Workshops project. In her new role, Danielle will take on additional leadership responsibilities, focusing on planning and process improvement within her areas of oversight.

Introducing The Carpentries Board of Directors

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Community,
It is my honour to introduce the Board of Directors, who will work alongside us to advance our mission and guide us through our fiscal sponsorship transition. As we look to the future, we also take a moment to celebrate the invaluable contributions of our outgoing Board members. Their wisdom and dedication have played a pivotal role in shaping The Carpentries into the organisation it is today. With gratitude for their service, we eagerly welcome our incoming Board members. Their fresh perspectives and energy will enrich our vision and propel us forward as we navigate 2025 and beyond.

Building an Inclusive Future in Data Science: The Carpentries' 2025 Glosario Expansion

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Glosario, The Carpentries’ open source multilingual glossary for computing and data science terms, has already made remarkable strides. By late 2024, Glosario included translations in over 26 languages, with significant contributions from our global community. However, as Glosario has grown, we have identified challenges that limit its accessibility and scalability. Contributions to the glossary, currently managed in a YAML format, can be intimidating for newcomers and time-intensive for reviewers. Additionally, we have recognised the need to provide meaningful recognition to contributors, a cornerstone of The Carpentries’ commitment to valuing diverse contributions.

Teaching LLM Assistants in Carpentries Workshops, part 2

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Following our previous post summarising a pair of community discussions on the topic of teaching the use of LLM “assistants” such as ChatGPT in Carpentries workshops, here we describe the Curriculum Team’s plans to coordinate relevant updates to lessons.

Including discussion of LLMs in workshops

One key takeaway from November’s community discussions was the observation that learners are using/will use LLM assistants when learning to code, whether we want them to or not. In this context, we believe that our goal as Instructors should be to help learners develop a working mental model of how these tools can be used, the kind of task they are (and are not) suited to, and their strengths and limitations.

Teaching LLM Assistants in Carpentries Workshops, part 1

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Generative AI “assistants” such as ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot, based on large language models (LLMs), have gained a lot of attention over recent years and are impacting how people learn about and practice coding and data science. Some members of The Carpentries community have reported observing learners using ChatGPT and similar tools to assist them in and after workshops. Others have reported on efforts to educate members of their local communities about the models behind these tools, their advantages and limitations, and how to judiciously approach their use.

Ending Support for _styles_ in the Incubator

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Our lesson infrastructure, The Carpentries Workbench, was rolled out across all Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lessons in May 2023. The Workbench replaced our previous lesson infrastructure, a Jekyll-based template (augmented by scripts and other resources developed by the community) affectionately known as styles. The product of several years of work by Zhian Kamvar, the Workbench made a number of improvements over styles, e.g. by bringing lesson sites up to at least WCAG AA standards in web accessibility, and making local installation of the infrastructure significantly easier on most community members’ systems.

Happy New Year from The Carpentries

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

As we begin the year, we want to reflect on our journey and express deep gratitude for the collective dedication and leadership that have propelled The Carpentries forward. This post marks a significant milestone: On February 1st, The Carpentries will become an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation! We have made substantial progress across our strategic priorities. We remain focused on finalising key projects, exploring new opportunities, and developing a forward-thinking strategic plan for 2026 and beyond. Our work is a testament to our community’s thoughtful collaboration and stewardship, and we are confident it will continue to advance our mission to empower diverse communities through data and software education.

Bridging Communities: The Carpentries and GREI Collaboration

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We would like to share an exciting new collaboration between The Carpentries and the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI). This collaboration represents a shared commitment to equipping researchers worldwide with the skills and tools needed for effective data and software management, especially within the biomedical research community. GREI was launched in 2022 by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Data Science Strategy (NIH ODSS) in the USA to foster robust data-sharing practices, recognising the critical need for researchers to make their data accessible, reusable, and impactful across disciplines. At its core, GREI supports a network of repositories designed to accommodate diverse data types, emphasising usability, discoverability, and adherence to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. This initiative not only provides researchers with the infrastructure to share their data but also offers guidance and tools to improve data management practices, making it easier to comply with data-sharing policies and maximise the reach of their work. By working together, The Carpentries and GREI aim to align our resources to demystify generalist repositories, enhance workflows for data submission and reuse, and ultimately ensure high-quality, well-documented deposits. But why is this effort so important, and what does it mean for our communities?

2024 Wrapped: Strategic Plan Progress and our Path Forward

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As we close the year, our final Core Team meeting was a moment of inspiration and reflection. Together, we celebrated our milestones, evaluated progress, and charted the path for an exciting new chapter in The Carpentries’ evolution. This year held particular significance as we worked to bring our 2020–2025 Strategic Plan to life, a vision crafted amidst the global pandemic. With just one year left, we are laying the groundwork for what’s next: strengthening partnerships, amplifying community impact, and staying true to our mission and values. As a reminder, our six strategic goals are:

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.

Open Call for Nominations: Join The Carpentries Board of Directors

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is on an inspiring journey toward greater independence, and we invite passionate leaders to help shape our future. As we transition from fiscal sponsorship under Community Initiatives to becoming an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit, we are onboarding additional members to our Board of Directors who will guide our mission to strengthen the global data science and open-source education community. This is your opportunity to be part of an organisation that has a powerful impact on communities worldwide.

A recap of the CZI sponsored Accelerate Precision Health (APH) Carpentries Workshops

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In September 2022, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation (CZIF) announced a partnership with four Historically Black Medical Colleges (HBMCs) based in the United States, aimed to further support the cutting-edge scientific research they are leading to address significant gaps in genomics research, create new tools and methods to prevent and treat disease and accelerate precision health for everyone, particularly Black people and other people of color.

CZIF’s Accelerate Precision Health (APH) program will advance genomics research by investing in genomics programs at each of the HBMCs — Charles Drew University College of Medicine in Los Angeles, California; Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C.; Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee; and Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

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.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee Announces New Lesson: Introducing Computational Thinking

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

The idea for the Introducing Computational Thinking lesson came from my own experiences of teaching Software Carpentry lessons and learning to code. While Software Carpentry taught the fundamentals of task automation and coding, it did not directly address how to break problems down or how to apply a coding mindset to research questions. As a result, when I tried to apply what I had learned, I found it challenging to break problems down into computable chunks. I therefore saw a lesson on computational thinking as a necessary precursor to learning how to code.

Introducing Our 2024 Cohort of Certified Instructor Trainers!

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In August, we began training a new cohort of community leaders to become certified as Instructor Trainers. These are the people who co-teach Instructor Training events, host teaching demonstrations, and participate in oversight and maintenance of our Instructor Training program as a whole. With 22 people, we are proud to say this is the largest cohort ever to join the Instructor Trainer community! Our new Instructor Trainers are joining us from universities, informatics centers, government departments, and corporations across Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Thank you for Breaking the Language Barriers in Data Science and Programming

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed in the Glosario Codefest, an event that highlighted the importance of breaking down language barriers in data science and programming. Your contributions have helped create a more inclusive learning environment, advancing our vision of accessibility for the global community. This event, supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, reflects a significant step forward in making data science knowledge available to all.

Launching The Carpentries Membership Program Survey

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

At The Carpentries, we are committed to creating a vibrant, inclusive community that meets the diverse needs of our members and supports our mission to build capacity in the data science and coding community. As we strive to improve and adapt our membership offerings, we need your help!

We Want to Hear From You

We are launching a survey to gather valuable feedback from our current and past Member organisations. This is an opportunity for you to share your thoughts on how we can enhance our membership model, better align with your organisation’s needs, and ensure that we provide the most meaningful benefits to our community.

HPC Carpentry at LLNL

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is a cross-posting from the HPC Carpentry blog, reporting on a recent workshop.

HPC Carpentry at LLNL

In the first week of June, 2024, Instructors from HPC Carpentry taught our full workflow workshop for the first time. Over a four-day stint at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we delivered this content not once, but twice!

It was immensely rewarding to see all this material come together in one place. Traveling to teach in person, while not without hiccups, was extremely worthwhile. We believe we served our learners pretty well, and we learned a few lessons relevant to future workshops.

Citation Information for Open Source Lessons

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

In this post, co-authored by members of the CodeRefinery project and The Carpentries Curriculum Team, we discuss the current state and potential future applications of the Citation File Format (CFF) for open source lesson projects. The post concludes with a set of recommendations for what information should be captured in a CITATION.cff and how.

What is the Citation File Format (CFF)?

The Citation File Format is a plain-text human- and machine readable citation information metadata for software and datasets. The text files contain standardized fields and use the YAML serialization language. These fields are listed in a CITATION.cff text file, including but not limited to authors, title, version, identifiers, and type. Type is currently restricted to software and dataset. While lessons are neither software nor a dataset, the metadata collected in the CFF file represents well everything needed in order to also cite lesson materials.

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.

HPC Carpentry Enters Lesson Program Incubation

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce that HPC Carpentry has entered Lesson Program Incubation. This is another big step towards the project joining Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry and Software Carpentry as our The Carpentries Lesson Program.

Toby Hodges, The Carpentries Director of Curriculum, said:

I am delighted to see HPC Carpentry move a big step closer to joining The Carpentries. I attended my first HPC Carpentry workshop in Dublin in 2018 – the day before the first ever CarpentryCon! – and have been enthusiastically following them ever since. I know from previous roles how challenging it can be for researchers to get to grips with high-performance computing environments, and the positive impact good-quality training in these skills can have on the scale and reproducibility of their work. So I find the prospect of adding HPC Carpentry workshops to the list of training offered by The Carpentries really exciting. The project is also supported by an inspiring community that shares the values of our own: adopting the project as an official Lesson Program and merging our two communities will strengthen both groups.

New R Ecology Lesson Released

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Those visiting the Data Carpentry Data Analysis and Visualisation in R for Ecologists lesson today might notice things have changed! The redesigned version of the lesson, approved for adoption by the Curriculum Advisory Committee earlier this year, has now replaced the previous content.

The former version was released to Zenodo before the redesigned content was merged into the lesson, and the files and folders of that version can be downloaded from there or accessed through the history of the lesson repository.

Reigniting Community: Reflections from Coffee with The Carpentries Executive Director

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hello Carpentries Community,

Over the past six months, I’ve enjoyed our “Reigniting Community” sessions, where we’ve had some heartfelt conversations about our resources and operations. It’s been a time of listening, learning, and growing together, and I’m excited to share some key takeaways with you.

We began the series in January, with a candid discussion about the tough decisions we faced regarding staff layoffs. It was a moment of honesty as we navigated the impacts on our organisation, striving to be transparent about our strategies for recovery and growth ahead.

Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee Approves a Major Update to the LC Python Lesson

Wed, 26 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We are excited to announce that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) has approved a major update to the Python Intro for Libraries lesson.

The lesson demonstrates how to use Python to clean, analyse, and visualise library usage data, providing an introduction to reproducible workflows in Python for library and information workers. While the lesson repurposes some elements from the previous Library Carpentry Introduction to Python, it is a major overhaul that includes a new library-specific dataset, the use of JupyterLab instead of Spyder, and new episodes that use Pandas to tidy a dataset and Plotly to visualise data.

Registration Open for CarpentryConnect Heidelberg

Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Registration has opened for the BioNT Community Event & CarpentryConnect Heidelberg 2024! Register to participate remotely or in-person before 15th September.

As a reminder, this regional event for members of The Carpentries and BioNT communities will include a diverse range of interactive and collaborative sessions. The event programme has been updated to include more information about the sessions and schedule.

The event will take place 12-14 November 2024, online and at EMBL Heidelberg.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. 26 new Maintainers participated in the two hour onboarding, with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintanence
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee

New and existing Maintainers were also invited to join a two hour GitHub Skill-up, aiming to teach them how to:

Library Carpentry Curriculum Committee Approves Data Management Plan Lesson

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

We are excited to announce that the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC) has approved a new lesson Data Management Plan Course for Librarians for inclusion in the Library Carpentry curriculum. This course was developed as part of an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to UCLA to develop open science lessons for Library Carpentry.

This course provides an introduction to conducting data management plan (DMP) services for librarians. By the end of this course, librarians should be equipped to offer basic DMP review services to researchers.

Introducing the New Editors of The Carpentries Lab

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to welcome three new Editors to The Carpentries Lab, our platform for open peer review of community lessons. In February of this year, I made a call for volunteers to take responsibility for managing reviews in the Lab. The response from the community was phenomenal, and today I am thrilled to be joined by Federica Gazzelloni, Dimitrios Theodorakis, and Sébastien Vigneau. With support from the Curriculum Team, Federica, Dimitrios, and Sébastien will manage reviews as publicly-visible issue threads on the Lab Reviews repository. As Editors, they will process review requests, undertaking initial editorial checks before contacting and assigning community members to review lessons.

Applications Now Open for Carpentries Instructor Trainer Training Starting August 2024

Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This blogpost has been updated to extend the application deadline

Do you look back fondly on your Instructor Training and think, “I would love to teach that!”? Do you want to help people learn to be more effective teachers, while continuing to develop your own teaching skill through regular engagement with our Instructor Training curriculum? Maybe you are looking for another way to get involved and give back to The Carpentries community. If any of these describe you, consider joining our vibrant community of Instructor Trainers!

Exciting updates from the CarpentryConnect Heidelberg 2024 organising committee

Tue, 28 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to share exciting news from the organising committee of the BioNT Community Event & CarpentryConnect Heidelberg 2024! As we approach the event, themed “Community-led training beyond academia,” we are excited to announce several key updates that highlight our commitment to fostering an inclusive and enriching experience for all participants. These updates include our keynote speakers, the introduction of the Inclusivity Ticket, and our provisional programme.

1. Announcing our Keynote Speakers

We are happy to introduce our keynote speakers:

Translating Software Carpentry lessons into Ukrainian language: a status update

Fri, 17 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was orginally published on Dr. Olexandr Konovalov’s website as “Software Carpentry for Ukraine: status update”. Minor modifications in style have been made to the original so that this version is in keeping with The Carpentries blog post conventions.

This is an overview of the current state of the project of translating Software Carpentry lessons into Ukrainian language. It accompanies the slide of my lightning talk at the Collaborations Workshop 2024.

Introducing the new Instructor Trainers Leadership Committee for 2024

Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In February, the Instructor Trainer community held its fourth annual election for the Instructor Trainers Leadership Committee, a Committee that provides governance and development support to our growing subcommunity of Instructor Trainers, and makes decisions on behalf of that community that affect our Instructor Training program and related policies. Previously called the Trainers Leadership Committee during its first 3 years of existence (2021, 2022, and 2023) this Committee will now be referred to as the Instructor Trainers Leadership Committee to emphasise its service specifically to the Instructor Trainer community. In their third year as an elected body, the Instructor Trainers Leadership Committee oversaw two important changes:

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.

Proposal Submission Open for (Hybrid) AU-Aotearoa CarpentryConnect 2024.

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear All,

We are hosting the first AU-Aotearoa CarpentryConnect on 23 May 2024, in person and hybridly in Melbourne, Perth, Dunedin and Auckland. Our goal is to bring The Carpentries community together to explore and discuss community-led software and data skills training, and capacity building initiatives. Please join us!

We are delighted to open the call for topic suggestions and abstract submissions for

Lightning talks (5 mins)
Keystory talks (20 mins)
Skillsharing or training sessions (60 or 90 minutes)
Unpacking discussions (60 or 90 minutes)

Under the following general themes:

Curriculum Advisors Approve Redesigned DC R Ecology Lesson

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce that a redesigned version of the Data Analysis and Visualization in R for Ecologists lesson has been approved for adoption into the Data Carpentry Ecology curriculum. The redesigned version will replace the existing lesson later this year. The Curriculum Advisory Committee previously published a call for Instructors to test the lesson and provide feedback, which includes a summary of the differences between the two lessons.

The new lesson lets learners dive into data visualisation much more quickly, letting you quickly appreciate the benefits of the lesson and enticing you to learn more about data storage, manipulation and analysis as the lesson progresses. The new structure of the lesson helps make it more approachable for beginners and more motivating for all learners, and has received great feedback from Instructors who have taught the lesson so far.

Advancing AI Education in GLAM: Highlights from the Library Carpentry Code Sprint

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The lesson maintainers for Intro to AI for GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) and the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (the LC-CAC) co-hosted a seven-hour online code sprint on Jan 31, 2024 to help contribute bug fixes, edits, and improvements to this popular new lesson.

With the aim of moving the beta lesson closer to a stable release and adding it to the core Library Carpentry curriculum, a diverse group of global participants gathered to work on the lesson. Fourteen participants with a range of affiliations and expertise collaborated together during shifts that were hosted throughout the Sprint by Phil Reed, Cody Hennesy, Tim Dennis, and Leigh Phan. Participants included representatives from Hugging Face (UK), the University of Manchester (UK), the Medical Research Council at the Gambia Unit at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Smithsonian Institution, the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg (DE), The National Archives (UK), the University of California, Los Angeles (US), the University of Minnesota (US), and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Apply for 2024 Carpentries Maintainer Onboarding!

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next round of Maintainers. Currently we have 92 Maintainers serving across 48 core lessons. To keep the community healthy, we need to plan for people wanting to step down from their current positions and finding new people to step into the role.

You do not need to be a Git expert to be a Maintainer. If you are familiar with the current Carpentries Git materials, you will have the foundation and support to learn the skills you will need as a Maintainer. Training on lesson maintenance workflows and GitHub skill up sessions will be offered in multiple time zones during onboarding to ensure you have the skills you need to succeed.

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.

Changes to Software Carpentry's Lesson Program Governance Committee and their work

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hi all!

Like you all, we were surprised, upset, and a little taken aback by the loss of several members of the Carpentries Core Team. Our thoughts and best wishes are with all those who have been affected.

What does a reduction in Core Team support available mean for Software Carpentry Governance and the maintenance and development of lesson materials? These are the most difficult conversations we have had in the past year as the Lesson Program Governance Committee (LPGC).

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.

The Carpentries Lab: Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to (belatedly) announce the addition of a new community-developed lesson, Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing to The Carpentries Lab. The curriculum was peer reviewed in the Lab Reviews repository, and approved for inclusion in The Carpentries Lab on 17th July 2023.

The Carpentries Lab was set up as a space for peer-reviewed lessons developed by the community. Designed to complement The Carpentries Incubator, where the community collaborates on the development of new lessons on a wide range of topics, the Lab is intended to serve as a platform for open peer review of these community-developed lessons and the hosting of lessons that have passed through that review process.

Proposal Submission Opens for CCHD24

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Note: the deadline for proposal submissions has been extended to 19 April.

The CarpentryConnect and BioNT community event - Heidelberg 2024 is expected to be the key community-building and networking event for The Carpentries and BioNT’s community in Europe, with worldwide participation. Taking place 12 - 14 November 2024, this event will provide the opportunity to bring together newer and more experienced community members to share knowledge, network, develop new skills, and develop strategies for training beyond academia and building strong local and regional training communities. The event will be held in a hybrid format, allowing workshops to be conducted virtually.

Supporting the Curriculum Development Community in 2024

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The recent departure of several colleagues from The Carpentries Core Team has impacted every facet of the organisation’s operations, with changes outlined in a recent post to this blog.

As Curriculum Team Lead, my main concern has been figuring out the best answer to the question, “How can a Curriculum Team reduced in size and capacity best meet the needs of an active community of lesson developers and maintainers?” The support the Curriculum team provides falls into three categories: community-developed lessons, official lessons, and lesson infrastructure. In this post, I describe how the Curriculum Team will support the community’s activities in these areas for the rest of this year and how and why you can get involved.

Breaking Language Barriers in Data Science: Glosario Codefest Event

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In data science and programming, breaking down language barriers is pivotal for creating an inclusive learning environment. We are excited to announce an event that aligns with this vision – the Glosario Codefest! This event, made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, marks a step forward in advancing data science knowledge and accessibility for our diverse global community.

Developed in 2020, Glosario has become a resource for learners worldwide. Glosario’s commitment to accessibility is exemplified by its open availability online. Released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, Glosario’s content is stored in a structured plain-text format (YAML), ensuring machine-readability.

Revisions to The Carpentries governance structure

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Community,

In August 2023, we announced our plan to operate as an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation. Becoming a standalone nonprofit organisation offers our community several advantages, and here we will offer background information, share our current status, and provide you with an update on the future of our governance structure. To learn more about the history of our governance, read our blog posts tagged “governance”.

Benefits of The Carpentries as a Standalone Non-profit Organisation

Independence and greater flexibility

Our current legal structure is called “fiscal sponsorship.” This status has allowed The Carpentries to accept tax-deductible donations and qualify for grant funding by working with our current fiscal sponsor, Community Initiatives, a 501(c)(3) organisation. As our fiscal sponsor, Community Initiatives provides comprehensive administrative services and support, allowing The Carpentries to focus on programming and supporting our community. We have certainly benefited from fiscal sponsorship and are very grateful for Community Initiatives; they share our excitement about becoming a standalone non-profit organisation.

Changes to support from the Core Team at The Carpentries

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, we released a blog post re-introducing to the community the nine members of The Carpentries Core Team. This comes after we recently announced the departure of seven valued members of The Carpentries Core Team and celebrated the accomplishments, heart, and vision of our legacy team members. The financial necessity of these recent changes also requires us to look closely at our workload. We must determine which of the many activities supported by our Core Team lie at the heart of The Carpentries vision to be the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills.

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.

Join us for CarpentryConnect Heidelberg 2024!

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are very excited to announce the upcoming CarpentryConnect Heidelberg 2024 (CCHD2024), scheduled to take place in Heidelberg, Germany, from November 12th to 14th, 2024.

Following the success of CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019, we aim to create an event where members of The Carpentries community from Germany and beyond can come together to explore and discuss community-led software and data skills training as well as capacity building initiatives.

CCHD2024 will feature a diverse range of sessions. The event will include breakouts, posters, lightning talks, workshops and curriculum co-working sessions, all centred around the Theme: “Community-led training beyond academia”.

Join Our AI for GLAM Lesson Code Sprint - Library Carpentry, January 31, 2024

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

You’re invited to a code sprint for the Intro to AI for GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) Library Carpentry Lesson on January 31, 2024! The lesson maintainers and the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee are co-hosting an open online sprint for anyone in the Carpentries community who wants to help contribute bug fixes, edits, and improvements to this important new lesson. The lesson introduces artificial intelligence topics and tools to galleries, libraries, archives, and museum staff. This is a great way to engage with the Library Carpentry community - all are welcome!

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation approves grant for Glosario

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To advance data science knowledge and accessibility for our diverse community, we developed Glosario. Today, we are pleased to share that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently approved a grant for use over 12 months (November 2023 through October 2024) to support an upgrade to Glosario, the open-source, multilingual glossary for computing terms.

Since Glosario was developed in 2020, our global community has translated computing and data science terms into more than 24 languages, comprising more than 450 pull requests and 90 GitHub issues. The glossary helps learners attend workshops and use our lessons to make sense of computational and programming jargon written in English by offering it in their native language. Translating data science terms also provides a teaching tool for Carpentries Instructors to reduce barriers for their learners.

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.

Announcing the results of the 2024 community election

Thu, 04 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the community election for the 2024 Board of Directors, which will assume responsibility for governance on February 1, 2024.

Incoming community-elected members

Four candidates were nominated to fill up to four open seats on The Carpentries Board of Directors. Of the 1253 ballots distributed to Voting Members, 199 ballots were submitted (16% turnout). The candidates joining the Board of Directors for three-year terms as community-elected members are:

New Year Journey Ahead: A Reflection from The Carpentries Executive Director

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Carpentries Community,

As we settle into a new year, I sincerely thank you for the incredible journey we’ve shared and the impact we’ve collectively made on the lives of data enthusiasts globally. Thank you for your unwavering commitment to our mission, vision, and values.

Reflecting on the past year, we’ve faced challenges that tested our resilience (e.g., staffing changes). We have also celebrated milestones (e.g., The Carpentries’ 25th Anniversary) that showcased our Strength through Diversity. In these moments, the core values of The Carpentries shine through, reminding us that we are indeed the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills.

#Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: Ethan White

Wed, 27 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In July 2023, The Carpentries turned 25 years! On July 24th we launched the #Carpentries25 anniversary celebrations, which continued for the remainder of the year with a series of monthly events and weekly activities highlighting the global and regional contributions and impact of The Carpentries community.

This #Carpentries25 Testimonial Series is one way we will celebrated this milestone, and if you wish to revist previous contributions, please visit the #Carpentries25 tag on this blog.

Enhancements to the Toolkit of IDEAS

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Toolkit of IDEAS emerged from recommendations provided by ReadySet, a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm that conducted an organisational assessment of The Carpentries in 2020. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of Kari L. Jordan, Executive Director of The Carpentries, and the generous support of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, this project became a reality. Tara Robertson Consulting Inc. was enlisted in March 2022 to lead this initiative, working closely with the Carpentries Core Team’ Team Leads and the broader community.

Saying Farewell to 7 Carpentries Core Team Members: Navigating Change Together

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Carpentries Community,

Today, I write to share the news that profoundly impacts our community and Core Team. With a heavy heart, we announce a series of layoffs within our organisation.

Change is never easy, especially when it affects the talented individuals who have contributed so much to our community. Each Core Team member has played a crucial role in shaping the welcoming and inclusive environment we cherish. Their dedication and hard work have been instrumental in bringing our vision of being the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills to life.

Celebrate #GivingTuesday with The Carpentries Community

Tue, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Carpentries Community!

Today is #GivingTuesday, a global opportunity for us to use the individual power of generosity to support communities and important causes. At The Carpentries, we value all contributions and celebrate every act of generosity we offer! I have given a great deal of time to this wonderful community over the years as an Instructor, Trainer, Executive Council Member, local community organizer, and Lesson Developer because I believe sharing our training efforts across a community makes them better and working with The Carpentries makes my work better. Today, I am recruiting donors to contribute to the work of the organisation and want to share what I have learned about supporting The Carpentries financially.

Release of Sandpaper 0.15.0

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the eighteenth post continuing a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench (our new lesson infrastructure). In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench. If you are unfamiliar with The Workbench, you can watch a video that describes the workbench and the beta phase in two minutes.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, or if you have questions, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum.

Election Nominees for the 2024 Board of Directors

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The election for Community-Elected members of the 2024 Board of Directors will be open from 4 December and close on 10 December at midnight, anywhere on Earth.

If you are a Voting Member, you will receive an email from The Carpentries Core Team with the subject “Confirming eligibility to vote in The Carpentries 2024 Board of Directors Election”. If you do not receive it but you feel you have contributed sufficiently to this community, please complete the Application for Voting Membership before 27 November.

Engaging with a Cross-NASA Subcommunity

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In a recent Carpentries Community Session a set of three programs with Carpentries memberships within the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shared a bit about how they currently engage with The Carpentries. The purpose of the session was to explore opportunities to support the activities of these programs through formation of a Carpentries subcommunity. A Carpentries subcommunity is defined as “a subset of our global community that can be local, regional, domain-specific, or a group of community members sharing a common language or interests.” Anyone interested in developing an engaged network of Instructors was invited to attend the session, resulting in 56 community members representing multiple US government agencies, state governments, universities, and non-profits.

Join us in welcoming Nathaniel Porter as our new Maintainer Community Lead!

Wed, 08 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Carpentries community!

My name is Nathaniel and I’m excited to be taking on a new role with The Carpentries as Maintainer Community Lead. I’d say it’s a new hat for me, but if you’ve seen me on a call or workshop around the Carpentries, you’ll probably recognize me more by my flat cap (which I don’t intend to replace) than my face.

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.”

The Curriculum and Trainers for Collaborative Lesson Development Training

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this week we announced the launch of a new program of Collaborative Lesson Development Training. Today I would like to provide some more details about the content of the training, and the community members who will be teaching it.

Lesson Developer Trainers

Following a first round of Trainer Training we have a cohort of eight Trainers who will lead the events. These Lesson Developer Trainers are experts in curriculum development drawn from The Carpentries community. They have a wealth of experience in design, development, and maintenance of lessons gathered from activities both within and outside The Carpentries.

Collaborative Lesson Development Training

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is launching a new program of Collaborative Lesson Development Training.

Following a couple of pilot events for the curriculum, and a first round of Lesson Developer Trainer Training, today we open up the training program for registrations.

What does the training teach?

The Collaborative Lesson Development Training curriculum teaches skills and concepts in three broad categories:

Opportunities and Challenges in Localisation: The Carpentries Perspective

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In the realm of open science, the power of collective knowledge is magnified when it’s accessible to all, irrespective of geographical or linguistic boundaries. Localisation, in this context, is not just about translating scientific content, but about adapting research, methodologies, and data to resonate with diverse cultural and regional nuances. This series of blog posts, Opportunities and Challenges in Localisation, will dig into the world of localisation from the vantage point of various open science communities of practice. Representatives from these communities will share their unique efforts in championing localisation, the opportunities they’ve unearthed, the challenges they’ve grappled with, and pathways for you, the reader, to engage and collaborate. Join us in this exploration, as we underscore the importance of localisation in making open science truly inclusive, bridging knowledge gaps, and fostering a global community of collaborative inquiry. If your organisation also has localisation efforts, and would like to share your story on a future blog post in this series, please do so following these formatting and template guidelines and send your contribution to balmarzouq@turing.ac.uk.

Thank You to our Regional Coordinators

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In 2021, we announced the development of the Carpentries Community Development Program, which merges the role of Regional Coordinators, Community Facilitators, and Champions into one role as Community Coordinators. The Community Development Team has worked effortlessly over the last 2 years to make this happen!

The Carpentries are extremely grateful for the work of our Regional Coordinators. These individuals were granted work hours or volunteered their personal time to help support the coordination of workshops in their region. This has been extremely helpful because Regional Coordinators are active in their local regions and understand the workshop needs of the Instructors, Hosts, and Learners.

#Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: Jean Baptiste Fankam Fankam

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In July 2023, The Carpentries turned 25 years! On July 24th we launched the #Carpentries25 anniversary celebrations, which will continue for the remainder of the year with a series of monthly events and weekly activities highlighting the global and regional contributions and impact of The Carpentries community.

This #Carpentries25 Testimonial Series is one way we will celebrate this milestone, and if you wish to contribute to this testimonial series please find the instructions in the celebrations announcement and reach out to us. Also, be sure to register to receive communications about upcoming monthly regional events.

Call for Candidates for The Carpentries Board of Directors

Tue, 26 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

If you are interested in translating this blog post please email team@carpentries.org.

Carpentries community leaders are needed! If you have experience in:

Auditing (i.e., risk management, financial reporting, audit process, monitoring compliance with laws and regulations)
Finance (i.e., oversight of an annual budget)
Governance and Personnel (i.e., creation and implementation of sound compensation, personnel policies and practices or Board efficacy, composition, onboarding and recruitment)
Programs (i.e., Carpentries Lesson Program governance, advising on metrics for programmatic outcomes or making recommendations to strengthen programs and services)

… The Carpentries needs YOU!

Maintainer Community Lead: an update and next steps

Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

My Time as Maintainer Community Lead - a message from Vini Salazer

The Maintainer Community Lead is a volunteer position at The Carpentries with the main goal of supporting Lesson Maintainers. I took up this role last year following the departure of Daniel Chen. Daniel did some amazing work, not only supporting the Maintainer Community, but also revamping the Maintainer Onboarding curriculum and the Maintainer Request for Comments (RFCs), a space for discussion lesson changes and the Maintainer Community in general.

The Carpentries Takes a Giant Leap Towards Independence

Tue, 29 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Community,

When I became your permanent Executive Director in April 2020, I knew I wanted to explore what it would mean for The Carpentries to operate as an independent non-profit organisation. Over the last three years, we have streamlined our operations and governance and convened a task force to plan and implement a roadmap to transition The Carpentries out of fiscal sponsorship to independent, tax-exempt status.

We are thrilled to announce this exciting stage in the journey of The Carpentries, especially as we commemorate 25 years of service to our community. Planning for this transition marks a significant step forward in our mission to provide accessible and impactful training in essential data and computing skills. Since its inception, The Carpentries has played a pivotal role in bridging the digital divide and empowering individuals from all walks of life to harness the power of data and technology. With independent, non-profit status, we will be poised to amplify our efforts and drive innovation in the ever-evolving landscape of data science and research.

#Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: The New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI)

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In July 2023, The Carpentries turned 25 years! On July 24th we launched the #Carpentries25 anniversary celebrations which will continue for the remainder of the year with a series of monthly events and weekly activities highlighting the global and regional contributions and impact of The Carpentries community.

Celebrating The Carpentries Workbench

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In May 2023, a significant milestone was reached as The Carpentries transitioned all 43 of its official lessons to a new lesson infrastructure, The Carpentries Workbench. This project, led by Zhian Kamvar our Lesson Infrastructure Developer, was a three-year coordinated effort requiring input and contributions from many members of our community. We asked six of them to provide their reflections on the project, its impact, and Zhian’s leadership.

Jennifer Stubbs, Assistant Professor, Bradley University

Community Roles: Community Session Host, Instructor, Maintainer

Changes to Instructor Checkout

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Summary of the updated checkout process:

Teaching Demonstration requires less preparation
Attend a Welcome Session, a new type of community discussion focused on new community members
Get Involved with the Carpentries in any way that suits you (no longer limited to lesson contributions!)

What has changed?

A visual guide to the changes we are making to The Carpentries Instructor checkout process. For more details, each step is described below.

#Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: Damien Irving

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Piloting Meal Reimbursement: A Way of Saying Thank You

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In 2020 we launched the pilot of online workshops, and our Instructor community rallied around this new format. Much effort has gone into organising, coordinating, and teaching these workshops. We are beyond grateful for your continued commitment and support, and we would like to show our appreciation for all of your efforts. Over the next few months, we will pilot meal reimbursements for select online Centrally-Organised workshops as a way of saying thank you.

Request for Quotation (RFQ)- Website Development

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Are you a developer or organisation interested in providing Web Development Services to The Carpentries? Learn more about this contracting opportunity.

Project Overview

The Carpentries is looking for a developer to build a theme for our website using the Hugo static site generator. We previously received funding to improve the accessibility and the information structure of our website and handbooks. We have been working toward this goal, beginning with contracting a web designer to evaluate the information architecture and design of our website. The contractor worked with our team and community to outline mockup designs for an updated website and provided recommendations for our handbooks. We are now in need of further support to complete the development for our website.

Join the Genomics Curriculum Advisory Committee!

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Data Carpentry Genomics Curriculum Advisory Committee is seeking new members, including someone to serve as committee secretary. This is an exciting time to be part of the Genomics CAC, as the committee will soon be considering adoption of the Introduction to R and RStudio for Genomics lesson into the official Data Carpentry Genomics curriculum.

Curriculum Advisory Committees provide high-level oversight, vision, and leadership for a curriculum and guide large-scale updates. Curriculum Advisors meet approximately quarterly, and serve a two-year term. The Carpentries Handbook includes more about what it means to be a Curriculum Advisor.

Please Welcome our Newest Cohort of Certified Instructor Trainers!

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to announce the latest additions to our community of Carpentries Instructor Trainers! Instructor Trainers (also known as “Trainers”) co-teach Instructor Training, host teaching demonstrations, and participate in oversight and maintenance of our Instructor Training program. This cohort includes new Trainers from Argentina, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Teaching new Carpentries Instructors is a vital and impactful role in The Carpentries! We are proud to welcome these accomplished people joining our Trainer community and taking the lead to advance our mission around the world.

#Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: Jannetta Steyn

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In July 2023, The Carpentries turned 25 years! On July 24th we launched our #Carpentries25 anniversary celebrations which will continue for the remainder of the year with a series of monthly events and weekly activities highlighting the global and regional contributions and impact of The Carpentries community.

This #Carpentries25 Testimonial Series is one way we will celebrate this milestone. If you wish to contribute to this testimonial series please find the instructions in this announcement and reach out to us. Also, be sure to register to receive communications about upcoming monthly regional events.

Twenty-Five Years and Counting

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Greg Wilson, who co-founded Software Carpentry with Brent Gorda in July 1998, reflects on how The Carpentries has contributed to the world of research as it is today, 25 years later.

This post was originally published with The Third Bit.

Next Monday (July 24, 2023) is the 25th anniversary of the first Software Carpentry workshop at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Carpentries is hosting a roundtable to celebrate, and to prepare for that I’d like to talk about how the world looks today:

Teaching targets with Penguins

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Originally posted on the rOpenSci website

Many researchers are becoming more aware of the importance of reproducibility. Although reproducibility involves a diverse array of topics and tools, one rOpenSci package has gained considerable attention for enabling reproducible analysis pipelines in R: targets, by Will Landau.

Why a targets workshop?

Despite its popularity, targets can be challenging to learn because it requires code to be organized in a way that is different from what most people are used to.

Beta Testing an Alternative Version of R Ecology lesson

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Data Carpentry: Ecology Curriculum Advisory Committee has approved a redesigned version of the Data Analysis and Visualization in R for Ecologists lesson for beta testing. Curriculum Advisors invite the Data Carpentry community to teach this alternative version of the lesson and provide feedback, to inform their discussions as they consider formally adopting it and replacing the current version in the curriculum.

About the Redesigned Lesson

The lesson was redesigned and developed by Michael Culshaw-Maurer in The Carpentries Incubator during his tenure in The Carpentries Curriculum Team as a post-doc at CyVerse.

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.

Updates on The Carpentries Lesson Infrastructure

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this bitter-sweet blog post, I want to start by noting that we quietly passed a milestone last month. On 15 May, we successfully rolled-out our new lesson infrastructure, The Carpentries Workbench to all 43 of our official lessons. The Workbench, which has been featured regularly on our blog brings major improvements to how our community creates, maintains, teaches, and learns our lessons.

Building Success

The Workbench Prioritises accessible design principles and uses automated testing to validate lesson content for compliance with WCAG AA+ accessibility best practices, Is built on tools we teach in our workshops and that are commonly used in our community, reducing barriers for new lesson developers, maintainers, and contributors, More accurately reflects lesson authorship by clearly separating the tools needed to build the lesson from the content. Employs a modular design that is intended for future growth to support our community.

The Carpentries Executive Council invites YOU to a Community Session

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Executive Council will host its second Community Session of the year Wednesday, 14 June 2023, at 20:00 UTC. During this discussion, there will be an overview of the EC’s quarter-two meeting and an opportunity for community members to ask questions about our governance. Sign up to attend the Community Discussions Etherpad.

During the quarter-two meeting, the Executive Council discussed challenges with lesson governance and received an overview of The Carpentries’ finances. We encourage you to review the past minutes of Executive Council meetings. Minutes are located on the executive-council-info repository. Minutes include a high-level overview of activities for the EC, including a quarterly review of finances and the strategic plan for 2020-2025. Meet us there, and bring a friend or colleague!

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.

Welcoming the New Lesson Program Governance Committees

Mon, 08 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to announce the new Lesson Program Governance Committees for Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry. These committees will provide community leadership for each lesson program, with responsibility to oversee project strategy, advocate for the lesson program and its community, and to communicate with the Executive Council, the Core Team, and the Carpentries community as a whole.

These committees are essential to the long-term health of The Carpentries as a community-led organisation, and I am deeply grateful to the following community members for stepping into the role.

The 2023 Instructor Notes Drive Starts Next Week!

Sat, 06 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The 2023 Instructor Notes Drive will take place from 8th to 19th May. During these two weeks, we call on the community to help us expand, update, and improve the guidance provided to Instructors on Carpentries lessons. It is a great opportunity to make an impact on the effectiveness of Carpentries lessons, to learn more about how to contribute to lessons, and to practice and develop your skills working with Markdown, Git, and GitHub.

Highlights from the 2023 Executive Council Retreat

Wed, 03 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Executive Council Annual Retreat 2023

The Carpentries Executive Council (EC) retreat was held on April 20-22 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Once again, its hybrid modality and well-structured agenda allowed the EC to work on strategic issues to support the organisation. The EC retreat followed two additional convenings where Carpentries community members were present: CZI’s Accelerating Open Science in Latin America and csv,conf,v7.

The hybrid agenda included team-building activities for the Council as a whole, Standing Committee meetings, and discussions with members of the Core Team.

Wins and Challenges of Running a Carpentry Workshop in South Africa during Load shedding

Wed, 03 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Millions of people in Southern Africa are left without power for up to 12.5 hours daily due to load shedding. This is when a power supply can not provide enough electricity for all at once, and to avoid a total blackout, power is turned off in part or parts of a power grid. In the wake of COVID-19 in early 2020, The Carpentries transitioned to fully online workshops and still, most workshops offered in Southern Africa are online. One can only imagine the impact of running a Carpentries workshop online during load shedding.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Tue, 02 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I am thrilled to share the news that our latest cohort of Lesson Maintainers has completed their onboarding and are now poised to provide valuable support across The Carpentries curricula. Nineteen individuals participated in the comprehensive three-hour onboarding program, which included a wide range of goals and objectives. These included gaining a better understanding of The Carpentries’ vision and goals for lesson maintenance, connecting with other Maintainers and the larger Maintainer community, and developing the necessary skills to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all contributors. Additionally, participants gained valuable hands-on experience with core technical skills for lesson maintenance.

New opportunities to lead Carpentry-Con-type programming year-round

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A blog post published in February 2023 highlighted findings and four key recommendations from the most recent CarpentryCon evaluation report. In this post, it was announced that CarpentryCon would be pushed back by one year and would be hosted in South Africa in 2025 instead of 2024. The post also noted that, due to this schedule change, we would be introducing new opportunities to lead CarpentryCon-type programming year-round. We are excited to announce that the time has come!

The Carpentries Strategic Plan: Three Years and Counting

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Last week our Team Leads and Executive Council met to discuss progress towards our strategic plan for 2020-2025. The last update we shared with the community was in May of 2022. If you missed it, read our Strategic Plan Year Two in Review. During the hybrid meeting, our Team Leads shared significant milestones we have achieved in the last year related to the following six strategic goals:

Build regional and local capacity to empower sustainable communities
Intentionally incorporate equity, inclusion, and accessibility to support a diverse community.
Provide opportunities for our volunteers’ and Core Team’s growth and professional development.
Facilitate creating and maintaining relevant, high-quality, community-curated curricula.
Strengthen organisational structure and capacity to be strategic and responsive.
Advocate for our values and vision to empower more people to work with data and software.

Each of these goals carries its specific objectives and rationale to aid us in implementing them. In our third year of work toward the Strategic Plan, we have made significant progress on each of the six goals. Read on to learn about our work on each goal, and follow the Strategic Plan GitHub repository for quarterly updates.

Get Ready for the Instructor Notes Drive

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

From 8-19th May, we will be coordinating an Instructor Notes Drive: a community-wide effort to update, expand, and improve guidance provided to Instructors in lessons.

What are Instructor Notes?

Instructor Notes are pieces of advice, guidance, warnings, resources, etc for those teaching a lesson, to help them prepare and teach their workshops more effectively. Until now, Instructor Notes have been kept in a dedicated page, located under the “Extras” dropdown menu of a lesson site.

The Dovetail #17: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Thu, 13 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the seventeenth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench (our new lesson infrastructure). In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench. If you are unfamiliar with The Workbench, you can watch a video that describes the workbench and the beta phase in two minutes.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, or if you have questions, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Workbench Beta Phase Complete

Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Beta Phase Complete

Since October 2022, we have been running a test of our new lesson infrastructure, known as The Workbench. If you are unfamiliar with The Workbench, you can watch a video that describes the workbench and the beta phase in two minutes. If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, or if you have questions, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

If you have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

The Carpentries Lab: Metagenomics Curriculum

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce the addition of a new community-developed curriculum on Metagenomics to The Carpentries Lab. The curriculum was peer reviewed in the Lab Reviews repository and approved for inclusion in The Carpentries Lab on 24th February 2023.

The Carpentries Lab was set up as a space for peer-reviewed lessons developed by the community. Designed to complement The Carpentries Incubator, where the community collaborates on the development of new lessons on a wide range of topics, the Lab is intended to serve as a platform for open peer review of these community-developed lessons and the hosting of lessons that have passed through that review process.

Announcing 27 March Community Discussion with The Carpentries Executive Council

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Executive Council will host its first Community Discussion of the year (UTC) Monday 27 March 2023 09:30 a.m. During this discussion, there will be an overview of the EC’s quarter-one meeting and an opportunity for community members to ask questions about our governance. Sign up to attend the Community Discussions Etherpad.

We encourage you to review the past minutes of Executive Council meetings. Minutes are located on the executive-council-info repository. Minutes include a high-level overview of activities for the EC, including a quarterly review of finances and the strategic plan for 2020-2025. Meet us there!

Welcome to the 2023 Trainers Leadership Committee!

Wed, 15 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In February, the Trainer community held its third annual election for Trainers Leadership, a Committee that provides governance and development support to our growing subcommunity of Instructor Trainers, and makes decisions on behalf of that community that affect our Instructor Training program and related policies.

In their second year as an elected body, the Trainers Leadership Committee (TLC!) oversaw many important changes. These included:

The first implementation of the Certification Renewal process approved by the Trainer community in 2021. The careful oversight of Leadership made this a successful milestone, balancing goals to maintain a community that is active, sustainable, and inclusive.
Creation of a transparent process for proposal and scheduling of Trainer meetings and topics. This lays a foundation for increased community influence on and support for meetings that provide enriching and timely development opportunities.
Design and approval of recommendations to make changes to the Instructor Checkout process, based on a broad community assessment project implemented in 2022. The 2023 Leadership will be working with Core Team to plan implementation, with some changes tentatively scheduled for June.
Creation of more inclusive procedures for this committee, including use of asynchronous commenting and voting to achieve quorum. The challenge of operating groups with global representation is significant for all Carpentries subcommunities, and this group aims to create a model for procedures that are both effective and manageable for our volunteer participants in all time zones.
Updating community documentation to better reflect policies and procedures, including changes to the Certification Renewal process and documentation for this Committee. These changes were presented to the full community and ratified during the election in February.

Details on these and other accomplishments of this Committee are available in the reports and issues sections on the Trainers repository.

The Dovetail #16: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Tue, 14 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the sixteenth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench (our new lesson infrastructure). In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench. If you are unfamiliar with The Workbench, you can watch a video that describes the workbench and the beta phase in two minutes.

Join the Monthly Instructor Meetings

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As a Carpentries Instructor, how do you get updated information? Through email, slack channel or a blog post? These are all great ways to gather information, however, it is not as conducive if you have questions, concerns or feedback regarding the information shared.

The Carpentries Workshop Administration Team recognized we were missing an opportunity to connect with Instructors and hear from you to make your teaching experience better. To bridge the gap we now host monthly meetings for Instructors!

The Carpentries Accessibility Statement and Accommodation Form

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to announce that we have developed an Accessibility Statement for The Carpentries. Our team is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible experience for all users, and this statement is an important step towards achieving that goal.

Our Accessibility Statement outlines our commitment to meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards, as well as our ongoing efforts to ensure our lessons, events, and website, are inclusive and user-friendly. We have implemented a number of accessibility features to help achieve this goal, such as:

The Future of CarpentryCon and Community Programming

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon, The Carpentries’ conference, was initiated as a biannual event to offer professional development and networking opportunities for our community members. The first in-person event occurred in Dublin, Ireland in 2018 and the next one, planned for Madison, Wisconsin in 2020, was transitioned to a virtual space in response to the pandemic. The most recent CarpentryCon was also held online and occurred from 1-12 August 2022. Over the years, we have learned a lot about the ways in which virtual and hybrid events significantly increase accessibility and how we can best support the community through our event offerings.

Developing Support for Instructors in 2023

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post, we outline some of the activities the Core Team has planned to make the lives of Instructors easier in 2023.

Developing Instructor onboarding materials

The Workshop Administration Team is working with the Instructor Training Team and the Community Development Team to develop a general Instructor Onboarding. These onboarding events are intended to help prepare Instructors to teach their first workshops. During Instructor Training there is a plethora of information being shared and after certification the Instructors may still have questions directly related to workshop logistics. Updates to the development and launch of the Instructor Onboarding will become available as progress is made.

Apply for the current round of Carpentries Maintainer Onboarding!

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next cohort of Maintainers. Currently we have 109 Maintainers serving across 56 core lessons. To keep the community healthy, we need to plan for offboarding people who want to step down from their current positions and finding new people to step into the role.

You do not need to be a Git expert to be a Maintainer. If you are familiar with the Git lessons from either Library Carpentry or Software Carpentry, you will have the foundation and support to learn the skills you will need as a Maintainer. The Maintainer community has a dedicated Slack channel, TopicBox list, and two monthly meetings to help support you and the lesson you are working on.

The Dovetail #15: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fifteenth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench (our new lesson infrastructure). In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench. If you are unfamiliar with The Workbench, you can watch a video that describes the workbench and the beta phase in two minutes.

Carpentries Trainer Training Applications are Open - Apply by 27 February!

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The role of Instructor Trainer (aka “Trainer” and different from “Instructor” in Carpentries lingo) has a very special place in The Carpentries. The Trainer community is much smaller than the Instructor community – since we began we have certified only 147 Instructor Trainers, compared with 4,161 certified Instructors! We train Instructor Trainers 1-2 times per year, based on our ability to meet global demand for Instructor Training and the interest of member organisations in supporting Trainers to enhance their local efforts. If this role interests you, be sure to apply now!

Register your Carpentries Subcommunity

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Community Development Program was launched in 2022 to support The Carpentries subcommunities. A subcommunity is a subset of the larger Carpentries community and can be local (e.g., University Carpentries Club), regional (e.g., Carpentries in Africa), domain-specific (e.g., HPC Carpentry), or a group of community members sharing a common language (e.g., Carpentries-es) or interests (e.g., Carpentries Offline). Communities of practice built around formal Carpentries roles (e.g., Instructors, Maintainers) are not included in this definition and are not considered subcommunities. The Community Development Program has been slowly taking action on addressing fourteen recommendations that emerged from conversations with a number of leaders of Carpentries subcommunities throughout 2021 and 2022.

Launching Data Carpentry: Image Processing with Python

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I am thrilled to announce the first official release of the new Data Carpentry curriculum, Image Processing with Python. In November 2022, the Curriculum Advisory Committee met and approved a motion to move the lesson out of beta testing and into stable status. Version 1.0.0 of the curriculum was published to Zenodo last week. This means the curriculum is now available for teaching in official Data Carpentry workshops.

Curriculum Content

The Image Processing with Python curriculum teaches the concepts and skills needed to write automated processing pipelines for image data. Using examples from morphometrics, the curriculum covers the steps of a typical image processing workflow: loading images, masking, blurring and thresholding data, and ends with a capstone challenge to provide a chance for additional practice. Like Foundations of Astronomical Data Science, released in April 2022, this curriculum consists on a single lesson, designed to be taught over two full days or four half-days.

Introducing The Carpentries Information Technology Developer, Eli Chadwick

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to welcome Eli Chadwick to The Carpentries Core Team! Eli joins the Infrastructure Team as our new Information Technology Developer and has extensive experience in developing tools and applications as a Research Software Engineer. We asked Eli to share a bit about himself, read on to learn more!

I studied Physics at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom (UK). Over the course of my degree I learned how to program, culminating in a project simulating observations of “tidal disruption events” – where stars are ripped apart by supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies.

We are Hiring a Communications Coordinator. Join Our Team.

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for a full-time Communications Coordinator to join our global, mission-driven organisation, and is particularly seeking applications from individuals in Mexico, Central America, South America, or Southern Africa. The Communications Coordinator will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 75,000 learners, 3,400 instructors, 140 Trainers, and 100 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

This position is supported with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Our new team member will join a diverse and engaged team of remote professionals working to spread data-driven research skills around the world. Our team values openness, honesty, fairness, and transparency as the keys to fostering trust. We believe that the individuals who make up our community are the most important part of our organisation and our strongest resource. We strive to make decisions that prioritize people first and empower the growth and success of all who are part of our organisation. We value a growth mindset in all that we do and strive to be always improving and evolving ourselves and our methodologies, being receptive to feedback, responsive, curious, and willing to learn.

Calling for Volunteers to join a Lesson Program Governance Committee

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This post was updated on 3rd February 2023, extending the deadline for applications to the end of Wednesday 15th February 2023 Anywhere on Earth.

The Carpentries has three lesson programs, Software Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Data Carpentry. In November, I published a post describing the governance structure of each lesson program, and outlining a plan to introduce more community governance in the form of Lesson Program Governance Committees (LPGCs). Today, 24 January we open the call for volunteers to form these new committees. The call for volunteers will remain open until the end of 5th February, and I encourage anyone interested in community leadership and guiding the development of one of the lesson programs to apply.

Announcing our new Deputy Director of Business

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

I am elated to announce that Talisha Sutton-Kennedy is advancing to a Junior Team Lead role, and will now be serving as The Carpentries Deputy Director of Business. Since 2018, Talisha has brought her keen attention to detail and process-improvement orientation to the Business and Membership Teams, leading to great improvements in efficiency and confidence in The Carpentries business administration processes. In her new role, Talisha will continue to strengthen our business operations, and will consolidate our Membership processing and support services within the Business Team. Congratulations Talisha!

The Dovetail #14: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourteenth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench (our new lesson infrastructure). In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench. If you are unfamiliar with The Workbench, you can watch a video that describes the workbench and the beta phase in twom minutes.

Multiple ways to follow-up after Carpentry trainings: Benefits, impacts and librarians’ wishes

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

What routines do librarians and other information professionals adopt after a Carpentries training, and what other benefits and impacts does this have on their professional life? These questions were the starting point of a survey developed by the Library Carpentry Advisory Group, LCAG in 2021. We reached out to the wider library community with the aim to gain a better understanding of impacts resulting from training, learn more about their engagement with the Carpentries community and to collect their ideas and wishes for current and future training topics. The survey consisted of 28 questions overall and was open for responses between June and August 2021. We disseminated the survey through various channels, including The Carpentries mailing lists and social media channels, regional mailing lists (e.g. Australia, Asia, Africa) as well as direct contacts to former workshop participants and instructors (via host institutions). Overall, 113 responses were received. Not surprisingly, the majority of respondents are based at universities. Further respondents work in public libraries, special libraries or research organizations. Over two thirds (79 respondents) reported that their library already engages with The Carpentries, and several do so in multiple ways. In addition, 19 respondents work at libraries that are not involved yet but they would like to learn more about The Carpentries. Reported job roles (cf. Figure 1, multiple choice) are strongly related to teaching and learning (45.4%), research support roles (research data management 32.4%, scholarly communication 28.7%), and reference and user services more generally (31.5%). Moreover, several respondents manage collections, digital library services, research and development projects and information and data analytics.

Honoring Omar Khan, The Carpentries Communications Manager

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Omar Khan joined The Carpentries in 2020 to support all aspects of communications for our organisation. He was the primary driver of getting the community the information they needed by developing our annual communications strategy and implementing our internal workflows. His work included, but was not limited to, compiling content for our newsletter, engaging the community on social media, and identifying important, timely, and interesting content for our blog. Omar is also an extremely talented graphic design artist who developed emojis, logos, templates, reports, and some really cool hex stickers.

Introducing The Carpentries Director of Technology, Dr Rob Davey

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to welcome Dr Rob Davey to The Carpentries Core Team! Rob is joining us as the Director of Technology. In this role he will manage the technical requirements for The Carpentries’ programmatic and administrative teams to ensure that The Carpentries provides an accessible and inclusive experience for our community members. Rob will also lead The Carpentries data privacy and security efforts, and provide strategic direction for improvements to the technology stack used in our work. We are ecstatic to welcome Rob to the team!

Happy New Year from Dr. Kari L. Jordan, The Carpentries Executive Director

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to 2023 at The Carpentries!

I spent time during the holiday period reflecting on what we accomplished in 2022, the feedback you shared, and the priorities our Core Team have identified after serving and working with our various community segments. It is clear that we must make a concerted effort to strengthen our community through training, support, and getting creative with how we appreciate and recognise your contributions. After all, we are nothing and can do nothing without each and every one of you.

Announcing the 2023 Executive Council for The Carpentries

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the community and council elections for the 2023 Executive Council, which will assume responsibility of governance from the current Executive Council in February 2023.

Incoming community-elected members

Two candidates stood for the community election held during the first week of December. Out of the 1,386 ballots distributed to Voting Members, 356 ballots were cast (25.7% turnout). The two candidates receiving the highest number of votes and joining the Executive Council for two-year terms as community-elected members are:

The Dovetail #13: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the thirteenth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench (our new lesson infrastructure). In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

If you have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

Lessons for Librarians in Open Science Principles and Methods

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The UCLA Library is pleased to announce a call for proposals for Lessons for Librarians in Open Science Principles and Methods, a two-year (2023-2024) project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Service (IMLS) to incentivize lesson authors to develop and refine seven lessons each year through two-year sequential summer workshops. This initial call is for lesson proposals to form the project’s first-year cohort (2023).

The project seeks to support continued skills development for librarians in open science by creating a librarian-focused curriculum. Led by the UCLA Library Data Science Center, the project will award each recipient (individual or group) with $5,000 for developing an open science lesson. Authors will design and refine lessons through summer workshops utilizing the Carpentries Curriculum Development guidelines and the Collaborative Lesson Development Training program as frameworks for curriculum development. The program was designed by a team at UCLA, including the chair of the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (LC-CAC), Tim Dennis, and certified Carpentries instructor Zhiyuan Yao. Inspired by the Carpentries’ evidence-based teaching and learning model, the team will work closely to align new lessons with existing Carpentries’ lessons, and leverage the Carpentries’ technical infrastructure to create new open-source lessons on GitHub. In addition, a member of LC-CAC will serve on the project’s Review Committee each year with an eye toward aligning new lesson proposals with the existing Carpentries curriculum. One potential project outcome will be a series of new lessons for possible integration with Software, Data, or Library Carpentry curricula. A broader goal of the project is for librarians to increase their aptitudes in the principles and practices of open science, so that they can provide instruction to researchers and better support faculty by advocating and teaching open and transparent techniques.

CarpentriesOffline — CarpentryCon 2022 feedback and call for help

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally published on 12 December on Medium.

In July we published our first blog post to introduce CarpentriesOffline. This will be post number two, a report back of CarpentryCon 2022. We should probably get a name for this series. Any suggestions?

If you are not familiar with CarpentriesOffline — it is a project to create an environment for delivering Carpentries workshops offline using Raspberry Pi (RPi) computers. It could be any computer lying around that you don’t know what to do with, but for starters we are focussing on the RPi.

IoT for Novices in South Africa

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Originally posted on the Society of Research Software Engineering website, this blog post highlights an Introduction to the Internet of Things workshop hosted at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the buzzwords that researchers would like to include in their research and grant applications, but few actually understand what it is. So, when I was asked by Kim Martin whether I could run a workshop at Stellenbosch University in South Africa to introduce a group of curious researchers to this thing they are hearing so much about I immediately agreed – as usual before completely thinking it through. I am not an IoT expert but merely an enthusiast that likes playing around with microcontrollers, sensors and computery things such as Raspberry Pis. I am also a research software engineer and I immediately saw an opportunity to introduce research software engineering to researchers – not only because the workshop is being presented by an RSE but also to tell them how an RSE can benefit their research.

The Dovetail #12: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the twelfth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench (our new lesson infrastructure). In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

If you have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

I Can’t Believe I Survived Without It: Learning Data and Software Skills with The Carpentries

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally published on 15 November on the Australian Research Data Commons blog.

In 2022, as part of the Carpentries Partnership for Australia, the ARDC began refreshing the cohort of certified Carpentries instructors across Australia. There are now 14 research organisations involved in the Partnership, to date, 52 have completed Instructor training, and 22 of these are fully certified to teach Carpentries Workshops.

The Carpentries Instructor Training program is a proven method for teaching digital research skills, and is part of the ARDC’s leadership in promoting a digital research skills uplift for Australian researchers, in collaboration with partner organisations across the country.

Community Helps Add Alt Texts to our Lesson Images

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In early September, Brynn Elliott, Accessibility Manager for The Carpentries hosted two Themed Discussions for the community focused on improving accessibility of our lessons through improving alt text on images. The group started off with an overview of what alt text is, why it is important, and how to add it to images in our lessons.## What is alt text? Alt text - also known as alternative text, alt tags, or alt descriptions - are a written description of the image that has several purposes. Alt text is important for accessibility, screen readers can only read text, individuals who are blind or have low vision are still able to understand the image purpose. Search engine crawlers use alt text to index data and improve search results. Images that are broken or missing can still be interpreted because text is shown in its place. Alt text may vary depending on the goal of the photo.

Election Nominees for the 2023 Executive Council

Wed, 23 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The election for Community-Elected members of the 2022 Executive Council will be open from 5 December and will close on 11 December at midnight, anywhere on Earth.

If you are a Voting Member, you should have received an email from The Carpentries Core Team with the subject “Confirming eligibility to vote in The Carpentries 2022 Executive Council Elections”. If you have not received it, but you feel you have contributed sufficiently to this community, please complete the Application for Voting Membership before 29 November.

Carpentries Gratitudes: 2022 and beyond

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In 2019, the community initiated The Carpentries Gratitudes project as an opportunity to share an appreciation for each other and all that we have been able to accomplish together. We have carried on this tradition each December through blog posts, social media posts and recorded messages of thanks. Although the end of the year is a great time to reflect and show appreciation, we want to provide ongoing opportunities for members of our community to share their appreciation throughout the year. Therefore, starting in December 2022, we will have multiple channels available for you to say thanks.

Planning for Lesson Program Governance Committees

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In January 2023, The Carpentries will call for community leaders to volunteer to join Lesson Program Governance Committees for Software Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Data Carpentry.

Where We Have Been

The Carpentries was formed in January 2018, after Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged to form a single organisation. Our third lesson program, Library Carpentry, joined in November that year, and the structure of the organisation has remained relatively stable ever since. Before the merger, Software Carpentry & Data Carpentry had Steering Committees, which combined into a single entity when the two organisations agreed to merge, and became the first Executive Council of The Carpentries, following an election of new members in late 2017.

Announcing our new Director of Assessment

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Dr. Kelly Barnes is advancing to a Senior Team Lead role and will now be serving as The Carpentries Director of Assessment. Over the past three years, Kelly has brought her expertise in assessment and evaluation to the Instructor Training team, improving and strengthening the Instructor Training and Trainer Training programs. In her new position, she will be able to expand her reach and bring high-quality assessment to all of The Carpentries core activities - including curriculum development and maintenance, workshops, and community development. Congratulations Kelly!

The Dovetail #11: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the eleventh post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

If you have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

On The Carpentries and Twitter

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

To The Carpentries Community:

Twitter has been of great use to The Carpentries as a platform. It has enabled us to connect with our community, welcome new people and groups to our community, and engage in and facilitate conversations. We have spent a great amount of time and effort to bolster our presence on the platform with these purposes in mind.

That is why we have been distressed by the changes that have taken place or are planned to take place at the platform. Planned changes like less content moderation, removing resources and personnel from critical teams dedicated to safety, preventing misinformation, and communications, make the platform worse and demonstrably less safe and inviting. Additional planned changes around increased monetization at the platform will make the platform less accessible as well.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: R and the Tidyverse for Working with Data

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Incubator Lesson Spotlight highlights a lesson under development by our community in The Carpentries Incubator. In this edition, we look at the progress being made on the {{page.lesson_title}} lesson, and hear from the authors about how The Carpentries community can get involved with the ongoing development of this lesson.

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/r-tidyverse-4-datasets/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/r-tidyverse-4-datasets

Learning Objectives

To understand fundamentals of visualisation with ggplot2
To be able to subset and alter data for your needs
To be able to effectively alter the shape of data (pivoting)
To be able to summarise data efficiently

Target Audience

Anyone working with data sets that want to learn efficient ways of wrangling and visualising that data with R, using the tidyverse.

The Dovetail #10: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 02 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the tenth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

If you have used the workbench and would like to provide feedback, please tell us about your experience.

The Dovetail #9: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the eighth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Beta Phase Updates

The beta phase is up and running with the first lesson: “Data Analysis and Visualisation in R for Ecologists”. The live version is at https://datacarpentry.org/R-ecology-lesson, while The Workbench version is at https://preview.carpentries.org/R-ecology-lesson. Note that The Workbench version of the lesson is a snapshot from 2022-10-17, which allows the Maintainers of the lesson to practise working with the new infrastructure before it becomes the default. On 2022-11-14, the underlying lesson repository will be converted to using the Workbench. During this time, the default URL will serve a snapshot of the lesson, and the live lesson will be served at the preview URL. Note that any pull requests that come into the lesson during that time should not come from forks created before 2022-11-14.

The Dovetail #8: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Beta Phase To Resume

As we enter into the Q4, I am pleased to announce that the long-delayed beta phase will commence from 2022-10-17 until 2023-03-13 with one lesson entering the beta phase per week. Details of the beta phase and the official table of lessons can be found below and on the Workbench Beta Phase page, with explanation of what the different stages of the beta phase will bring.

Announcing our new Deputy Director of Technology

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

A Message from Erin Becker

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

Announcing our newest Curriculum Advisory Committees

Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am delighted to announce the formation of new Curriculum Advisory Committees for Data Carpentry Ecology, Data Carpentry Image Processing with Python, and Data Carpentry Social Science. This follows the Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) that were formed for many of our curricula earlier this year, and means that we now have Curriculum Advisors providing guidance on all of The Carpentries lessons in English. In addition to these new CACs for Data Carpentry, the CAC for Software Carpentry welcomes two new members.

Tell Us What You Think of the Instructor Training Checkout Process

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

{% include alert text=‘Note: Our checkout requirements have changed since this blog post was published. Read about how we made these changes and about the new checkout requirements, effective August 14, 2023.’ %}

We are improving the Instructor Training Checkout process to remove accessibility barriers and make the process more worthwhile for trainees and the Carpentries community. But, we need your help to make sure we get this right!

The Core Team, in partnership with Trainers Leadership, is working on the first systematic review and improvements to the Checkout process since 2018.

The Dovetail #7: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the seventh post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

We are hard at work drawing up plans for The Beta Phase, which will tentatively restart on 2022-10-17. I have recruited members from the Curriculum, Workshop Administration, Assessment, and Communications teams to help out with the effort. By the time the beta phase is over and we convert our lessons (current estimate: Q2 2023), the whole community should be aware of and excited for the changes!

Aufruf für Kandidaturen für den The Carpentries Executive Council (Vorstand) 2023

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

このポストを日本語で読む

Lee esta entrada en Español

Read this blog post in English

Es werden Menschen für die Leitung von The Carpentries gebraucht! Hast Du:

den Wunsch, gemeinsam mit Carpentries-Leitern aus aller Welt die Zukunft von The Carpentries zu gestalten und unseren anhaltenden Erfolg zu sichern?
Möchtest Du Deinen Beitrag zu The Carpentries auf globaler Ebene leisten?
den Wunsch und die Bereitschaft, die gesamte Organisation zu beraten und zu vertreten?
Kenntnisse und Erfahrungen, die den Executive Council von The Carpentries bei der strategischen Führung und Steuerung der Organisation unterstützen?

Wenn ja, dann braucht The Carpentries DICH!

Call for Candidates for the 2023 Carpentries Executive Council

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

このポストを日本語で読む

Um diesen Post auf Deutsch zu lesen klicke hier

Lee esta entrada en Español

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 advise and 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!!

Convocatoria de candidatos para el Consejo Ejecutivo de Carpentries 2023

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

このポストを日本語で読む

Um diesen Post auf Deutsch zu lesen klicke hier

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¡Se necesitan líderes de Carpentries! ¿Tienes:

Un deseo de unirte a los y las líderes de Carpentries de todo el mundo para dar forma al futuro de nuestra comunidad y asegurar nuestro éxito continuo?
¿Deseas ampliar tu contribución a Carpentries llevandola a nivel global?
¿Deseo y voluntad de asesorar y representar a toda la organización?
¿Conocimientos y experiencia que ayuden al Consejo Ejecutivo de Carpentries a liderar y guiar estratégicamente a la organización?

¡Si es así, The Carpentries te necesita!

コミュニティ選出とカウンシル選出のノミネーション開始

Fri, 16 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Um diesen Post auf Deutsch zu lesen klicke hier

Lee esta entrada en Español

Read this blog post in English

カーペントリーズのリーダーを募集します！以下をお持ちではありませんか？

カーペントリーズのリーダーシップチームに参加してザ・カーペントリーズの未来とサクセスを築く意欲
ザ・カーペントリーズにグローバルレベルで貢献する意欲
組織全体に提案したり、また組織を代表する意欲
ザ・カーペントリーズエグゼクティブカウンシルのストラテジーや組織をガイドすることがサポート出来る知識や経験

もし答えが YES なら、ザ・カーペントリーズにはあなたが必要です！！

ザ・カーペントリーズエグゼクティブカウンシルに参加するにふさわしい候補者を選出するためのプロセスに、ザ・カーペントリーズのコミュニティの方全員に、自分自身、または的確だと思われる人をノミネートすることによって参加して下さい。

エグゼクティブカウンシルは、ザ・カーペントリーズのガバナンス機関で、組織の戦略や計画に関わっています。エグゼクティブカウンシルのメンバーはコミュニティ、またはエグゼクティブカウンシルのいずれかによって選出され、2 年の任期を務めます。

コミュニティ選出メンバー

カーペントリーズコミュニティは毎年エグゼクティブカウンシルに 2 人選出します。これらの候補者は自分で自分をノミネートする必要があります。また、カーペントリーの投票権を保有していなければなりません。コミュニティ選挙で落選した場合、自動的にカウンシルで選出する枠の検討対象になります。このフォームを使用してご自身をコミュニティ選出枠にノミネートして下さい。あなたの回答は、コミュニティ枠立候補者を発表するブログポストに記載されます。ノミネーションに関するブログポストの例は以前の立候補者のリストから確認できます。また、コミュニティと共有する 3 分間ビデオを作成するオプションもあります。

カウンシル選出メンバー

カウンシル選出枠は、エグゼクティブカウンシルによって決定されます。2023 年度は、3 人が選出されます。カウンシル選出枠には、どなたでもノミネートすることができます。また、過去にカーペントリーズと関わりがなくても大丈夫です。カウンシルは、ノミネートされた候補者に連絡を取り、選出された場合に参加する意思があるかどうかを確認します。このポジションに誰かをノミネートしたい場合は、このフォームを使用してください。

今期でエグゼクティブカウンシルの任期を終えるメンバーは:

Aleksandra Nenadic (コミュニティ選出)
Sarah Stevens (コミュニティ選出)
John Chodacki (カウンシル選出)
Michael Smith(カウンシル選出)
Masami Yamaguchi (カウンシル選出)

以下は、昨年選出されたメンバーなので、次期も継続します:

Konrad Förstner (コミュニティ選出)
Yanina Bellini Saibene (コミュニティ選出)
Annajiat Alim Rasel (カウンシル選出)

コミュニティ選出とカウンシル選出ポジションのノミネーションは世界のどこにいても 2022年10月17日月曜日に締め切られます。

Access for All

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We value accessibility as core, and create multiple avenues for participation where all people can learn and contribute.

One of The Carpentries strategic focus areas is to intentionally incorporate equity, inclusion, and accessibility to support a diverse community.

To do this, we teamed up with Understood, whose mission is to shape workplaces to be inclusive for people with disabilities, to better understand where The Carpentries could improve accessibility for the community and what we are already doing well. Understood evaluated organisational statements and policies, employee processes (hiring, onboarding, workflows), and observed a three-day Software Carpentry workshop.

The Dovetail #6: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the sixth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail”, about the transition to The Carpentries Workbench. In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news about the Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

A lot has happened since the last time I provided an update (2022-07-20), just not that much on The Workbench side of things. I attended and presented at the RStudio conference 2022, took a short “staycation” to decompress (with a broken aircon, no less!), attended and presented at CarpentryCon 2022, and sat on hiring committees for our new Director of Technology. During this time, I was able to tackle some superficial aspects of the Workbench itself.

The Executive Council Annual Retreat for 2022

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

During the week of July 17, the members of the Executive Council held their annual retreat. With a full and very well-organized agenda, the EC had time to connect and discuss our strategic plan and governance.

With a hybrid modality, the EC also had the opportunity to learn about governance models and reflect on the model we have and the model we aspire to have. We also reviewed, discussed and made decisions about the work of the standing committees.

Introducing The CarpentryCon 2022 Keynote Presentations

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon 2022 is nearly here! We are very excited to present the work of the CarpentryCon Task Force and our community.

In this blog post, you will find the titles and abstracts for the four keynote presentations at CarpentryCon. ES indicates a session presented in Spanish and EN indicates a session presented in English. All sessions will include English captioning and may include additional translation services as requested through registration.

We are Hiring an Information Technology Developer. Join Our Team.

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for a new full-time Information Technology Developer to join our global, mission-driven organisation. The Information Technology Developer will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 80,000 learners, 3,900 Instructors, 110 Trainers, and 100 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

Our new Information Technology Developer will join a diverse and engaged team of remote professionals working to spread data-driven research skills around the world. Our team values openness, honesty, fairness, and transparency as the keys to fostering trust. We believe that the individuals who make up our community are the most important part of our organisation and our strongest resource. We strive to make decisions that prioritise people first and empower the growth and success of all who are part of our organisation. We value a growth mindset in all that we do and strive to be always improving and evolving ourselves and our methodologies, being receptive to feedback, responsive, curious, and willing to learn.

The Dovetail #5: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fifth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Announcements

Workbench Beta Phase On Hold

The Workbench Beta phase is on Hold until after CarpentryCon, and it is likely that it will be on hold until mid-September. Over the last few weeks, like an unexpected late spring ice storm, situations unrelated to development of The Workbench both personal and professional ([such as the departure of a good friend and colleague]({{ site.url }}/blog/2022/07/thank-you-francois/)) have arisen, which forced me to stop pedaling and gently squeeze the brakes on this project so that the Dovetail does not turn into a fishtail.

Running Software/Data and Library Carpentries workshops offline

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on the Newcastle University Research Software Engineering Medium and is being published here with the permission of the author.

When the Internet “goes down”, my life comes to a standstill. So what happens when you are trying to deliver a Carpentries workshop and you have no Internet access? Usually, our workshop website with the schedule and all the links to the lessons materials are online. The collaborative part of the git lesson requires access to GitHub and of course, quite often, students have to download the data and the software they require for the workshop.

Honoring François Michonneau - Senior Director of Technology

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

François is exceptionally gifted and a phenomenal leader. On his last day, we share some of his wonderful accomplishments over the past 4+ years.

François joined The Carpentries in 2018 as Curriculum Development Lead in an effort to scale our collaboratively developed curriculum, though he was no stranger to the community. François has been a Data and Software Carpentry community member since 2014, serving in multiple roles including Maintainer, Instructor, and Trainer. As Curriculum Development Lead, he co-organised Data Carpentry’s first Bug BBQ, developed GitHub labels for The Carpentries lessons, and was instrumental in publishing Data Carpentry’s Social Sciences lessons. He has provided strategic oversight for The Carpentries lesson infrastructure, advising on the technical and community engagement aspects of this work. His expertise has proven invaluable in preparing several grant applications and engaging with potential partners. For example, François co-led the Carpentries Lab grant proposal development and implementation funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Additionally, he was co-PI on our CZI grant to advance The Carpentries equity, inclusion, and accessibility goals, helping to secure $399,300 over 24 months.

Join us in Welcoming our New Maintainers!

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. Seven new Maintainers completed independent study of the Maintainer onboarding curriculum, and demonstrated completion of the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintenance
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template
Practicing core technical skills for lesson maintenance
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee

We are Hiring a Director of Technology. Join Our Team.

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for a new full-time Director of Technology to join our global, mission-driven organisation. The Director of Technology will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 80,000 learners, 3,900 Instructors, 110 Trainers, and 100 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

Our new Director of Technology will join a diverse and engaged team of remote professionals working to spread data-driven research skills around the world. Our team values openness, honesty, fairness, and transparency as the keys to fostering trust. We believe that the individuals who make up our community are the most important part of our organisation and our strongest resource. We strive to make decisions that prioritize people first and empower the growth and success of all who are part of our organisation. We value a growth mindset in all that we do and strive to be always improving and evolving ourselves and our methodologies, being receptive to feedback, responsive, curious, and willing to learn.

The Dovetail #4: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourth post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Announcements

For anyone who has questions about The Workbench, I will be hosting two themed community discussions:

(UTC) Friday 08 July 2022 14:00 (find your time)
(UTC) Tuesday 12 July 2022 00:00 (find your time)

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-06-08,

Apply to become a Curriculum Advisor

Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This post was updated on 12 July 2022 to indicate that we are also recruiting for new members to join the Curriculum Advisory Committee for Software Carpentry.

In August 2021, we announced that The Carpentries is reactivating our Curriculum Advisory program. Curriculum Advisory Committees provide high-level oversight, vision, and leadership for a curriculum and guide large-scale updates. Each Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) supports and is supported by a group of Lesson Maintainers, who focus on day-to-day maintenance of the lessons. In February 2022, we announced new CACs for Software Carpentry and three Data Carpentry curricula (Astronomy, Genomics, and Geospatial).

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Introduction to Reproducible Publications with RStudio

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/Reproducible-Publications-with-RStudio
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/Reproducible-Publications-with-RStudio

Learning Objectives

Get started with RStudio and learn about the advantages of using the environment in academic research and writing.
Build on research and analytical skills by learning how to create reproducible documents that combine code, analysis, and narrative.
Understand good practices for project organization, version control, and documentation as means to advance open science.
Develop a reproducible paper with provided data, code, and narrative.

Target Audience

Researchers, of any discipline and at any level, with interested in using Rstudio and learning good practices for reproducible research.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. Thirty new Maintainers participated in the three hour onboarding, with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintenance.
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community.
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors.
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template.
Practicing core technical skills for lesson maintenance.
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee.

We are excited to welcome these new members to the Maintainer community and look forward to working with them, and continuing to work with our many committed continuing Maintainers, over the coming months. If you are interested in becoming a Maintainer in the future, stay tuned for announcements of our yearly Maintainer Onboarding sessions.

The Dovetail #3: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-06-08,

{sandpaper} version 0.5.8 -> 0.6.0
- create_episode() will now accept titles with spaces and UTF-8 characters. A slugified file name will be created from the title. Now you can create a new episode like so: sandpaper::create_episode("안녕 고양이 😹 Hello Kitty!") and the corresponding file name will be: 02-안녕-고양이-😹-hello-kitty.Rmd
- create_episode() now has the variants create_episode_rmd() and create_episode_md(), for lesson developers who want to create episodes of a specific file type.
- create_lesson() gains the rmd = TRUE argument, which allows lesson developers to opt out of creating an R Markdown-based episode if they want.
{varnish} version 0.1.14 -> 0.2.0
- The search field has been disabled to avoid confusion (it is a future endeavour)
- The heading above the sidebar has been renamed to EPISODES to avoid confusion
- The sidebar will stay collapsed across page refreshes
{pegboard} (no updates)
Both the markdown template and R Markdown template now default to creating incubator lessons, as these are more common than lessons that are purely carpentries.

To update your local Workbench installation, open R and use the following code:

Introducing The Carpentries Director of Fundraising, Amanda Steele

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are so excited to share news that our Core Team is growing! This week we welcomed Amanda Steele - The Carpentries new Director of Fundraising. In her new role, Amanda will set annual revenue and fundraising goals by identifying, cultivating, building and solidifying relationships with new and established donors and coordinating fundraising campaigns. She will engage with current and potential member organisations, and administer The Carpentries’ Sponsorship Program. We are delighted to welcome Amanda to the team and community.

Join us in welcoming Vini Salazar as our new Maintainer Community Lead!

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Hi everyone,

My name is Vini and I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining The Carpentries as Maintainer Community Lead. It’s a pleasure to assume this role passed on from Daniel Chen, which did a wonderful job for the past year and a half. The Maintainer Community Lead is a point of contact for all things related to maintenance of Carpentries lessons. I’ll also be hosting the monthly Maintainer Meetings that serve as a space to discuss that. You are welcome to ask any technical questions related to Git, GitHub, interacting with contributors or anything of the sort. Maintainers are a vital part of The Carpentries community, and we understand that being one requires a fair amount of time and commitment. So, we hope to support not only current Maintainers, but also to facilitate the process for people that would like to either step down from or return to their Maintainer role. I’m also very excited for this year’s round of Maintainer Onboarding, which is happening this week! Looking forward to meeting all of you joining. An important note: due to time zone differences, starting from June the monthly Maintainer Meetings will change times to 12 and 22 UTC. For meeting times, you can always check the Maintainers’ CodiMD.

The Dovetail #2: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second post in a series that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast of the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-05-25,

{sandpaper} version 0.5.5 -> 0.5.8
- pull request workflow updated to include validation for lesson accessibility. Links and images that could be improved for accessibility will now be highlighted in the pull request.

The Dovetail: Updates from The Carpentries Workbench

Wed, 25 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first post in a series of posts that we are calling “The Dovetail.” In this series, we aim to keep members of The Carpentries community abreast on the current news for The Carpentries Workbench.

If you are interested in participating in discussions around The Carpentries Workbench, head over to our GitHub Discussions forum: https://github.com/carpentries/workbench/discussions

Updates to The Carpentries Workbench

Since 2022-05-05,

{sandpaper} version 0.5.1 -> 0.5.5
- This incorporates important updates for R-based lessons and introduces the workbench-beta config variable to indicate that a lesson is in the workbench beta phase
{varnish} version 0.1.11 -> 0.1.13
- Workbench beta phase alert added
- dropdown navigation no longer is hidden by the sidebar on XXL screens (thanks @brownsarahm!)
- blockquotes are now more clearly delineated from the rest of the content (thanks @fiveop!)
{pegboard} version 0.2.4 -> 0.2.6
- Link validation no longer treats alt="" as invalid as this can indicate decorative images that are ignored by screen readers.

To update your local Workbench installation, open R and use the following code:

Now Published: The Carpentries 2021 Annual and Financial Report

Mon, 23 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

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

We hope you take the time to read these reports to see all the work that our Core Team and community have done in 2021.

2021 Annual Report

The Carpentries Annual Report is an effort to summarize the work done towards our mission in 2021. It is a crucial tool that helps us understand where the community and Core Team have devoted our time, while also helping us know where to focus our efforts in the next year. Additionally, the report provides an opportunity to reflect on where we have been and where we are going.

Image Processing with Python - Call for Beta Pilot Applications

Thu, 19 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Data Carpentry: Image Processing with Python curriculum is ready for beta testing. First developed for the Digital Imaging and Vision Applications in Science (DIVAS) project, the lesson has already been through several iterations and pilot workshops. The curriculum is now ready for testing by the Instructor community, with the goal of preparing a full release within the next 12 months.

We are seeking community members to host and teach beta pilot workshops with the Image Processing with Python curriculum in July - October 2022. Continue reading for more information on the curriculum, the previous alpha pilot workshops, and how to apply to host and/or teach a beta pilot.

Welcome to the 2022 Trainers Leadership Committee!

Wed, 18 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In February, the Trainer community held its second annual election for Trainers Leadership, a Committee intended to provide governance and development support to our growing subcommunity of amazing people who teach Instructor Training.

In their first year as an elected body, Trainers Leadership made great strides towards establishing their role and improving the support structures for the Trainer community. These included:

Establishing meeting procedures, adopting a variation on Martha’s Rules, identifying ways to use public and private channels to prioritize transparency, and creating GitHub templates and other structures to facilitate future work.
Reviewing and planning a replacement for the (former) Trainer Agreement. A new proposal for a Certification Renewal Process for Trainers was presented to the full community and ratified during the election in February.
Detailing governance and management structure for relevant processes, including oversight of Instructor checkout, Instructor Training curriculum maintenance, and the process of scheduling Trainer community meetings.
Overseeing a major update to the Instructor Training Curriculum
Defining a decision-making partnership with the Trainer community. Conversations so far suggest that Leadership is trusted and expected to take responsibility for action, reserving community consultation for focused, impactful choices.
Seeking and receiving approval from The Carpentries Executive Council as a formal Committee! This took time because this group has a governance role, making it different from other Committees, and there were not yet any guidelines for that aspect of their role. Trainers Leadership will continue to report to the EC as a Committee, but they can also now look to the new Lesson Program Governance policies where applicable.

As part of their commitment to transparency, details on these and other accomplishments of this productive group are available in the reports and issues sections on the Trainers repository!

Applications for sponsored Carpentries Memberships open now!

Wed, 18 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

During our Executive Director, Dr. Kari L. Jordan’s, New Year address we annouced funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to provide three (3) Silver Carpentries memberships to institutions serving underrepresented groups in Central and South America and in Southern Africa for 2 years. A silver membership includes 2 Centrally-Organised workshops and 5 seats in online Instructor Training. In addition, membership includes the opportunity to send two (2) representatives to meetings of the Member Council, which meets approximately quarterly to discuss issues of importance to Member organisations.

Community Maintainer Lead: Recap, Update, and What's Next

Tue, 17 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Community Maintainer Lead

The Community Maintainer Lead is a volunteer position at The Carpentries with the main goal of supporting the lesson Maintainers. Angela Li was the first to have this role, where she worked on the Lesson Maintenance Handbook to help give new and existing maintainers more guidance on how to Maintain a lesson. When I took on the role after Angela, I wanted to help build the Maintainer community within and between individual lessons.

Apply for the current round of Carpentries Maintainer Onboarding!

Thu, 12 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard a new cohort of Maintainers! We currently have 72 Maintainers serving across 48 official lessons. To maintain healthy support for all of our lessons, and to enable Maintainers to step back from the role as needed, we are recruiting an additional 52 Maintainers for 29 lessons. Although we are not yet able to hold Maintainer Onboarding in languages other than English, we strongly encourage applications from folks interested in maintaining one of the four official Carpentries lessons currently offered in Spanish.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Introduction to Deep Learning

Wed, 11 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/deep-learning-intro
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/deep-learning-intro

Learning Objectives

Prepare input data for use for deep learning
Design and train a Deep Neural Network
Troubleshoot the learning process
Measure the performance of the network
Visualize data and results

Target Audience

The main audience of this lesson is considered to have an academic background at any level. More importantly, we expect them to know basics of statistics and machine learning to follow through with the material.

Become an Instructor and help bring data and coding skills to people across the globe!

Tue, 10 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We often receive inquiries from people who are interested in becoming certified Carpentries Instructors or in recommending an opportunity for certification to a friend or colleague. In this post, we will review a few frequently asked questions and share a new avenue for priority admission to our Open Instructor Training program.

How can I be trained as a Carpentries Instructor?

Carpentries Instructor Training seats can be purchased for groups and individuals through Membership and A-la-carte seat purchases. In addition, we offer free access to individual applicants through our Open Instructor Training program. Anyone with an interest in becoming certified as a Carpentries Instructor can apply to this program. Applications are scored periodically and admitted in order of rank as seats become available.

The Carpentries Workbench: Beta Phase and Beyond

Thu, 05 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Updated 2022-10-03 to reflect that the beta URL will not be the permanent URL

This is an ongoing series of blog posts about The Carpentries Workbench, (the next iteration of the [Lesson Infrastructure]({{ site.url }}/posts-by-tags/#lesson-infrastructure)). Find more about our Design Principles, our Path to the Design for the Lesson Website, the Alpha Test of the Workbench, and our Official Announcemnt of The Carpentries Workbench.

TL;DR

We will be transitioning some of the lessons to The Carpentries Workbench in the next few months as a beta test. The beta test will live in parallel to the current lessons for at least two months before fully transitioning. If you are a Maintainer, and would like to have your lesson enter the beta test, please sign up and tell us about your lesson and when is the earliest time for you to start the beta testing.

Teaching Centrally-Organised Workshops

Tue, 03 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If you are a certified Instructor for The Carpentries, I am sure you have received an email/slack message or two announcing “Upcoming Teaching Opportunites” around the world. Specifically our Centrally-Organised workshops. These workshops are requested by organisations and come with the full support of The Carpentries Workshop Administration Team and Instructors.

Whether you are a newly certified Instructor or an experienced Instructor, this blog post will provide detailed information that will give more insight to Centrally-Organised workshops.

The Carpentries Strategic Plan: Year Two In Review

Mon, 02 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In April of 2021, The Carpentries published our Year One Strategic Plan Update.

Outlined in the strategic plan are the following six goals:

Build regional and local capacity to empower sustainable communities
Intentionally incorporate equity, inclusion, and accessibility to support a diverse community.
Provide opportunities for growth and professional development of our volunteers and Core Team.
Facilitate the creation and maintenance of relevant, high-quality, community-curated curricula.
Strengthen organisational structure and capacity to be strategic and responsive.
Advocate for our values and vision to empower more people to work with data and software.

Each of these goals carries with it specific objectives and rationale to aid us in implementing them.

CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 - A global event

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The first virtual CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 took place from 6 to 17 September. The event included 2 Carpentries workshops, 1 Carpentries instructor training event, 2 networking events, 1 learning session and 1 opening address.

The main goal of CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 was to build capacity for workshops through instructor training and bring together newer and more experienced community members to share knowledge, network, develop new skills, and develop strategies for building strong local communities around digital and computational literacy in Africa.

Executive Council Key Activities Report

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary Statement

The Carpentries Executive Council is the highest leadership body of The Carpentries, to whom the Executive Director of the Carpentries reports. The work and engagement of the Executive Council is performed via the following committees: Officers Committee, Governance Committee, Finance Committee, Communications Committee, Program Committee.

The members of the Executive council are:

Cedric Chambers, Jump Recruits, USA
John Chodacki, California Digital Library, USA
Konrad Förstner (Secretary), ZB MED - Information Centre for Life Sciences and TH Köln, Germany
Paula Andrea Martinez (Vice Chair), Australian Research Data Commons / Research Software Alliance, Australia
Lex Nederbragt (Chair), University of Oslo, Norway
Aleksandra Nenadic, The Software Sustainability Institute, UK
Michael Smith (Treasurer), D.Eng., The PEER Group, USA
Sarah Stevens, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Masami Yamaguchi (Code of Conduct Committee Liaison), Griffith University, Australia

Officers Committee

Members: Lex Nederbragt, Paula Andrea Martinez, Konrad Förstner, Michael Smith

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Interactive Data Visualizations in Python

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing The Carpentries Accessibility Manager, Brynn Elliott

Wed, 27 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to welcome Brynn Elliott to The Carpentries Core Team! Brynn is joining as our new Accessibility Manager, through funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to advance The Carpentries Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices (read announcement). We asked Brynn to share a bit about herself. Read on to learn more!

Hello!

I am very excited to be joining The Carpentries community as the Accessibility Manager. Though I am incredibly new to The Carpentries, accessibility has been at the forefront of my professional career for years.

Announcing 2022 Executive Council Elections

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Make a recurring gift via GitHub Sponsors to support The Carpentries’ curriculum

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The 2021 Instructor Training Report

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Introducing Our First 2022 Cohort of Certified Instructor Trainers!

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In January, 2022, we began training for a new cohort of community leaders to become certified as Instructor Trainers. These are the people who co-teach Instructor Training events, host teaching demonstrations, and participate in oversight and maintenance of our Instructor Training program as a whole. With 16 people, we are proud to say that this is the largest and most globally and linguistically diverse cohort we have trained to date!

EIA Roadmap Update: The Strategic Plan is The Plan

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary: The Strategic Plan is the plan. Watch this short video of Dr. Kari L. Jordan and Tara Robertson discussing the EIA Roadmap’s alignment with The Carpentries’ Strategic Plan for 2020-2025.

Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (EIA) has always been at the forefront of how The Carpentries operates internally, and serves our community. Work on the EIA Roadmap started in 2018, with the final version of the roadmap being published in 2019. Our Strategic Plan for 2020-2025 was released in January 2020. In an ideal world, these two plans might have been released in the reverse order, but EIA was too important for us to wait to have a Strategic Plan in place. EIA is not new for us and we needed to ensure that the important pieces of the roadmap were captured in the Strategic Plan.

Piloting Collaborative Lesson Development Training

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

This June and July, we will pilot a new program of Collaborative Lesson Development Training. To apply to join the training, follow the link at the end of this post.

About the Training

Aimed at groups of collaborators who want to start creating a new lesson, Collaborative Lesson Development Training will focus on three main topics:

Good practice in lesson design and development
Creating lesson websites with The Carpentries Workbench
Collaboration skills

Spread over six half-days, with an extended break between sessions 4 & 5, participants will learn how to prepare an effective lesson to suit a defined target audience, how to implement that lesson as an open source website using The Carpentries Workbench, and how to collaborate and build community around a lesson project.

Foundations of Astronomical Data Science Launch

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The long-awaited Data Carpentry curriculum for working with astronomical data is now available to teach! The Foundations of Astronomical Data Science curriculum was actively developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Astronomy Curriculum Data Carpentry Committee (ACDC; composed of Erin Becker, Azalee Bostroem, Allen Downey, Rodolfo Montez Jr., Brett Morris, and Phil Rosenfield) and has undergone The Carpentries incubation process including two alpha workshops and two beta workshops. The first official offering of the stable curriculum will be at the summer meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) this June in Pasadena, CA. This is the first new curriculum released by The Carpentries since August 2018 and represents the first curriculum designed for intermediate learners! The curriculum is now ready for any certified Instructor to teach! Keep reading to learn more.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Intermediate Research Software Development in Python

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/python-intermediate-development/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/python-intermediate-development

Learning Objectives

After this course, learners should be able to:

Set up and use a suitable development environment together with popular source code management infrastructure to develop software collaboratively
Use a test framework to automate the verification of correct behaviour of code, and employ parameterisation and continuous integration to scale and further automate your testing
Design robust, extensible software through the application of suitable programming paradigms and design techniques
Use a critical, reflective mindset to prepare and release your software for reuse by others
Manage software improvement from feedback through agile techniques

Target Audience

A typical learner is someone who is working in academic research and, needing to write some code, has gained basic software development skills either by self-learning or attending, e.g., a novice Software Carpentry Python course. They have been applying those skills in their domain of work by writing code for some time, e.g. half a year or more. However, their software development-related projects are now becoming larger and are involving more stakeholders, and they now need more intermediate software engineering skills to help them design more robust software code, automate the process of testing and verifying its correctness and support collaborations with others.

Our tips and tricks for online workshop teaching

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Who we are

We are Alessia, Flavia and Stefania, part of the King’s College London Carpentries Instructor Team. We run regular Carpentries-like workshops on Unix and Git (8 so far, more to come!) and we are here to share some tips and tricks with the community!

Background

Some background first. We teach our workshops online: we started doing so during the pandemic, but we found that the format suited our personal needs, so we are planning to keep them online for the foreseeable future. This also seems to widen accessibility for our participants, allowing extra flexibility (e.g., working from home, childcare, etc.). The Unix workshop is structured in 3 half-day sessions (3 hours each), plus an optional short exercise session (~1 hour); the Git workshop counts 2 half-day sessions plus an optional exercise session. Workshops are normally open to internal participants from King’s College London and the NHS trust, however, we allow external participants in some instances (e.g., Global South collaborations). We aim for about 15-20 participants per workshop (as we have found this to be a manageable number for online sessions), with the three of us instructing plus one or two helpers, if available. We take turns for leading the session (we all have favourite sessions/topics), but we can be flexible to cover for each other should the need arise. The instructors who are not teaching at a given time take care of breakout rooms (for individual help to participants), of questions in the chat, and of taking notes.

We are Hiring a (Deputy) Director of Fundraising. Join Our Team.

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is seeking a full-time (Deputy) Director of Fundraising to join our global, mission-driven organisation. As the (Deputy) Director of Fundraising, you will set and meet annual revenue and fundraising goals; identify, cultivate, build and solidify relationships with new and established donors; and coordinate fundraising campaigns. See below for a detailed description of the role including responsibilities, salary, and how to apply.

This is a remote position that will be fully funded by The Carpentries for a minimum of one year, with future funding made possible through success in this role.

Announcing Changes to The Carpentries Logo Usage and Modification Policy

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As The Carpentries grows and welcomes more and more members to our community, we are solidifying policies to ensure we are supporting our community equitably, while at the same time making sure The Carpentries’ logos, trademarks, and interests as an organisation are protected.

We want to ensure that our community has clear directions and resources when they are working with or modifying The Carpentries logo. Currently, the policy is not very clear and community members are left to parse it on their own which leads to variance and misunderstandings in the modifications.

Building and Sustaining Carpentries Subcommunities

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In October of last year, the Community Development Team (CDT) announced that it would be launching a new effort to support community building across The Carpentries organisation. The primary goal of the Community Development Program is to improve how The Carpentries’ subcommunities are supported to maximize benefits to our community members and to ensure the long term sustainability of the organisation as we continue to grow globally. We define a subcommunity as a group of community members serving in the same role within the organisation, located in the same geographic region, or who come together because they share common interests.

Piloting Open Peer Review of Lessons

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

For the past few years, The Carpentries curriculum community has been designing and developing lessons in The Carpentries Incubator. As illustrated by the first figure in Zhian Kamvar, Lesson Infrastructure Technology Developer’s post from last year, about alpha testing the infrastructure redesign, this lesson development is now happening at a huge scale. At the time of writing, the Incubator hosts more than 100 lessons at various stages of the development cycle. We have been supporting these efforts by providing training on lesson development, highlighting the ways community members can contribute to the development of lessons in a regular series of Incubator Lesson Spotlight posts on this blog, and maintaining channels for this subcommunity of lesson developers to communicate and collaborate.

Online Workshops and the Supporting Instructor Role

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It has been a long wait, but the news is finally out…online workshops are here to stay! After two years of implementing workshops online, we know that there is a lot that goes into the planning and execution of these workshops. The Core Team will be making changes over the course of 2022 to make the online workshop process as easy as possible for all; hosts, Instructors, learners, and members of the Core Team. One of these changes is that we will no longer distinguish between Experienced and Supporting Instructors.

Announcing Our New Curriculum Advisors!

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am very excited to announce the formation of new Curriculum Advisory Committees to support several of our curricula!

In September 2021, we put out a call for applications to form Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) for seven Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry curricula. We received 36 applications, which were reviewed by previous Curriculum Advisors and Core Team members. Twenty-five individuals were invited to join, and twenty-three completed onboarding to become members of the Software Carpentry CAC and three Data Carpentry CACs (Astronomy, Genomics, and Geospatial). Three individuals were invited to join the Data Carpentry Ecology and Data Carpentry Image Processing CACs, which will form after a second round of recruitment in May. Several existing members of the Library Carpentry CAC also participated in onboarding, with the goal of bringing lesson support processes in closer alignment across all of The Carpentries Lesson Programs.

Introducing The Carpentries Workbench

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

What is The Carpentries Workbench?

The Carpentries Workbench is a fresh redesign of our lesson infrastructure¹ from the ground up that clearly separates the tools from the content. We hope it will better serve the needs of our community members and create paths forward for improving access, portability, stability, and reliability of our lesson infrastructure as the repertoir of our lesson developers continues to grow.

Following the guidelines we set out in our post on design principles, The Carpentries Workbench is built with R and Pandoc in three custom packages called {sandpaper}, {varnish}, and {pegboard} for deployment, styling, and validation, respectively. It is important to note here that knowledge of R or pandoc is not necessary to build a lesson using The Workbench. The only requirement is a working knowledge of markdown syntax. To find out more about the process we used for validating the usability of the infrastructure, you can read our blog post about the alpha testing and our blog post about the UX testing and design, or if you have 20 minutes to spare, you can watch a video of Zhian’s UseR!2021 talk: “Using R as Community Workbench for The Carpentries Lesson Infrastructure (with slides available here).

Introducing Sher!, Director of Workshops

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

I am thrilled to announce that SherAaron Hurt is advancing to a Senior Team Lead role and will now be serving as The Carpentries first Director of Workshops. SherAaron joined the team in 2017 in a part-time administrative support capacity. Over the past four and a half years, SherAaron has epitomized The Carpentries value of “Always Learning”, growing her teaching skills, technical abilities, and leadership skills immensely throughout her tenure with The Carpentries. I know that SherAaron will continue to lead the Workshop Administration Team with heart and confidence, and am excited to follow her as she blazes a new path for The Carpentries workshop of the future.

We are Hiring an Accessibility Coordinator. Join Our Team.

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for a new full-time Accessibility Coordinator to join our global, mission-driven organisation for two years. The Accessibility Coordinator will be integrate accessibility standards and best practices across all areas of The Carpentries organisation. They will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprising 60,000 learners, 3,000 instructors, 97 Trainers, and 98 member organisations from research institutions around the world.

This position is supported with funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Learn more about CZI’s work to advance diversity and inclusion in open source.

Update to our Privacy Policy

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the release our new Privacy Policy. This new version follows a more standard structure and spells out your rights and how to exercise them under European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Customer Privacy Act (CCPA). It also includes the legal basis we use to process your personal information.

One thing that has not changed is our commitment to your privacy. We collect as little data as possible, we do not (and never will) sell your data, and we provide you with access to all the data we store about you directly from your AMY profile.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Building Websites with Jekyll & GitHub Pages

Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/jekyll-pages-novice/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/jekyll-pages-novice

Learning Objectives

After this lesson, learners should be able to:

create formatted page content with Markdown
configure their project to build and serve pages on GitHub
build a coherent site with multiple pages using the Jekyll framework
customise the layout and style of the pages on their site

Target Audience

This lesson guides learners through making websites using Jekyll in a web hosting service GitHub Pages. Anyone comfortable interacting with websites in a web browser and willing to learn how to produce website. Basic understanding of HTML and/or Markdown as webpage authoring languages is welcome but not a must.

The Instructor Development Committee is Moving and Needs YOUR Help

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2019, the Instructor Development Committee (IDC) has supported Instructors as they transitioned from Instructor training to becoming actively engaged in community activities such as teaching and curriculum development. They have supported community discussions and mentoring programs to offer opportunities for Instructors to learn from each other and have identified projects that will support Instructors in their work. Between 2018 and 2021, the committee was led by a number of our community members (2020-2021 cohort, 2019-2020 cohort) and supported by a liaison from The Carpentries’ Community Development Team.

New Prices for Workshops, Instructor Training, and Memberships

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

In November we announced upcoming changes to our pricing for Centrally-Organised workshops, Instructor Training, and Memberships. The new pricing structure increases the flexibility of our Membership offerings, allowing Members to create service packages that will best serve their needs. We’ve also introduced geographically-tiered pricing, which will enable us to better serve organisations outside high-income countries. Lastly, we are starting a financial support program to offer support for organisations who are unable to pay our standard fees, irrespective of location.

Happy New Year from The Carpentries Executive Director, Dr. Kari L. Jordan

Mon, 03 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I meditate quite often. Last week I participated in a practice whereby we meditated on various aspects of 2021, like resilience, acknowledging our needs, and caring for ourselves and others. During my time of meditation and reflection, I could not help but think about you – The Carpentries community. I will never truly know exactly what this community has endured over the past 24 months. What I do know is that you have shown up, and continue to show up, contributing to The Carpentries’ mission even when it is hard to do. For that, you have my sincere #CarpentriesGratitude.

Thank You! Values Alignment Task Force

Mon, 27 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last year, our use of certain platforms has been a topic of discussion following the release of information that suggests an organisation may not be acting in accordance with or in alignment with The Carpentries Core Values. These discussions sparked conversations around how The Carpentries decide who we align with.

In response to these conversations, The Carpentries Executive Council approved a charter for a Values Alignment Task Force. The objective of the task force was to outline a set of recommendations that would be used to develop a Due Diligence process for how to identify whether an organisation or service is acting in accordance with The Carpentries Core Values.

The Lesson Infrastructure Commitee: Past, Present, and Future

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Take a moment to browse Greg Wilson’s original HTML lecture for The Unix Shell (2006-11-27) and then head over to the most recent snapshot of The Unix Shell (2021-10-23).

Back then:

markdown was only 2 years old
git was only 3 years old
github did not exist
jekyll did not exist
smartphones and tablets did not exist

The lesson infrastructure has evolved so much in the past 14 years along with the vastly changing landscape of online publishing where it is now easier than ever to publish a website from a handful of markdown documents.

Announcing the 2022 Carpentries Executive Council

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the community and council elections for the 2022 Executive Council (EC). The 2022 Carpentries Executive Council will assume responsibility of governance from February 1, 2022. We would like to give the most welcome greeting to incoming EC members.

Incoming community-elected members

Three candidates stood for the community election held during the beginning of November 2021. Out of the 1,283 ballots distributed to Voting Members, 192 ballots were cast (15% turnout). The two candidates receiving the highest number of votes and joining the Executive Council for two-year terms as community-elected Members are:

Executive Council Key Activities Report

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Cedric Chambers, Jump Recruits, USA
John Chodacki, California Digital Library, USA
Konrad Förstner (Secretary), ZB MED - Information Centre for Life Sciences and TH Köln, Germany
Paula Andrea Martinez (Vice Chair), Australian Research Data Commons / Research Software Alliance, Australia
Lex Nederbragt (Chair), University of Oslo, Norway
Aleksandra Nenadic, The Software Sustainability Institute, UK
Michael Smith (Treasurer), D.Eng., The PEER Group, USA
Sarah Stevens, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Masami Yamaguchi (Code of Conduct Committee Liaison), Griffith University, Australia

The Carpentries Executive Council would like to give an overview of its activities and to make its works transparent to the community. Therefore, it has written a report of what happened between February 2021 and July 2021.

The Future of Online Workshops

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It has been 20 months since The Carpentries convened a Task Force to address the urgent demand for remote Carpentries workshops. To date we have run over 700 online workshops. With the feedback and recommendations we have received from Instructors and Host we have been able to provide updates to the Official Guidelines for teaching Carpentries Workshops Online.

We know that the transition to online workshops presents its own set of pros/cons and it may not have been easy but our community rose to the occasion. The demand for our workshops did not suffer, in fact, we saw an increase with requests for Centrally-Organised workshops.

Glosario: African contributions

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

During the last 12 months, the African Carpentries Community and other global members have mobilised efforts to translate English data science terms into the online, multilingual glossary of terms called Glosario. Translations were done into, among many others, Afrikaans, Amharic, Bahasa Indonesia, Setswana, isiXhosa, isiZulu and Kiswahili. These efforts build on the successes of Hacktoberfest 2020.

The glossary has grown into 17 languages in the past two years, most languages spoken in Africa. What follows highlights the African Carpentries Communities’ efforts during 2021.

Share Your 2021 Gratitudes with Our Community

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In 2019 and 2020, The Carpentries published a series of posts thanking the various parts of our community. Since that time, the community has supported The Carpentries through tumultuous times - from transitioning to online workshops and a virtual conference in 2020, to new and revitalized programs like the Curriculum Advisors Committee and the Community Facilitators Program. To be sure, there is no end to what we are grateful for from our community.

The Carpentries Instructor Training Curriculum has been Updated!

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Throughout 2021, The Carpentries Core Team and Trainer community have been developing, discussing, and testing an updated version of our Instructor Training curriculum. It has now been merged into our repository on GitHub and submitted to Zenodo for official release!

Changes in this update include:

General changes to make the curriculum more useable and maintainable:
- Reduced hyperlinks to external websites
- Eliminated use of handouts for activities
- Reduced content on Carpentries policies; increased orientation to main sources of policy information
- Reduced use of jargon
- Reduced use of coding in examples to accommodate variable background knowledge
- Structural changes to improve timing and flow, allowing for more consistent breaks & alternate schedules
Content removed or transferred to optional exercises page (more relevant to lesson development, which is now a separate curriculum)
- Practice writing multiple choice questions
- Practice writing learner profiles
- Content on Bloom’s Taxonomy
Content changed or rearranged
- Previous episode on “Mindset” reduced and combined with “Motivation and Demotivation” episode
- Previous content on Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in “Motivation and Demotivation” episode moved to its own episode and expanded
- Previous references to formative assessment sprinkled across episodes are now highlighted as distinct uses
- Mental models are now explained using concept mapping and analogies
- Some strategies specific to teaching in-person are now presented with suggested adaptations for teaching online
- Content on Instructor Checkout is consolidated and clarified
Added or enhanced content
- Concluding a workshop (added to content on introductions)
- Team teaching practices, reinforcing common mechanics of Carpentries workshops

Goals reserved for the next update (not included yet):

Improvements to referencing (to replace previous use of hyperlinks)
Further improvements to new episode on EIA as well as additional bonus content on this topic (we have a grant and some awesome partners to help; please get in touch if you would like to be involved!)
Additional suggestions related to online or hybrid instruction. (These will continue to evolve separately, with content migrating into our core curriculum as needed/ requested by our community.)

Why Change a Good Thing?

Given the positive feedback we regularly receive on our program, you may be wondering why we would do anything more than minor maintenance!

Applications Now Open for Carpentries Trainer Training Starting January 2022

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Pricing Update for 2022

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries depends on revenue from memberships and workshop administration fees to support our programs and deliver quality, hands-on, effective training in more than 70 countries around the world. We launched a Membership program in 2016, and have kept our prices stable over the past five years. During this time, we have learned a lot about the expectations for a membership program from our Member organisations and the costs of running such a program for our organisation. It also became clear that our current pricing structure is out of reach for institutions outside high income countries. In January 2022, we will be updating our pricing structure to improve the equity of our programming, making it more cost-effective for institutions with limited funds. These changes are in service to our core values of Access for All and Strength through Diversity.

Join Us to Learn More about CarpentryCon @ Home in 2022

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In October, The Carpentries Core Team announced that we will be hosting a virtual CarpentryCon next year. Since then, we have identified four volunteers from the community to serve as Task Force Co-chairs:

Annajiat Alim Rasel is a certified Instructor with The Carpentries and is located in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Rabea Müller is the Regional Coordinator for the DACH region and is located in Köln, Germany
Trisha Adamus is an Instructor Trainer and is based in Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Jesse Johnston is a Library Carpentry Instructor and is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Annajiat and Rabea will be leading planning efforts in the eastern hemisphere with the support of Angelique Trusler, African Capacity Development Manager for The Carpentries. Trisha and Jesse will be leading efforts in the western hemisphere with the support of myself, Director of Community for The Carpentries. This will ensure we accommodate all time zones in our planning so that everyone in the community can fully participate no matter where they live.

Enseñando a enseñar entre comunidades en español

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Read this post in English

Durante 2020 y 2021 enseñamos dos entrenamientos para instructores de Carpentries organizados por MetaDocencia. Estos workshops tuvieron una serie de características particulares:

Completamente en español: tanto trainers como participantes fueron personas de Latinoamérica, hablantes nativos de español.
En linea.
En cuatro encuentros de medio día a lo largo de dos semanas.
Se organizó un quinto encuentro opcional para completar los tres pasos del checkout.

Los dos primeros puntos hicieron el entrenamiento mucho más accesible a personas hispanohablantes y de la región que querían formarse para poder enseñar mejor. Que el workshop sea en español derriba una de las barreras de acceso más importantes a los materiales y prácticas que promueve The Carpentries. Que el workshop sea on-line permite que más personas participen desde sus lugares, sin tener que viajar. Las dos ediciones de los cursos juntaron personas de Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, México y Uruguay. Esto también contribuye a la formación de una comunidad regional porque facilita comenzar a conocernos y compartir las experiencias específicas de nuestra región.

Teaching to teach between communities in Spanish

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Podes leer este post en Español

During 2020 and 2021 we taught two trainings for Carpentries instructors organized by MetaDocencia. These workshops had a number of particular characteristics:

Completely in Spanish: both trainers and participants were people native Spanish-speakers from Latin America.
Online.
In four half-day meetings over two weeks.
An optional fifth meeting was organized to complete the three steps of the checkout.

The first two items made the training much more accessible to Spanish speakers and people from the region who wanted to be trained to be able to teach better. The fact that the workshop is in Spanish breaks down one of the most important access barriers to the materials and practices promoted by The Carpentries. The fact that the workshop is online allows more people to participate from their locations, without having to travel. The two editions of the courses brought together people from Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Uruguay. This also contributes to enriching the regional community because it makes it easier to get to know each other and share the specific experiences of our region.

Quarterly Strategic Plan Update: Q3 2021

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In January of 2020, The Carpentries published our Strategic Plan for 2020-2025. Written and adopted before the onset of a global pandemic that has reconfigured the way the world operates, this strategic plan has served as a much-needed guidepost for The Carpentries through a period of uncertainty and change. Each quarter, The Carpentries Core Team highlights progress towards completing or fulfilling the strategic plan.

I hope you will be proud of the work we have been able to accomplish in the third quarter of 2021. Our commitment to equity, inclusion and accessibility is strong, and with your help we have improved several workflows and streamlined programs to make it easier for community members to participate and contribute. Read on to learn more, and as always, we invite you to get in touch with us to share any feedback you may have.

We Value All Contributions - The Carpentries 2021 Fundraiser

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In 2020, The Carpentries ran our first-ever fundraising campaign. We learned a lot in that process about the mechanics of fundraising, but most importantly we learned just how passionate you - The Carpentries community - are. Without you, none of our work would meet the level that it does, and our mission of being the leading inclusive community teaching data skills would remain words on a webpage, rather than something that we see every single day in our workshops.

Transition for The Carpentries Membership Team

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentries Community,

I am writing to share that Al Obayuwana (former Director of Partnership) has departed The Carpentries effective 25 October. While we are sorry to see Al go, there will be minimal disruption to the efforts of our Membership Program, which will continue to be supported by our membership team - Angelique Trusler, Talisha Sutton-Kennedy, and Erin Becker as interim Team Lead. Our membership@carpentries.org email is the best place to send questions and inquiries during this time.

Election nominees for the 2022 Executive Council

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The election for Community-Elected members of the 2022 Executive Council will be open from Nov 03 and will close on Nov 10, anywhere on Earth.

If you are a Voting Member, you should have received an email from The Carpentries Team with the subject “Confirming eligibility to vote in The Carpentries 2022 Executive Council Elections”. If you haven’t received it, but you feel you have contributed sufficiently to this community please contact team [at] carpentries.org before 31 Oct.

Announcing CarpentryCon @ Home in 2022

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It has been almost 20 months since the COVID-19 pandemic hit our communities. This resulted in significant changes to our personal and professional lives and, even now, impact how we manage our day to day activities. The Carpentries was not immune to these changes, especially in how we support our workshops and events. It was announced in April 2020 that our bi-ennial, in-person CarpentryCon event, which was to be held in Madison, Wisconsin, had been cancelled. It was not until May 2020 that the organisation decided to move forward with a virtual event that we named CarpentryCon @Home. It was the first 100% virtual conference hosted by our organisation, and we made significant efforts to ensure the event was inclusive and accessible to any community member who wanted to participate.

Introducing The Carpentries Sponsorship Program

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past two years, we have explored several models to strengthen our organisational structure and capacity to be strategic and responsive, from both the programmatic and financial perspectives. We secured several grants to improve our technical infrastructure and core programs. We developed long-lasting partnerships with minority-serving organisations, libraries, and open science communities. We also piloted a donation campaign - we raised $15,445!

All of these efforts are in alignment with our strategic plan for 2020-2025, and today I am excited to announce an initiative that will diversify the organisation’s revenue stream while helping us attract like-minded organisations that want to be a part of the amazing and valuable work we are doing.

Announcing The Carpentries Community Development Program

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Community Development Team (CDT) is excited to announce the launch of its Q4 project to develop the Community Development Program, a program that will build capacity in community management to support our subcommunities. Subcommunities currently exist to bring our members together who are in the same regions of the world, who have an interest in the same field of research, or who have interest in other focus areas that have emerged over time. The project will launch with the project team conducting interviews and focus groups with leaders of a number of these subcommunities to inform the development of this new program.

Announcing The Carpentries African Capacity Development Manager, Angelique Trusler

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

For the past two years, Dr. Angelique Trusler has served as The Carpentries Regional Consultant for Southern Africa thanks to the generous support from the South African Center for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR). Angelique joined our team bringing depth, knowledge, and experience not only as a Carpentries instructor and community member in South Africa but also as a social sciences researcher and practitioner.

Developing a strategy for building The Carpentries community across Southern Africa has been Angelique’s passion and pride. Specifically, her leadership has helped us make progress on the following goals:

Launching Lesson Publication Task Force

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Members of The Carpentries community contribute to official lessons in a number of ways, including lesson development, contributing edits and updates to content, and serving as Maintainers. We want to acknowledge these contributions on official lesson publications, which requires processes for scheduling lesson publications and determining authorship.

The Carpentries is launching a Task Force on the official lesson publication process, and we are seeking community members to participate in several meetings. We are looking for community members who are interested in lesson publication and how to ensure that contributions are appropriately recognized and communicated internally and externally. The Task Force will have a set number of meetings and concrete goals of developing guidelines for determining authorship and scheduling official lesson publications. Specific times will be determined once the Task Force membership is set.

Hacktoberfest 2021 - Glosario Contribution Drive

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, members of The Carpentries community came together during Hacktoberfest to contribute to Glosario, an open source, multilingual glossary of data science terms. Hacktoberfest is a “month-long celebration of open source” run by DigitalOcean, during which participants can register their contributions to open source projects on GitHub and qualify to have a tree planted in your name.

We need you!

This month, as part of Hacktoberfest, we are encouraging all members of our community to contribute to the expansion and internationalisation of Glosario. So far, the glossary includes definitions in 17 languages and has been designed to include definitions in any language. We would love to see our international community come together to provide definitions and translations in these and other languages, to increase the value of this resource for everyone, regardless of the language(s) they use.

CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 - A global event

Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The first virtual CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 took place from 6 to 17 September 2021. The event included 2 Carpentries workshops, 1 Carpentries instructor training event, 2 networking events, 1 learning session and 1 opening address. The main goal of CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 was to build capacity for workshops through instructor training and bring together newer and more experienced community members to share knowledge, network, develop new skills, and develop strategies for building strong local communities around digital and computational literacy in Africa. The virtual event was attended by more than 120 attendees and volunteers (i.e. trainers, instructors and helpers) from 28 countries worldwide, including 16 countries in Africa. An estimated 300GB of mobile data was provided to 71 attendees over 19 African network providers.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Interactive Data Visualizations in Python

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/python-interactive-data-visualizations/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/python-interactive-data-visualizations

Learning Objectives

Learn how to wrangle data into a tidy format using the pandas library.
Learn how to create some basic visualizations using the Plotly Express library.
Learn how to create a web app using the Streamlit library for sharing the visualizations, as well as interacting with the data and visualizations via widgets.

Target Audience

This workshop is appropriate for learners who have recently completed the “Plotting and Programming in Python” lesson (or have some experience with Python and pandas), and is targeted specifically to those who want to learn more about creating data visualizations and building interactive dashboards. The lesson can be taught in 1 hour (if you skip the exercises and include Episode 1 in the prep) or up to 2 hours (if you include time for students to work through all the exercises and include Episode 1 in the workshop time).

Announcing 2022 Executive Council Elections

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Executive Council (EC), the leading governance body for The Carpentries, is pleased to announce the election process for 2022. For information on the roles and structure of the EC, please see the bylaws in The Carpentries Handbook. These elections are for two community-elected seats, which are selected by all voting members of The Carpentries community. In addition, the EC is looking for recommendations to fill two Council-elected seats, which will be elected by the EC. The members whose seats are open for election include Cedric Chambers, Konrad Förstner, Paula Andrea Martinez, and Lex Nederbragt and remaining EC includes: John Chodacki, Aleksandra Nenadic, Michael Smith, Sarah Stevens, and Masami Yamaguchi.

Make a recurring gift via GitHub Sponsors to support The Carpentries’ curriculum

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Open science practices are at the core of all The Carpentries’ work, and therefore at The Carpentries we are intentional and dedicated to making our lesson materials openly available, collaboratively developed, and up to date. Our community of practice is dedicated to increasing the accessibility of data skills, and the diversity of people who use them. We develop and maintain lessons in foundational computational and data science skills and offer pedagogical training to instructors, empowering positive and effective peer-to-peer instruction. A truly amazing community has grown around our mission, and it is because of the generous support we receive from community members that we are continuing to thrive.

Apply to become a Curriculum Advisor

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Joining one of the Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) is an excellent opportunity to engage with The Carpentries and be directly involved with the development and leadership of our Curricula.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed onboarding and are ready to support lessons across The Carpentries curricula. Eighteen new Maintainers participated in the three hour onboarding, using a completely updated curriculum with the following goals:

Orientation to The Carpentries goals and vision for lesson maintanence
Getting connected with other Maintainers and the overall Maintainer community
Developing skills for creating a positive environment for all contributors
Becoming familiar with the key components of the lesson template
Practicing core technical skills for lesson maintanence
Learning how and when to elevate issues to the Curriculum Advisory Committee

The 2021 Instructor Training Report

Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Instructor Training Team is excited to release the 2021 Instructor Training Report. This report is an in-depth look at the Instructor Training program and provides an update on its successes, challenges, and growth.

Quick Facts

Instructor Training Outcomes

Trainees rate Carpentries Trainers very highly.
- The majority of trainees thought Trainers gave clear answers to questions (97%), were good communicators (97%), considerate (99%), and enthusiastic (98%).
Trainees report higher levels of ability and knowledge after Instructor Training.
98% of trainees agreed that the atmosphere during Instructor Training was welcoming.
92% of trainees agreed that Instructor Training was worth their time.
74% of trainees report an increase in motivation to learn about teaching after Instructor Training.
Trainees are very likely to recommend Instructor Training to a friend or colleague.
- Recommendation scores have averaged 8.43 - 9 out of 10 for the last five years.
81% of Trainees hear about Instructor Training through word of mouth.

Instructor Training Growth

Updates on the Member Organisation Council

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One of the benefits of being a member organisation with The Carpentries is that you hold a seat on The Carpentries Member Council. This is where member organisations and The Carpentries leadership can discuss what is working and what needs revamping or tweaking. At our last council meeting, recruiting helpers and adjusting to teaching online came up as challenges. Since then, we have begun to provide our Instructors additional training in online teaching and host organisations received templates to support with helper recruitment, enabling our community to teach over 588 workshops online since March 2020.

Reactivating the Curriculum Advisory Committees

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In early 2018 The Carpentries launched Curriculum Advisory Committees, to provide high-level oversight, vision, and leadership for a curriculum and to guide large-scale updates. We are now relaunching the program in order to better support our current curricula and ensure that they remain up-to-date and effective.

If you are interested in being directly involved with the development and leadership of The Carpentries Curricula, joining one of the Curriculum Advisory Committees (CACs) is an excellent opportunity.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Programming with Julia

Wed, 04 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/julia-novice/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/julia-novice

Learning Objectives

using the Julia REPL
get comfortable with the package manager and environments
learn syntax for common tasks (types, control flow, functions & methods, modules)
finding, using and creating packages
writing tests

Target Audience

People with some programming experience that are new to Julia. Particularly people doing scientific computing.

The Carpentries Community Facilitators Program: 6-months in

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In September 2020, The Carpentries introduced the Community Facilitators Program. This new initiative sought to create new pathways for active involvement in everyday community activities by more community members. This program was developed to sustain the growing Carpentries community and support other core programs that contribute to the advancement of our mission. In November 2020, we met The Carpentries Feedback Facilitators, who were onboarded as our first cohort of Community Facilitators, focussing on feedback facilitation.

Highlighting our strategic plan efforts to support local community building

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

At the end of each quarter the Core Team spends time individually and collectively reflecting on the progress the organisation has made toward our Strategic Plan for 2020-2025. This exercise is truly meaningful for us as it speaks to our commitment to one of our 9 Core Values: Act Openly. By sharing semi-regular updates about our strategic plan with our community, we hope to keep you engaged in our growth and development. To follow this work closely watch our strategic-plan GitHub repository.

Welcome to our New Instructor Trainers

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We want to introduce you to our 14 new Instructors Trainers! They have just completed Trainer Training, are badged, and ready to jump in. Many of them are already scheduled to teach their first Instructor Trainings in the next few months! This group is full of passion, excitement, and great ideas! They will be such an asset to our community!

Please Welcome our New Trainers:

Ben Chiewphasa

I am the Economics and Data Librarian with the Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship at the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries. In my current role, I provide information literacy, data analysis, and data visualization support via consultations as well as workshops and library instruction. My research interests include critical data literacy, community engagement efforts in academic libraries, and government information dissemination. I initially sought Carpentries Instructor certification to meet the needs of University of Montana graduate students who were generally aware of available tools and approaches for wrangling data, but lacked the opportunities to actually learn these skills and consequently apply them to their own research. I think the skills I’ve learned from Carpentries Instructor Training have made me a better teacher overall—whether it’s leading Carpentries workshops or even teaching credit-bearing courses. My time with the Carpentries has motivated me in lowering learning barriers and empowering researchers to conduct efficient, reproducible, and open research.

Introducing the new Executive Council Standing Committees

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As mentioned in the recent blog post, On the governance of The Carpentries, the Executive Council has established standing committees. This post elaborates further on their roles and responsibilities.

What is the Executive Council and how does it operate?

The Executive Council is the official leadership body of The Carpentries. It is responsible for strategic and organisational planning, selecting the Executive Director and evaluating their performance, financial oversight, identifying revenue streams and resource development, approving and monitoring The Carpentries programs and services, and enhancing The Carpentries public image. Members of the council also serve as advocates and ambassadors for the organisation, leveraging their networks to benefit the organisation’s reputation and fundraising. The Executive Council executes these responsibilities through a combination of monthly Executive Council meetings and regular correspondence and collaboration via email and online platforms.

New book: Research Software Engineering with Python

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Note: This blog post was updated in April 2024 to link to a new version of this book. The corresponding R version is no longer available.

A big part of the Carpentries success is the two-day workshop format, but that hasn’t stopped countless instructors over the years speculating about the great things we could teach if only we had more time. With an entire semester, for instance, you could take researchers through the entire lifecycle of a data analysis project, from the initial setup and code development through to a fully automated data processing pipeline and published software package. A small group of us decided to act on that speculation a few years ago, and set about writing Research Software Engineering with Python. It effectively represents our attempt at lesson materials for a Software Carpentry workshop that runs for the duration of a university semester course.

Introducing The Carpentries Director of Community, Alycia Crall

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Alycia Crall to The Carpentries Core Team! Alycia is our new Director of Community and has extensive experience serving diverse communities. We asked Alycia to share a bit about herself, read on to learn more!

I’m very excited to be joining The Carpentries as your Director of Community! I have known of The Carpentries since I started my last position with the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a program that collects and provides open environmental data to advance the field of ecology. Since that time, the positive reputation of the organization has been underscored through my work within the data science community and through my interactions with members of The Carpentries Core Team and the organization’s volunteers. It’s an amazing community and one I cannot wait to be fully engaged with.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Analysis and Interpretation of Bulk RNA-Seq Data using Bioconductor

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/bioc-rnaseq
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/bioc-rnaseq

Learning Objectives

After following this lesson, learners will be able to:

choose an appropriate design for a bulk RNA Sequencing experiment.
import and annotate quantified RNA-Seq data in R.
assess the quality of experimental results represented as a gene expression matrix.
run a standard differential expression analysis and interpret the output.
execute a gene set analysis.

Target Audience

This lesson is aimed at researchers who are already aware of what Bioconductor is and how it can benefit their data analysis. They are comfortable with basic operations in R, such as creating numeric, character vector, and data frame variables, installing and loading packages from CRAN and Bioconductor, and visualising data in common formats such as bar and scatter plots. These researchers want to learn how to use R and Bioconductor to explore and analyse data produced in bulk RNA sequencing experiments, and visualise and interpret the results of these analyses.

Wrapping Up the Carpentries Python Curriculum Project

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

On April 6th, 2021, The Carpentries made a blog post announcing the “Maintenance and Development of The Carpentries’ Python Curriculum” project. This project was generously funded by the Python Software Foundation’s Scientific Working group, and over the past twelve weeks, I’ve been working on it to improve and develop Python lessons for The Carpentries community. As it comes to an end, I’d like to summarize the project’s accomplishments and how my experience was as a maintainer.

On the governance of The Carpentries

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

When The Carpentries was formed in 2018 by the merger of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry, it was decided that the new organisation should be governed by an Executive Council

Over the years, one of the recurrent discussions between the Executive Council, the Core Team and the wider Community has been what the exact role of the Executive Council is. This blog post summarises some recent discussions and decisions on this topic.

Reflecting on our first Alpha Test of the Lesson Infrastructure Redesign

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

This is an ongoing series of blog posts about the next iteration of the [Lesson Infrastructure]({{ site.url }}/posts-by-tags/#lesson-infrastructure). Find more about our Design Principles and our Path to the Design for the Lesson Website

As our community has grown in the past few years, it has become evident that our current lesson infrastructure—where implementing updates involves complex manual steps—does not scale well. It was also evident that the lesson development toolchain was intimidating enough that it was—in and of itself—a barrier to contribution. When this infrastructure was created back in 2016, we had only a few lessons that were maintained by a small group of maintainers who were able to install the toolchain and render them locally. We now have more than 100 official and community-developed lessons combined. Based on the feedback from our much larger maintainer community, it is clear that many find it challenging to keep the infrastructure up-to-date on their own machines.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Foundational Computer Skills

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/foundational-computer-skills
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/foundational-computer-skills

Learning Objectives

To recognize different extensions and format of the data files and software packages
To identify appropriate software suitable to learners’ environment
To be able to download data, place in appropriate location, extract, and load data
To be able to download, install, configure, and test software

Target Audience

Learners preparing for a workshop
Instructors and helpers helping with pre-workshop setup

Lesson Progress

The lesson is in the initial stages of development (pre-alpha).

First Software Carpentry Workshop in Japanese

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

（このブログポストを日本語で読む）

We recently held the first ever Software Carpentry (SWC) workshop in Japanese (online). The workshop was co-hosted with B’AI Global Forum, a research group within the Institute for AI and Beyond, which is a joint project between the University of Tokyo and Softbank. The title of the workshop was “Introduction to Data Analysis with R”, with content based on the one lesson we’ve translated so far, SWC “R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis”¹. Below, we summarize how the workshop went, using the tried-and-true feedback format of “Green Sticky Notes” (things that went well) and “Red Sticky Notes” (things that didn’t go so well).

ソフトウェアカーペントリーの初日本語ワークショップ

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

(Read this post in English)

この間、初めて日本語でソフトウェアカーペントリー（SWC）のワークショップをオンラインで開催しました。今回のワークショップは、東京大学とソフトバンクが共同で立ち上げたBeyond AI研究推進機構の中の研究グループ、B’AI Global Forumとの共同開催でした。「Rによるデータ解析入門」というタイトルで、今まで翻訳してきたRレッスンを元に行いました¹。以下、カーペントリーズ形式で「緑付箋」（上手く行ったこと）と「赤付箋」（上手く行かなかったこと）に分けて感想をまとめました。

緑付箋（上手く行ったこと）

共同主催者と密接な連携

今回の共同主催者のB’AI Global Forumには大変お世話になりました。B’AI Global Forumが参加者（主に東京大学文系大学院生）を募集して、重要な連絡をしてくれたので、ワークショップの準備に集中することが出来ました。対応がいつも丁寧かつプロフェッショナルでした。パートナーは大事です。　

オンラインで行うワークショップの知識

今回のワークショップは新型コロナウイルスによってワークショップがオンラインに移り始めてからちょうど一年目というタイミングで行いました。その間に、カーペントリーズのコミュニティーからワークショップをオンラインで行う上でのヒント・アドバイスが色々挙げられました²。インストラクターのためのオンラインでワークショップを行うワークショップもあります！これらの資料は大いに参考になりました。そして、参加者もかなりすでにオンライン（zoom）に慣れていましたので、割とスムーズに行きました。

練習と準備

しかし、ヒントだけでは出来ません。ワークショップの前に２回ほど全員（インストラクター２人、ヘルパー４人）でミーティングをして、インストラクターだけでさらに数回練習会をしました。オンラインでワークショップを行うのは本当に複雑で、落とし穴だらけです。何回も練習したら、ブログポストを読むだけでは分からないことを色々に気付きました。そして、毎回セッションが終わった後にインストラクターやヘルパーで30分くらい反省点など話し合うことによって、次回の内容の調整ができました。

赤付箋（上手く行かなかったこと）

教える内容の変更による混乱

元々は唯一翻訳が完成したレッスンの「R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis」を教えることを予定していたのですが、参加者は主に文系の大学院生で、時間も短いものでした（全５回、２時間ずつ）。そう考えると、Rの基礎を丁寧に教えるSWC形式よりも、なるべく早く実際に応用できるデータ・カーペントリー（DC）の「Data Analysis and Visualization with R for Social Scientists」の方がふさわしい、と思うようになりました。が、データ・カーペントリーのレッスンはまだ日本語訳が出来ていなかったので、最終的には翻訳済のR for Reproducible Scientific Analysisの用語を使いながら、教える内容をDCのレッスンのように教えることにしました（例えば、ベースRよりもtidyverseから使う、など）。ちょっと混乱しましたが、最終的はこのようにして良かったと思います。理想的にはいつか、他のレッスンも翻訳したいところです！

オンラインで教える内容の選定

オンラインのワークショップだと、教えられる内容が大幅に減ることを予想しましたので、レッスンの内容はかなり軽く設定しました。それでも、４回目のレッスンでパイプ（%>%）、dplyr::group_by()、dplyr::summarize()を全部教えようとしたら、流石に多すぎました。この三つのコンセプトはどれも初心者にはかなり難しいので、もっと時間が必要だと反省しています。

まとめ

初の日本語SWCワークショップは全体的に上手く行ったと思います。アンケートでは参加者から非常に高い評価をいただきました³。翻訳が完成したレッスンは今のところ一つしかないことで多少困りましたが、近い将来、他のレッスンもどんどん翻訳したいと思います。皆様から日本語カーペントリーズのコミュニティーのご参加をお待ちしています！

参加方法

SWC日本語チームのホームページ
ツイッター： @swcarpentry_ja
フェイスブック： carpentries.ja
ギットハブ: swcarpentry_ja

スラックチャンネルもあります (日本語でも英語でも大丈夫です)。ここからご参加ができます。

どなたでもレッスンの翻訳に貢献できます。もしギットハブ上でのワークフローについてのご質問があったら、気軽に聞いてください。どうぞよろしくお願いします！

レッスンの翻訳についてのブログポストはこちらです（英語）。 ↩︎
これらのブログポストは特に参考になりました：Online Workshop Logistics and Screen Layouts, Recommendations for Teaching Carpentries Workshops Online, Mapping & Planning a Live Coding Workshop for Digital Delivery ↩︎

Announcing Alfred P. Sloan Foundation award to advance The Carpentries Equity and Inclusion goals for training researchers of color.

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It has been exactly two years since the release of The Carpentries Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Roadmap. Over the last two years we have:

improved the way we operate and engage with communities around the world
developed accessible pathways for community contribution
supported infrastructure for lesson development in non-English languages
improved Membership onboarding to include strategies for equity and inclusion
launched the Community Facilitators program to support community belonging

We have much more to do to support our diverse community, and to live up to our vision of being the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills. What we know from experience is that achieving equity takes intentionality and deep collaboration. For that reason, we have pursued grant funding to advance our equity and inclusion goals.

Recruiting Instructors for Self-Organised Workshops

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The original blog post was posted on 2020-08-05, what follows is an update to the original post

While Self-Organised workshops are not managed by The Carpentries Workshop Administration Team, we want to be able to provide you with resources to make the load lighter. When hosting a Carpentries workshop there are many steps in the coordination process. One of the most important components is ensuring you have Instructors to teach your workshop. This can be even more difficult when you have to recruit the instructors for a Self-Organised workshop.

Apply for the current round of Carpentries Maintainer Onboarding!

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is preparing to onboard the next round of Maintainers. Currently we have 161 Maintainers serving across 54 core lessons. To keep the community healthy, we need to plan for people wanting to step down from their current positions and finding new people to step into the role.

Most of our official core lessons are currently in maintenance mode - meaning that the content is relatively stable. However, we are planning to move to a new lesson template and a new infrastructure stack for building the lessons. Over the next year, there will be a bit more work making sure all existing issues and PRs are dealt with as the lesson transition over to the new template and infrastructure stack.

Registration for CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 now open!

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What is CarpentryConnect?

CarpentryConnect events are regional Carpentry Community meetups that take place outside of the main international CarpentryCon meetup. The second South African CarpentryConnect will be held virtually and will bring together newer and more experienced community members to share knowledge, network, develop new skills, and develop strategies for building strong local communities around digital and computational literacy at universities.

The main goal of CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 is to build capacity for workshops through instructor training and establish a network for the regional Carpentries community. The first South African CarpentryConnect took place in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2018. CarpentryConnect South Africa 2021 will build on the successes of that first event, to bring together and grow the Carpentries community in Africa even further. Workshop fees and mobile data for African participants is funded by Code for Science and Society Event Fund.

100 Members Strong, A Community Accomplishment

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It is hard to believe that from a vision of wanting to teach members of the community the foundations of computational and data science skills, we have grown to an organisation with 100 active memberships. This milestone reminds us that there is a community behind each membership that is receiving access to training and workshops, of which to date, 3,100 have been delivered to roughly 80,000 learners from all over the world!

Director of Community Development and Engagement Transition

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Announcement from The Carpentries

We are writing to share the news that The Carpentries Director of Community Development and Engagement and Community Development Team lead, Serah Njambi Kiburu, is departing her position to pursue new opportunities. Her final working day at The Carpentries will be July 30. Erin Becker, the Associate Director of The Carpentries, will lead the Community Development team while we search for Serah’s successor.

“Serah is truly a thought leader in open science, and one of the most caring and compassionate advocates I have ever met. One of the many things I learned in my time working with Serah is the value of feedback, and creating space for all the voices to be heard,” says Kari L. Jordan, Executive Director of The Carpentries, ”Several programs that are core to our mission were developed by Serah during her time with The Carpentries. Her legacy is sound, and the organisation is better because of her contributions. We will miss you Serah!”

Sharing our new Code of Conduct Facilitators Module

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In summary, while maintaining the role of the Code of Conduct Committee (CoCc) as a Code of Conduct enforcement body, in the near future, Code of Conduct Facilitators will be trained and actively available to the community as a trusted and neutral point of counsel on Code of Conduct-related matters, monitor Carpentries online spaces and physical meetings and escalate Code of Conduct incidents for the attention of the CoCc or otherwise certify that the community is functioning as expected.

2020 Financial Report Carpentries Conversations

Tue, 15 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Are you interested in discussing The Carpentries’ 2020 Financial Report and learning about how it was put together? Last month we announced the release of the 2020 Annual & Financial Report. Now that those reports have been made available to the community, we have scheduled two themed discussion sessions to dive into the reports later this month.

Please join Carpentries Operations Manager, Talisha Sutton-Kennedy, on a guided tour of the 2020 financial report. This discussion session (or Carpentries Conversation) will begin with a presentation and be followed by a question and answer session.

Carpentries Community Conversation with the Executive Council

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

On Friday, 22 February, 2021, two sessions were held for The Carpentries Community to meet and interact with The Carpentries Executive Council (EC) - to hear from about governance in The Carpentries and the work the EC is currently doing.

The hour- long discussion included (i)guided discussion and a (ii) Q&A session. Here is a summary of the conversation.

Questions and answers from the guided discussion

Provide a brief history of the Executive Council in The Carpentries

When Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged on January 1, 2018, it was decided to continue the tradition of a community-led steering council that both organisations had. The name chosen was Executive Council. It was decided to have 9 people on the council, 4 community-elected (any community member can stand for EC election) and 5 council-elected. Nominations for Council elected seats can come from the community, the Council, or Core Team, and the nominees do not necessarily have to be community members. This helps to have a wide range of expertise in the EC. See also this blog post from 2018.

Recruiting new members to the Code of Conduct Committee

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries are committed to providing a welcoming and supportive environment for all people, and our [Code of Conduct]({{ site.code_of_conduct_url }}) (CoC) is the framework for this commitment. The Code of Conduct Committee (CoCC) is responsible for managing the Code of Conduct, handling reports of conduct violations, and advocating for the CoC in the community.

The Carpentries Code of Conduct Committee is currently recruiting new members. We seek 3-4 community members who are passionate about ensuring that The Carpentries is a welcoming space, who have time to dedicate to the committee, and who bring diversity to the committee. In addition, it is beneficial, but not necessary, to have previous experience with this kind of work.

Announcing our new Curriculum Team Lead

Tue, 08 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A Message from Erin Becker

I am excited to announce that I have passed on the mantle of Curriculum Team Lead to Toby Hodges as of 1 June. In his role as Curriculum Community Developer, Toby has been a vital member of the team since joining us last August. He has showcased amazing leadership in the development of The Carpentries Incubator and CarpentriesLab and in the creation and piloting of Lesson Development Study Groups. Toby has been preparing to transition into this leadership role over the past few months and I have every confidence in his ability to lead the team with verve. I will remain on as a supporting member of the Curriculum Team.

Reflecting on the first round of Lesson Development Study Groups

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In February-April 2021, we ran the inaugural round of Lesson Development Study Groups (LDSG). The program combined weekly group discussions with reading and practical “homework” tasks requiring participants to apply the skills and practices they were learning to their lesson as they developed it.

The Study Groups program was designed to help community members taking the first steps in designing a new lesson in The Carpentries Incubator. It focussed on good practices in lesson design, and elements of The Carpentries lesson infrastructure, with the aim of giving the participants a solid foundation from which to continue building their lessons. We also hoped that it would help us to identify gaps in the resources we provide around lesson development, as we work to improve the quality and accessibility of our infrastructure, processes, and documentation.

Formalising The Carpentries Community Roles & Support Structure

Wed, 26 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past three years The Carpentries has grown in size - we run more workshops, train more individuals to teach, and serve more member organisations. Since our merger, we have also adapted the way we operate to comply with various laws and regulations (e.g. GDPR). What has remained the same is our intention to be transparent and supportive of our community. We are therefore writing this post to provide you with background and motivation for why we are formalising community roles.

From research to final product: the path to the design for the next lesson template

Tue, 25 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I was so excited to take on this lesson template redesign project with The Carpentries! As with any design project, it was paramount to define our objectives from the start to ensure success. This template redesign began with the below objectives that informed all of my process and choices:

The lesson template should conform to web accessibility standards.
The lesson template should be optimized for responsive screens and all devices.
The lesson template should be more navigable overall and support both learner and instructor needs.

Over the course of 10 weeks with these objectives in mind, I completed an end to end process to deliver the final redesign of The Carpentries’ lesson template early April!

University of the Western Cape’s first Data Carpentry Workshop of 2021

Mon, 24 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on the University of the Western Cape’s eResearch Office website. The UWC eResearch Office promotes and supports the use of advanced information technologies to enable better, faster and higher-impact research. As research becomes increasingly data-driven, researchers in all fields require new skills in order to be able to manage their data effectively. This needs to happen throughout the research lifecycle, thus producing better, faster and higher-impact research. UWC Researchers can find resources and build solutions for their research data management needs with the help of the eResearch Office.

Attend an Onboarding Session to Become a Carpentries Discussion Host

Thu, 20 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Community Discussion sessions have metamorphosed over the years within The Carpentries community. In addition to the traditional format which prioritises discussion to prepare newly-trained instructors for the three-step checkout process after Instructor Training, The Carpentries holds topical community calls, known as Themed Discussions, aimed at skill-sharing, ideas exchange and sharing of updates around specific subjects and about ongoing community activities in The Carpentries.

Invitation to Become a Discussion Host in The Carpentries

Community discussions are specifically designed for pre- and post-workshop discussion, and serve as a recurring space for instructors and helpers to ask questions and exchange ideas around the teaching Carpentries workshops, and to debrief after teaching. They also serve as places for networking and for peer mentorship between experienced and new instructors.

2020 Annual and Financial Reports

Wed, 19 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

As with years past, we have spent some time reflecting on the past year and compiled annual reports which highlight some of our activities and shared accomplishments from 2020.

The 2020 Annual and Financial Reports are now available. The reports can be found on the Reports page, The Carpentries central resource for all reports including yearly reports, grant reports, and assessment reports.

2020 Annual Report

The 2020 Annual Report includes several highlights, notably a message from Executive Director of The Carpentries, Dr. Kari L. Jordan, and a message written by the Executive Council. In addition, there are summaries of The Carpentries progress on our core operations and affirmations of The Carpentries values and mission.

Our First Workshop - Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya

Tue, 18 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on the Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya website. The Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya aims to bridge the gap between well-established bioinformaticians and aspiring ones through peer training and mentorship, so as to enhance collaborations to foster quality scientific research and innovations and promote the sharing of data, skills, and codes.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” That is what we can say about our first R workshop, which was also our first workshop as the Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya (BHKi). We gathered the knowledge and experience we all had as a committee and put it together to deliver the two-day workshop. It happened on the 24th and 25th of March 2021, and it was such a journey. So let us take you through it.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Bash and R for Metagenomics

Mon, 17 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/metagenomics/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/metagenomics

Learning Objectives

Acknowledge the importance of well-organized bioinformatics projects and apply this sense of tidiness to metagenomics data.
Learn and implement the guidelines for reproducible metagenomics projects.
Understand and apply the basics for Bash and R programming languages.
Use of Bash and R programming languages to assess and manipulate metagenomics data.
Learn and use the steps and tools for a complete analysis of shotgun and 16S metagenomics data.

Target Audience

Genomics and metagenomics enthusiasts; newcomers to the bioinformatics world; biological science undergraduate, postgraduate students and researchers. We do not assume previous knowledge of Bash, R or metagenomics for the lesson.

Library Carpentry’s Journey: Seeding the Future

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2018, Library Carpentry has been on a fruitful trajectory of growth and expansion. Fueled by a generous Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant awarded to the California Digital library, we have advanced the scope, adoption, and impact of Library Carpentry across the nation. Community partnerships have formed with libraries at academic institutions both in the US and around the globe, creating a rich and collaborative Library Carpentry community and making computational skills training widely available to librarians and researchers across disciplines. Supplemental funding by the IMLS has supported a growing number of Carpentries workshops and instructor training opportunities as well as a membership scholarship program to reach new and diverse library communities and consortia.

Introducing Michael Culshaw-Maurer

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Michael Culshaw-Maurer to The Carpentries. He is the first postdoctoral researcher to work with The Carpentries, and will be working jointly with Cyverse. We are excited by this partnership. Michael brings both teaching and community development experience and will work with the Curriculum Team to help with the Carpentries Incubator and the CarpentriesLab projects. He will help support the community in developing new lessons, and help create a lesson review process. We are thrilled to have him on the team!

Core Team 'Acc-athon' to Add Alt Text Across Carpentries Curricula

Thu, 22 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

At the end of March, the Core Team had an “Acc-athon”, or accessibility hackathon, led by Erin Becker, where we worked together to add and improve alt text across Carpentries curricula.

What is alt text?

Alternative text or alt text is an HTML element that describes the appearance and function of an image on a page. Alt text serves several functions. It appears in place of an image if the image is broken. It enhances the discoverability of content, because search engines can index alt text. But, perhaps most crucially, alt text makes web content more accessible. If someone uses a screen reader, when the screen reader gets to an image, it will dictate the alt text in place instead.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Python for Business

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/python-business/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/python-business

Learning Objectives

teach data processing skills that are automated, repeatable, and testable
apply Python as a replacement for spreadsheet-based analysis

Target Audience

Python for Business is a software skills training programme aimed at business students. It helps business students learn about basics of programming and how to perform Excel-like tasks with Python.

The Carpentries Strategic Plan: One Year Update

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In January of 2020, The Carpentries published our Strategic Plan for 2020-2025. Written and adopted before the onset of a global pandemic that has reconfigured the way the world operates, this strategic plan has served as a much-needed guidepost for The Carpentries through a period of uncertainty and change. Outlined in the strategic plan are the following 6 goals:

Build regional and local capacity to empower sustainable communities
Intentionally incorporate equity, inclusion, and accessibility to support a diverse community.
Provide opportunities for growth and professional development of our volunteers and Core Team.
Facilitate the creation and maintenance of relevant, high-quality, community-curated curricula.
Strengthen organisational structure and capacity to be strategic and responsive.
Advocate for our values and vision to empower more people to work with data and software.

Each of these goals carries with it specific objectives and rationale to aid us in implementing them.

Foundations of Astronomical Data Science - Call for Beta Pilot Applications

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Astronomy Data Carpentry curriculum, “Foundations of Astronomical Data Science” successfully held two alpha workshops in November 2020 and January 2021.

We are seeking community members to host and teach beta pilot workshops with the revised Foundations of Astronomical Data Science curriculum in June - August 2021. Continue reading for more information on the lessons, the alpha workshops, and to apply to host a beta pilot workshop.

The Astronomy Data Carpentry project is an endeavor funded by the American Institute of Physics Venture Partnership Fund, which was awarded to the American Astronomical Society to develop this curriculum (PIs: Azalee Bostroem, Diane Frendak, and Dr. Rodolfo Montez Jr.). The Astronomy Curriculum Development Committee, composed of Azalee Bostroem (Project Lead; University of California, Davis), Dr. Erin Becker (The Carpentries Associate Director), Dr. Rodolfo Montez Jr. (Astronomy Advisor; AAS and AIP liaison), Dr. Brett Morris (Astronomy Advisor), and Dr. Phil Rosenfield (Astronomy and Industry Advisor), were joined by lead curriculum developer, Dr. Allen Downey (Olin College), to create a two-day Data Carpentry curriculum for the astronomical community.

Carpentries Trainer Training May-July 2021

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that applications are now open for anyone wishing to become a Carpentries Instructor Trainer in 2021!

Carpentries Jargon 101: What is an Instructor Trainer?

A flow chart of our Instructor Training program, from Instructor Trainers to Instructors to Learners.

Announcing The Python Software Foundation Scientific Working Group grant

Tue, 06 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hi, I am Vini, a Carpentries Instructor and bioinformatician based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I am very pleased to announce that my proposal “Maintenance and Development of The Carpentries’ Python Curriculum” was approved as part of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) Scientific Working Group’s call for grant requests. This call was announced in December of last year and its goal is “to advance the scope, breadth, and utility of Python for scientific work (…), with specific emphasis on maintainer / maintenance support, outreach and education, as well as improved infrastructure & documentation.”

Pondering on the Question of Community Sustainability

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries has been around for a long while - Greg Wilson’s telling of the first ever Carpentries-style workshop dates back to July 1998 with initial discussion and ideation sessions about what is now The Carpentries starting three years prior in 1995. In 2021,this amounts to over 20 years of iterative design on The Carpentries style of teaching and lesson content, immense community collaboration and input on dozens of initiatives, peer mentoring and collective ownership of different processes — all of which have contributed to the healthy and impactful status that this community-led organisation holds in the present day.

Welcome to Trainers Leadership!

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In February 2021, the Instructor Trainer community elected its first Trainers Leadership panel and ratified a preliminary governance structure for this Carpentries sub-community. This panel and its documentation remains provisional, pending creation of guidelines and an approval process for sub-community governance by The Carpentries Executive Council. In the interim, they will proceed to flesh out procedural plans and will engage with The Carpentries Core Team to represent the interests of the Trainer community on policies and plans that pertain to Instructor Training.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight: Introduction to Open Data Science with R

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}} Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/open-science-with-r/ Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/open-science-with-r

Learning Objectives

After this lesson, learners should.. Know best practices in data analysis with R: tidy format, transformation, filtering, etc. Know how to increase scientific reproducibility and openness by coupling R with version control (git). Be able to create literate programming reports using R Markdown.

We Stand With Our Community Members of Asian Descent

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It was not so long ago that our Core Team shared a blog post advocating for empathy, empowerment, and equity, (A Call for Allyship and Solidarity), in support of our Black community members. Here we find ourselves again facing a painful reality: Anti-Asian violence is rising around the world. A collective trauma is being felt across the Asian diaspora, and I, like many other leaders in open science, am outraged and deeply saddened by not only the events that took place in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) last week, but the overwhelming amount of anti-Asian violence that has been on the rise over the past year. Silence is complicity; I will not be silent.

Announcing New Members of the Library Carpentry Advisory Group

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Following on from January’s Call for Applications, the Library Carpentry Advisory Group is pleased to welcome seven new members to our team. Selected from a pool of excellent applicants, they will begin their 3-year terms this month. Please join us in welcoming:

Sara King - Australia

Dr Sara King is the Training and Engagement Lead for AARNet. She is focused on outreach within the research sector, developing communities of interest around training, outreach and skills development in eResearch. She is passionate about helping others develop the infrastructure and digital literacies required for working in a data-driven world, translating technology so it is accessible to everyone. This year she is looking forward to working with the university library community to develop skills around active research data management, data analysis with Jupyter Notebooks and how to improve personal resilience in ever-changing technological and work environments.

Call for Pilot Workshops: Neuroimaging Lessons

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

An important step in the process of developing a new lesson is the moment when material is taught for the first time by someone other than the original author(s). In our description of the lesson life cycle we refer to these events as beta pilot workshops. After teaching the new lesson material, Instructors provide feedback to the lesson developer(s) to enable the lesson to be further polished in final preparation for an official release.

Introducing our new Director of Partnerships

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to welcome Al Obayuwana to The Carpentries team as our new Director of Partnerships. In this role, Al will focus on further developing our Membership program, supporting current Members, and expanding our membership base across a diverse range of institutions. Al comes to us with extensive experience working with community-based non-profits. In his most recent position as Vice President of Youth and Community Development for the YMCA, he successfully established new programming and greatly expanded fundraising revenue for the organisation. We are excited to add Al’s skills in relationship-building, program development, and fundraising to the team.

Integration and reuse of Library Carpentry content into curricula

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Jeff Oliver, Julie Goldman and Konrad Förstner

There is a growing need to teach students professional data handling skills. Luckily, nobody has to start from scratch for this. While the lessons of The Carpentries including the Library Carpentry lesson program are designed to be taught as defined combinations in two-day workshops, they can be reused in other contexts. In this blog post members of the Library Carpentry community describe how they include Library Carpentry lessons in academic curricula and use the training methods to teach computational skills to students.

Prioritising Accessibility in Organising Online Events

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was also cross-posted on Code for Science and Society’s Event Fund blog and the CSCCE blog.

Accessibility is to equity as a foundation is to a house. A well-rounded and intentional approach to making your community spaces and resources accessible levels the playing field for all in your community, and benefits everyone in the long-run.

December 3, 2020 was last year’s International Day for People with Disabilities. Under the theme, ‘Not all Disabilities are Visible,’ the day’s focus was on spreading awareness and understanding of disabilities that are not immediately apparent, such as mental illness, chronic pain or fatigue, sight or hearing impairments, diabetes, brain injuries, neurological disorders, learning differences and cognitive dysfunctions, among others.

Introducing R lessons in Japanese

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Software Carpentry lessons in Japanese

As previously discussed we have a Japanese language team aiming to maintain a community-led translation of the core Software Carpentry lesson. See our previous posts on how we got started and how we manage collaborative translations via GitHub. Our team has grown internationally in the age of online meetings with contributions from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, and the USA. We hope this will support growing the Carpentries community in Japan and Carpentries lessons for Japanese learners overseas.

Incubator Lesson Spotlight - Reproducible Computational Environments Using Containers: Introduction to Docker

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Incubator Lesson Spotlight highlights a lesson under development by our community in The Carpentries Incubator. In this first feature of the series, we look at the progress being made on the {{page.lesson_title}} lesson, and hear from the authors about how The Carpentries community can get involved with the ongoing development of this lesson.

Lesson Profile

Title: {{page.lesson_title}}
Lesson Pages: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/docker-introduction/
Lesson Repository: https://github.com/carpentries-incubator/docker-introduction

Learning Objectives

After this lesson, learners should..

Know what containers are and how they can be useful
Know how to find and use containers created by someone else
Know how to create and share your own containers
Understand how to take the next step in your use of containers

Target Audience

Our target audience is researchers who want to learn how to use containers to help manage computational environments and enhance the reproducibility of their research results. Learners should have some experience with the Unix shell, e.g., from having completed the Software Carpentry lesson, “The Unix Shell”.

Introducing our new Workshop Administrator Danielle Sieh

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

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

You will be seeing emails from her soon, and you can contact Danielle at workshops@carpentries.org. Welcome Danielle!

A message from Danielle

I am truly delighted to be joining The Carpentries team in the role of Workshop Administrator. I am based in Columbus, Ohio (USA) and I am relatively new to The Carpentries organisation and mission. However, after a lot of research and a whole lot of reading, I became quite enamored with The Carpentries and everything the organisation embodies. Having a background largely involved in education and community relations, I was excited to see the emphasis on evidence-based teaching, inclusivity and diversity, and a strong focus on getting information across to the learner in a way that works for them. I am thrilled to be working for such an incredible organisation and can’t wait to see what amazing opportunities this role brings.

Improving Accessibility in The Carpentries

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Because The Carpentries has a people-first and access-for-all mindset, one of the considerations that guides our choice of online platforms for community use in The Carpentries is the ease, clarity, and consistency with which people can interact and collaborate in real time (community calls, study groups, instructor training and workshop sessions, etc) and asynchronously (sharing opportunities, contributing to resources, asking questions etc).

In the past, for in-person workshops and activities across The Carpentries, we have offered guidelines on how to ask participants about their accessibility needs and worked to make our in-person gatherings accessible. Over the last year, as all our community activity shifted online, from our workshops, to our biennial community conference, it became apparent that we needed to do more to promote equitable access and make our online spaces more accessible. Carpentries Conversation 26 has valuable feedback that we are working on acting on and our Feedback Facilitators have been working to collate suggestions that community members have made over the years on the issue of accessibility in different Carpentries communications channels. They will share more about this in a future blog post.

Help Inform Translation Priorities for Carpentries Resources

Thu, 28 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Translation efforts in The Carpentries are community-led, and we recommend that you consider joining our internationalisation community channel in The Carpentries Slack to stay informed.

To help inform the efforts of community members interested in translating (i)resources for use in local Carpentries events like CarpentryConnects and (ii) all other resources currently available for the global Carpentries community in English, we request your input on the set of questions below:

We would like to hear about the relationship between spoken languages and the languages used for instruction in institutions where you are located. You can type your responses under issue 27 in The Carpentries Conversations repository or in this Google Doc using these prompts:

The Carpentries at rstudio::global(2021)

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

rstudio::global (2021) is a conference for R and RStudio users that is set to take place on Thursday, January 21 2021. The 24-hour virtual event will kick off at 8am PT / 16:00 GMT / 01:00 JST, and here is what time that will be for you. To cater well to all timezones, rstudio::global(2021)’s schedule spans 12 hours, and repeats from the beginning at the half-way point. Registration to participate in the conference is free for everyone to secure your ticket and attend at your convenience.

Alpha testing a Jekyll Pages lesson

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In the past several months, we have been developing a lesson, Building Websites with Jekyll and GitHub Pages, in The Carpentries Incubator. In November 2020, we taught this material for the first time in two mini-workshops hosted by UW-Madison.

The first time a lesson is taught is always an important step in its development. It is a chance to really assess how well the lesson objectives and material fit the target audience.

It is also usually the first time exercises have been tested by learners, and can expose weaknesses in the material that are difficult to spot from our perspective as a lesson author. In the life cycle of a lesson, The Carpentries refer to these initial trial runs undertaken by lesson authors as alpha pilots.

Announcing the 2021 Executive Council for The Carpentries

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the community and council elections for the 2021 Executive Council, which will assume responsibility of governance from the current Executive Council in February 2021. We would like to give the most welcome greeting to the following five new members.

Incoming community-elected members

Five candidates stood for the community election held during the beginning of December. Out of the 1182 ballots distributed to Voting Members, 224 ballots were cast (~19% turnout). The two candidates receiving the highest number of votes and joining the Executive Council for two-year terms as community-elected Members are:

Wrapping up The Carpentries FIRST Fundraising Campaign

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

We tried something new in the last quarter of 2020. The Carpentries engaged our community and supporters in the first fundraising campaign for individual and organisational donations. First and foremost, we thank you for donating to The Carpentries. Your monetary contributions will directly support our efforts to offer greater diversity in the spoken languages we teach and interact in, recognize and appreciate the different cultural norms that exist around data, programming, teaching, and volunteering in different regions to improve our programs and services, collaborate with existing organisations to reach broader communities, and authentically engage broader communities, working with, not for them.

An update on our 2020-2025 Strategic Plan progress

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Last October we shared progress toward our strategic plan for 2020-2025. We are excited to share more updates with you, and to hear your thoughts about the road ahead. Read on to learn more.

Strategic Plan Progress Updates by Team

Business Team

In Q4 2020, The Business Team explored the revenue applications of The Carpentries current assets and organisational strengths. We researched fundraising strategies and took advantage of fundraising training opportunities offered to Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) grantees. The information from these initiatives was used to support the development of a fundraising plan. As part of this project, the team launched a mailing list for members of our community who are interested in helping broaden The Carpentries’ impact on the world around us. For more information, please view the blog post: Announcing The Carpentries Philanthropy: A New Way to Get Involved with The Carpentries (2020-10-01)

I See, UC, We All See Carpentries: Collaboratively Scaling Workshop Instruction Across a University System

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

This Carpentries workshop ran online over the course of 3 weeks.

Week 1: Unix shell, Git/GitHub, SQL (one lesson per day, 9am-12pm)
Week 2: R (3 days, 9am-12pm)
Week 3: Python (3 days, 9am-12pm)

Following the success of the virtual Southern California Library Carpentry workshop, Carpentries instructors from UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, and UC Berkeley decided to run a joint Carpentries workshop open to students and researchers affiliated with these three University of California (UC) campuses. The plan for this workshop was to run online sessions over the course of three weeks. The primary idea and goal for this workshop was to further connect a Carpentries network across the University of California campuses. Similar to the Southern California Library Carpentry workshop, this joint UC workshop came together because of the already established collaborative partnerships between the Carpentry instructors at these three campuses. Tim Dennis at UC Los Angeles proposed the idea for this workshop to the other campus instructors, Reid Otsuji at UC San Diego and Scott Peterson at UC Berkeley, to begin planning the workshop. Each of the hosts reached out to Carpentries instructors on their campuses to gauge interest in teaching in this workshop. There was a great response and interest from the community of instructors at all three campuses.

A New Year Message from The Carpentries Executive Director

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year Carpentries Community! I did a mindfulness exercise recently that helped me see all the possibilities the new year holds. Many of us set goals at the beginning of the year, or “resolutions”, but I was reminded that setting intentions is an even more powerful exercise. Goals focus on what you want to achieve, while intentions focus on how you want to think, act, or be in the present moment.

Running an Online Data Carpentry Workshop in Iran

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It was my aim for a long time since I started to learn basics of programming in Python in 2017. I was excited to teach whatever I learned to other people and extend it. I am an analytical biologist and I have a lot of colleagues who were searching for someone speaking Persian to learn programming skills from.

I think learning in a maternal language is crucial to make the lessons more efficient. Teaching Data Carpentry could help them to make their own way in their research projects and improve the quality of their studies. I planned this workshop two months after I got my certificate as an instructor of The Carpentries. Because of COVID-19, the workshop in Iran was to be online too. Good for me! I participated in several online workshops around the world such as in the US and South Africa to learn and have experiences in teaching in online workshops and become an experienced instructor.

Apply to Join The Carpentries Lesson Development Study Groups

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce a new program of Lesson Development Study Groups for members of the Carpentries community who would like develop a new lesson in The Carpentries Incubator.

The Study Groups program will bring these community members together to develop their lessons as a cohort. Participants will benefit from the process by learning and discussing good practices in lesson design and share their experience as they build their lessons.

Outcome of October Community Discussion for Nordic and Baltic Countries

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blogpost is repost of a blogpost at CodeRefinery and is based on the notes made on Carpentries Community Discussion Etherpad on the 30th Oct. 2020.

Summary

The Carpentries say “never touch learners keyboard”. Should instructors rigidly follow this advice in online workshops or should we be more flexible in order to overcome the challenges of teaching online?

On October 30th 2020, a Carpentries community discussion was held with discussion focused on Nordic and Baltic countries. The host was Annika Rockenberger (Carpentries instructor trainer). Including the host and the co-host, totally 15 participants joined: 6 from Norway, 3 from Sweden, 3 from Finland, 2 from Denmark, and 1 from Bangladesh (Thanks for joining, all!). A complete list of the participants can be found below.

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.

Amending the Carpentries Bylaws in 2020

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

One of the tasks of the Executive Council is to “re-approve [the Bylaws] or an amended version every two years.”

What are our Bylaws?

The Carpentries Bylaws are a set of governance rules that describe the purpose of the organisation, how we are governed, how membership is regulated and how we operate.

The Carpentries Bylaws can be found in the Carpentries Handbook.

The first version of the Bylaws were developed, and approved in November 2018, by the first Executive Council of the newly formed The Carpentries organisation. This meant that 2020 marks the first time these bylaws have needed reapproval or amendment.

Library Carpentry Advisory Group Call for New Members

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Library Carpentry Advisory Group acts as a key friend to The Carpentries governance and Core Team and advises on ways to foster greater participation in the Library Carpentry community. The Advisory Group discusses, plans, and pursues strategies for involving new and current members in Library Carpentry. Members of the Group volunteer to serve three year terms, with increasing levels of responsibility and leadership each year.

Benefits of Being on the Advisory Group

Advisory Group members have the opportunity to work closely with a global community of librarians, archivists, and information professionals dedicated to expanding data and computational skills in library and information science communities.

Welcome to our Newest Instructor Trainers!

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to announce that our most recent cohort of Instructor Trainers have completed their onboarding and received their badges! This most recent cohort includes 10 Trainers based in North American time zones as well as expanding our Trainer communities in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. Their unique expertise and perspectives on training and community will be a tremendous resource for Carpentries Instructors to come!

Our new Trainers are:

Thank you for contributing to Glosario!

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In October we asked you to contribute to Glosario, the online, multilingual glossary of data science terms, as part of Hacktoberfest. The Carpentries community is international and, as well as contributing definitions of new terms in the languages already represented in the glossary, we wanted to encourage the introduction of new and translated definitions into more languages.

We know that the Carpentries community is amazing and we are delighted to say that you came through for us again! At the end of September, Glosario contained 528 definitions for 467 terms in four languages. By the time all contributions made during Hacktoberfest had been merged, the glossary contained 716 definitions for 521 terms, in eight languages! In addition to all these new definitions, translations, and languages, Glosario had also gained four new editors - Janetta Steyn and Angelique Trusler for Afrikaans, Beatriz Milz for Portuguese, and Batool Almarzouq for Arabic - and twelve new contributors (13 contributors before Hacktoberfest; 25 after).

Giving Tuesday at The Carpentries

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

What is Giving Tuesday?

Giving Tuesday is an annual “global generosity movement” which was originally created as a day to mark and encourage generosity and giving in all of its forms, whether that be volunteering or donating.

As you may have seen, The Carpentries is running our first ever fundraising campaign and we are honored and truly grateful for the generosity we have seen from our community in donating. If you would like to donate any amount, we would truly appreciate it. However, enshrined in The Carpentries’ Core Values is the notion that We Value All Contributions. In the spirit of that guiding message, here are a few of the ways that you can help support The Carpentries and mark Giving Tuesday through forms other than monetary contributions.

Meet The Carpentries Feedback Facilitators

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Community Facilitators in The Carpentries are people who are empowered to advocate for others in the community and guide community members as they navigate The Carpentries global community. When we set out to start designing The Carpentries Community Facilitators program in Q2 2020, one of our main goals was to onboard our first cohort of community facilitators, focussing on Feedback Facilitation, before the close of 2020. We are very pleased to introduce the first ten Carpentries Feedback Facilitators in this blog post.

Election for the 2021 Executive Council

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Edit (2020-12-01): Changes of the open/closing dates and one candidate status.

The election for Community-Elected members of the 2021 Executive Council will be open from December 2, and will close on Thursday, December 10 Anywhere on Earth. If you are a Voting Member, you should receive an email with a ballot and voting instructions from The Carpentries via ElectionBuddy by the end of the day on Wednesday, December 2. For more information on the Executive Council and election process, please see the bylaws and this blog post. If you have questions or concerns about the election process, please contact Juan Steyn.

Apply to Join The Carpentries 2021 Mentoring Program!

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Do you have a Carpentries goal that you are not sure how to accomplish? Or do you want to help your fellow instructors gain the skills and confidence they need to achieve their goals? If so, we encourage you to join a Carpentries Mentoring group!

We are seeking mentors and mentees to participate in The Carpentries Mentoring Program in 2021!

Mentors are certified instructors who facilitate a community of fellow instructors with similar interests.

Welcome Rabea Müller, Regional Coordinator for the DACH Region

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Regional Coordinators are essential to the daily operations of Carpentries workshops. With workshops being offered globally it is important for us to have Regional Coordinators locally placed to help organise workshops. The Carpentries is excited to announce Rabea Müller has joined our team of Regional Coordinators. Rabea is located in Cologne, Germany and will be managing workshops in the DACH region, which consists of Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

In addition to being a Regional Coordinator, Rabea is responsible for the development of a Data Science and Data Librarianship at our institution ZB MED. She is a Carpentries Instructor and Lesson Maintainer and has taught five workshops and counting.

Why give to The Carpentries?

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This week I received a lovely note from a Carpentries community member who wanted more information about why The Carpentries has initiated a fundraising campaign. This provides me with a fantastic opportunity to inform our community about how non-profit projects, including The Carpentries, are structured.

The Carpentries is very grateful to have received grants from various foundations and organisations, including the Sloan Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the California Digital Library, the Moore Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). While we were awarded $2.86 million in grant funds over the next 3 years, only a portion of those funds are made available for use each calendar year. Earlier this year, as we assessed our finances and upcoming work, we estimated a $130,000 deficit for fiscal year 2021, despite improving the way we budget and taking advantage of several non-profit discounts. In years prior, we were able to rely on membership income to cover this difference, however, membership income as compared to last year at this time is down 55%. To account for this deficit, we explored several revenue generation models and applied for small grants in addition to launching our first fundraising campaign.

Announcing our new Maintainer Community Lead

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hello everyone! I am excited to be joining The Carpentries as the next Maintainer Community Lead. The previous lead, Angela Li, has left me some large shoes to fill, in building and sustaining the Maintainer community, and I hope to build on what she has already created.

I joined Software Carpentry in 2014. Since then, I have maintained lessons and have taught numerous workshops, and just finished up my Carpentries Trainer Training. I am currently a PhD Student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the eastern United States, looking at data science education in the biomedical sciences, where my work is heavily inspired by The Carpentries.

Expanding The Carpentries Community in California

Thu, 12 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Between January and September 2020, I had the opportunity to work with an amazing group of librarians to develop the Carpentries community in California academic libraries. The goal for this project - which was funded by an IMLS grant through the California Digital Library - was to create sustainable communities of academic libraries across California that could work together to make computational training more accessible to librarians and the communities that they serve. I hoped to partner with existing Carpentries member libraries (largely in the University of California system) to teach workshops that would reach librarians in underserved state schools and community colleges. The plan was to offer Library Carpentry workshops, train librarians to teach with Instructor Training workshops, build local communities of practice, and promote Carpentries membership. With the COVID-19 pandemic we had to reimagine many aspects of the project to work in the virtual environment, but I was able to meet most of the original goals thanks to the work of many dedicated collaborators.

A Call to Action: Donate to The Carpentries

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I keep a picture of my grandmother in my line of sight at my desk. Every now and then I shift my eyes from my computer screen to her lovely face for inspiration. She believed in community, higher education, and the value of contributing what you could to help others. She taught me these values, and how to use my voice to empower others to realise their potential. I am so grateful for the values she instilled in me. These values drive my work and philanthropic engagement. I am passionate about this organisation because my personal values directly align with our Nine Core Values. I am where I need to be.

Call for Pilot Workshops: Introduction to Conda for (Data) Scientists

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Updates to Our Platinum Membership Tier

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Platinum tier is our most customisable membership type. Organisations choosing a Platinum membership have many options, in terms of both membership benefits, and in discount options available for in-kind time provided to The Carpentries. With growing community interest in Platinum memberships, we’ve updating our pricing structure to increase the transparency and equity of our membership program. A breakdown of this updated pricing structure is available on our Membership page.

Members of our team are on hand to help you in constructing a Platinum membership that best suits your organisation’s needs for training and community support. To request a meeting with our team, please send us an email.

We are Hiring Three New Team Members. Join Our Team.

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for two new full-time team members, and one temporary employee or contractor to join our global, mission-driven organisation. These new roles will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprising approximately 70,000 learners, 2,500 instructors, 100 Trainers, and 85 partner organisations from research institutions around the world. See below for descriptions and links to apply.

Director of Partnerships / Deputy Director of Partnerships

We are hiring a Director or Deputy Director of Partnerships to provide planning, vision, and implementation of the partnership program and represent the needs of partner organisations in planning and strategic development. Individuals with work authorisation in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, or the United States should apply.

Teaching a Library Carpentry Workshop in Southern California (and the Virtual Yonder)

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

From August 10 to 13, we taught a virtual Library Carpentry workshop to 18 librarians, primarily from California.

Our Audience

Our primary audience was librarians and library staff from the California State University (CSUs) system, a system that is relatively new to the Carpentries. When we first planned this workshop, we planned to teach it in-person at the California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) campus and therefore we anticipated our audience would be mostly from Southern California. While we missed the benefits of in-person connections and interactivity, our instruction team was excited to be able to reach a much wider audience across the CSUs. We had attendees from all across California, from Humboldt State in the north to San Diego in the south, and many points in between. Additionally, we opened up slots for librarians from other California academic libraries and also had one international attendee from South Africa!

Call for Candidates for the 2021 Carpentries Executive Council

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In the search for qualified candidates to serve on The Carpentries Executive Council, every member of The Carpentries community is encouraged to participate in the process, by nominating themselves or a qualified individual for one of the seats coming up for election.

The Executive Council is the governance body for The Carpentries, and is responsible for strategic and organisational planning. The members of the Executive Council serve two year terms, and are elected by either the community or Executive Council.

Reflections on my First Data Carpentry Workshop

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted by the author on Medium and has been cross-posted here with the permission of the author.

It was 6:00 AM GMT on 28th September 2020, a Monday morning in Ghana and I was up and ready behind my computer, taking a final glance through the materials for my participation in a Data Carpentries Workshop, organized by SADiLaR (South African Center for Digital Language Resources) in partnership with the Carpentries in Africa.

CarpentryCon @ Home: The journey of the Wikidata Lesson

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon Session Etherpad and Information. This session was led by Rabea Müller ¹ and Konrad Förstner ^1,2

Context

In 2018, we saw the need and opportunity for librarians to use Wikidata as an auxiliary resource to facilitate their work. On the other hand, the information skills of librarians can also help to improve the data in the Wikidata platform. With this realisation Library Carpentry Wikidata Lesson was born.

A first surcharge for this took place in 2018 at WikiCite, where the design of the workshop was planned for the first time in a session. Afterwards the planning continued at the ZB MED team.

Progress Towards The Carpentries 2020-2025 Strategic Plan

Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In early June we shared a summary of the work to be completed in year one of our 2020-2025 strategic plan (see this blog post). I enjoy reflecting on our progress because it is a continuous reminder of how strong and vibrant our community is. Read on to learn what we have accomplished as a result of your engagement, and what is to come in the next two quarters.

Strategic Plan Progress Updates by Team

Business Operations

The Carpentries Business Team has successfully piloted a quarterly budget workflow that helps us anticipate our income and expenses. Additionally, our Capacity Building project gave us space to explore revenue generation models and develop a fundraising plan. We documented all of our current Memorandums of Understanding, and developed a wish-list for in-kind support that will be shared with the community very soon. Can you say, “Carpentries Philanthropy”?

Lessons Learned - Data Carpentries Workshop for SADiLaR (August 31, 2020)

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

The call went out for instructors and helpers to cover the Data Carpentries Workshop from 31 August to 4 September 2020. Five instructors and two helpers were selected. We had two instructors from England (Jannetta and Varshita), one from France (Samuel), one from Kenya (Benson), one from Japan (Maggi), and two from South Africa (Marissa and Lactatia).

Preparation for the workshop

The workshop was organised by Angelique Trusler, the Regional Consultant for Southern Africa. Attendees were sent instructions in an email on how to download and install the data and software required. A couple of weeks before the workshop the instructors and helpers were put into contact with one another via email to decide who would do what during the workshop. We used a shared online spreadsheet to indicate which parts we would like to teach and who would be able to act as helpers on what days.

Announcing the new Help Wanted page

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A new Help Wanted page was recently added to The Carpentries website, providing a list of issues in need of some help, from Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, Software Carpentry, The Carpentries, and Carpentries Incubator GitHub repositories. We hope this will serve as a single point of reference for trainee instructors completing the checkout process, and anyone else looking for a way to make an impact by contributing to our materials.

The page provides an accessible overview of all open issues that maintainers have identified as needing help, across many of our official and community-developed lesson repositories. The listing also includes issues from the repositories of other Carpentries resources, such as Glosario, and infrastructure such as the organisational websites and lesson template.

Hacktoberfest 2020 - Glosario Contribution Drive

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In July The Carpentries announced Glosario, an open source, multilingual glossary of data science terms. Since that blogpost was published, almost 200 more terms have been added to the glossary in English, along with many more definitions in other languages. In the future, the resource will help lesson developers and maintainers make their materials more findable, allow learners to identify paths between lessons, and support non-English speaking learners in grasping lesson material.

Announcing The Carpentries Philanthropy: A New Way to Get Involved with The Carpentries

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We invite you to join the new Carpentries Philanthropy mailing list if you are interested in learning more about how you can help us be the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills. Sign up here

The Carpentries Philanthropy badge

The Carpentries Philanthropy is a newly launched mailing list for members of our community who are interested in learning more about how they can help support our mission of building global capacity in essential data and computational skills, and broaden The Carpentries’ impact on the world around us.

CarpentryCon @ Home: Growing Carpentries through a Growing Community at Oklahoma State University

Tue, 29 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon Session Etherpad and Information located here.

Our Carpentries organization here at OSU is about five years old. We feel pretty good about how it has grown and transformed over that time. Some of the biggest changes included transferring program administration and “ownership” to the Library, replenishing our local instructor base as it turns over, and adopting tools to more effectively promote workshops and engage volunteers. Other successes have included collaborating with some regional universities to help nurture their Carpentries programs, and seeing our workshops fill up with a waiting list on a continual basis.

Our Long-Term Survey is Open for Responses

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In April 2020 we released version 2 of The Carpentries Long-Term Survey Results. We learned that more than half of survey respondents use self-guided Data, Library, or Software Carpentry material months after attending a workshop. As the unprecedented Coronavirus pandemic has pushed our community to transition to virtual instruction, we are interested in receiving feedback from individuals who participated in a workshop in the last 6 months. There is much to learn about where learners are in their journey.

Running Newcastle University's First Online Software Carpentries Workshop

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

How it all started

On April 1, 2020, Newcastle University’s Research Software Engineering (RSE) team became one year old. We are a very new team, but have great plans for the future. One is to badge as many as possible of our team as Carpentries Instructors so that we can run Carpentries workshops at the university for research staff and students.

I managed to attend an online instructor training workshop towards the end of March 2020 just as lockdown started. Inspired and enthused at how well the instructors’ workshop worked online I quickly completed the checkout process and then started exploring opportunities for an excuse to run a workshop. Being the first to complete the instructor training, hopefully, a few more of my colleagues will follow in September 2020.

Recent Publications Highlighting the Value of the Carpentries in Academic Libraries

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The following three articles are highlighted in the new Library Carpentry Zotero collection.

How Library Carpentry helps us to transform our data and our training

Phil Reed, Data Specialist (Teaching, Learning and Students), The University of Manchester Library

There continues to be much discussion around more advanced digital skills in many aspects of library and information professional practice. Some particular issues highlighted for metadata and cataloguing work include the need for a competency framework, establishing what specific skills learners need, and maintaining a pool of instructors. In this journal article, Phil looks at the emergence of Library Carpentry workshops in the north of England, describing how the community could develop to meet the training and development needs of multiple fields in the sector. It includes a case study on a new lesson he has been involved in building about TEI XML, inspired by Manchester’s special collection, which may also serve as a way to encourage buy-in for The Carpentries from new institutions.

Announcing Library Carpentry efforts with the Network of the National Library of Medicine

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce our efforts to build the data skills of information professionals through our relationship with the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM). NNLM members will make use of the skills taught in Library Carpentry (LC) workshops to benefit health, health information, and biomedical research communities.

The NNLM Training Office (https://nnlm.gov/nto) at the Eccles Health Sciences Library - University of Utah will work with The Carpentries to bring core lessons of Library Carpentry virtually to NNLM. In addition to virtual Library Carpentry workshops, The Carpentries will train NNLM members as Library Carpentry instructors, and pilot additional curriculum in the online environment.

Apply to Become a Carpentries Feedback Facilitator

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We invite you to complete this short form. Deadline for applications is at the end of day, Wednesday, 7 October 2020, anywhere on Earth.

In our September 15 blog post, we introduced The Carpentries Community Facilitators Program, a new initiative aimed at designing additional pathways for active involvement in everyday community activities by more community members in The Carpentries. We hope that in the long term, this program will help sustain the growing Carpentries community and support other core programs that contribute to the advancement of our mission. Today, we are inviting community members to apply to join our first cohort of community facilitators who will be trained, mentored and supported to serve as feedback facilitators in The Carpentries.

Introducing The Carpentries Community Facilitators Program

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

The Community Facilitators Program is a new initiative in The Carpentries that seeks to create new pathways for active involvement in everyday community activities by more community members. This program will help sustain the growing Carpentries community and support other core programs that contribute to the advancement of our mission.

In 2019, Kari L. Jordan, Tracy Teal, Sher! Hurt and Serah Njambi Kiburu constituted a Core Team working group that discussed how to support Carpentries community members through conflict. This working group identified the need for a task force to make recommendations for dealing with incidents that come up in our community spaces and whose review and resolution fall outside the mandate of The Carpentries Code of Conduct (CoC) committee (see task force charter). One of the key recommendations from this Task Force was the institution of a Code of Conduct Facilitators Program to serve as an added layer of support for our community before incidents are reported to the Code of Conduct Committee (CoCc). More specific suggestions about how the Code of Conduct Facilitators Program could operate were first proposed by Malvika Sharan, the 2020 Code of Conduct committee chair in Q1 2019. In summary, while maintaining the role of the CoCc as a CoC enforcement body, Code of Conduct Facilitators would actively monitor Carpentries online spaces and physical meetings and share potentially negative behaviours or otherwise certify that the community is functioning as expected.

Meet our 2020-2021 Cohort of Instructor Development Committee Leaders

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

Instructor Development Committee (IDC) leaders in The Carpentries lead efforts to organise Community Discussions, set up mentoring cycles, and advocate for activities and initiatives that promote professional development, equity and inclusivity for Carpentries instructors. During their year-long term, IDC leaders also work on special projects aimed at improving instructor resources in The Carpentries, and facilitate conversations with other Carpentries instructors to brainstorm and discuss matters arising.

The Instructor Development Committee (formerly known as the Mentoring Subcommittee) was established in 2015 to develop and maintain a mentorship program to support instructors as they progress through training, teaching, curriculum development, and other community-related activities. The committee helps promote community-building and networking by providing virtual spaces where instructors from all over the world can share teaching success stories and discuss strategies for overcoming challenges. You can find more information about the IDC and its activities in the Instructor Development section of our handbook.

Transition for The Carpentries Membership Team

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentries Community,

I am writing to share that Elizabeth Williams (former Director of Membership) has departed The Carpentries effective 9 September. While we are sorry to see Elizabeth go, we are pleased to say there will be minimal disruption to the efforts of our Membership Program. We have established a plan to maintain routine membership tasks and inquiries, make progress on membership program development and infrastructure, and engage in new membership inquiries and conversations. Our membership@carpentries.org email is the best place to send questions and inquiries during this time.

How We Use Feedback at The Carpentries

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As you were filling out yet another survey or feedback form, you might have found yourself wondering, “What does The Carpentries do with all of this feedback anyway? Do they even use it? Do they really need to hear from me?” And the answer is yes, we definitely do!

If you have hung around The Carpentries for any period of time, you know that community is core to all we do. Everything is co-created by the community with support from The Carpentries Core Team. But to be able to co-create, we have to have strong lines of communication in all directions. As Core Team members, our job is to listen to you and use your feedback to inform the work we do. It is just as important, however, that we close that feedback loop by sharing back to you, to facilitate your work and to showcase your accomplishments. Since some of us really love concept maps here at The Carpentries, here is a little diagram to illustrate the many ways that we listen and share through our assessment work:

Now What? Next Steps After CarpentryCon @ Home

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A big thank you to Alfred P. Sloan foundation for making CarpentryCon @ Home possible.

First: if you attended CarpentryCon @ Home, please give us your feedback here!

Feedback Survey

CarpentryCon @ Home featured an incredible array of sessions on a wide variety of topics relevant to the Carpentries community. There was so much wisdom and experience shared across the 30+ sessions that whether you attended many sessions or were unable to attend at all, there is probably more you wanted to get out of the event!

Report from the Mega-Coderefinery workshop

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on the CodeRefinery website. In the CodeRefinery project we teach research software engineering tools and workflows, using the Carpentries style.

In May/June 2020, CodeRefinery ran a large online workshop with about 100 learners in attendance. We overcame the challenges with some clever strategies, and we feel the learning outcomes were similar to that of in-person workshops of around 30-40 participants.

After that workshop, some of the same staff held an even larger “High-performance computing (HPC) Kickstart” workshop (180 learners, more than four universities). This provided another perspective and reinforced some of the lessons learned during the large online CodeRefinery workshop.

What Will Constitute CarpentryCon @ Home Fireside Chat Discussions?

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the final week of CarpentryCon @ Home. In more than thirty sessions over the last seven weeks, community members and friends of The Carpentries have come together to facilitate and take part in hands-on sessions, discussions, social meetups, sprints, and more. This week, several community organisers will sit down over two fireside chats to discuss ‘How can we continue to grow inclusive, computational communities and leaders beyond CarpentryCon @ Home?’

Introducing our new Curriculum Community Developer

Thu, 20 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hi everyone! I cannot express how delighted I am to take up the position of Curriculum Community Developer with The Carpentries.

I am coming from a role as a scientific community manager at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL). In that position - alongside fellow Carpentries community members Renato Alves, Malvika Sharan, and Aidan Budd - I worked to build and support the community of computational researchers at the institute. In one aspect of that, I worked with community members to develop teaching material on topics relating to computational biology. It is a collaborative process that I have really enjoyed, and I cannot wait to share that experience with you all now.

Geospatial Data Carpentry Videos

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR

Instructors at the University of Wisconsin (at both Madison and Milwaukee) recorded videos of the Geospatial Data Carpentry Workshop They then held discussion sessions over the course of a week to discuss the videos the learners had watched Learners really enjoyed this setup and gave really good feedback. Instructors are still working on setting expectations about the setup better.

The Setup

Since mid-March, when the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus announced it would be temporarily closing, exploring methods for successfully teaching interactive coding workshops has been a continual discussion among our local community of Carpentries instructors. As The Carpentries staff like to say, the transition to online workshops has been a “chopportunity” (challenge-opportunity).

Design principles for the next iteration of The Carpentries lesson template

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post introduces twelve design principles that will guide the development of the next version of The Carpentries lesson template. First, we provide some background and definitions. If you are more interested in the principles themselves, you can skip forward to the Design Principles section.

Background

In The Carpentries’ history (including Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry), we have learned a lot about lesson templates. We have had two main versions of the template that relied on GitHub Pages. As the community grows, we are adding more lessons through [our community-developed lessons]({{ site.url }}/community-lessons/) (The Carpentries Incubator and The Carpentries Lab) every week; and we are starting to see the limitations of our current workflow. Given changes in the tools and infrastructure, we are envisioning the next iteration of the lesson template.

2020 - 2021 IDC Leadership Call for Applications

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We invite you to complete this short form. Deadline for applications is at the end of day, Monday, 24 August 2020, anywhere on Earth.

May 2020 officially marked the close of a year-long term for our 2019 Instructor Development Committee Leaders. We want to take this opportunity to thank Sarah Stevens, Arindam Basu, Tobin Magle, Marco Chiapello, Dr. Megbowon Kemi, and Martin Dreyer for their engagement, and for lending their time and expertise to different activities that served to improve instructors’ experiences in our community.

How to Recruit Instructors for Self-Organised Workshops

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

It has been nearly four months since The Carpentries started offering online workshops. With the release of version two of the online workshop recommendations, we have been able to offer resources for all instructors to effectively organise a workshop.

The Carpentries Workshop Administration Team has seen an increase in workshop activity, particularly for Self-Organised workshops. Being able to offer Carpentries workshops online allows organisations to reach a wider audience and we are extremely excited.

Primera experiencia traduciendo lecciones online dentro de la CarpentryCon@HOME

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

See English translation below.

¿Y tú cómo traducirías esta palabra?

CarpentryCon@HOME traduciendo

En la sprint the CarpentryCon el 20-21 de Julio se comenzó a traducir la leccion de R para datos geoespaciales de Data Carpentry. Nuestro avance ha sido increíble, en unas horas se logró traducir el 80% de la lección utilizando la plataforma Transifex. (agregar la foto aquí).

Junto con David, Paula y Florencia compartimos toda la sesión, permitiendo unirse a gente de todo el mundo en la franja horaria que fuese más conveniente para ellos.

Upgrading R Lessons to use R 4.0

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Summary and timeline

In April 2020, R officially released version 4.0. One of the major changes was the removal of the default stringsAsFactors = TRUE when reading in data frames. This was tentatively announced in late July 2019 and officially announced in February 2020. While this change has been seen as a good thing by the majority of the R community as a step towards reducing common pitfalls, it produces an interesting pedagogical challenge for some of our lessons that use errors and warnings generated from this default behavior as mechanisms to introduce learners to the concept of factors.

Announcing Glosario

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

glosario is an open source glossary of terms used in data science that is available online and also as a library in both R and Python. Authors can add glossary keys to a lesson’s metadata to indicate what the lesson teaches, what learners ought to know before they start, and where they can go to find that knowledge. Authors can also use the library’s functions to insert consistent hyperlinks for terms in their lessons in any of several (human) languages, and anyone who has installed the library can use it interactively to look things up while they are programming.

Carpentries Community Discussion Host Onboarding Now Open!

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentries Community Discussions are not only part of the check-out process but also provides a platform for all instructors (new and experienced) to discuss any questions (i.e. online workshop administration, how to adapt or using cloud instances they might have; or the opportunity to share unique teaching experiences post-workshop. With the move towards more online workshops, debriefing and sharing what worked and what didn’t is an important process of our community. The current number of hosts is a small fraction of our community so we are looking to expand the number and diversity of perspectives of hosts. If you are interested, please help us grow the community of discussion hosts.

Carpentries Trainer Training Fall 2020

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that our second and final round of applications is now open for anyone wishing to become a Carpentries Instructor Trainer in 2020!

A diagram of our Instructor Training program. Instructor Trainers are trained through Instructor Trainer Training and themselves teach Instructor Training to new Instructors. New Instructors teach Carpentries Workshops to learners.

Building the Maintainer Community and Your Own Skillset

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Over the past nine months, I have had the pleasure of serving as The Carpentries first Maintainer Community Lead. What started as a way to negotiate a Platinum Membership for my institution quickly became a way to get plugged into a large community of lesson maintainers, support others as they learned to maintain and support our curriculum materials, and multiply my impact in the community by empowering others to take the lead on our curricula.

Pre- and Post-workshop discussions : Six months into 2020

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Community Discussions are designed for everyone in The Carpentries community interested in learning, educating and advocating for teaching foundational coding and data science skills globally. Pre and Post-workshops discussions are designed for those getting ready to teach or having recently taught to come discuss their workshop with the community. Many Carpentry workshops globally are now hosted online due to the COVID-19 pandemic; these discussions also allow instructors to share unique online teaching experiences to instructors in-training who join the call during their check-out process.

Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are delighted to announce that our most recent cohort of Lesson Maintainers have completed their onboarding and received their badges! We had over 30 individuals participate in Maintainer Onboarding over the past month, including 8 existing Maintainers. We are excited to welcome these new members to the Maintainer community and look forward to working with them, and continuing to work with our many committed continuing Maintainers, over the coming months. We’d first like to thank several continuing Maintainers who participated in the onboarding. The insights and experience these folks were able to bring to the discussions were invaluable. Thank you Maxim Belkin, Sarah Stevens, Kat Koziar, Clarke Iakovakis, and Shari Laster!

Calling Local Midwest US Instructors!

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries community is growing throughout the Midwestern region in the United States! To support each other, we are starting a monthly community call for individuals based in the region to get to know each other, share experiences, and support each other with community building and workshop delivery. We’re looking for Carpentries Instructors across the US Midwest who are interested in growing their local Carpentries community and meeting other Instructors.

CarpentryCon @ Home Session Topics

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

There have been a lot of posts recently about CarpentryCon @ Home, but we wanted to offer one more to help people navigate the event. There are so many sessions offered, it might be hard to know where to start! The post organises the sessions by theme, so you can find sessions related to your interests.

A big thank you to Alfred P. Sloan foundation for making CarpentryCon 2020 possible.

I’m interested in:

The Software Sustainability Institute's Guidance for Running Online Training

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on the Software Sustainability Institute’s website based on lessons learned by SSI members.

Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash

Introduction

The following is guidance based on the Software Sustainability Institute staff and collaborators running online training events which have become more needed due to the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Steve Crouch has run afternoon training events online for the Scottish response to the Royal Society RAMP COVID initiative; Mario Antonioletti, Lucia Michielin, Aleksandra Nenadic and Giacomo Peru have been running Edinburgh Carpentries events online; Aleksandra Nenadic and Steve Crouch have run and facilitated workshops and instructor training events online. Rachael Ainsworth has excellent online event management experience especially during the recent delivery of Collaborations Workshop 2020 online. Shoaib Sufi has oversight of the Collaborations Workshop series of events and moved the selection of the Institute Fellows from a face to face meeting to a successful online event which has taken place for a number of years now.

Letter from The Carpentries Executive Director, July 2020

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Carpentries Community,

On 12 June our Core Team participated in the first Reading and Reflection Day. On that day I spent time reading resources on building and sustaining non-profit projects. I learned many things in the time I spent reading, but what leapt from the pages were strategies to move beyond survival and into thriving.

Now, do not get me wrong. The Carpentries is not only surviving - we are thriving! Your feedback and continued engagement has allowed us to establish processes for piloting our workshops online, and in 2019, we increased our number of trained instructors and workshops by 29% and 20%, respectively. That combined with support from CZI and the Moore Foundation and Mozilla’s Open Source Support (MOSS) program, the road ahead includes scaling instructor training, curriculum development, community development, and our equity, inclusion, and accessibility (EIA) efforts. We have lots to do - and I am here for all of it!

Join Us for CarpentryCon @ Home: 14 July - 31 August

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When we had to cancel the in-person CarpentryCon this summer, the organisers wanted to still provide the Carpentries community with a chance to meet other community members and learn from each other. CarpentryCon @ Home is a chance to experience some of the same in-person CarpentryCon content, but from the comfort of your home! In order to accommodate full schedules, we have scheduled a variety of sessions spread out over the next seven weeks - covering topics from lesson development, teaching/meeting online, diversity and inclusion, and more! A big thank you to Alfred P. Sloan foundation for making CarpentryCon @ Home possible.

Lessons Learned - Teaching Carpentries Workshops Online in Sweden, May 2020

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

In May 2020, 16 learners from three universities in Stockholm, Sweden and two other Swedish universities attended online workshops focused on Carpentries SQL, OpenRefine, and Python lessons. Taught over the course of four days, the three hour sessions were led by a team of one instructor, three helpers, and a “Zoom-DJ” who kept track of things in the Zoom room, ensured a welcoming environment for the learners, encouraged questions, kept track of the time, and managed the breaks and break-out rooms. During each session, the instructor, helpers, and Zoom DJ appended their titles to their names and had video on to make it easier for participants to ask for help. Workshop leads switched between instructor and helper roles in the different sessions.

Going Online: How we organised the first ever virtual csvconf

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A brief history about csvconf
Weighing the decision to hold csv,conf,v5 online

Moving online - The challenge
Moving online - The opportunity

Planning an online conference

Organizing Team
Selecting Talks
Creating a Schedule
Tickets and Registration
Code of Conduct
Communication via Slack
Picking a video conference platform

Zoom Concerns
Crowdcast Benefits
Crowdcast Challenges

#Commallama
A big thank you to our community and supporters
Looking Ahead - The future of csv,conf

A brief history

csv,conf is a community conference that brings diverse groups together to discuss data topics, and features stories about data sharing and data analysis from science, journalism, government, and open source. Over the years we have had over a hundred different talks from a huge range of speakers, most of which you can still watch back on our YouTube Channel.

csv,conf,v1 took place in Berlin in 2014 and we were there again v2 in 2016 before we moved across the Atlantic for v3 and v4 which were held in Portland, Oregon in the United States in 2017 and 2019. For csv,conf,v5 we were looking forward to our first conference in Washington DC, but unfortunately, like many other in-person events, this was not going to be possible in 2020.

People have asked us about our experience moving from a planned in person event to one online, in a very short space of time, so we are sharing our story with the hope that it will be helpful to others, as we move into a world where online events and conferences are going to be more prevalent than ever.

The decision to take the conference online was not an easy one. Until quite late on, the question csvconf organizers kept asking each other was not “how will we run the conference virtually?” but ‘will we need to cancel?’. As the pandemic intensified, this decision was taken out of our hands and it became quickly clear that cancelling our event in Washington DC was not only the responsible thing to do, but the only thing we could do. csvconf's #CommaLlama

Online Workshop Logistics and Screen Layouts

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We just ran another online Software-Carpentry workshop with the University of Delaware. It was spread across 4 days over 2 weeks where each day covered a single topic. Thanks to all the instructors (Book Moyers, Daniel Chen, Sébastien Vigneau, Lorraine Ling) and helpers (Adam Faranda, Anders Kiledal, Heidi Van Every, Iman Bhattacharya, Jose Daniel Chazi Capelo, Madolyn MacDonald, Menolin Sharma, Preethy Nair, Riza Li, Sachin Gavali) to make the process go smoothly.

Looking Back and Looking Forward: Scaling Collaborative Curriculum Development

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In February 2018, Data Carpentry was awarded funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support creation of sustainable infrastructure and scalable processes for curriculum development and maintenance. In May 2020, our funding for this initial scaling effort wrapped up. Here we report on lessons learned, work accomplished through this funding, and where our curriculum development and maintenance sustainability efforts are headed in the next few years.

Our primary deliverables for this grant were:

Lessons Learned - Teaching Carpentries Workshop Online UCLA Spring 2020

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on the UCLA Library website. As a member of the Carpentries, we offer Carpentries and Carpentries-styled workshops.

Introduction

Between April 10 and May 1, the UCLA Library Data Science Center offered four online 3-hour sections in R programming from Software Carpentry’s R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis. Our usual in-person workshops have a capacity of 30 learners and a typical waitlist of 20. Our attendance for the online course ranged from 30-50 with a waitlist of 250. Our learners primarily consisted of UCLA graduate students in business analytics and social sciences.

Outlining a Successful Virtual Software Carpentry Workshop on Zoom

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Software Carpentry-Day 2 Git tutorial. Instructor: Bernease Herman

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of Data and Research Scientists at the University of Washington eScience Institute and the Department of Astronomy were able to hash out and test the logistics of running a four-day Software Carpentry Workshop with 20 participants using only Zoom and slack. The following is an outline of what worked for our group with added context.

Reading and Reflection Days for The Carpentries Core Team

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In several conversations between Carpentries Core Team members, it has come up that, with all of the day to day work in community engagement, workshop operations, infrastructure, and supporting our various community segments from Members and Trainers to Maintainers and Instructors, we sometimes run short on time to (i) read up on resources that could help us in the work we do to support The Carpentries and (ii) reflect on the programs we support and how they can be improved. As members of the Core Team, we would like to reflect more on our existing workflows as well as how they can be improved so that our processes, programs, and infrastructure are in line with our core values. Sometimes we just need a day to read and reflect.

Call for Proposal Review and CarpentryCon @ Home Regional Hosts

Wed, 10 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon @ Home kicks off on July 14 and now is a great time for as many as are interested in our community to get involved - comment on session proposals you would like to see, contribute to sessions still looking for help, and volunteer to be a call host for your region. A big thank you to Alfred P. Sloan foundation for making CarpentryCon @ Home possible.

Help Us Review Proposals

We invite you to review sessions proposed for CarpentryCon @ Home by other community members in the issues section of this repository. Reviewing proposals is a two-step process:

The Carpentries’ 2020 Strategic Focus and Path Forward

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

On January 30, 2020 The Carpentries released its strategic plan for 2020-2025. This plan outlines six strategic goals for the next five years. The full strategic plan is published on The Carpentries website.

Carpentries Core Team members contributed to the discussion of which Strategic Plan objectives to prioritise in 2020. Priorities were based on the significant progress that had already been made toward some of the strategic objectives, personnel time, and grant obligations. We are delighted to share the goals and priorities for the first year of our strategic plan with the community.

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.

Learners' Experiences from South Africa's Online Workshop

Thu, 28 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

COVID-19 has had an impact on in-person meetings globally, and South Africa’s Carpentries workshops are no exception. Under an ongoing national lockdown, tertiary institutions are closed leaving students without access to internet and computer laboratories. The General Household Survey of South Africa (2018) indicated that only 10.14% of households have access to internet at home.

There is a silver lining, some universities have stepped up to bridge the digital divide and are offering access to laptops and mobile data for students to continue the academic year online (on loan or reduced prices). SADiLaR used this ‘chopportunity’ to host its first three-day Online Data Carpentry Workshop from May 5-7. Six learners from South Africa and the United Kingdom attended the online workshop, which covered Data Carpentry’s R for Social Scientists curriculum.

Introducing our new Astronomy Curriculum Developer

Thu, 21 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are ecstatic to welcome Dr. Allen Downey as our new Astronomy Curriculum Developer! Allen’s role is supported by a grant from the American Institute of Physics. His work will focus on developing a set of 3-4 Carpentries-style lessons on data organisation, data management, interactive data visualisation, and publishing data for longevity and interactivity - targeted towards astronomers. Allen will join the team part-time over the next six months to develop and pilot test these lessons. Welcome to the team Allen!

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.

Learnings from the First Centrally-Organised Online Workshop of 2020

Thu, 14 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Make sure to consult the official online workshop recommendations for preparation. They played a large role in our being able to achieve a Net Promoter Score (NPS)¹ of 75 in the Carpentries post-workshop survey. Our workshop was conducted online for Genentech. It started in the last week of April and took place over a two week period, with class being held approximately two hours every other day. The workshop covered plotting and programming in Python, Unix Shell, and Git/GitHub.

Submit a Session Proposal for CarpentryCon @ Home

Thu, 14 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We cannot meet in person for CarpentryCon 2020, so we are bringing CarpentryCon to you! CarpentryCon @ Home is an online series of events happening in July and August, sharing some of the great content that was planned for CarpentryCon 2020 in Madison including keynotes, breakouts, lightning talks, and socialising.

A big thank you to Alfred P. Sloan foundation for funding The Carpentries and making it possible to plan for CarpentryCon @ Home.

Running a Virtual Social Carpentries Meetup in UW-Madison

Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As part of growing our local pool of instructors at UW-Madison, we have started to host instructor social events more regularly. I planned to host a social one week after the most recent instructor training to aid in welcoming our newly trained instructors to the community.

We had moved instructor training online, because it is often taught remotely already, and are still working on a plan for the rest of our workshops this year. However, with the disruption all are facing in our communities due to the pandemic we could not hold the social as planned.

2019 Reports and our Annual Reports Page

Mon, 11 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Two pivotal resources for The Carpentries community were published for the first time in 2019. The first is our 2018 Annual Report which was released in early 2019, and the second is our 2018 Financial Updates Report which was publicised by our Executive Council in mid-2019. Both reports have been an invaluable reference in communicating with new and existing community members, potential funders, member organisations, and others.

Today, The Carpentries is excited to release our 2019 Annual Report and 2019 Financial Report, and to share a central resource we have created to aggregate all Carpentries reports for ease of access.

Introducing our new Deputy Director of Instructor Training

Wed, 06 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are ecstatic to welcome Dr. Kelly Barnes to The Carpentries Team. Kelly’s role as Deputy Director of Instructor Training is supported by a three year grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative for scaling and sustaining our Instructor Training and Trainer Training programs. Her work will focus on developing an assessment strategy for instructor and trainer training and working with the Trainer community to maintain and modernise our Instructor Training curriculum. She will also work with The Carpentries Instructor Training Team to scale up our capacity for instructor training by improving our workflows and documentation. Welcome to the team Kelly!

Increasing Researchers' Digital Literacy in Ethiopia

Tue, 05 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Ambo University in Ethiopia conducted its first ever Carpentries workshop from 17-19 October 2019 at the Main Campus which is located 100km from the Capital Addis Ababa (Finfinne). The Workshop was organized by Team Carpentries Ethiopia led by Dr.Margareth Greferer founder of R-Ladies Addis Ababa and Yared Abera Ergu (Library Carpentry Advisory Board Member 2019-2022) in association with Ambo University Academic Vice President, Ass. Professor Mulu Kitaba.

During the workshop three active instructors – ¹ Mr. Yared Abera Ergu ² Dr.Margareth Greferer, and ³ Bonny Adane – and one helper – ⁴Miss Yirefu Teferra Tekilessilase (PhD Student Addis Ababa University) – executed an amazing team effort teaching Data Carpentry Training. The participants were members of the University senior academic staff, Librarians and Researchers in different fields from across the University.

Carpentries Conversations: The Carpentries Teaching of Git and GitHub

Mon, 04 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Prompted by various tweets by our community members, and related community deliberations in The Carpentries’ Slack and TopicBox in December 2019, The Carpentries Core Team saw an opportunity for broader community discussions around instructors’ interest or comfort in teaching git and GitHub as outlined in our lesson programs.

We conferred with The Carpentries’ Curriculum Advisory Group who agreed to facilitate a series of Themed community discussions around The Carpentries Teaching of GitHub. This blog post summarises community input from three separate discussions in December 2019, and outlines a way forward for continued deliberations.

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.

Welcome to our Newest Instructor Trainers!

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to announce that our most recent cohort of Instructor Trainers have completed their onboarding and received their badges! This is a tremendous group, and many have already jumped in to begin teaching Instructor Training workshops and hosting Teaching Demonstrations! We are proud and fortunate to have them on board.

Our new Trainers are:

Angela Li (University of Chicago, USA)

Angelique Trusler (The Carpentries, South Africa)

Ann Backhaus (Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Perth, Australia)

Annika Rockenberger (University of Oslo, Norway)

Ariel Deardorff (University of California, San Francisco, USA)

Bianca Peterson (North-West University Potchefstroom, South Africa)

Evgenij Belikov (University of Edinburgh, UK)

Liz Stokes (Australian Research Data Commons Sydney, Australia)

Margareth Gfrerer (Higher Education Strategy Center, Ethiopia)

Matthias Liffers (Australian Research Data Commons / Curtin University, Australia)

Mike Trizna (Smithsonian Institution, USA)

Paola Corrales (Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera, Argentina)

Sara King (AARNet Adelaide, Australia)

Zachary Painter (Stanford University, USA)

Our Instructor Trainer Training program is still actively under development as we look to expand our capacity in the coming years. Huge thanks to these participants not only for their enthusiastic contributions to our discussion meetings, but also for their contributions to the continuing development of this training. We expect our curriculum for this program to be prepared for broader application in time for our next cohort.

Organising Online Carpentries Workshops

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As The Carpentries Core Team continues to transition to offering online workshops, the Workshop Administration Team would like to share additional information pertaining to Instructors to help you prepare for your workshops. Information shared in this blog post is a supplement to the Recommendations for Teaching Carpentries Workshops Online. Most importantly, we want to update Instructors on a few logistical workflows we have changed to support online workshops.

Registering your Self-Organised online workshop

Please be sure to register your Self-Organised workshop, as you begin planning your Carpentries online event. It is important that you use a unique workshop ID so that we can add your workshop to our database and provide the proper communications to you.

Having a Great Online Learning Experience: A Guide for Students

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on the Sydney Informatics Hub/Darya Vanichkina’s blog.

With the advent of COVID-19 we’re all having to do the unthinkable, which for an instructor like me means moving hands-on, practical coding workshops online. In this post, I’ll outline a few key things you can do as a learner to have what is hopefully the best possible experience attending synchronous online training.

Scaffolding Installation for Online Workshops

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Installing software is hard!

If you have been involved with a Carpentries workshop (or any technical workshop!), you have probably noticed that ensuring learners have a working installation of the tools that will be used can be a significant challenge. Installing software is an acquired skill, and troubleshooting the installation process often requires some of the very skills that we teach in our workshops! Some Instructors pre-empt these issues by offering an “installation party” the evening before the workshop - however, folks who have the least experience with software installation are the least likely to recognise how challenging it can be, and therefore often the least likely to show up for these installation help events.

A Brief Guide to Lists in The Carpentries' TopicBox

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

COVID-19 has had a big impact on the global Carpentries community. The following are various channels to subscribe to based on the information you might need as we monitor and respond to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.

The Carpentries TopicBox has many channels of threaded discussions. The most general and broad discussions revolve around teaching, pedagogy, technology, and tools. More specific channels are aimed at trainers, maintainers as well as instructors. Standalone channels are also available for local Carpentries community discussions.

Mapping & Planning a Live Coding Workshop for Digital Delivery

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This series of two blog posts was originally posted on the Sydney Informatics Hub blog here & here, and at Darya Vanichkina’s blog here & here. These posts were written in preparation for an ARDC Community call, where I shared my experience adapting our team’s training for online delivery at short notice. This is what I wanted to get out on the page and not talk about, because in my talk I instead focus on the “bigger picture” aspects of the training (pedagogy, design, on-stage activity and feedback), and on the personal experiences of my team and I. The video/slides of that talk are also available online.

Running University College London's First Online Git Workshop

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on University College London’s blog.

Tl;dr: We successfully ran a 3-hour workshop for 11 learners with one instructor and five helpers. We used Blackboard Collaborate as our main tool and shellshare to “look over the shoulders” of the learners.

Our team has been running training workshops since its start. Enabling researchers to make better software is one of our core goals. Most of our training benefited from The Carpentries’ methodology and material. We were early adopters and supporters of those - UCL became one of the first affiliate institutions of the Software Carpentry Foundation.

Introducing Our New Executive Director

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Kari L. Jordan is the new Executive Director of The Carpentries, effective 16 April, 2020. This announcement comes after a rigorous international search conducted by Marcum LLP and members of the search committee (Karen Cranston, Amy Hodge and Elizabeth Wickes) appointed by the Executive Council of The Carpentries.

Kari has been on the Core Team of The Carpentries since 2016 and succeeds the former Executive Director, Dr. Tracy Teal, who moved on from the role in January of 2020 to pursue other opportunities. Before becoming Executive Director, Kari served as the Acting Executive Director following Dr. Tracy Teal’s departure.

Lessons Learned from Running Code Refinery's First Online Workshop

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post was originally posted on the CodeRefinery website. In the CodeRefinery project we teach research software engineering tools and workflows, using the Carpentries style.

April 7-8, 2020, we gave our first online workshop on introduction to Git (2 x 3 hours) with 22 participants and we plan to deliver many more such workshops on a number of topics based on our lessons.

The workshop went well. Online feels slower, but has a different set of advantages (we discussed later whether we actually covered significantly less than during an in-person workshop and we were not sure the pace was actually slower).

Official Guidelines (V1) for Taking Your Carpentries Workshop Online

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

On March 17, The Carpentries convened a Task Force to address the urgent demand for remote Carpentries workshops as communities have shifted to distance work across the globe. The Task Force concluded on April 1, with an initial set of guidelines for teaching, supporting, and communicating about fully remote versions of all Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry workshops.

Task force members:

Angelique Trusler (Task Force Lead)

SherAaron Hurt (Workshop Administration Team Lead)

Serah Njambi Kiburu (Community Development Team Lead)

Karen Word (Instructor Training Team Lead)

Juan Steyn (Executive Council Liaison)

Elizabeth Wickes (Secondary Executive Council Liaison)

The guidelines for teaching these pilot-phase workshops now have a home on [The Carpentries website]({{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}/online-workshop-recommendations/). We expect to update these guidelines regularly, and will announce major changes to the community. We also plan to host themed Discussion sessions and, ultimately, to offer short training opportunities for current Instructors who wish to advance their teaching skills online. We do not yet know whether online instruction will become a permanent addition to The Carpentries’ supported workshop offerings – this will be evaluated in view of the feedback we receive once in-person workshops become possible again.

Introducing The CarpentryConnect Planning Kit

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryConnects are community convenings, organised to bring together community members of The Carpentries that are in close proximity geographically for knowledge exchange, collaboration, and networking. The CarpentryConnect Planning Kit provides checklists, templates, recommendations for best practices and resources to serve as guides in planning and carrying out CarpentryConnect events.

We prioritised the development of a first version of this resource in Q1 2020 because:

Our global online community has grown in leaps and bounds over the years and we have seen local community building efforts around the world begin to happen,

local and regional Carpentries convenings outside of instructor training and Carpentries workshops have become more popular in the last year, and

community members are currently responsible for the planning and execution of the events with minimal input from the Core Carpentries team,

With CarpentryConnect Planning Kit, we hope to lower the barrier to entry in putting together these events, so community members feel empowered to organise for plenty of convenings that add value to their work, and want to help standardise formats and uphold the quality of Carpentries events that are run in regional and local settings.

Changes to CarpentryCon 2020

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are very disappointed to announce that CarpentryCon 2020 will not be occurring as had been planned in June 2020. Here are the changes to know about:

No in-person (or virtual) conference this year

Due to the worldwide spread of COVID-19, it is not possible or safe to hold an in-person conference in Madison this year. If you have already registered for CarpentryCon, your registration fee will be refunded.

We gave thought to a virtual conference as an alternative, but that too was not feasible due to a number of constraints. As the Carpentries team, the CarpentryCon task force, and the Carpentries community are all juggling new challenges and responsibilities in the face of the pandemic, we know that people’s capacity to organise and attend an event like CarpentryCon is far more limited, which informed our decision, especially as we would like CarpentryCon to be an inclusive, accessible event.

Being a Carpentries Maintainer and the Skills You Can Learn

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Back in 2016, I wrote a blog post about “What the Carpentries Mean To Me” and it traced how everything I know these days stems from my first SWC workshop in 2013. I still hold the same sentiment today.

In the past few years, one of the biggest skills I have become more fluent in is Git version control and collaboration. As a part of Carpentry instructor onboarding, we are asked to submit a Pull Request to an existing lesson. This serves as a litmus test to make sure things are working and you’ve gone through the collaboration process at least once (nobody is expecting a full understanding of Git). But, maintainers do need to be somewhat comfortable with Git.

Apply for Carpentries Maintainer Onboarding!

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for anyone interested in becoming a Carpentries Lesson Maintainer!

Maintainers sustain our lessons and curricula over the long run, and we are looking forward to bringing on a new cohort of Maintainers to support our lessons. Additionally, we are opening up Maintainer Onboarding to existing Maintainers who wish to further advance their skills to better serve their lessons.

Our goals are to support Maintainers with training to successfully manage their lessons. Additionally, we hope to better serve those who contribute to lessons by encouraging timely response to their contributions. Finally, we hope to build out the Maintainer community through more regular onboarding.

More Community-Contributed Tips for Teaching Online

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We recently published a first round on community-contributed tips for teaching online. Today, we are publishing the second and final round of tips from our community members.

As communicated by Omar Khan on TopicBox on 26 March, The Carpentries has now set up a COVID-19 Response Task Force, and a more elaborate set of recommendations will be shared by its members in the coming weeks.

This post has been made possible by contributions from Julie Vecchio, Hanna Varachkina, Darya Vanichkina, Angelique Trusler and two anonymous contributors. Thank you!

Tips for Teaching Online from The Carpentries Community

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In The Carpentries #general Slack channel on Friday, 13 March 2020, several community members were discussing different approaches to employ in collaborating online, and specifically around curriculum development and teaching workshops. Lex Nederbragt and Laura Acion had a great thought to consolidate experiences in teaching and learning online from members of The Carpentries community, and share this in a more accessible space for others to read and adapt them for their needs. In the wake of COVID-19 and due to stringent measures taken to help curb its spread around the world, remote teaching and learning is quickly becoming a priority for institutions around the world. Acting on Lex’s and Laura’s suggestions, we put out a call asking The Carpentries community to share from their extensive experience in teaching and learning online.

Introducing our New Lesson Infrastructure Technology Developer

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I am super excited to join The Carpentries as the Lesson Infrastructure Technology Developer. Throughout my career, I have worked towards making complicated analytical tasks just a bit easier for scientists through both software and training. The chance to work with the wonderful people at The Carpentries on improving the lesson infrastructure is no short of a dream job!

I have just finished a stint at Imperial College London where I worked with both The R Epidemics Consortium (RECON) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International to develop tools, templates, and training materials for field epidemiologists to perform reproducible analyses in R. I was previously a plant pathologist where I developed tools for population genetic analysis of clonal organisms as well as tutorials and workshops introducing plant pathologists to R, reproducible research, and data management.

Introducing our New Communications Manager

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I am absolutely thrilled to be joining The Carpentries as Communications Manager. I come to The Carpentries after years of working in marketing and communications in the non-profit worlds of theater and arts in New York and Washington DC, after earning Bachelor of Arts degrees in Public Relations and Film Studies. In previous roles, I specialised in graphic design, and creation and strategy of publications and other content.

I first found out about The Carpentries through a weekly listserv highlighting opportunities in non-profits, and was immediately struck by the work that The Carpentries is doing and their mission-level commitment to inclusivity on a global scale. I am absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to bring my knowledge and experiences to the global community of The Carpentries.

Teaching a New Geospatial Python Lesson

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

On February 6-7, 2020, the NASA DEVELOP program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) hosted the initial run of Introduction to Geospatial Raster and Vector Data with Python, a Carpentries incubator lesson. This lesson was imagined as a Python complement to Introduction to Geospatial Raster and Vector Data with R, an existing Data Carpentry lesson.

Kunal Marwaha and Ryan Avery, the lesson authors, served as instructors. We had 8 attendees; the small learner size helped us work through hiccups in the new material. Most attendees were recent graduates in a field related to remote sensing or geographic information systems. We had a range of previous experience level, including folks who use Python daily, weekly, and never.

Recommendations for Staying Healthy During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is impacting our global community, we want to provide information and considerations for travel to community meetings, workshops and instructor training to support our community as you prepare during the COVID-19 outbreak.We are closely monitoring the ongoing and evolving global Coronavirus situation, and the potential impact for our community around the world.

Workshops, Instructor Training, and Community Meetings

There are more than 50 Carpentries workshops scheduled in the next three months and several instructor training events. The Workshop Administration Team, Regional Coordinators, and Instructor Training Team are encouraged to cancel events where instructors/trainers are unable to travel or participate. Additionally, if you have been banned from travel, you are encouraged to follow those regulations. If you have been selected to teach and need to withdraw please contact the host immediately and copy team@carpentries.org. We will work with the host to find a replacement (if needed) and ensure they follow up regarding any reimbursements needed.

Testing CodiMD

Wed, 26 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Collaborative note-taking is an essential part of what makes our workshops a success. Workshop participants enjoy being able to see the exact syntax of a command that was shared by an instructor, share tips, or ask questions. Collaborative note-taking is also a powerful approach for the many online meetings that take place in our community. Up until now, we have been using Etherpad as the solution to do this collaborative note-taking.

Piloting Automated Emails for Carpentries Workshops

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Organising a Carpentries Workshop requires many steps - not only for the workshop organiser and instructor, but also for the Regional Coordinators.

So far this year, The Carpentries has scheduled 59 workshops. On average, Regional Coordinators must complete 17 steps when organising a Self-Organised workshop and 31 steps for Centrally-Organised workshops. The [Workshop Administration Team (WAT)]({{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}/core-team-projects/#workshop-administration-team) recognises this can be overwhelming and have been working to make the workflow more efficient.

Incentives and Benefits of Getting Involved in Teaching Researchers

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Software Sustainability Institute believes in the benefits of open development, sharing and collaborating with a community as well as best practices in openness, crediting, citing and developing research software. What are the benefits for instructors of getting involved in teaching computational research skills and these best practices? And why should institutions allow staff to use some of their time to teach their colleagues and get involved in communities such as The Carpentries?

CarpentryCon 2020 - Updates from The Task Force

Thu, 13 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon 2020 is a key networking and community building event in The Carpentries’ annual calendar. The program is filled with events that will allow the participants to network, build community and skill up their technical skills all at once. The event will be held in Madison, Wisconsin, in the United States and you do not want to miss it!

Throughout the conference the attendees will be focusing on “Growing Inclusive, Computational Communities and Leaders”. The exact program is still being finalised, but an outline of the sessions is available on the CarpentryCon 2020 website and there will be announcements in the next month about our keynote speakers and which sessions have been chosen.

Help Us Find Sponsors for CarpentryCon 2020

Thu, 06 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The CarpentryCon 2020 Taskforce is excited to be planning the second CarpentryCon that will be held on June 29 - July 1st 2020 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA! The Budget Subcommittee has been working on a conference Sponsorship Kit, and we are pleased to share with it with the community and request for your support.

We know that the cost of the conference to community members, - registration, travel, accommodation - is just as important as the location. We want to ensure that you have the best experience at the lowest rate possible. To do so, the Budget Subcommittee has developed a Sponsorship Model to allow organisations and individuals to contribute financially to CarpentryCon 2020, and help offset some of the costs for community members to attend the conference!

The Carpentries Receives Mozilla Mission Partners Grant

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Mozilla’s Open Source Support (MOSS) program is a $2M annual fund that supports open source projects which broaden access, increase security and empower users. MOSS works directly with practitioners to fund work that helps eco systemically-important open source projects achieve sustainability.

Each year, the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) program makes awards to open source sustainers which help them advance their work in ambitious ways. At the end of 2019, the MOSS committees elected to make four end-of-year core support grants to a selected number of allied organisations.

Executive Council Officer Elections for 2020

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Executive Council has elected officers for 2020 and appointed a liaison to the Code of Conduct Committee. Congratulations to all of our new officers! You can learn a bit about each of them below.

The Executive Council is the governance arm of The Carpentries and is responsible for strategic and organisational planning, selecting and evaluating the Executive Director, financial oversight of the organisation, identifying revenue streams and resource allocation, approving and monitoring our programs and services, and enhancing our public image. The Executive Council is composed of nine (9) members, four (4) of which serve as officers. The Carpentries Handbook has details about the responsibilities of each of the Executive Council officers.

New Year Message from The Carpentries Acting Executive Director

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Not too long ago, a few members of our team participated in a ‘mini book club’. We read Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. In this book, author Zaretta Hammond recommends that we find real and virtual mentors who have walked the path of committing to be effective educators of culturally diverse learners. Reflecting on that recommendation, I realised that it describes The Carpentries community.

Our vision is to be the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills. That vision is fueled by each and every Instructor, community leader, and Champion advocating for our Core Values in workshops, instructor training, and virtually through our communication pathways.

The Carpentries Strategic Plan for 2020-2025

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

As its last major decision, the 2019 Carpentries Executive Council approved the first Strategic Plan for The Carpentries. This plan guides our way forward for the next three to five years. This blog post summarises the Strategic Plan; the full version is published [on the Carpentries website]({{ site.url }}{{ site.baseurl }}/strategic-plan).

Introduction

The Carpentries was founded in January 2018 via the merger of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry and was joined later that year by Library Carpentry. All three of these organisations have been dedicated to teaching computing and data skills to their various communities. United under The Carpentries we have the opportunity to work together toward a bigger and broader vision of the future.

Announcing our new Maintainer Community Lead

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that Angela Li is now serving as Maintainer Community Lead. Angela’s work in this role is supported by her home institution, the University of Chicago. She will be helping to reboot our Maintainer Onboarding program, recruit and onboard new Maintainers, and develop a sustainable way to support our Maintainer community.

Maintainers are a key part of The Carpentries community, acting as the backbone that supports our open-source curriculum and keeps our many lessons healthy. We’re looking forward to having Angela on board to support the Maintainer community in their lesson development and maintenance role. Welcome to the team, Angela!

Feedback: Remote Teaching of Genomics Data Carpentry Curriculum

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The People

A Genomics Data Carpentry Workshop was organised by and taught at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology ICIPE in Nairobi, Kenya. Daniel Ouso was the on-site instructor, while Bianca Peterson taught remotely from South Africa. We also had amazing local helpers: Caleb Kibet, Careen Natoire, and Gilbert Kibet

We had one completed BSc., three continuing Ph.D.s, one completed M.Sc., and the rest of the participants were continuing M.Sc.s. The main fields of study of most participants were genetics, genomics and bioinformatics. Participants were mostly Windows users and a little under 40% had zero programming experience. We had more females than males attending the workshop.

We Appreciate Library Carpentry

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I am incredibly grateful for the Library Carpentry Advisory Committee (Birgit, Yared, Liz, David, Julie, Tim, Konrad, Jeff, John, Tim, Chris, Mark, Phil, and Carmi) for taking on the work of guiding Library Carpentry into the next chapter. Specific shoutouts to Chris Erdmann for his work making Library Carpentry a fully-fledged part of The Carpentries, Liz Stokes for taking on the role of co-chair with me, and Carmi Cronje for her leadership on the Curriculum Committee. We have an ambitious set of goals for the next couple of years and I look forward to growing this community together.

Introducing Our New Director of Instructor Training

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Hi! My name is Karen Word and I am your new Director of Instructor Training with The Carpentries! Over the next three years, I will be overseeing a major expansion to this program, thanks to funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. I am thrilled to be here! I am writing to share my excitement with you, along with some thoughts on where we have been and where we are heading with this program.

Registration for CarpentryCon 2020 is Now Open

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

2020 is here and we are a few months away from one of the biggest Carpentries events of the year - CarpentryCon 2020! The Task Force is working hard to plan an exceptional event, and we are excited to announce that conference registration is now open.

We cordially invite you to register for CarpentryCon 2020. The conference is set to take place between June 29 and July 1, 2020 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA where we will be “Growing Inclusive, Computational Communities and Leaders”.

Expanding the Carpentries Community in California Academic Libraries

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

As the Data Services Librarian at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-chair of the Library Carpentry Advisory Committee, I have been privileged to witness the transformative impact of data and software training for librarians. Whether it is a cataloging librarian figuring out how to automate data uploads, an instruction librarian realizing there is an easier way to clean their messy class registration data, or a research data management librarian who now has the language to connect with computational researchers, data training allows librarians to become invaluable resources to their libraries and academic communities. I am therefore very excited to share that I will be working with The Carpentries Team on a special project to develop the Carpentries community in academic libraries across California. The goal of this project is to create sustainable communities of academic libraries that can work together to make computational training more accessible to librarians and the communities that they serve. As part of this project, I will be reaching out to promote the work of the Carpentries in regional library groups, piloting new membership models for library networks and consortia, assisting with Library Carpentry workshops across the state, and offering more instructor training opportunities for California librarians.

CarpentryConnect Events in 2020

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The first community conference designed for the global Carpentries community, CarpentryCon 2018, was held in Dublin, Ireland between May 30 and June 1 of that year.

Since then, community members have expressed great interest in coming together more frequently to exchange ideas and knowledge, collaborate and network, and have found the opportunity to do so in smaller events in their regions and cities. To create a distinction between the global Carpentries community conferences - CarpentryCon, and regional community convenings, The Carpentries dubbed the latter CarpentryConnects.

We are Hiring an Executive Director. Join Our Team.

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries seeks its next Executive Director to spearhead the organisation’s vision of becoming the leading inclusive community teaching data and coding skills. We bid goodbye to Tracy Teal, the former Executive Director, on December 31, 2019. Senior Director of Equity and Assessment Kari L. Jordan will serve as Acting Executive Director for The Carpentries until the next Executive Director is hired.

The Executive Council is working with the non-profit division of Marcum LLP to conduct the search. You can find the full job description and details about the application process on Marcum’s website.

Announcing the 2020 Executive Council for The Carpentries

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce the results of the community and council elections for the 2020 Executive Council, which will assume responsibility of governance from the current Executive Council in February 2020.

Incoming community-elected members

Seven candidates stood for the community election held during the first week of December. Out of the 1248 ballots distributed to Voting Members, 419 ballots were cast (33.6% turnout). The two candidates receiving the highest number of votes and joining the Executive Council for two-year terms as community-elected Members are:

We are grateful for the Carpentries team - and the Executive Director

Mon, 30 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

You may know them as team@carpentries.org, or checkout@carpentries.org. You may have met them on a Zoom call or even in person. They are the Carpentries team, the staff employed by The Carpentries organization. And without them, the work we do would have been a lot harder to accomplish.

Their tasks and roles range from administrative and logistic support and management, leading programs and instructor training, engaging (with) the community, membership and infrastructure, equity, assessment and general leadership. Finally we have the executive director, still Tracy Teal at the moment of writing, but she will step down in January, ultimately to be replaced by a person as of yet unknown.

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.

Gratitude and the mission of fiscal sponsorship

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

In our Gratitude series, we shared our gratitude for our fiscal sponsor Community Initiatives. The Community Initiatives’ team joined in to share their gratitude for the work as well, and we appreciate the great partnership! Check out their post below.

It is Community Initiatives’ mission to help others excel at their missions. As a fiscal sponsor, we share our nonprofit status with organisations like The Carpentries; then, we take on their back office work that includes human resources, accounting, business development, legal affairs and so much more so that they can focus on their great ideas.

We Appreciate the Regional Coordinators!

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

How did The Carpentries oversee 543 workshops globally this year?! Two words…. Regional Coordinators! Around the world, Carpentries workshops are organised by a team of eight Regional Coordinators.

Regional Coordinators are the front face of The Carpentries, promoting our work and our culture in their geographical area. They manage workshop logistics, communicate with hosts and Instructors, and respond to general inquiries. The Regional Coordinators work together to support each other and ensure communities can thrive locally while maintaining quality and consistency globally.

We Appreciate Lesson Maintainers!

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We would like to sincerely thank the Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lesson Maintainers for their behind-the-scenes work that makes all of our workshops and independent learning possible.

Across our three Lesson Programs, we have 111 Maintainers, who work in teams to evaluate, respond to, and incorporate feedback and suggestions for improvement from workshop Instructors, helpers, learners, and folks who are using our lessons for independent learning. Our 111 Lesson Maintainers support our 51 official Carpentries lessons and workshop overview pages, and help provide feedback on our lesson template to guide its development.

We Appreciate Instructors and Helpers!

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

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

We Appreciate Community Initiatives, our Fiscal Sponsor!

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Some of our community members may have heard us mention our fiscal sponsor, Community Initiatives, at one time or another in the last year, but many have not. This is a testament to the amazing job that Community Initiatives (CI) does supporting pretty much everything that we do in ways that are pretty much always unseen. We would like to shine a spotlight on CI and express our sincere and inspired gratitude for their support this year.

Gratitude to Member Organisations and Champions

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Membership program will be going into its sixth year in 2020. Member Organisations were some of the earliest supporters of Software and Data Carpentry (though the nomenclature has evolved) and continue to be an invaluable source of support and inspiration within The Carpentries’ Community.

Since 2015, the number of organisations that have rallied around The Carpentries’ mission and vision to support our global community and build their own local communities through Membership has increased every year. In 2015 there were less than five Member Organisations, and this year our website lists over 90 from around the world. At each of these organisations are one or more Champions, Carpentries community members who advocate locally for the use of Carpentries resources and pedagogy and for the support of the global Carpentries community, as well as a host of others who organise workshops, navigate the tangle of paperwork, approve funds, and build community. To all of you, we literally cannot say thank you enough.

Gratitude to the Growing Trainer Community

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

History

The origins of the Trainer Community as we know it today can be traced back to 2012 when Greg Wilson invited a handful of experienced Software Carpentry Instructors to improve their teaching skills as part of a multi-week, online reading group and training course. Within a year, about 50 instructors completed the course to become certified Software Carpentry Instructors. In 2014, the first 3-day instructor training workshop was hosted in Toronto, Canada. Transitioning the course from weeks to days didn’t go as smoothly as Greg hoped, but Warren Code provided a lot of valuable advice that was used to refine the material, and by the end of 2014, the instructor training curriculum had the basic structure that is used today (1, 2, 3). In 2015, Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry began using the same curriculum to train new instructors, and this set the stage for transforming the curricula to serve train all future Carpentries Instructors. At this point in time, the demand for workshops was rapidly increasing and it was clear that our community needed a process for training new trainers.

With Thanks from Carpentries Instructors in Africa

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The African Instructors Community is made up of individuals who volunteer their time to teach foundational coding and data science skills to researchers on the continent. Ending 2019 on a positive note, not only was there a growth in the number of trained instructors, an increase in African countries joining The Carpentries community, but a Regional Consultant for Southern Africa has also been appointed to support the team of volunteer instructors across the continent.

CarpentryCon 2020 Financial Aid

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

In order to promote as well as grow inclusive, computational communities and leaders, #CapentryCon2020Madison is providing a limited amount of financial support to facilitate participation at CarpentryCon 2020 in Madison.

Financial aid is aimed at, but not limited to postgraduate students, early-career researchers and academics who are unable to fully meet conference expenses through other funding means. Interested applicants should be able to demonstrate their potential for leadership and the creation of value for computational research by expanding the reach of the Carpentries in their communities and beyond.

Gratitude from the Infrastructure Team

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

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

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

Expressing Gratitude to Our Instructor Development Committee

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When we onboarded the leaders of our Instructor Development Committee back in April 2019, we were confident their term would be successful. This group brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from all over the world!

From that time, this committee has put in a lot of thought and effort into resources and initiatives that are designed to empower instructors. For example:

The Instructor Development Committee Mentoring Chair (Marco Chiapello) successfully facilitated our Mentoring Groups. Did you miss the showcase? Check it out on YouTube! Marco and the other mentors, Angela Li and Mike Trizna, are also currently discussing the mentoring program guidelines and ways to improve the mentoring experience. Go Marco!

The Instructor Development Committee Discussion Chair, Martin Dreyer, organised countless pre- and post-workshop discussions, themed discussions, and #CarpentriesConversations and wrote a . Check them out. You can get involved with our discussions by becoming a Discussion Host.

Our Instructor Development Committee Secretary (Megbowon Kemi) and Communications Chair (Tobin Magle) kept us informed by publishing minutes from committee meetings and posting to our blog, TopicBox, Slack and Twitter.

Last, but definitely not least, our Instructor Development Committee Co-Chairs (Arindam Basu and Sarah Stevens) organised and facilitated committee meetings, set goals for the year, developed project plans, and helped push the committee forward with ideas to develop our growing instructor community!

But wait, there’s more! The committee successfully completed an assessment project! They analysed the results of our community discussion surveys and shared the results on our blog.

Extending Gratitude to CarpentryCon 2020's Task Force

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries’ CarpentryCon Task Force exists to organise and deliver the next CarpentryCon - a remarkable global assemblage of Carpentries members and friends. The Task Force started working together on January 22, 2019 and has not looked back! Our major planning milestones have answered these questions; the what, when and where? We are focusing on Growing inclusive, computational communities and leaders, between 29th June and 1st July 2020, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, United States. But beyond this answer, in the planning process, we ended with two top venues, leading to the inception of the annual CarpentryCon cycle from bi-annual, and a planned venue for CarpentryCon 2021 to be a pass-on baton to the next Task Force. Next year’s CarpentryCon has achieved a lot in the planning this year led by Christina and Ouso.

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.”

Thank You for Supporting our Outreach Efforts

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Clear and timely communications play a big role in making community activities across The Carpentries happen effectively. From sharing opportunities available to community members, highlighting resources relevant to topical discussions, picking meeting times, collaborating on different projects and offering compelling narratives of The Carpentries, these all help connect our community and move our collaborative work forward.

Drafting, revising and releasing a communications strategy, tailored for our community would not have been possible in the first half of 2019 without the elaborate feedback, timely reviews and contributions from many in our community. Thank you.

With gratitude, to the Code of Conduct Committee

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We have a deep appreciation for the Code of Conduct Committee (CoCc). Though its main goal is to maintain, update, and enforce The Carpentries Code of Conduct (CoC), this committee has contributed to instructor training material (pull requests #950 and issue #897 , clarified overlapping responsibilities with core team members and the Executive Council, onboarded two new members (welcome Ivo and Benjamin!) and finalised its governance structure.

Additionally, the committee contributed to recommendations for incidents that fall outside its mandate (see recommendations), all while exhibiting our core values.

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.

Election for the 2020 Executive Council

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The election for Community-Elected members of the 2020 Executive Council is now open, and will close on Friday, December 6 Anywhere on Earth. If you are a Voting Member, you should receive an email with a ballot and voting instructions from The Carpentries via ElectionBuddy by the end of the day on Monday, December 2. For more information on the Executive Council and election process, please see the bylaws and this blog post. If you have questions or concerns about the election process, please contact Kate Hertweck at k8hertweck@gmail.com.

New Etherpad server

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Our Etherpad instance is a critical part of our infrastructure. Everyday, hundreds of community members use it to take notes during workshops, instructor trainings, and community calls.

On November 30th, we upgraded the server that runs our Etherpad instance to accommodate the growth of our community. In the process, we have also upgraded to the latest version of Etherpad and made a few visible changes.

You will notice that:

we are using a new look that improves the lisibility of the content of the pads;

it is now possible to have different headings and styles in your pads;

the date at which a message has been posted in the chat window is now visible.

We hope these updates to our Etherpad instance will make your work and interactions with the Carpentries community better.

Introducing The Carpentries Gratitudes Series

Fri, 29 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is a community-led organisation. All year round, community members work diligently to equip each other with relevant skills and create welcoming spaces, both online and offline, for resource sharing, discussion and collaborative work.

This year, our community’s dedication and values have been epitomised through the ideas, strategies and outputs from Carpentries sub-communities like the Maintainers, Regional Coordinators, Trainers, Instructors and Helpers; and through committees and Task Forces like Instructor Development, Code of Conduct and CarpentryCon 2020 organisers; and by way of individual contributors that facilitate and sit in for our community calls, write blog posts and documentation and take part in initiatives like The Carpentries Tagathon and ongoing Internationalisation efforts. This list is in no way exhaustive, and one blog post would not be sufficient to shine a light on, and thank our community for all the ways they have made The Carpentries what it is in 2019.

The Carpentries Long-Term Survey is Open

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

Our long-term survey was developed to collect information from learners at least six months after completing a Carpentries workshop. To date, we have received 633 responses to our long-term survey between March 2017 and September 2019. We are officially opening our Long-Term Survey and would like anyone who has taken a Data, Software, or Library Carpentry workshop between April 2018 and December 2019 to provide feedback by completing the survey.

Long-Term Survey

We are Hiring Four New Team Members. Join Our Team.

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is hiring!

The Carpentries is searching for four new full-time team members to join our global, mission-driven organisation. These new roles will work with and serve our volunteer community - comprised of 50,000 learners, 2,000 instructors, 80 Trainers, and 85 member organisations from research institutions around the world. See below for descriptions and links to apply.

Deputy Director of Instructor Training

We are hiring a Deputy Director of Instructor Training to support our global Instructor Training community, train and onboard new Instructor Trainers (who teach our Instructors), and develop an assessment strategy to examine the impact of our Instructor Training and Trainer Training programs.

Internationalisation of Software Carpentry: System for Translation into Japanese

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A collaborative effort to translate the core Software Carpentry lessons into Japanese is currently underway. In this post, we outline how we are managing translations on GitHub, what progress we have made, and what we have learned so far.

Assembling a Team of Translators

We recently came up with the idea of translating Software Carpentry lessons into Japanese and have founded a team to reach this goal. Our recent blog post details how we got started, and this post will explain how you can get involved. Our community in Japan has been responsive and incredibly supportive. We are still just getting started, but everyone who has become involved has been enthusiastic and full of ideas. The team includes members who knew each other personally or professionally, as well as people who reached out online but were not a part of the Software Carpentry community.

Introducing The Carpentries Core Values

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In January 2019, at The Carpentries in-person team meeting, the Values project was earmarked as one of the team’s top priorities for the year. Towards the end of the second quarter, on the week of June 18, 2019, the project was green-lighted and work on it began.

We have spent five months in consultation with The Carpentries community about their perceptions of each other, our community culture, and the nature of interactions in spaces where our community members convene. We have developed a better understanding of our community’s expectations, and had time to interrogate some of our assumptions and reflect on what is currently working well and what is not. From community recommendations, The Carpentries has also identified some of the ways we need to shift our approach in the future so as to remain responsive and relevant to our community as its composition and needs evolve.

Trainer Training 2020

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce that applications are now open for anyone wishing to become a Carpentries Instructor Trainer!

A diagram of our Instructor Training program. Instructor Trainers are trained through Instructor Trainer Training and themselves teach Instructor Training to new Instructors. New Instructors teach Carpentries Workshops to learners.

Introducing our new Regional Consultant for Southern Africa.

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

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Angelique Trusler to The Carpentries team. Angelique joins the team through support from the South African Center for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR). Her work will advance SADiLaR’s community and workshop efforts in Southern Africa with a particular focus on advancing the development and deployment of Digital Humanities workshop materials. More broadly, Angelique will be developing strategies and workflows to adapt The Carpentries’ membership and workshop programs to function optimally in Southern Africa. She brings her experience and passion in data and software skills training to this role, and will advise The Carpentries on how to best adapt our programs to thrive in Southern Africa. Angelique will also assist and advise in developing a plan to create and support a strong team of volunteer instructors across the region. We are thrilled to have her on the team!

A Call to Action: Nominate Yourself for the Executive Council Today

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Back in the fall of 2017, Erin Becker reached out to me about putting myself up for election for the new Carpentries Executive Council. For me, this suggestion seemed to come out of the blue. Sure, I had been involved with the Carpentries as an instructor and more intensely as a workshop organiser at my institution. But was I really well-suited to serve on the Executive Council for a non-profit organisation? It was something I had never done before and I will fully admit that I suffered from imposter syndrome regarding the value I would be able to bring to the organisation in this role. I also wondered, quite frankly, if there would be any value in it for me professionally or personally. Time is one thing none of us seems to have enough of these days, and it is important for each person to make careful decisions about how much of themselves they give to “all the things”.

The Carpentries Executive Council 2019 In-person Meeting

Fri, 08 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

What have 9 people, one library meeting room, one cat, “Ich schaue nur”, all kinds of great German food and beers, and water “ohne Kohlensäure” in common?

November 4th and 5th the Executive Council and Executive Director gathered in the beautiful German city of Darmstadt, near Frankfurt. Our host, Gerald Jagusch from the Technical University Darmstadt, was so kind to arrange for us to use a meeting room of the University and State Library Darmstadt. for both Sunday and Monday. That library was a big building, with lots of students studying there and thus absolute silence was required in the hallways. Luckily the room we used was sound-proof enough that we could have our meeting there without disturbing the students (it helped that we managed to avoid the discussions becoming too heated :-) ).

CarpentryCon 2020: Tips for Submitting a Session Proposal

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon is one of the most awaited events of The Carpentries for community building and networking. The theme for CarpentryCon 2020 is “Growing inclusive, computational communities and leaders.” This three-day event brings together new and experienced community members to share knowledge, network, develop new skills, and exchange strategies for building local communities of practice. The conference will be at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA from 29 June to 1 July, 2020. Come and help develop the next generation of leaders through practical skill-ups, networking, workshops, and breakout sessions.

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 in Tōkyō: Adventures bringing Software Carpentry to Japan

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

Introducing Software Carpentry to Japan

There is a growing community that has embarked on a journey of finding missing grammatical particles, debating consistent terminology, and figuring out what a submodule does. All with the goal of providing bilingual software carpentry lessons in English and Japanese. Inspired by the efforts of the Spanish community, we aim to bring multilingual workshops to Japan and provide a Japanese version of the lesson materials for Japanese learners around the world.

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.

CarpentryCon Community Call, November 6

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We recently announced that CarpentryCon 2020 will be held in Wisconsin from June 29 to July 1, 2020 on the theme “Growing inclusive computational communities”.

After many rounds of community engagement on the calls for sessions, dates and times, as well as the call for themes and venue suggestions, we have chosen the theme above as a natural outgrowth of the previous CarpentryCon discussion. As the key biennial event of The Carpentries aimed at teaching foundational aspects of digital literacy, the focus shall be on the audience. We will be counting on the community as always to provide feedback and guidance to the steering committee, which presently consists of a well-mixed set of experienced organisers and eager volunteers.

Teaching Tech Together

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When I left the University of Toronto in 2010, I needed some way to pay the bills while I figured out what I was going to do next. I had enjoyed teaching programming to scientists ever since the first workshop that Brent Gorda and I taught at Los Alamos in 1998, and if people were willing to fund me to do it again, it seemed like as good an idea as any.

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!!

A Better Experience for Workshop Surveys

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Assessment is a key element of our operations. Today, we are excited to announce that we are revamping the tools behind our pre- and post-workshop surveys to provide a better experience to our learners and to our instructors. This change also greatly reduces the time needed for the workshop administration team to generate the links they share with instructors to access the results. The changes outlined here only affect our regular workshops, but in early 2020, they will also affect Instructor Training events.

Member Survey Results and the next Member Organisation Council Meetings

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Member Organisation Council Meetings held June 2019 were full of great conversation, questions and tips related to building local community around computational training using The Carpentries Membership. 34 representatives from 29 different Member Organisations worldwide joined four calls across three days and times to discuss all things Carpentries. We discussed the best format for regular instructor meetups, identifying local instructors, connecting to geographically local communities, the optimal number of instructors to meet training demand, and roles beyond that of instructor that facilitate workshop organisation, just to mention a few. For a more complete account, check out the meeting notes !

Tips for Organising Your First Carpentries Workshop

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

How This Blog Post Came About

Angela: We’re wrapping up the Fall 2019 set of mentoring groups, and I’m so proud of the work that the Organising Workshops Mentoring Group did over the past three months. Through the group, I was able to meet Carpentries community members who were going through the process of putting on their-first ever workshops, something I had recently begun to do at my own research center. The conversations I had with my mentees allowed me to reflect on how the Carpentries community is about so much more than teaching specific technical skills; it’s about sharing knowledge in a community of practice, whether that knowledge is organising individuals to start a new initiative, or wrangling a university department to fund a much-needed resource.

Teaching Software Carpentry at the University of Botswana

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

On 16-19 September, I taught a Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Botwsana.

The workshop was hosted by the Southern Africa Innovation Support (SAIS) Universities-Industry-Government (UIG) Co-creation Platform and had more than 30 learners.

Because Professor Tshiamo Motshegwa was travelling during the workshop, Badisa Mosesane was in charge of talk about The Carpentries and introduce me.

Badisa Mosesane explaining about The Carpentries.

During the workshop, I taught navigating files and directories with Bash, working With files and directories with Bash, for-loop with Bash, Git, GitHub, for-loop with Python, if-clause with Python, Python functions, Python scripts, debugging Python code, and Make.

Export to Etherpad: a New Extra in the Instructor-Training Repository

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Building Tools for Instructor Training Workshops

Wherein we talk about building tools to help instruct instructors learning how to instruct. Got that? No? Me neither. As a fairly newly minted instructor-trainer, one of my internal gripes about preparation was the need to create the Etherpad training template which serves as a shared note-taking space and workbook for the class.

Preparing this etherpad involves either editing an old text file which isn’t maintained as part of the normal lesson maintenance process (as that sort of maintenance would be tedious in the extreme) or laboriously copying and typesetting exercises from their beautiful (but non-translatable) html form into the limited number of styles allowed on the Etherpad. As I was getting ready to teach in July, the amazing Instructor Training Maintainers team were in the middle of the June release – and every time I had prepared the document, another exercise would be improved. This wonderful process of improvement, in the moment, was more than a little frustrating.

The Carpentries Tagathon - Our Hacktoberfest Initiative

Tue, 08 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Love our blog posts? Want to read more of them, help make them easier to find and share them with others? Join our Tagathon October 28 - November 1 to add tags to past posts and connect with others in the community about what we learn, share and teach.

Our community at The Carpentries thrives because individuals are eager to learn from and impart their knowledge on each other. Knowledge sharing is not the preserve of our hands-on, interactive, programming workshops. Rather, from Australia, Japan, Costa Rica, South Africa, the UK and Norway, community members have time and again found new, exciting, sometimes unconventional and memorable ways to interact with each other.

RStudio's Instructor Training Program

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries wants to thank RStudio for their donation to The Carpentries towards our shared goal of bringing more people into the R and programming communities.

In January 2019, RStudio’s Education team launched an instructor certification program based in part on the Carpentries’ instructor training. The program’s goal is to ensure that people who are offering commercial training for the tidyverse and Shiny have both the pedagogical and technical know-how needed to do it well. At the time of writing, over 40 people (including several Carpentries instructors) have completed certification and that number again are in the pipeline.

Catching Up on Executive Council Policy Making

Thu, 03 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Executive Council has spent a significant amount of time this year fleshing out, finalising, and approving a number of different governing documents and policies for the organisation that will allow us to proceed more efficiently in the future with the more exciting and engaging activities of “being” The Carpentries. This is an update to the community on what we have been working on and where you can find more information.

The Carpentries Canadian Community Discussion

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Canadian Regional Coordinators will be hosting a Community Discussion on Monday, October 7th at 18:00 UTC as a follow-up to our last call about constructing The Carpentries in Canada.

During this call we will cover several topics including:

Establishing instructor communities in any city that has potentially interested coordinators,

Recruiting community members to assist coordinating activities from a national perspective,

Expanding Canada’s administrative team,

Exploring the development of Carpentries related programming for the National Science & Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRAs), and

General discussion of any topics that participants would like to raise.

Anyone interested in the future of The Carpentries community in Canada is invited to attend and contribute. Please sign up on the Etherpad. We hope to see you there.

Livening Up Live Coding

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

An example of hardware carpentry, lol (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Carving New Coders

The Carpentries is a global non-profit initiative to help build foundational skills in coding and data science. For example, Software Carpentry contains lessons about the shell, git, R and Python, while Data Carpentry and Library Carpentry teach more domain-specific knowledge.

I took part in a two-day remote workshop to learn how to become a badged Carpentries instructor. There was a strong focus on understanding how people learn and how best to teach them to maintain motivation.

Thank you all!

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

September 30th will be my last day in the role of Library Carpentry Community & Development Director. I have been fortunate to meet so many amazing people working in libraries and the research community during this time. Thank you to the IMLS, the California Digital Library, and The Carpentries for this great opportunity. So many members of the community have helped Library Carpentry grow these past couple of years, not to mention the initial hard work that went into starting Library Carpentry. Together we have moved Library Carpentry to a formal Lesson Program in The Carpentries. We have welcomed new community members and run more workshops and events around the world. We have improved and expanded the curriculum thanks to the efforts of a diverse community of Maintainers and contributors from around the world. The Curriculum Advisory Committee and the Advisory Group continue to provide invaluable guidance on how we can move forward. Libraries have become an important part of The Carpentries Membership (over 60% are members) and thanks to additional support from the IMLS, libraries will continue to be an important part of the continued success of The Carpentries. I think Elaine Westbrooks, the University Librarian at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (where I will be headed in October), said it best in her post about the importance of libraries in The Carpentries, The Strategic Value of Library Carpentry and The Carpentries to Research Libraries.

Lessons learned from the Community Discussion on Burnout

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

How do you sustain a community of volunteers? “Burnout” has been the subject of recent attention in widely-shared articles such as How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. But what can we do as individuals and members of a volunteer-based community to prevent - and mitigate the effects of - burnout? Stuart Geiger, staff ethnographer at the UC Berkeley Institute for Data Science, and Dorothy Howard, PhD student at the UC San Diego Department of Communication, are studying burnout in the context of the visible/invisible work of open-source software sustainability and maintenance, as part of a research project funded by the Sloan and Ford Foundations. They recently led a very popular Carpentries community discussion, using their preliminary research findings as a starting point for further discussion about burnout in the Carpentries context. The conversation was broadly applicable - and pertained to volunteer work, day jobs, and hobbies, all in pursuit of that lofty goal of “work-life balance.”

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.

New Zealand Community Holds Its First Carpentries Chat

Tue, 24 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries Community in Dunedin is gaining momentum! To date, 21 people from the Otago region have attended instructor training and several of these people gathered at the University of Otago on 30th August to take part in New Zealand’s first ever ‘Carpentries Chat’. It was a chance for the local instructor group (and friends/ colleagues) to discuss what we had accomplished throughout the year and what is coming up.

The Carpentries Community Champions Call - September 2019

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

Carpentry Champions - September 2019

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

Code of Conduct Mandate Task Force Releases Recommendations

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The global Carpentries community is growing. Community members are running more workshops, engaging with each other and sharing our content broadly, and speaking on behalf of The Carpentries at various meetings and on social media. With our growth comes an added awareness of the different ways our community engages with each other inside and outside our spaces and in the broader open scholarship/open data ecosystem. As such, potential conflicts or breaches of our Code of Conduct can arise. Currently, some incidents we may want to be aware of and respond to are outside our Code of Conduct Committee’s (CoCc) formal guidelines and processes. As a vanguard organisation with a digital and technological purpose, the organisation needs to respond to these incidents transparently, respecting multiple countries traditions and practices, and legal considerations. To address this, a Code of Conduct Committee Mandate Task Force was convened to make recommendations to help respond to incidents that happen outside the existing mandate of the Carpentries Code of Conduct Committee.

Introducing Updated Workshop Request Forms and More

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I am sooooooooooooooooo excited! I get to be the first one to tell you that the update to the Workshop Request Forms and the Workshops page of the Carpentries website is COMPLETE! Wooohoooo!!!!!

Updated Workshop Request Forms

With the new changes, workshop organisers no longer have to complete long forms with fields that are not applicable to them. We have made it so that you provide us with only the information needed to process your workshop. We have separated the Workshop Request Forms based on the various kinds of workshops that you organise:

Continued support from IMLS for Library Carpentry

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In November 2017, the California Digital Library (CDL) announced a two-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant funded project to further advance the scope, adoption, and impact of Library Carpentry across the US. The grant enables CDL and the University of California Curation Center (UC3) to host Chris Erdmann, the Library Carpentry Community and Development Director, and his work with community members, Carpentries staff, and governance groups to integrate Library Carpentry as a lesson program, further develop the curriculum and lessons, grow the community of Carpentries instructors with library and information backgrounds, and continue outreach to raise awareness about Library Carpentry and The Carpentries in the broader library community.

Carpentries Values Project - An Update and Call for Input

Thu, 12 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

When we set out to ask The Carpentries community for input on August 1, we spelled out the rationale of The Carpentries Values project in this way:

Shared values and goals have long been the starting point of communities of practice as they identify changes they want to see and start working together towards these changes. The Carpentries started out with a clear goal - teaching foundational computational skills to researchers worldwide. Something that is also important and unique about our community is how we work and engage with each other. As a community, values are important to us and we consider that we have a set of shared values. However, we have not yet articulated what these values are.

Mentoring Groups Virtual Showcase: Oct 15 at 19:00 UTC

Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever been curious about what happens in a Carpentries Mentoring Group?

The Instructor Development Committee will be hosting its first Mentoring Virtual Showcase for the 2019-2020! The showcase will take place on October 15, 2019 at 19:00 UTC. During the showcase, current mentors and mentees will share progress on their projects, how they’ve grown, and how you can get involved. Come and see presentations from the mentoring groups who met over the summer to get an idea of what possibilities there are, whether you’re a future mentor, mentee, or enthusiast!

Instructor Trainer Training: Knowing When to Hold ‘Em

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The purpose of this blog post is, first and foremost, to let those who are eagerly awaiting our next Instructor Trainer Training know that we will not be running one in October-December 2019 as we had previously planned. Our next Trainer onboarding opportunity will most likely come in January 2020, with applications in November 2019.

(Instructor Training events, in contrast, run year round and individual applications are always accepted here. Access to Instructor Training is also available through Organisational Memberships.)

Supporting The Carpentries

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) is rolling out a series of activities aimed at increasing functional coding and data science skills for researchers and research support professionals through The Carpentries.

In early 2019, the ARDC initiated an Australia-wide consultation to assess the current levels of demand and support for Software and Data Carpentry training. The consultation provided critical information about the challenges of Carpentries expansion as well as identifying the possible next steps to increase training availability. As a result, the ARDC is rolling out a series of activities to address challenges such as:

Connecting with the Community at CarpentryConnect in Manchester

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

One of the highlights this year for The Carpentries’ community in Europe was the CarpentryConnect event, which took place from 24 to 27 June 2019 in the vibrant British city of Manchester. Aleks Nenadic, the Training Lead at the Software Sustainability Institute, chaired the organisation team and recently posted a report from this incredible meeting. Here are some of my personal highlights and notes.

Many people I have known over the years while working in the different Open Science spaces were going to be there. This was enough reason for me to not miss this event. Moreover, under the leadership of Aleks, I got to be part of the organisation team and contribute in small ways to this very thoughtful and welcoming meeting. As promised in the program, keynote lectures, hands-on sessions, workshops, and social events provided us with a number of opportunities to exchange both the technical and transferable skills with each other and ensure that we left the meeting with our hearts full of joy and minds full of ideas.

Upcoming Updated Forms for Workshops & Workshop Section of The Carpentries Website

Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Have you had a desire to request a Carpentries workshop but weren’t sure where to go? Wanted to notify us of a Self-Organised workshop without having to complete an extensive form? Taught a Self-Organised workshop that was shorter or longer than the standard, or mixed and matched curriculum? Have you had questions regarding the logistics of a workshop and weren’t sure where to go?

If you said YES to any of these questions, then continue reading! In the upcoming weeks we will be updating several processes as it relates to The Carpentries workshops. We want to be sure you are aware of the changes before they happen :)

IDC meetings 8/19/2019: Findings from community discussion surveys

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

IDC Project: Findings from the Community discussion surveys

The Instructor Development Committee has been working hard on their first project for the year: looking at the data from the community discussion host and participants surveys. We will be discussing our findings at the IDC meetings on 08-19-2019. In advance of the meeting, we’d like to give you the highlights of our findings:

Main Findings:

Hosts and co-hosts/notetakers

In 2019, 21 Carpentries community members have hosted discussion sessions.

A little over half of these (12) are volunteer. The others are Carpentries staff.

On average, we have 12 discussions per month, and 7 unique hosts per month. That means each host has to take 1-2 sessions per month.

Only about half of the discussion sessions have notetakers

Over three quarters of attendees are attending the sessions for pre-post debriefs or instructor checkout

Attendees

The vast majority of sessions have more than 10 attendees

The number of community members attending for instructor checkout is greater than all other purposes by a factor 50.

Most attend Pre- and Post-Workshop Discussions, but the satisfaction is greatest for the Themed Discussions.

The discussion host ratings are consistently high

Most attendees would recommend these sessions to others

Conclusions

Overall, the data indicates that our discussion sessions are well attended, which is a good thing! However, only half of the sessions have notetakers, which can make hosting a session with 10+ people difficult. The satisfaction and host ratings are also positive. But, many sessions only have attendees who are doing checkout. While it leaves more time for questions about the checkout process, the attendees do not benefit from hearing from an experienced instructor about a real workshop. Thus, we have questions for the community:

HPC Carpentry at ISC2019

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last year there was a lot of interest in the idea of HPC Carpentry during CarpentryCon 2018, and afterwards there was a drive to build on that momentum and get an alpha version of the hpc-intro lesson finished (for the most part by merging the hpc-in-a-day lesson into the existing Compute Canada lesson). When I saw the “Workshop on HPC Education and Training for Emerging Technologies” (HETET19) at ISC19, I was reminded (again!) that I hadn’t contributed as much to that effort as I might have liked. However, I also didn’t want to see that effort go unreported so Peter Steinbach and I decided to write a short paper for the workshop covering HPC Carpentry development.¹

Your experiences will help us recommend support for our CoCc

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries has convened a task force to make recommendations for support structures and potential guidelines for incidents outside our Code of Conduct Committee’s (CoCc) mandate. This undertaking has come about as our community continues to grow and expand in the number of workshops we run, communities we reach, and diversity of our instructors and learners. Our Code of Conduct and CoCc are serving its purpose, but when incidents fall outside its mandate what can we do?

Software Carpentry at York

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Last month a Software Carpentry workshop organised by the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC) at the The University of Edinburgh in collaboration with ARCHER and the Software Sustainability Institute was held in York. We had around twenty attendees from various backgrounds such as genetics, physical sciences, and engineering among others. My EPCC colleague Mario joined me as my fellow instructor and we also had the valuable support of three knowledgeable helpers from the Department of Physics at the University of York: Phil Hasnip, Peter Hill, and Killian Murphy.

Carpentries Community Discussion on PREreview.org

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Scholarly peer review is broken

As defined by the Merriam-Webster English dictionary, peer review ¹is “a process by which something proposed (as for research or publication) is evaluated by a group of experts in the appropriate field”. But who gets to decide who is the “expert” and who isn’t? What are the criteria by which a proposed research article is selected or rejected? Different journals have different policies, but for the most part this process is opaque and done behind closed doors. This opaqueness might also be the root of a system whose players are disproportionately male (Helmer et al. 2017²; Lerback, American Geophysical Union, and Brooks Hanson 2016³; “Nature’s Sexism” 2012⁴; Fox, Sean Burns, and Meyer 2016⁵) and from North America or European countries (Chawla 2018⁶; Murray et al. 2018⁷). As part of a global push for transparency in scholarship, we at PREreview believe we need better ways to find, train, and engage researchers in peer review.

Carve Your Niche with The Carpentries

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Illustration above by Connie Clare

{:style=“float:left”}Victor Koppejan is a PhD student in computational Bioprocess Engineering. His doctoral research involves the purification of proteins from biological matrices for industrial use using expanded bed adsorption. Koppejan employs open source computer simulation tools to model the dynamics of fluid and particle flow in a fluidized bed using the Dutch National Super Computer.

Announcing CarpentryCon 2020 Dates, Location and Theme

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to the efforts of the whole Carpentries Community, we received a number of great suggestions/bids for CarpentryCon2020’s theme and venue. Many thanks to those who took time to suggest a theme or submit a venue bid.

Read more about the theme and venue below and bookmark the CarpentryCon2020 website for additional updates.

CarpentryCon 2020: Meet Up in Madison, Wisconsin, USA!

We are excited to announce that CarpentryCon2020 will be held on June 29 - July 1st, 2020 at the University of Wisconsin - Madison (Madison, Wisconsin, United States).

CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019 Highlights

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post was first published on Software Sustainability Institute’s blog.

Photo by Mario Antonioletti

CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019 took place from 25th to 27th June 2019. For the first two days, we were in a fantastic, modern, vibrant meeting venue – The Studio – at the very heart of Manchester. On the third day, we moved to the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science, so attendees had an opportunity to see the Oxford Road/North campus after refurbishment too. We’ll publish a detailed CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019 report, but, in the meantime, here are some highlights from the event.

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.

Releasing The Carpentries Communications Strategy and Implementation Plan

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The efforts of thousands of dedicated and passionate individuals and ally organisations have allowed The Carpentries to extend reach and develop local presence in new regions around the world. This has, in turn, resulted in a huge spike in the size of our community of scientists, librarians, researchers and technologists and in the quantity and quality of resources produced under The Carpentries banner over the years. To every mentor, trainer, maintainer, instructor, regional coordinator, contributor, learner, and team, council, committee and task force member that has worked to make this possible, we thank you.

22 Months in the Making: New Genomics Curriculum Release

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

All of The Carpentries lessons focus on teaching core skills, rather than particular tools. But, as Greg Wilson says, “We have to use something” to teach those skills. Because we do use particular tools in our teaching, we frequently need to balance the need for lesson stability against the need to stay up to date with new technology.

In November 2017, Data Carpentry released a curriculum for working with genomic sequencing data. Work on this curriculum had started all the way back in 2014, and at the end of 2017 had reached a stable state where the lessons were ready to be taught by people outside of the original development group. This workshop teaches genomics researchers how to manage their data, access data from popular sequencing databases, automate their analysis pipelines by writing custom Bash scripts, and compute in the cloud. It’s targeted at complete novices, with no previous programming experience, and is designed to help research teams level-up their computational skills and get more done in less time.

Announcing the June 2019 lesson release!

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As a community committed to iterative improvement, our lessons are never done. Every day, Maintainers receive feedback and contributions to help our lessons run more smoothly, stay up to date with technology changes, and be accessible to more audiences. Despite (or maybe because of!) this constant improvement, it’s important to take the time to celebrate our progress and to give credit to the hundreds of people who make our lessons the wonderful resource they are for the tens of thousands of learners who attend our workshops and use our materials online.

Reflections from a Carpentries Train the Trainer Workshop

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post was originally published on Alexander Refsum’s personal blog.

I have spent the two last days at a “Train the Trainers” workshop organised by The Carpentries project. Here I will summarise some thoughts on the workshop, and things that I will take with me for my own teaching practice.

The Carpentries

The Carpentries project comprises the Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and Library Carpentry communities, with a shared mission to teach foundational computational and data science skills to researchers. I have taken several Carpentries lessons over the last years, organised by volunteers here at the University of Oslo.

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.

Developing Data Skills at Macquarie University Library

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Grai Calvey, Fiona Jones and Heather Cooper

In 2016, Macquarie University delivered a Data Science and eResearch Platform Strategy. In response, the Library embarked on a series of initiatives including:

Developing workshops to improve the data skills of all our library staff

To grow confidence when engaging in data science practice, eResearch conversations and the support of researchers

Our three goals were to:

Teaching reproducible science with R to a wide range of experience levels

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Carpentries Workshop attendees, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Portugal in May 2019. Photo credit: IGC

My name is Phil Reed (Twitter and GitHub) and I am a relative new-comer to The Carpentries, having qualified as an instructor last autumn. I co-led a Library Carpentry event at The University of Manchester Library where I work as a Data Specialist. In May 2019, I travelled to the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Oeiras, Portugal to co-lead my first Software Carpentry workshop. The title of this two-day session was “R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis”, covering R and some version control with Git, for bioinformatics researchers and students. Below is a brief evaluation from me, the other co-lead Eric Persson and the head of training at IGC, Pedro Fernandes.

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:

Building a Community for Digital Literacy at ZB MED: The Carpentries and HackyHours

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Eva Seidlmayer, Konrad Förstner, Silvia Di Giorgio, Chris Erdmann

ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences is the national library of Germany for medicine, health sciences, nutrition, agriculture and the environment. For the life sciences community, ZB MED provides invaluable services such as PUBLISSO, an open access publication portal, and LIVIVO, a literature discovery service. Also, ZB MED established a scientific programme covering a broad spectrum of data science applications from text- and data mining to bioinformatics. This is all a part of ZB MED’s digital transformation to an information centre with a broad spectrum of services and training. To help with this transformation, ZB MED takes advantage of Library, Data, and Software Carpentry training material to provide its employees a foundation in software and data skills.

Need Library Carpentry Stickers? Let Us Know!

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000
**This post originally appeared on the [Library Carpentry website](https://librarycarpentry.org)**
By Chris Erdmann

Stickers are a great way to show your support for, and celebrate your affiliation to Library Carpentry. We get frequent requests for Library Carpentry stickers but haven't been able to avail them at every event. Thanks to the LIR HEAnet User Group for Libraries we will have plenty of stickers on hand for the attendees of our LIBER-LIR-Library Carpentry instructor training 2-day event.

Lessons Learned from our Call on Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Our first Community Discussion on Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility had such an impact on my work. Between the two calls we had 31 participants. I was so happy to see so many people on the calls, and appreciate everyone for their time, honesty, and perspective. We kicked off the call by reviewing The Carpentries [Code of Conduct]({{ site.code_of_conduct_url }}) and had everyone share something they’re proud of. Then we did a little jargon busting. If we were going to discuss our experiences around diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, it was important that we all had a shared understanding of what these terms meant.

2019 Instructor Development Committee (IDC) Meeting Schedule

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Instructor Development Committee (IDC) would like to announce the schedule for this year’s meetings. They will be held on the third Monday of the month at 16:00 UTC and 22:00 UTC.

The June IDC meetings are on Monday June 17th at the above times. We will discuss our work on the Mentoring Program, as well as pitch and solicit ideas for what the committee should be doing in the future.

It's a Wrap! The 4th Library Carpentry-Mozilla Global Sprint Concludes.

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Thanks to everyone that participated in the 4th Mozilla-Library Carpentry Global Sprint. Unlike the 3 previous sprints, this year’s sprint stretched across the full month of May with the majority of the sprint taking place 30-31 May 2019.

The sprint started earlier in the month with Centre for Digital Scholarship at Leiden University Libraries drafting a Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Things for Astronomy.

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.

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.

Call for 2019 Mentoring Group Participation

Fri, 24 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Instructor Development Committee is excited to announce Round 1 of the 2019-2020 Mentoring groups.

Do you have a Carpentries goal that you’re not sure how to accomplish? Or do you want to help your fellow instructors gain the skills and confidence they need to achieve their goals? If so, we encourage you to join a Mentoring group! Each small group will be formed around common interests and goals. You’ll spend 8-12 weeks working with your colleagues to refine your goals and make progress toward them in a format that works for your group.

The Carpentries in Australia: Community Discussion Summary

Tue, 21 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

To coincide with the recent announcement of an official Regional Coordinator for Australia, we held an online community discussion last month.

There was a great turnout for the discussion (15+ people) with participants describing a wide variety of Carpentries activities happening around the country. While traditional two-day workshops are still very common, Carpentries lessons and approaches are being adapted for use in longer courses such as the CSIRO Data School as well as shorter offerings from not-for-profits (e.g. Intersect) and university departments (e.g. Research Platform Services) that provide training for researchers on a regular basis. Carpentries workshops are also being incorporated into Research Bazaar events around Australia, which are multi-day on-campus festivals promoting digital literacy.

Tips and Tricks for Teaching R

Fri, 17 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Following a few Data Carpentry workshops, we (a.k.a. Bianca and Katrin) shared some of the strategies we employ to enhance participants’ R learning experience in a Community Discussion with other Carpentries Instructors from Africa. In this post, we will expound on some of these strategies and welcome you to try them in the workshops you facilitate, and share your outcomes with the broader Carpentries community.

Pen-on-paper exercise

In the R episodes on Data Manipulation and on Visualisation, code and challenges become quite complex and may contain new concepts of coding as well as of data analysis for novices. Individual code blocks can easily run over several lines when using pipes (%>%) or when building plots with ggplot, thus increasing cognitive load for learners. To enhance understanding of the concepts behind the R commands and also to give participants a break from sitting in front of the computer, we included group exercises with pen and paper. We divided participants into groups of four to five and gave each group a blank sheet of paper (it works particularly nice with big sheets stuck to a wall so the groups can stand around it). We then wrote a challenge on the Workshop Etherpad/whiteboard and asked the groups to discuss and write down the steps (not necessarily the commands) they would need to subset their data accordingly.

Diversity is our Goal. Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility is how we get there.

Thu, 16 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Community Discussion: Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Roadmap

Whether you are new to The Carpentries community or have been part of the community for a long time, we want you to share your experiences, ideas, and perspective around equity, inclusion, and accessibility at the upcoming Community Discussion (21-22 May). Join the discussion at the following dates/times:

Tuesday, 21 May 1500 UTC

Wednesday, 22 May 0100 UTC

Sign up on the Community Discussions Etherpad to attend. Connection details for Zoom (video conferencing) and audio connection details are located on the Etherpad.

36 lessons will be published, which ones will you contribute to?

Wed, 15 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries lessons continuously change and improve through individual contributions from Instructors, workshop helpers, learners, and other users of the lessons. These contributions are guided by our lesson Maintainers, who also participate in and often lead large-scale updates to their lessons. To provide tangible credit for the work done by Maintainers and other contributors, we periodically publish our lessons on Zenodo, which provides a citable work product (DOI) that contributors can put on their CV or resume. Since our last coordinated lesson release in August 2017, many Library Carpentry lessons have become stable and ready for their first release. Several Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry lessons have also had major updates during this time period and are ready to release a new version.

Genomics Workshop Pilot and BugBBQ at University of Arizona

Wed, 15 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

This February, a small group of committed community members, led by Taylor Reiter at the University of California, Davis, completed a major update to the Data Carpentry Genomics curriculum. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed! This update included significant changes to both the data set and the software used for the lessons, modernizing the workshop and keeping it relevant to researchers working in the genomics field. The new version of this curriculum is already live and will be officially published in the upcoming lesson release in June.

Carpentries Community Discussion Sessions - A Primer for New Discussion Hosts

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

In the past, we had discussion sessions for Carpentries Instructors that took place twice a week and provided a platform where experienced and novice instructors could discuss previous and upcoming workshops, share challenges and victories with the community, and complete their Carpentries Instructor checkouts.

These sessions had a few challenges that included timezone differences, limited availability of time slots for checkouts and debriefs, to name but a few. We found it difficult to meet all the demands for Carpentries discussion sessions, and felt the need to relax the discussion session requirement for checkouts. The community however, felt it necessary to keep the discussion sessions as a requirement, but in a different way with multiple pathways to participate.

Constructing The Carpentries Community in Canada

Thu, 02 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Are you in Canada and interested in growing the Canadian Carpentries Community? Join us for a Community Discussion on May 22nd at 12:30pm Eastern to get this growth started. In this call you’ll have the opportunity to connect with Canadian Carpentries community members and learn how to empower instructors to run more workshops in more locations across Canada. The Canadian Regional Coordinators (John Simpson and James DesJardins) will be on hand to give a summary of the workshops that are currently offered and to answer any questions about the process that might come up. By the end of the call we hope to have a volunteer or two join us as we continue coordinating the growth of the Canadian Carpentries Instructor Community. Participants will leave with ideas they can implement in their local community for growth and development.

Introducing the New Carpentries Instructor Development Committee

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Instructor Development Committee (originally the Mentoring Subcommittee) was established in 2015 to develop and maintain a mentorship program to support instructors as they progress through training, teaching, curriculum development, and other community-related activities. The committee helps promote community-building and networking by providing virtual spaces where instructors from all over the world can share teaching success stories and discuss strategies for overcoming challenges. Any Carpentries community member is welcome to join the Instructor Development Committee. You can find more information in the Instructor Development section of our handbook.

What have the Library Carpentry Maintainers been working on?

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

In January 2019, the Library Carpentry Maintainers met online to discuss a variety of topics from communication channels to giving credit. The discussions helped with tackling big questions and understanding how we wanted to work as Maintainers.

See News from the Library Carpentry Maintainer Community and Curriculum Advisory Committee

What have the Maintainers been up to since then? This blog post will catch you up on what all the lesson Maintainer teams have been doing since January. The following are brief reports from the lesson Maintainer groups:

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.

What’s New at ORCID? A Joint Library Carpentries/ORCID Webinar!

Wed, 17 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Alice Meadows, Chris Erdmann

We are delighted to announce that Library Carpentries and ORCID are co-hosting a webinar on What’s New at ORCID. Registration is free – just add your name here – and there will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.

This webinar, at 10am ET on Thursday, May 16, will focus on ORCID’s new API v3.0, launching in May, which includes some valuable new features for researchers, their organizations, and the wider community alike:

Announcing the Library Carpentry Advisory Group

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

On 15 March 2019, the Library Carpentry Governance Group officially became the Advisory Group. The Advisory Group acts as a critical friend to Carpentries governance and staff and advises on ways to foster greater participation in the Library Carpentry community. The Group meets on a bi-monthly basis to discuss, plan, and pursue strategies for involving new and current members in Library Carpentry. It is not a governance group and does not make decisions for the Library Carpentry community.

Wrapping Up the Rural Campuses Connection Project Capacity Development Initiative.

Tue, 09 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Rural Campuses Connection Project (RCCP) ran since 2010 in South Africa with the aim of bringing better internet connectivity to various rural campuses of publicly funded universities and research institutions. In the earliest phase the project included funding for physical infrastructure as well as design and implementation of networks. During RCCP phase 2 (RCCPII) a portion of funding was set aside for capacity development around internet connectivity. RCCP was funded through the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), managed by Universities South Africa (USAf), and implemented by the Tertiary Research and Education Network (TENET).

Highlights from the recent Instructor Training in South Africa

Mon, 08 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in Durban, South Africa, hosted its first Carpentries instructor training from 18th to 20th of March 2019. This training was conducted by us - Katrin Tirok (Durban), Samar Elsheikh (University of Cape Town), and Saymore Chifamba (Siyavula, Cape Town), the three brand new trainers in South Africa, and Malvika Sharan (EMBL) from Germany.

Katrin organised this training in association with the Research Flagship in Big Data and Informatics at UKZN and the RCCPII Capacity Development Initiative managed by Talarify. Co-funding the training allowed us to invite participants from different institutions to enhance the networking of future instructors and convey the idea of a larger community right at the training. Our participants came from the University of Fort Hare, University of Zululand, Rhodes University, Mangosuthu University of Technology, TENET as well as from UKZN. They represented postgraduate students, lecturers, professors and support staff coming from the computer, environmental, health, information and library, life, and social sciences.

Soliciting Community Feedback

Thu, 04 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is a lucky community

There are many people in The Carpentries who are enthusiastic about the mission of the organization and eager to contribute time and effort to developing and maintaining resources, and to serving on committees to help The Carpentries flourish. Of the core lessons for both Software and Data Carpentry, all lessons have been updated in the past month, most within the last two weeks. If you look at the community calendar for the organization, there are meetings nearly every day. For a largely volunteer force, that is incredible.

Announcing The Carpentries Curriculum Development Handbook

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Note (2024-12-09): The Curriculum Development Handbook has been retired. Its content has been incorporated into the new Lesson Developer Handbook, the curriculum for Collaborative Lesson Development Training and other sections of the Community Handbook.

Note (2020-02-03): The Curriculum Development Handbook is contiually being developed, so the links below may change. The main page of the Curriculum Development Handbook can be found at https://cdh.carpentries.org/

A key value of community is the horizontal transmission of culture - sharing mistakes we’ve made and lessons we’ve learned so that things are easier for the next person. In our Instructor Training program, we prepare new instructors to teach existing content using evidence-based teaching methods. The spirit of Carpentries lessons, however, doesn’t lie in reproducing the script faithfully and teaching the content “as is”. Every time our lessons are taught, they’re a little bit different, as Instructors try things out, learn, and (hopefully) contribute back to the lessons so that others can benefit from their experiences. Because of the innovation of our Instructors, and the value our community places on iteration and collaborativity, The Carpentries’ lessons get stronger every time they are taught.

Communications at The Carpentries

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is a project merger between Software Carpentry, Library Carpentry and Data Carpentry, with a strong community of librarians, researchers and technologists brought together by two distinct events of 2018, and a common goal in mind - to build and grow communities of practice around computational skills development for researchers and librarians. 2019 marks twenty years of iterations on The Carpentries pedagogical model, and the ninth year of executing our current focus on community edification by sharing data science and coding skills.

What's Involved in Leading a Carpentries Community Committee?

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As you may have read in Kari’s blogpost, The Carpentries is looking for new leaders of the Instructor Development Committee (IDC). As a former Co-Chair of the IDC, I’m writing this post to encourage anyone interested to take advantage of this rewarding opportunity and also to give some advice, perspective, and further information on what the new leader(s) can expect. Kari did a great job of describing in that previous post the work of the IDC and the benefits and responsibilities of leading the Committee, so I will not retread that ground. Instead, I’ll focus on my personal experience.

Mozilla-Library Carpentry Global Sprint, 30-31 May, 2019

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Library Carpentry Sprint, 30-31 May, 2019

The Library Carpentry Sprint is part of the 2019 Mozilla Global Sprint, which will take place worldwide throughout the month of May. You can find us on Mozilla Pulse.

We’ve participated in a number of sprints over the years. Have a look at a couple of our past sprints:

November 2018

May 2018

Sprints allow us to improve upon and develop new Library Carpentry material while meeting and collaborating with people in the community. If you are new to Library Carpentry, our website has some information to help get you started.

Executive Council Officer Elections for 2019

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

At its recent meeting on March 21, 2019, The Carpentries Executive Council elected officers for the current year and appointed a liaison to the Code of Conduct Committee. Congratulations to all of our new officials! You can learn a bit about each of them below.

The Executive Council is the governance arm of The Carpentries and is responsible for strategic and organizational planning, selecting and evaluating the Executive Director, financial oversight of the organization, identifying revenue streams and resource allocation, approving and monitoring our programs and services, and enhancing our public image. The Carpentries Handbook has details about the responsibilities of each of the Executive Council officers.

The Carpentries Australia: Community Discussion

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Back in February 2013, Greg Wilson (co-founder of Software Carpentry) flew out to Sydney and Melbourne to run the first ever Software Carpentry “bootcamps” outside of Europe and North America. Those of us involved in those initial workshops could not have anticipated just how quickly things would grow. Fast forward six years and here’s how far we’ve come in Australia:

150+ workshops

3,750+ learners

130+ qualified instructors

7 member institutions

Past Software Carpentry workshops in Australia

Leadership Opportunities with The Carpentries: Interest Meeting April 3, 2019

Mon, 18 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Revisiting the 2016 Mentorship Subcommittee Roadmap reminded us how important volunteerism is, especially as pertains to growing and developing our instructor pool. Our past Instructor Development Committee (formerly Mentorship Subcommittee) Co-Chairs (Jamie Hadwin, Marian Schmidt, Toby Hodges, and Christina Koch) worked hard to set the course for creating a positive, cohesive, diverse, and open worldwide community of instructors and helpers for The Carpentries. We owe our readiness to onboard the next leaders of the Instructor Development Committee (IDC) to the efforts of these four outgoing co-chairs, and thank them for their immense contributions!

Carpentry on a Chromebook

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Since grad school, I’ve appreciated the ability to jump between the command line terminal, desktop apps, and the browser. I recently needed a new laptop. I have long been primarily a Mac user, and I looked at new and refurbished Mac, linux, windows, and ultimately Chromebook laptops.

The price of a Chromebook made it an extremely attractive choice, but could it serve as my main laptop? There are many blog posts and reddit subthreads describing hacks for dual boot or VM terminals in unstable developer mode. However, I discovered Google recently released a Linux (beta) app within the stable ChromeOS channel, called “Crostini”. This allows users to simply opt-in to Linux on the settings page; no flags, no developer mode, no complicated hoops. The system requirements for Crostini mean that only a few Chromebooks are currently supported; I went with the Acer Chromebook 11 CB311-8H.

Bring CarpentryCon 2020 to Your City – Call for Themes and Venues

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon 2020 planning begins

CarpentryCon has become the community tested and community approved networking and skills-building event for The Carpentries community. Its international conference last year, and the different CarpentryConnect events across the globe aimed at connecting regional communities have offered a common in-person platform to connect with our international colleagues, develop ideas, gain new skills and experience a genuine sense of belonging.

Personally, this was only one of the several events that I have attended/organised in my career where I felt at home, and as Fotis Psomopoulos says: “this event had a special emotional element unlike any other”. To recreate the same (or even better) experience in 2020, the CarpentryCon TaskForce has already started to plan the logistics for CarpentryCon 2020.

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.

Introducing The Carpentries' Regional Coordinators

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

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

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

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

The Carpentries in New Zealand

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

On 11-March the New Zealand (NZ) Regional Coordinator will be hosting a Community Discussion for anyone interested in or currently involved with The Carpentries program. Here, the many faces of The Carpentries in NZ can touch base and share ideas.

We will discuss the history of The Carpentries in New Zealand, talk about where the community is headed, and, most importantly, highlight the support channels that you have access to as a member of The Carpentries in New Zealand.

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 }}).

News from the Library Carpentry Maintainer Community and Curriculum Advisory Committee

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

News from the Library Carpentry Maintainer Community and Curriculum Advisory Committee

During the week of 14-17 January 2019, Library Carpentry Maintainers met online to discuss a variety of topics from Communication Channels to Giving Credit. The discussions helped with tackling big questions and understanding how we wanted to work as Maintainers. For a summary (and notes) from the meetings, see:

Join Us at CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019!

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Did you see the recent announcement that registration and call for proposals are now open for the CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019 conference? This event is an opportunity for members of The Carpentries’ global community of instructors and anyone else with an interest in helping researchers to improve their computational skills, to get together for a few days to exchange ideas and learn some new things. With an exciting programme (still under development, no spoilers!), the sessions will focus on developing new and existing curricula, increasing the sustainability of research software, methods and tools for better teaching, and more. The conference will also have as much to offer those who are newcomers to The Carpentries as it does to those who have attended a workshop, helped or taught at one or two, or been involved for years.

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.

Sher! Transitions into new role: Workshop & Logistics Manager

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Five hundred twenty-nine is a very exciting number… Can you guess what it is?!

That’s right, 529 is the number of days I have worked for The Carpentries to date. It has been an amazing experience. On August 31, 2017 I began working part-time as the Workshop Administrator. From my very first virtual meeting, I soon discovered that I belong in The Carpentries.

I never dreamed of having a desire to learn to code and even use the shell as part of my daily routine. After my first Software Carpentry Workshop I was so eager to learn more. I always thought the black screen with all the code was terrifying. Now, even though I am still a novice, I find myself trying to impress my family and friends with my skills. I will have the shell open and type ls, ../, cd, whoami, or pwd several times, just to fill up my screen and to look cool. :)

Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Things

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000
**This post originally appeared on the [Library Carpentry website](https://librarycarpentry.org)**
By Chris Erdmann and Natasha Simons

At CarpentryCon 2018, Bérénice Batut and Katrin Leinweber led an engaging breakout session on “Fostering FAIR Data and Sustainable Software Practices”. At that session, we discussed briefly the need for domain-relevant guidance on FAIR. What is FAIR? To use the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility or INCF's description:

"The FAIR principles are a set of community-developed guidelines to ensure that data or any digital object are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. The FAIR principles specifically emphasize enhancing the ability of machines to automatically find and use data or any digital object, and support its reuse by individuals. Standards for the description, interoperability, citation etc. are at the core of these principles."

Later in the summer, it seemed like perfect timing when the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) approached Library Carpentry about hosting a worldwide sprint on developing FAIR material. Library Carpentry had hosted a series of sprints in the past as part of the Mozilla Global Sprint and ARDC had experience with developing material called “10 Things”. We decided to combine the two and give it a go!

Announcing Elizabeth as New Director of Membership

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

Once, at a cousin’s birthday party, I was excited to announce to my family that I wanted to become a spy when I grew up. Now, I am excited to announce my new role as Director of Membership with The Carpentries. At first glance, the path between the two seems unclear, but I am excited to bring to this new role the experiences and perspectives I gained along the way.

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.

A Wrap-up from the African Task Force

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

At the end of 2017 eight Carpentries community members volunteered to serve on the African Task Force to help strengthen the local community. At a meeting in February 2018 we decided to focus on mentoring trained instructors and on creating awareness of The Carpentries in Africa. In this short report we share some of the highlights of the past year, give an overview of our activities, and also reflect on the lessons learned.

CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018: Building Bridges for Digital and Computational Literacy.

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

During the first week of September 2018, CarpentryConnect Johannesburg was run in South Africa.

Although we initially dreamt of running an open event (similar to CarpentryCon in Dublin) we had to weigh up the benefits of opening the event up with the risks of not being able to attract enough people due to the associated costs. Over the past few years we’ve realised that getting institutions to invest (pay registration fees and cover travel costs) in something they have never heard about, is quite hard. Especially at a time when travel budgets are cut and embargoes are being placed on travel (most notably for university support staff).

Jonah Leaving for New Role in New Zealand

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

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

The Carpentries in the Classroom

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Denice Adkins

Incorporating The Carpentries into my Curriculum

As a Library and Information Science (LIS) professor at University of Missouri, one of my concerns is that students get a mix of theoretical knowledge and practical learning to help them through the rest of their graduate program and in the workplace. As a veteran of Library Carpentries Instructor Training, I knew I wanted to do some sort of Carpentries-related instructional component in my class, but I also knew that the classroom has constraints that a dedicated Carpentries session does not have. This blog post describes my experience with adding a Carpentries lesson to one of my classes in Fall 2018 semester.

Traducción al español de Ecología con Python, una lección de Data Carpentry

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

Read the English version of this blog post here.

Entre septiembre de 2017 y mayo de 2018 desarrollamos una iniciativa impulsada por la comunidad para traducir las lecciones de Software Carpentry al español. Su resultado fue la producción de tres lecciones de alta calidad, que pueden utilizarse para enseñar un taller de Software Carpentry consistente de La Terminal de Unix, Control de Versiones con Git, y R para Análisis Científicos Reproducibles.

El siguiente paso lógico para potenciar la cartera de lecciones en español de The Carpentries era traducir una lección de Data Carpentry basada en Python. En noviembre de 2018 iniciamos y completamos un esfuerzo comunitario para crear Análisis y visualización de datos usando Python.

Data Carpentry Python Ecology Lesson Translated into Spanish

Thu, 17 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Lee la versión en español de esta publicación aquí.

From September 2017 to May 2018, there was a community-driven effort to translate the Software Carpentry lessons into Spanish, and the result was the production of three high-quality lessons that can be used to teach a Software Carpentry Workshop consisting of La Terminal de Unix, Control de Versiones con Git, and R para Análisis Científicos Reproducibles.

The next logical step to enhance The Carpentries portfolio of Spanish lessons was to translate a Python-based Data Carpentry lesson. In November 2018, we initiated and completed a community-driven project to create Análisis y visualización de datos usando Python.

Shaping Our Programs through the Lens of Equity.

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We have officially been operating as The Carpentries for one year now. Can you believe it?

I joined Data Carpentry’s staff as Deputy Director of Assessment in August of 2016. Since that time, and with the help of countless community members, I’ve been able to streamline our workshop surveys, develop and revise our instructor training surveys, expand our mentoring program, and liaise with the Code of Conduct and Instructor Development Committees to revise our Code of Conduct and improve our Community Discussions. Every day I get to do meaningful work and collaborate with a global network of amazing people.

Announcing our January 2019 Instructor Trainer Cohort

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

We recently put out a call for applications from members of the community who want to become Carpentries Instructor Trainers. This round of applications followed closely on the heels of a prior cohort, and was opened to meet member demand in our rapidly-growing communities. If you missed the short window for this application, never fear – we do plan to run another starting around September 2019! Contact Karen Word (krword@carpentries.org) if you would like to be notified when applications open.

Lesson Program Implementation, Governance Group Meeting, and Community Updates

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Lesson Program Implementation

As mentioned in a recent Carpentries blog post on 1 November 2018, Library Carpentry is now an official Lesson Program of The Carpentries. In the post, we outlined our next steps, in other words, our implementation plan to make this so. We’d like to update the community about where we are at with regard to the plan.

The official Lesson Program language has been integrated into a number of Carpentries resources including our Library Carpentry websites, GitHub organization and instructional repositories, policies, handbook, onboarding material, request forms, surveys, one pagers, slides, badges, trainer/instructor etherpads/documents, and social media profiles. We’ve added collaborators from The Carpentries staff, Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee and Governance Group to our GitHub organisations. Also, Cam Macdonell (MacEwan University), a longtime member of the Library Carpentry community, has joined The Carpentries infrastructure group.

Welcoming the New Community Engagement Lead

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We are thrilled to announce that Serah Njambi Kiburu will be joining The Carpentries as Community Engagement Lead, starting 11 January 2019.

Serah has over five years experience as an open data and open source advocate, and brings with her a wealth of experience in community building and coordination, in developing and implementing curricula and outreach strategies, and translating complex technical topics into content that is easy to understand. Most recently, she worked as a Developer Advocate for Open Knowledge International. Before that, she worked with Code for Africa. Through her work, she has developed a wealth of experience developing and teaching technical workshops and engaging with communities around technical training.

Announcing the 2019 Executive Council for The Carpentries

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

The Executive Council elections have concluded! Thanks to everyone who participated in the election as a candidate or voter. The Executive Council is the governance of The Carpentries, and we are fortunate to have so many people engaged in our community governance.. A summary of the results for both community-elected and council-elected seats are described below.

Incoming community-elected members

Out of the 981 ballots distributed to Voting Members, 247 ballots were cast (25% turnout).

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!

New and Improved Instructor Training Workflow!

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Instructor Training is a primary benefit of our Membership program, serving to build local capacity for offering Carpentries workshops and spreading The Carpentries pedagogical model to other teaching environments at member institutions. In addition to bringing this training to our members, we also offer it free of charge to individuals at institutions not able to finance a membership. Through this dual model, we have trained more than 1,600 Instructors in over 45 countries around the world.

Library HackyHour at Curtin University Library

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Janice Chan

Starting in 2017, Curtin University Library in Perth, Western Australia hosted a series of Library Carpentry workshops that were well attended. Staff feedback suggested that they would like to learn more and apply these new skills to their day-to-day work. The Library looked to Software Carpentry and borrowed the HackyHour concept, to create a space where staff could continue to apply what they’ve learned. Library HackyHour at Curtin University Library happens every second Thursday, in the Library Makerspace, from 12:00 to 13:00.

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’.

Unique multi-site teaching experience via virtual shared conference

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

Location

The Virgin Islands are located about three hours south of Florida, against the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The University (UVI) has a campus on each of the two most populous islands, St. Croix and St. Thomas. These islands were colonised by Europeans for two hundred years and are still territories of the United States. Most residents today are Afro-Caribbean.

Sponsor

South Big Data Hub (SBDH) is a new data science initiative, run by Georgia Tech. They have a contract with The Carpentries to run workshops at many universities in the Southeastern United States. They also planned a Train the Trainers session this year to enable the same universities to teach their own workshops.

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)…

Updates on Instructor Checkout Requirements

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The goals of our instructor discussion sessions are for new trainees to meet community members and learn more about how a workshop is run, and how to prepare. We are fulfilling the community component with teaching demos, and more instructor training is happening online. Future instructors are meeting other members of the community through their trainings. Additionally, if instructors want to learn more about running a workshop, it may make more sense for them to do it right before they start preparing when they have questions.

Instructor Training Curriculum Updates

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Instructor Training Curriculum is a centrepiece among The Carpentries workshops. It is constantly in use as we bring new Instructors on board, and our engaged Instructor Trainer community brings a steady stream of new ideas for its improvement. This makes for a fun community, interesting discussions… and a lengthy to-do list! In the month of October we organised a “push” on the Instructor Training curriculum, in which we made good progress on backlogged issues, organisation, and usability for new Instructor Trainers. This is not a full “release” – we’re about halfway to where we’d like to be for our next published update – but we are pleased with what we’ve accomplished and hope you will be, too. We are particularly grateful to the community of Instructor Trainers whose feedback and contributions have both inspired this work and helped to complete it!

Apply to Become a Carpentries Instructor Trainer!

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Are you an active Instructor looking to take your involvement with The Carpentries to the next level? Or, are you an experienced educator who has found something to love in our Instructor Training curriculum? Are you excited by the thought of going deep with our curriculum through reading and online discussion of the practices that underpin the success of our workshops?

If so, we would like to hear from you! We are about to open a new round of Instructor Trainer Training, an 8-week reading group and on-boarding to become a certified Carpentries Instructor Trainer. (Note that this is different from becoming a certified Instructor. Instructors lead workshops; Trainers lead Instructor Training events. Instructor applications are accepted on a rolling basis and may be found here.) Becoming a Trainer is a fantastic opportunity to grow your own training skills, which are increasingly in demand both in academia and industry.

Election for The Carpentries’ Vision and 2019 Executive Council

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries will hold an election from December 3-7 for both the 2019 Executive Council as well as The Carpentries’ vision.

The Carpentries Executive Council is hosting two Community Calls this week (on Thursday/Friday depending on your time zone) to discuss the election. Two sessions will be held to accommodate our global community. Connection details are in the etherpad; please sign in if you plan to attend. These community calls will provide an opportunity to ask questions about community governance and the election process, as well as learn more about the candidates for the community-elected Executive Council positions.

2019 Election: Juliane Schneider

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Who am I?

I am Juliane Schneider, and I’m a restless soul with a flair for boredom and weird career paths. Currently, I’m Team Lead/Lead Data Curator at Harvard Catalyst, Clinical and Translational Science Center. My past jobs have included Database Designer for EBSCO, Metadata Specialist with UCSD Research Data Curation Program, Metadata Librarian for Countway Library at Harvard Medical School, and I once was an insurance librarian on Wall Street despite knowing nothing about insurance (I learned things, though).

2019 Election: Elizabeth Wickes

Sat, 24 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

About me

I am a current Executive Council member and submitting my nomination for reelection. As an elected representative for the 2018 Executive Council, I am eager to continue the work I’ve begun and see it through next year.

I have been active with The Carpentries since 2015. I completed my instructor training as part of a larger independent study on teaching practices for end user programmers. I was one of the first certified instructors at the University of Illinois and have experienced the power of local mentorship to push my skills and deepen my understanding of Carpentries practices.

2019 Election: Amy Hodge

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

About Me

As a current, elected member of the Executive Council, I’m very excited to be putting myself forward for re-election for a two-year term. It’s been a wonderful, engaging, and educational year for me on the Council, but now that we’ve gotten the new organization up and running, I’m eager to participate in more of the building activities I hope to see happening in the future.

I received a PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale, after which I worked for nearly 10 years at science database companies. I’ve now been at Stanford University Libraries for the past six years, where my role is to help researchers, particularly in the sciences, with data management and sharing and with developing the skills they need to perform these tasks efficiently and effectively. Research in all fields is moving rapidly toward intensive data science, leaving many researchers struggling to keep up with learning all the new skills needed for the complex research questions they devise. The Carpentries can help many researchers improve the quality and robustness of their work.

Welcoming the new Administrative Support Specialist

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We are pleased to announce Talisha Sutton-Kennedy has joined The Carpentries staff team in the position of Administrative Support Specialist. Talisha comes to us from Michigan, USA with a diverse background and skill-set. She has a background in research and experience in coding, customer service, volunteer organizations, and administration. Talisha has Bachelors degrees in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from Michigan Technological University. She also has a Masters in Pharmacology & Toxicology from Michigan State University.

Nominate a member to Community Service Award before 19 November

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Carpentries is receiving nominations for 2018 Community Service Award until Monday, 19 November, 2018 Anywhere on Earth Time. To nominate a member of the community, fill in “The Carpentries Community Service Award 2018 Nomination” (Google) Form.

Who can be nominated?

Any individual who has contributed to The Carpentries and member projects, e.g. Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry and Library Carpentry, in any form who is neither a member of the Executive Council nor a member of staff.

Discussion Summary: Delivering Exercises to Learners

Fri, 09 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On Wednesday 7th November, members of the community joined a themed instructor discussion session to share experience and ideas around how we deliver exercises to our learners during a lesson/workshop. Inspired by this excellent blogpost by Sarah Brown, the Instructor Development Committee wanted to leverage the experience of other instructors on this important topic. Sarah, who also lead the discussion in this session, also wanted to collect feedback and ideas to bring back to the Lesson Infrastructure Committee to inform their design choices when updating our lesson template.

You’re Invited! Mentoring Meetup November 8th

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As we approach the holiday season, I am reflecting on the year and what has given me joy. One thing I am truly grateful for is our Instructor Development Committee. Toby Hodges, the committee’s co-chair, has done a phenomenal job in his term thus far pushing us to think broadly about ways to engage and support our growing instructor pool. I’m grateful for you Toby!

In this State of Instructor Development slide deck, you’ll notice something else I’m grateful for: The Carpentries Mentoring Groups. Mentoring groups have been supporting each other since 5 September in several areas. A few of the groups’ activities include:

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!

Announcing 2019 Executive Council Elections

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Executive Council (EC), which provides governance for The Carpentries, is pleased to announce the election process for 2019. If you would like more information on the roles and structure of the EC, please see this blog post. These elections are for two community-elected seats, which are selected by all voting members of The Carpentries community. You must be a voting member of The Carpentries to self-nominate yourself for a community-elected position. The Executive Council is also looking for recommendations to three Council-elected seats. Anyone may recommend someone, independent of whether or not that person is a a voting member of The Carpentries.

We just passed 2K Twitter followers!

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000
**This post originally appeared on the [Library Carpentry website](https://librarycarpentry.org)**
By Chris Erdmann

It’s time to celebrate a milestone. On October 24th, 2018, the Library Carpentry Twitter account passed two thousand followers! We thought it would be a great opportunity to summarise our Twitter analytics.

To start, here are our top 5 tweets by impressions since we created the account in May 2016:

Big news today. BIG NEWS. We have a new website: https://t.co/nC1p4gbIAw
We would love your thoughts and comments. Raise an issue on this repo https://t.co/BU5gLKgrEf We finished it during #mozsprint #lc2018

The Carpentries 2018 Annual Report

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Join us in celebrating the release of The Carpentries’ first official annual report! This report provides a quick overview of our activities for the past year and a look into the coming year. It also serves to communicate the mission, achievements, and fiscal health of The Carpentries to potential members and funding organizations.

Because this report is primarily intended for people and organisations encountering The Carpentries for the first time, it highlights the history of The Carpentries and the values of our community. We believe that this report will also be of interest to our current community members. It provides an quick, graphical, and (we hope!) fun overview of the past action-packed year, along with a statement of progress toward our mission, and a snapshot of our finances over the past year. If you’re looking for a resource to share with your department head, director, or other potential ally of The Carpentries - this is it!

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.

The Magic of Etherpads

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When I compiled the What is a Workshop? page for The Carpentries website, I tried to list the many features that make our workshops special.

Etherpads came a long way down the list, yet they are an essential tool for making things work. In an earlier post, I said the Code of Conduct was the most important of our teaching practies, but workshops would not run half so smoothly without etherpads.

Etherpads in workshops

When I teach, I preload the workshop etherpad with links to all the lessons to be taught. I provide a link to the workshop website, and to the installation/troubleshooting page, and to the Reference page of the lesson for those who want to keep open a tab with that extra help. I also add the names and Twitter handles of the Instructors and helpers (and various flavours of Carpentry, depending on what workshop is being taught). I add the workshop hashtag, and a list of those attending (from the workshop sign in list). Wifi connection details go on there, as do recommendations for where to find the best coffee on campus. The pad can fit it all.

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.

Announcing the Top 10 FAIR Data Things Global Sprint

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Announcing the Top 10 FAIR Data Things Global Sprint

Join us on 29-30 November 2018, for the Top 10 FAIR Data Things Global Sprint! The Sprint is being organised by Library Carpentry, Australian Research Data Commons and the Research Data Alliance Libraries for Research Data Interest Group in collaboration with FOSTER Open Science, OpenAire, RDA Europe, Data Management Training Clearinghouse, California Digital Library, Dryad, AARNet, Center for Digital Scholarship at the Leiden University, and DANS.

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.

Nominate a Member You’ve Noticed Working Extra Hard in 2018

Thu, 04 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

In 2016, Software Carpentry gave Christina Koch, Adrianna Pinska and Jon Pipitone the Community Service Award for their valuable contributions to the project. In 2017, Anelda van der Walt received the award. This year, with the merger of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry to create the umbrella project known as The Carpentries, the Executive Council decided to continue with the recognition of extra hard work by some volunteers and will choose and announce 2018 award winners in December.

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.

Help Us Plan for CarpentryCon 2020

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The CarpentryCon Task Force met on 25 September to answer questions from community members interested in planning CarpentryCon 2020. It was great to welcome community members from the UK, New Zealand, and South Africa to the call. We hope those people will be joining the Task Force. While most of the current Task Force members will continue serving as well, we would still like to see more members joining the Task Force.

Load Magic for Python and a call to discuss how we deliver exercises to learners

Fri, 28 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post describes a teaching tip I shared at CarpentryCon 2018 and how it thrust me into deeper Carpentries involvement. It also aims to start a larger conversation about how we deliver exercises in workshops and how the lesson infrastructure can better support instructors and learners.

Let’s talk about exercises

One challenge I had before my first workshop was figuring out how to deliver exercises to learners. I asked around, but when I thought about myself as a learner trying to do exercises based on the descriptions I got, I imagined being confused and distracted. I found the load magic of IPython/Jupyter notebook to give exercises to learners that enabled them to focus on the concepts I was teaching, not fumble with tools. I shared the idea at CarpentryCon, got great feedback, and have thought more about how we could update the infrastructure to support it over the past few months. In The Carpentries, teaching and learning come first, so before the lesson infrastructure committee implements changes, we wanted to get more feedback on the general approach, and how instructors are delivering and would like to deliver exercises. I wanted to share my path on how I got to this question, why I’m interested in addressing it, and start that conversation.

My Pathway in The Carpentries

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

What does Carpentries involvement bring to your life? In the first of what we hope will be a series of posts on how people can get (or already have been) involved with The Carpentries, either globally or locally (or both!), Belinda Weaver, the Community and Communications Lead for The Carpentries, explains her own pathway to involvement.

In the beginning …

I have been involved with The Carpentries since 2014. Yet, when I first heard about Software Carpentry - which was my doorway into involvement - I had never learned to program in any language, and had never dipped a toe in GitHub, much less used any kind of tool for version control.

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.

Want to Organise a Workshop on Image Processing?

Mon, 17 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted to organise a workshop on image processing for PhDs in the medical domain. I usually use Software Carpentry lessons in my workshops, but there are no lessons on image processing. Before starting to re-invent the wheel, I thought I should ask the Software Carpentry community if anybody had given a workshop like that recently.

Hey guys, image processing lesson anyone?

I was hit by a wave of suggestions and existing materials — and although not everything fitted in the scope of my workshop, it sure made my life a lot easier! Here is a summary of some of the useful links which were shared.

Data in the desert

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

By Jeff Oliver

Back by popular demand, the University of Arizona Libraries held its second Library Carpentry workshop on 6-7 August, 2018. Braving the intense desert heat, learners from the University of Arizona Libraries and Arizona State University Library showed up to learn about research computational tools and best practices in dealing with data.

The workshop included 21 learners, five instructors, and two helpers, representing a total of nine departments from the two universities.

Updates to The Carpentries' Code of Conduct

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Since its inception as Software Carpentry, The Carpentries community has always subscribed to a Code of Conduct (CoC). Our Code of Conduct helps explain to community members and others what behaviours are acceptable and expected, and what constitutes unacceptable behaviour. Our CoC is a crucial part of making our community more inclusive and diverse, because it extends a welcome to everyone regardless of their background, ethnicity, skill level, gender, career stage, or beliefs.

CarpentryCon – Post-conference Report and Call to Action

Sun, 09 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The first CarpentryCon

From 30 May to 1 June, 2018, the first ever in-person Carpentry conference, CarpentryCon 2018, took place under the theme “Building Locally, Connecting Globally”, with a vision to bring community members together under the same roof.

The conference was held at University College Dublin in Ireland and comprised keynote talks as well as many excellent unconference sessions suggested by the community members. The unconference sessions included 12 breakout discussions, six skill-up topics, six technical workshops and many impromptu birds-of-a-feather events (see the complete program here).

Report back from University of Calgary Libraries

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Thanks to the University of Calgary Libraries

Thanks to the University of Calgary Libraries for recently hosting both a Library Carpentry Workshop (28-29 August) and a Carpentries Instructor Training for Librarians (30-31 August). The events were possible thanks to support from John Brosz, Renee Reaume, Susan Powelson, Ingrid Reiche, Paul Pival, Calum Center, and University of Calgary Libraries staff. The Taylor Family Digital Library’s state-of-the-art teaching and collaboration spaces were perfect for The Carpentries hands-on pedagogical approaches used by the trainers and instructors, Juliane Schneider, Karen Word, and Chris Erdmann.

The Structure of The Carpentries Executive Council

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Executive Council is the main leadership body for The Carpentries. This post introduces the Executive Council’s roles and responsibilities, how the council is structured, and the reasoning behind this approach.

Roles and Responsibilities of the Executive Council

The Carpentries Executive Council is the highest leadership body of The Carpentries organisation. It is responsible for strategic and organizational planning, selecting the Executive Director and evaluating their performance, financial oversight, identifying revenue streams and resource development, approving and monitoring The Carpentries programs and services, and enhancing The Carpentries’ public image. Members of the council also serve as advocates and ambassadors for the organisation, leveraging their networks to benefit the organization’s reputation and fundraising. The Executive Council executes these responsibilities through a combination of monthly Executive Council meetings and regular correspondence and collaboration via email and online platforms.

Data Carpentry for Atmosphere and Ocean Scientists

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Back in late 2012, I was a couple of years into my first job out of college. My undergraduate studies had left me somewhat underprepared for the coding associated with analyzing climate model data for a national science organization, so I was searching online for assistance with Python programming. I stumbled upon the website of an organization called Software Carpentry, which at the time was a relatively small group of volunteers running two-day scientific computing “bootcamps” for researchers. I reached out to ask if they’d be interested in running a workshop alongside the 2013 Annual Conference of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS), and to my surprise Greg Wilson - the co-founder of the organization - flew out to Australia to teach at our event in Melbourne and another in Sydney (the first ever bootcamps outside of North America and Europe). I trained up as an instructor soon after, and from 2014-2017 I hosted Software Carpentry workshops alongside the AMOS conference, as well as other ad hoc workshops in various meteorology and oceanography departments.

Announcing our new Instructor Trainers-in-training

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

We recently put out a call for applications from members of our community who want to become Carpentries Trainers. The call was open to current Instructors and other qualified community members, for example, people with existing teaching or training experience.

Our Trainers are key to the continuing growth and success of The Carpentries. They teach our Instructor Training curriculum, which then brings new Instructors into The Carpentries community.

We are excited to announce that the following people will be joining the next round of training to start on 10 September. It is great to see the many different locations which will help us extend our reach.

Geospatial Workshop is Now Ready to Teach!

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The long-awaited Data Carpentry curriculum for working with Geospatial data is now ready to teach! As with all our newly developed curricula, these lessons are now in ‘beta’. We are actively promoting workshops and collecting information from those workshops to improve these lessons as they are taught more broadly and in different contexts. We will also be onboarding Instructors to prepare them to teach these new lessons. Keep reading for more details.

Help Shape the Governance of Our Community

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, the Executive Council announced an RFC for bylaws for The Carpentries. Bylaws traditionally describe the rules and regulations used to run an organization. As a fiscally sponsored organization, The Carpentries is not required to have formal (legally binding) bylaws. As an organization that is community-driven, though, these bylaws are important for describing the role of the community in governing and guiding the strategic direction of The Carpentries. We have tried to use plain language, rather than legal jargon, to make the document accessible for our diverse community members, while still attempting to provide clear expectations associated with the structure and governance of The Carpentries.

Introducing the Instructor Development Committee

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

After some discussion, at recent meetings of the Mentoring Committee and on the associated GitHub repository, members of the Committee have chosen to rename the group. We will now be the Instructor Development Committee.

The discussion came about from an acknowledgement that “Mentoring” implied that the Committee focussed solely on mentoring activities such as the Mentoring Groups Program (more on which below). While it’s true that part of what we do is to support the amazing work that Kari Jordan and others do with mentoring groups, that’s only one aspect of the conversations that we have at our monthly meetings and the activity of the Committee members outside of those meetings.

Three Years in the Making for Instructor Training in Latin America

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This month I (Rayna Harris) co-taught a remote The Carpentries Instructor Training Workshop for 25 Spanish-speaking trainees in six countries in Latin America. It was awesome! One thing that made this workshop so special for me is that it has been three-plus years in the making. So, I thought I would tell the story, from my perspective, about all the things that came into play to make this workshop a reality.

The Strategic Value of Library Carpentry and The Carpentries to Research Libraries

Wed, 22 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Elaine L. Westbrooks

The Data Science Community Newsletter, a helpful resource by Laura Noren and Brad Stanger, helps us track all the data science initiatives sweeping through higher ed. Brown, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, UC Irvine, UIUC, University of Michigan, and others have launched data science initiatives in the past few years and have been announced in each newsletter.

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.

University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries Team Up to Teach First Library Carpentry Workshop in Oregon

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Jonathan Cain, Sarah Seymore, Steven Van Tuyl, Clara Llebot, Ryan Wick, Chris Erdmann

On March 16 and March 23, the University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries teamed up to teach the first Library Carpentry workshops in the state of Oregon, which were open to all Orbis Cascade Alliance members. These workshops were intended to help people working in library- and information-related roles in the Northwest improve their competencies and efficiencies through better understanding of the structure and organization data, automating repetitive, error prone tasks, and maintaining and analysing sustainable and reusable data.

Highlights from the Mentoring Groups Virtual Showcase

Fri, 17 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

My vision for our mentoring groups is that we offer opportunities for community members to be stretched, challenged, and empowered. The recent showcase that wrapped up the last round of mentoring groups showed that all three goals were achieved.

We have been running mentoring rounds for some time now. The highlights of the previous rounds can be seen here.

The highlights from this round included:

Exploring different teaching skills using Teaching Tech Together

Achieving an understanding of existing social barriers in classrooms such as language, or age

Using an etherpad to summarise and share progress

Using a group discussion format to facilitate peer mentoring

Participants found the mentoring round very useful. Mentee Erika Mias said:

New England Libraries Team Up to Become Carpentries Members

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Joshua Dull, Thea Atwood, Andrew Creamer, Julie Goldman, Kristin Lee, Lora Leligdon, Sara Oelker, Chris Erdmann

How can libraries get involved and become Carpentries members? The New England libraries had an innovative approach to this question: work as a team. The New England Software Carpentry Library Consortium, or NESCLiC for short, brought together library staff from seven academic libraries: Yale, Harvard, Tufts, Dartmouth, UMass Amherst, Brown, and Mt. Holyoke.

NESCLiC shares the costs and benefits that go along with Gold Tier membership, but the Consortium also allows staff from the different areas of academic librarianship and technology, including the digital humanities, statistics, high performance computing, sciences, engineering, medical libraries, and data services, to work together on Carpentries initiatives in their libraries.

Request for Comment on Carpentries Mission and Vision

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As announced two weeks ago, the Executive Council has been working on developing drafts of the mission and vision statements for the new joint organization. These drafts are now available and we request your feedback through two Requests for Comment and related GitHub issues by midnight (in your time zone) Friday August 31, 2018.

Requests for Comment (RFCs, also called Requests for Public Comment) are a tool used to solicit feedback on planned actions that affect a broad community. These RFCs build on those used during the merging of Software and Data Carpentry to ensure that these central guiding statements serve all members of our diverse community.

Announcing the Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

I’m happy to announce the members of the inaugural Library Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC):

Carmi Cronje, CSIRO, Australia

Katrin Leinweber, TIB Hannover, Germany

Mark Laufersweiler, University of Oklahoma, USA

Tim Dennis, UCLA, USA

Erika Mias, Cape Town, South Africa

Chris Erdmann, CDL/The Carpentries, USA (ex officio, logistics)

The Carpentries Handbook provides a description of the philosophy guiding the Committee and the responsibilities of Curriculum Advisors.

What constitutes a Library Carpentry workshop?

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, Belinda Weaver, John Chodacki, Juliane Schneider, Jez Cope, Kayleigh Lino, Tim Dennis, Cam Macdonell

Given that Library Carpentry currently has nine lessons on its books, and a couple more in draft form, the question of exactly what constitutes an ‘official’ Library Carpentry workshop is timely.

On 17 May, Belinda Weaver opened an issue about this question, proposing what lessons should be taught for a workshop to be badged as Library Carpentry. The issue asked others in the community to comment. The issue received 10 comments from Chris Erdmann, Jez Cope, Kayleigh Lino, Juliane Schneider, Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati, Greg Wilson, James Baker, and Lauren Ko. Out of the current Library Carpentry lessons, the bulk of comments identified Introduction to Data, the UNIX Shell, Introduction to Git, and OpenRefine as the core lessons that should be taught at a Library Carpentry workshop.

What’s New in Our Programs?

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

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

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

Seventy-One Workshops... and Counting

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

By Belinda Weaver, Chris Erdmann, Tim Dennis, Juliane Schneider, Carmi Cronje, Jez Cope

Seventy-one Library Carpentry workshops have now been taught around the world, including one-day, two-day, and multi-day events, with future workshops being added every day.

With this milestone behind us, it is important to pause and appreciate what has been achieved so far by the community. Since 2015, more than 102 instructors and 123 helpers, 225 in total, have contributed to Library Carpentry training events in 13 countries. We have collaboratively developed open educational lessons to teach software and data skills for anyone who works in libraries or similar organisations.

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.

Sydney ResBaz - A Big Success

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On 3-5 July, Macquarie University hosted the 2018 Sydney Research Bazaar (ResBaz). Macquarie University became a member organisation of The Carpentries, joining in 2016 as the first supporting member organisation in Australia. Associate Professor Shawn Ross, Director of Data Science and eResearch at Macquarie, welcomed attendees to the event.

Research Bazaar (ResBaz) is a worldwide festival promoting digital literacy emerging at the centre of modern research. Every year, ResBaz events are held at university campuses across the globe. The aim of these events is to equip researchers from all career stages with digital skills and tools to make their research faster and smarter.

Mentoring Groups Showcase Their Achievements - All Welcome

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

The most recent round of mentoring groups will wrap up in mid-August. As with previous rounds, groups will share what they have learned and achieved during their time together in a virtual showcase (also known as a get-together via Zoom).

To maximise attendance, showcases will take place at two different times and members of our community are invited to attend. You don’t need to be a mentor or mentee to attend the showcase, and you can come to either or both.

A Carpentries-Based Approach to Teaching FAIR Data and Software Principles

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Recently, I was lucky to participate in an innovative workshop held at Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) Hannover from 9 - 13 July, 2018, which paired The Carpentries’ pedagogical style of teaching and lesson material with in-depth background on the FAIR Data Principles. FAIR comprises a set of guiding principles to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (Wilkinson et al., 2016). FAIR is a relatively new initiative that is gaining momentum. Key stakeholders across the research lifecycle are exploring how the underlying FAIR Principles can be applied and assessed at various points. For instance, at the 2018 Research Data Alliance (RDA) Plenary Meeting in Berlin, FAIR was mentioned in at least 23 of the sessions:

Apply to become a Carpentries Instructor Trainer!

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Are you an active Instructor looking to take your involvement with The Carpentries to the next level? Or perhaps you are an experienced educator who has found something to love in our Instructor Training curriculum? Or maybe you want to understand more of the theory that underpins the success of our workshops?

If so, we would like to hear from you, as we are about to open a new round of Instructor Trainer training. This is a fantastic opportunity to grow your own training skills, which are increasingly in demand both in academia and industry.

CarpentryCon Experienced by Latin American Attendees

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired by the “CarpentryCon Experienced by the African Carpentry Task Force” blog post, we decided to copycat our friends from the other side of the Atlantic and share our experience.

Paula Andrea Martinez

CarpentryCon was on my plans to attend since last year. Yes, I was super eager to meet the online community in person. Interacting with people online and then to see familiar faces and add a hug to each of the greetings was very gratifying. I’ve been working with the Carpentry community for three years and a bit more, and since last year, having many online meetings, multiple email and issue threads. All of you were part of my days, also I’ve missed not seeing some of you. For me, it was a sharing kind of event, people are so passionate and interested in taking this forwards so it was always very nice to hear the stories behind what has been achieved. It also gladly surprised me to have heard so many “thank you” phrases flowing one way or the other. Thanks for every person who made the event possible and looking forward to keep on the train of the communities. A personal highlight, when I presented the work of The Carpentries in Latin America in a short talk, I felt the need to continue with this, because many people will benefit of this amazing community.

Eight Days, Four Workshops, Two Islands, One Earthquake

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Belinda Weaver

Teaching four Library Carpentry ’express’ workshops within eight days might sound quite taxing but the enthusiasm of the people I taught made it pretty easy. I also had some help from Jonah Duckles with workshop one at the University of Otago in Dunedin (this formed part of the Dunedin ResBaz event) and from Aleksandra Pawlik with the workshop at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.

Evidence of Carpentries' Impact on Learners

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Many community members who want to justify involvement with The Carpentries would like evidence that our workshops have an impact. We’ve had some exciting results from our surveys and want to make you aware of the impact our workshops have on learners.

Kari Jordan recently presented the paper, Short-format workshops build skills and confidence for researchers to work with data, at ASEE’s Annual Conference. Several community members collaborated on this work, and it offers a comprehensive look at data science workforce needs and training, Carpentries’ teaching practices, and the long-term impact (meaning six-months to a year after) our workshops have on learners’ skills and confidence.

Mission, Vision, and Bylaws for the Carpentries

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Following our in-person meeting in June, the Executive Council has been working on revising and solidifying the mission, vision, and bylaws for The Carpentries. These three pieces of writing represent the core values and goals of The Carpentries and the manner in which the organization is structured and led by both community and staff. We hope to reflect and honor both the cultures of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry, as well as the larger, more diverse community which continues to develop.

Dunedin ResBaz

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

Two Days of Skills Workshops

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

No More Self-Organised Workshop Fees

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

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

Why eliminate the Self-Organised workshop fee?

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

Carpentries in the Libraries Community Calls

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann

Time to talk about data and software skills in libraries

One of the strengths of The Carpentries is its community and libraries are great places to foster conversations around data and software skills. There are a number of places where our community can have conversations and get involved - these include our Library Carpentry GitHub, Gitter channel, and Topicbox list. Now there is another option. Starting in August, we will start a monthly online calls series for one hour with the following format:

Organisational Memberships and the Future of the Carpentries

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

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

CarpentryCon Experienced by the African Carpentry Task Force

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to The Carpentries and funding from conference sponsors, as well as TENET, the members of the African Carpentry Task Force were all able to attend the inaugural CarpentryCon event that took place at University College Dublin, Ireland, between 29 May and 1 June, 2018. Each of us has written a brief summary of our experience and takeaways from the conference, and we all agree that the event was an extremely valuable experience that exceeded all our expectations!

Report from 2018 In-person Executive Council Meeting

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The 2018 Executive Council met face-to-face for the first time last week (June 18-19) in Gainesville, Florida in the USA. So, this seems like a good time to give everyone a sense of what we discussed at the in-person meeting, and what is in store for the next several months.

Why an ‘Executive Council’?

First, I want to talk about the name ‘Executive Council (EC)’. Why are we an EC, and not a ‘Board of Directors’? In the US, a ‘Board of Directors’ has a specific meaning, and suggests financial and legal responsibility. Because we are not our own non-profit, but are fiscally-sponsored by Community Initiatives, we do not have our own Board of Directors (noting that CI, which is a non-profit, does have a Board of Directors). We also felt that ‘Executive Council’ better captured the level of commitment and responsibility of the members than ‘Steering Committee’ (thinking about getting credit, often on academic CVs, for the work of the EC).

The Carpentries: A Joint Narrative (January 2017 - March 2018)

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merged officially on 1 January 2018 to form a new organisation, The Carpentries. In mid-June, The Carpentries held their first Executive Council in-person meeting. A report of that meeting will be published shortly.

In preparation for the EC meeting, Carpentries’ staff prepared a narrative report on the progress we have made as a joint organisation since we began to work together more closely from January 2017. Two key milestones during that time were the creation and launch of both The Carpentries Handbook and the new Carpentries website.

Join an Onboarding Session for Hosting Discussion Sessions

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Instructor discussions are important to our community to help Instructors prepare to teach, to debrief after Instructors have taught, and to help new Instructors complete their certification as Carpentries Instructors. Sessions are regularly run and are generally well-attended. Feedback to the Mentoring Subcommittee proves they are highly valued.

Toby Hodges recently put out a call to recruit new session hosts so we can meet continuing demand for these sessions.

Why it is worthwhile

As someone who has hosted a few in her time, I would say that, far from being hard work, these sessions are a joy to run and be part of. Meeting new people in our wide global community is always stimulating. People in discussions I have hosted have ranged from ‘old hands’ coming back to share their workshop experience to new members of the community about to teach for the very first time and bursting with questions. Attendees have been based in Japan, the US, South Africa, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands … the list goes on.

The Carpentries Instructor Training for Librarians

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, John Chodacki

We are pleased to announce an open Carpentries instructor training course on 30-31 August geared specifically for the Library Carpentry movement supported by a grant to the California Digital Library from the IMLS.

Open call for instructor training

This course will take place in Calgary, Alberta, Canada at the University of Calgary Libraries. The two-day course is open to anyone and the event will focus on preparing members of the library community as Carpentries instructors. The sessions will be led by Carpentries staff and community members, Karen Word, Juliane Schneider, and Chris Erdmann.

Library Carpentry Community Update

Wed, 20 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann, Belinda Weaver

Report-back from CarpentryCon and the latest governance call

Things are moving along nicely in the Library Carpentry community, helped by regular meetings of the governance group and lots of face to face talking at the recent CarpentryCon event in Dublin, where we ran a Library Carpentry Onboarding Workshop. Many people at CarpentryCon were keen to talk Library Carpentry. We are now firming up our ideas about our audience, and what constitutes a workshop, and we are currently discussing how we can get more workshops organised and more instructors trained. (We hope to announce an instructor training event shortly.)

Report on the Next Steps in R workshop at CarpentryCon 2018

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

A three-hour workshop called “Next Steps in R” was offered on Day 3 (June 1st, 2018) of CarpentryCon 2018, and approximately 14 people attended. The intended audience were those who had previous experience using R, ideally dabbling with components of the tidyverse like {dplyr} or {ggplot2}, and who wanted to take their skills to the next level. Specifically, the goal of this workshop was not only for learners to acquire new data manipulation skills, but also to practice using these skills while considering the thought processes behind developing workflow pipelines. Essentially, if you are dealing with a single or multiple data sets, and want to get from point A to point B, what tools are available?, and what do you need to think about when using them?

The Carpentries' Programmatic Assessment

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

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

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

Report: Lesson Infrastructure Breakout at CarpentryCon

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

One of the breakout sessions at CarpentryCon focussed on lesson infrastructure: the template we use for our lessons and how this template and the platform that we use to deliver this material (GitHub Pages & Jekyll) could be improved/better utilised. The session was led by François Michonneau, our Curriculum Development Lead, with notes taken by Toby Hodges. This blogpost is a summary of the discussion in that session. You can see the original notes on this etherpad.

Get More Involved with The Carpentries' Instructor Community

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Hi folks,

Are you looking for a way to get more involved in The Carpentries instructor community? Would you like to meet more members of the community, help new instructors to prepare for organising and teaching a workshop, and benefit from the experience that other instructors have gained from teaching? We are looking for volunteers to host instructor discussion sessions.

These sessions are regular, one-hour online meetings that bring together trainee and experienced instructors to reflect on teaching experience and prepare for future workshops. The job of the host is to participate in and facilitate these discussions, and to make sure that all participants have an equal opportunity to participate in the conversation.

Thoughts on CarpentryCon: the Value of Community

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Belinda Weaver has already given a great overview of CarpentryCon, praising both the program and the atmosphere of the conference. One of the most important lessons that I learned during the conference was how great it is to keep quiet and hear someone else say what I think (yes, it took me 33 years to learn this), so I’ll try not to repeat much of what she already said so well. I would like to echo her praise of the organising committee though, and applaud their determination to provide assistance with travel costs. It was wonderful to see the global Carpentries community so well represented at our inaugural conference.

A summary of the tweets generated at CarpentryCon 2018, Dublin

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

To complete the CarpentryCon report, I analysed the tweets with the “#CarpentryCon2018” hashtag or that mentioned “@CarpentryCon” using the rtweet R package by Michael W. Kearney. The source code used is available from GitHub and is based on the analyses of tweets generated during the Evolution conference in 2015 and 2017. This analysis would not also be possible without the tidytext and the tidyverse packages.

The figures seem to reflect the feeling participants expressed during the conference. The Carpentries is about the great people making up our community and this is reflected in the word cloud, and the most commonly associated words. The sentiment analysis shows very little use of words associated with negativity (and the ones used seem to be from people who could not attend the event), but instead highlight the positive experience of the participants.

CarpentryCon 2018 Wraps Up

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

Warm. Open. Diverse. Welcoming. Inspiring.

Those words go some way towards summing up the three fantastic days of keynotes, lightning talks, skill-ups, breakout discussions, workshops, and networking that comprised the first-ever CarpentryCon held at University College Dublin. This event drew an audience of more than 110 people from right round the globe.

After a welcome from the CarpentryCon Task Force, the event kicked off with Valerie Aurora’s keynote, Focus on Allies, which taught us all some new strategies to support diversity and inclusion. As James Baker tweeted, “I didn’t expect #CarpentryCon2018 to start with a keynote on inclusion and diversity and targets and ally skills, but it sets the scene beautifully: not just “We have a CoC” and move on, but an hour on how we can understand, improve, and action the CoC as a community.”

Pancakes on a Stick, and Other Things I Learned at UCLA

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Juliane Schneider

It was not my best teaching effort. But it was one of my best learning experiences, and for an instructor, that’s a maybe selfish but definitely great outcome. For me.

I learned that the UCLA campus is truly gorgeous, and their campus catering serves delicious coffee and pastries. I learned that engaged learners can save you. I learned that these people were so into the workshop that most of them showed up for the entire Friday - a Friday before a three-day holiday weekend, possibly the best altmetric ever for interest in a workshop. I also learned about the mechanics of advanced whiteboard technology (wheels).

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.

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.

All Carpentries Mailing Lists now moved to TopicBox

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

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

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

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

Calling for Responses to our Long-Term Survey

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

Calling all learners! If you’ve taken a Software, Data, or Library Carpentry workshop in the past six months, I want to hear from you!

I would like to know what has transpired in your work and career since you completed that workshop. Have you changed what you do? Begun to work more efficiently? Passed on skills to others? Or perhaps you have gone on to learn other things, or to learn more about the skills you picked up.

Executive Council 1st 2018 Tertile Report

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

May 2018 is almost over and The Carpentries Executive Council wants to provide a brief report of their activities during the first four months of 2018. We are slowly getting to know each other, our role as the Executive Council and what it means that we now are a single organisation.

Executive Council members are listed on the Governance page where you can also find links to the minutes of the Executive Council monthly meetings.

Have your say

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Belinda Weaver

The Library Carpentry governance group has created a governance repository on GitHub to list members, meeting minutes, and other things relevant to the future of Library Carpentry.

See the minutes of our May meeting.

The group meets monthly on the second Monday/Tuesday of the month (date and time depending on time zones).

Asking for your input

We want to deal with issues of relevance to this community. Feel free to suggest agenda items on our governance call etherpad.

Social Sciences Lessons Published!

Thu, 17 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to announce the initial release of a Data Carpentry Social Sciences Curriculum. This is the first Data Carpentry Curriculum to be released targeted towards researchers outside of the life sciences and provides an opportunity to reach out to new communities.

Peter Smyth has assembled the initial content for these lessons with the guidance of Rachel Gibson, Professor of Political Science at the Cathie Marsh Institute of Social Research, University of Manchester, UK. It was polished during the April 2018 Bug BBQ, and the finishing was done by the lesson Maintainers in coordination with Carpentries staff.

Library Carpentry Hackathon a Great Success

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

By Chris Erdmann and Belinda Weaver

Library Carpentry ran a two-day hackathon over 10-11 May as part of the annual Mozilla Global Sprint.

This was the third hackathon run by the worldwide Library Carpentry community. As ever, it was a great success, pulling in a number of people new to this community. Sprint participants from Melbourne had attended their first-ever Library Carpentry workshop only a week before.

Library Carpentry Hackathon a Great Success

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Library Carpentry ran a two-day hackathon over 10-11 May as part of the annual Mozilla Global Sprint.

This was the third hackathon run by the worldwide Library Carpentry community. As ever, it was a great success, pulling in a number of people new to this community. Sprint participants from Melbourne had attended their first ever Library Carpentry workshop only a week before.

Pre-sprint, all the repositories formerly housed in data-lessons were moved over to the new Library Carpentry organisation on GitHub.

Rethinking the Lesson Pipeline

Tue, 15 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If you had a look at CarpentryCon’s program, you might know that I will be facilitating two sessions: “Contributing on GitHub” on Wednesday, 30 May and “Bring and Build Your Own Lesson ‘Carpentries-style’” on Friday, 1 June. During the process to organise both sessions, I have ben thinking a lot of what we could improve in the way that we write our lessons. One of the things that I know that annoys many of the maintainers is the fact that they need to copy and paste the output of each command. RStudio has been work in a new project called reticulate that “enables easy interoperabilty between Python and R chunks” and in this process they have made it much easier to use Python from R Markdown.

Library Carpentry at The University of Melbourne

Fri, 11 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Post by Belinda Weaver.

Peter Neish and I taught a one-day Library Carpentry workshop to around 24 library staff at the University of Melbourne on 4 May.

We covered jargon busting, regular expressions for pattern matching, the Unix shell, and OpenRefine. This was a fairly ambitious program for a single day, but we managed to get through it, losing only a little skin as we tore through the shell lesson. Things went a little off the rails when the main projector started switching on and off randomly. This resulted in a total rearrangement of the room with a subsequent loss of visibility for some learners.

The Carpentries Programmatic Assessment

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

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

Book Review: Teaching What You Don't Know

Sun, 29 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A review of Teaching What You Do Not Know by Therese Huston

With such an intriguing premise and promise, how could I fail to pause over Therese Huston’s Teaching What You Don’t Know? I have found myself in this situation several times in the past, either through hubris or bureaucracy, and the hopeful existence of a manual to smooth my way was too much to pass up. Huston presents a practical survey of the reality of teaching a subject in which one is not an expert, as well as a number of strategies for mitigating classroom disarray and providing a solid learning experience for students.

An extended Data Carpentry Workshop over 7 weeks instead of 2 days

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Background

The UF R Users Group was formed in January 2017, and since then we’ve been running a weekly “UF R Meetup”: A two-hour session consists of a 30 to 60 minute presentation/tutorials followed by an “open lab” session. The meetup is meant to be a casual, informal opportunity to learn as a community, and seek face-to-face advice.

By the end of the second semester of running the meetup, we had identified a couple of issues:

April 2018 Bug BBQ Summary

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

On 12-13 April, The Carpentries hosted our first joint Bug BBQ. The main objective of this event was to get the lessons for the Geospatial and Social Sciences Data Carpentry curricula ready for release. We also invited contributions to all Software and Data Carpentry lessons during this time. A Bug BBQ is a global, distributed event, where the community gathers to work collaboratively on our lessons. The combination of having dedicated time to look at the lessons and many fresh sets of eyes to examine their contents makes these events excellent for moving new lessons forward. For older lessons, it is a good opportunity to go through any old issues and pull requests, especially ones that require some extra thinking, or that propose significant changes to the lesson.

Building Carpentries Engagement in Your Communities

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

One of the things I enjoy most about The Carpentries is that the people who volunteer their time in so many ways come from so many different backgrounds and fields. Not only are there scientists and programmers from every discipline you can think of, but educators and librarians and people who have a passion for teaching and learning and inclusivity and the power of community.

The building of an organization like this takes time and dedication from many quarters, but produces something robust and powerful. You can help build this community further and spread the word to others about how to get involved by holding a community-building workshop at one of the conferences or events you regularly attend. It’s great fun, and you get to meet lots of people who are interested in The Carpentries and who you can help introduce to the myriad ways they can get involved. There are often spaces and times set aside at these events for people to suggest workshops to lead. Or the workshops can even be done in a less formal way by finding a group that wants to participate and grabbing a corner of the hotel bar during some conference downtime or a networking break.

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.

Poster, Program, Participation

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon 2018 in Dublin is little more than a month away! This inaugural community-building and networking event for The Carpentries should be a major highlight of the year, with a great program of speakers and workshops to keep people engaged. CarpentryCon will run from 30 May to 1 June, 2018.

To help people get excited about what is coming, the Task Force are running a daily Twitter countdown through the dedicated CarpentryCon feed. You can also join an upcoming community call where members of the Task Force will answer any questions you might have. There will be two calls you can join, both on 3 or 4 May, depending on your time zone.

Updates on the new Geospatial and Social Sciences lessons

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In December 2017, we made a call for community members to contribute to two new sets of Data Carpentry lessons, targeted towards researchers working with geospatial data or survey data for the social sciences.

There was overwhelming interest from the community in working to develop and publish these two curricula. In the past few months, six new Maintainers for the Geospatial lessons, and five new Maintainers for the Social Sciences lessons have gone through Maintainer onboarding and begun to work with their lessons. Please join our community in welcoming Chris Prener, Geoff LaFlair, Peter Smyth, Juan Fung, Stephen Childs, Tyson Swetnam, Lauren O’Brien, Janani Selvaraj, and Lachlan Deer as new Maintainers on these lessons (Chris Prener and Juan Fung will serve as Maintainers for both the Geospatial and the Social Sciences lessons), as well as Leah Wasser and Joseph Stachelek, who will be continuing on as Maintainers for the Geospatial lessons.

Running workshops on limited budgets

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Anelda van der Walt and co-host Toby Hodges ran the first themed discussion session in March to brainstorm ideas about running workshops with little to no funding. Attendees from Australia, the US, the UK, and Canada joined to hear and contribute ideas.

Existing Funding Models

The Brisbane model is to use Eventbrite to charge a low fee (around AUD $60) for attendance at workshops. This has a few benefits - waitlists can be managed, the booking widget appears in the workshop website, fees can be easily refunded up to a week before the workshop, and attendance is generally good because people have paid out of their own pockets or have been sponsored by their school to come. The fee covers the costs of room hire and the fairly lavish morning and afternoon teas that keep people from wandering off in search of sustenance during breaks. The Brisbane instructor pool is fairly large so there is no need to fly people in, which means we don’t have to factor in those costs. One drawback is having to pay the catering and room hire costs up-front by personal credit card as the Eventbrite payout comes only after the workshop. This is a break-even charge - we could charge more and return some money to The Carpentries, but our main interest is in keeping costs low.

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.

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.

Volunteering for CarpentryCon 2018

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The first inaugural CarpentryCon is less than 50 days away! The taskforce is diligently working to make sure all t’s are crossed and I’s are dotted to ensure that the Community enjoys a wonderful un-conference. While doing so, we have realized that we need one more thing…YOU!!!

Have you had a desire to get involved with the planning of CarpentryCon and did not have the time? Or maybe, you felt as though you did not know where you could be most valued? Or maybe, you thought the taskforce had everything under control and did not need your help?

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

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.

Developing GitHub labels for The Carpentries lessons

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In November and December of 2017, we conducted a series of interviews with lesson Maintainers. You can read the summary and see a link to the full report on this blog post. A major theme that emerged from the interviews was that the Maintainers’ jobs were sometimes difficult because it was not always clear what was expected from them or how much authority they have on deciding what can be changed in the content of the lessons. To begin to address these issues, we developed an onboarding for new Maintainers to clarify the role and responsibilities of Maintainers. We also created Curriculum Advisory Committees for the different curricula, to offer high-level guidance on lesson structure and technology choices.

How to be involved in the Bug BBQ?

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Remind me…

When is the Bug BBQ?

It starts on April 12th, 9am Eastern (US) and ends on April 13th, 5pm Pacific (US) (click on the links to see these dates and times for your timezone).

What is the Bug BBQ? Why are we doing one?

You can read more about this in the announcement post.

What is the website with all the info?

https://carpentries.github.io/2018-04-bug-bbq/

I want to contribute to the lessons during the Bug BBQ!

We created a guide that outlines how to contribute to the Bug BBQ. There are many ways to get involved, the issues to address are as varied as the skills they require, and the time it takes to fix them.

Mentoring Groups Open for Multiple Timezones

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Did you miss the deadline to join a mentoring group? Do not fear, there are still openings for mentees to join groups in the following timezones:

UTC+2

UTC+1

UTC+8

UTC+11

To join, fill out the mentoring application.

Mentoring groups are beneficial to participants because group members are able to focus on specific goals, including teaching their first workshop and developing new lesson contribution material. Being a part of a group that addresses something important to you is both powerful and enjoyable. You do not want to miss out on The Carpentries mentoring opportunities. Join a mentoring group today!

Mentoring Groups Open for Multiple Timezones

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website Did you miss the deadline to join a mentoring group? Do not fear, there are still openings for mentees to join groups in the following timezones:

UTC+2

UTC+1

UTC+8

UTC+11

To join, fill out this application.

Mentoring groups are beneficial to participants because group members are able to focus on specific goals, including teaching their first workshop and developing new lesson contribution material. Being a part of a group that addresses something important to you is both powerful and enjoyable. You do not want to miss out on the Carpentries mentoring opportunities. Join a mentoring group today!

How to be involved in the Bug BBQ?

Tue, 03 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Remind me…

When is the Bug BBQ?

It starts on April 12th, 9am Eastern (US) and ends on April 13th, 5pm Pacific (US) (click on the links to see these dates and times for your timezone).

What is the Bug BBQ? Why are we doing one?

You can read more about this in the announcement post.

What is the website with all the info?

https://carpentries.github.io/2018-04-bug-bbq/

DC Genomics Workshop, UC Davis, January 2018

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

From January 24-25 (Thursday and Friday) we held a Data Carpentry Genomics workshop at UC Davis, led by Sue McClatchy. This was a “sold out” workshop, which filled up about a day after the registration went live. This indicates to us that we should host it again!

Overall, it was a great workshop. The learning workflow included:

Data organization and management -> Introduction to the shell -> Downloading sequencing data files -> QC (fastqc and trimming) -> Assembly -> Variant calling

Software Carpentry: Considering the Future

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

When Software Carpentry became part of the merged Carpentries this January, outgoing Software Carpentry steering committee members Rayna Harris and Christina Koch were tasked with continuing the work of the steering committee. For the past several weeks, we’ve been working together with a small group to determine what Software Carpentry needs as a sub-community to grow and thrive in the future, and we have identified two primary goals.

One first goal is a restatement of Software Carpentry’s mission. The Carpentries are growing by leaps and bounds, so this seems like a timely moment to stop and think about what Software Carpentry is doing as a branch of The Carpentries and why. This exploration of mission and identity isn’t just so we can have a nice tagline, but to provide direction and a reference point for future decisions that impact the community.

Who Belongs at CarpentryCon 2018? You Do!

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

CarpentryCon 2018 will be the key community building event in The Carpentries’ annual calendar. To be held in Dublin from 30 May - 1 June, 2018, CarpentryCon will be three action-packed days of skill ups, breakout sessions, talks, social events (there will be a conference dinner), and workshops.

Who do we want to see there?

YOU!

Grad student? Tick.

Post-doc? Tick.

Working in industry? Tick.

Project or lab leader? Tick.

Webinar with Rochelle Tractenberg: Debrief

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On February 2, the Assessment Network held a well-attended webinar with Rochelle Tractenberg. Dr. Tractenberg holds two PhDs, one in Cognitive Sciences and the other in Statistics, and directs the Collaborative for Research on Outcomes and Metrics at Georgetown University, where she is a tenured professor in the Department of Neurology. It was a great privilege for our community to be able to engage in a conversation with her and to learn from her expertise.

Webinar with Rochelle Tractenberg: Debrief

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

On February 2, the Assessment Network held a well-attended webinar with Rochelle Tractenberg. Dr. Tractenberg holds two PhDs, one in Cognitive Sciences and the other in Statistics, and directs the Collaborative for Research on Outcomes and Metrics at Georgetown University, where she is a tenured professor in the Department of Neurology. It was a great privilege for our community to be able to engage in a conversation with her and to learn from her expertise.

Welcome to New Trainers

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are excited to welcome seventeen newly badged Trainers to our community. The group recently finished their program with Karen Word and are now certified to teach new Carpentry Instructors.

Join us in welcoming Tania Allard, Anne C. Axel, Mik Black, Murray Cadzow, Mesfin Diro, Caroline Fadeke Ajilogba, Anne Fouilloux, Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran, Claire Hardgrove, Toby Hodges, SherAaron Hurt, Senzo Mpungose, David Perez-Suarez, Juliane Schneider, Nicholas Tierney, Jessica Upani, Elizabeth Williams.

Welcome to New Trainers

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are excited to welcome seventeen newly badged Trainers to our community. The group recently finished their program with Karen Word and are now certified to teach new Carpentry Instructors.

Join us in welcoming Tania Allard, Anne C. Axel, Mik Black, Murray Cadzow, Mesfin Diro, Caroline Fadeke Ajilogba, Anne Fouilloux, Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran, Claire Hardgrove, Toby Hodges, SherAaron Hurt, Senzo Mpungose, David Perez-Suarez, Juliane Schneider, Nicholas Tierney, Jessica Upani, Elizabeth Williams.

Revival of the African Task Force

Tue, 13 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the past five years, the Carpentries have gained considerable traction in Africa. Since the first online instructor training in 2015, more than 100 African-based instructors have been trained of which more than 40 had qualified. An estimated 50 workshops have taken place on the continent in countries including South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mauritius, Kenya, Ghana, Gabon, and Ethiopia. More than 15 instructors from other continents have visited the continent to join local instructors in building community and teaching workshops. These include instructors from the UK, several states in the USA, Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.

Carpentries for Latin America

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The idea of translating Carpentries’ lessons into Spanish and other languages is not new [1, 2, 3]. At the end of 2017, a group of volunteers (see Initial Group members below) embarked on the goal of making Spanish translations a reality. We are very happy that many more volunteers joined us in this effort. We did it, and today we can make the fruit of these months of work known to the entire community!

Carpentries para Latinoamerica

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

La idea de traducir las lecciones de Carpentry al español y otros lenguajes no es nueva [1, 2, 3]. A finales del 2017, un grupo de voluntarios (ver Grupo inicial) nos embarcamos en la meta de hacer las traducciones al español una realidad. Estamos muy felices de que muchas más voluntarias y voluntarios se nos han unido en este esfuerzo y hoy podemos dar a conocer el fruto de estos meses de trabajo a toda la comunidad. ¡Lo logramos!

Mentoring Groups are Back!

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In February, we held our mentoring groups virtual showcase, and community members engaged with mentors and mentees virtually to hear about the accomplishments they made over the course of their mentoring experience. Not only were mentees able to finish their instructor checkout tasks and contribute to the CarpentryCon taskforce, mentors started local communities and reconnected with community members globally.

You’ve expressed to us and each other the benefits these mentoring groups have had on your growth in and outside of the Carpentries. You are building powerful, and meaningful connections by developing peer communities. Because of that, we want to continue to support these groups, and give more community members the opportunity to join, either as a mentor, or a mentee.

Mentoring Groups are Back!

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In February, we held our mentoring groups virtual showcase, and community members engaged with mentors and mentees virtually to hear about the accomplishments they made over the course of their mentoring experience. Not only were mentees able to finish their instructor checkout tasks and contribute to the CarpentryCon taskforce, mentors started local communities and reconnected with community members globally.

You’ve expressed to us and each other the benefits these mentoring groups have had on your growth in and outside of the Carpentries. You are building powerful, and meaningful connections by developing peer communities. Because of that, we want to continue to support these groups, and give more community members the opportunity to join, either as a mentor, or a mentee.

Announcing the first joint Carpentries Bug BBQ

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Bug BBQ is a Carpentry-wide event to improve all our lessons – both existing Software and Data Carpentry lessons, and new releases. We welcome contributions from the Community on all of our lessons. If you want to contribute, but you are not sure where to start, head over to the Bug BBQ website where we will highlight how to get involved.

The Carpentries are preparing to publish the Social Sciences and the Geospatial Data Carpentry curricula on Zenodo. The Social Science Lessons will be published in April, and the Geospatial Lessons in June. This will be the first publication for these lessons. We regularly publish our lessons (SWC, DC) 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.

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.
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.

Announcing the first joint Carpentries Bug BBQ

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Bug BBQ is a Carpentry-wide event to improve all our lessons – both existing Software and Data Carpentry lessons, and new releases. We welcome contributions from the Community on all of our lessons. If you want to contribute, but you are not sure where to start, head over to the Bug BBQ website where we will highlight how to get involved.

The Carpentries are preparing to publish the Social Sciences and the Geospatial Data Carpentry curricula on Zenodo. The Social Science Lessons will be published in April, and the Geospatial Lessons in June. This will be the first publication for these lessons. We regularly publish our lessons (SWC, DC) 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.

Call for Contributions: Data Carpentry Ecology and Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committees

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In mid-2017, Data Carpentry piloted a Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Genomics curriculum. The goals for this committee were to provide general oversight, vision, and leadership for the full Genomics lesson stack, to ensure that the lessons stay up-to-date with existing best practices in the field, and to continue to serve the needs of genomics practitioners attending our workshops. Genomics Curriculum Advisors met after the initial Genomics lesson publication in November to discuss proposed structural and major topical changes to the lessons and will be helping the Genomics Maintainer team to make decisions about these changes as we prepare for a second release this year.

First African Carpentries Instructor Training of 2018.

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 21-23 February 2018, the fourth South African Carpentries instructor training for African based Instructors took place in Kleinmond, Western Cape. The workshop was funded through the Rural Campuses Connection Project Phase II (RCCPII) Tertiary. The lead Trainer, Erin Becker, is the Associate Director of The Carpentries and currently based near San Francisco, California. Other Trainers included Senzo Mpungose, Scientific Data Center and Infrastructure Manager for Mathematical Sciences at WITS, Caroline Ajilogba, a Postdoctoral Researcher from the Microbial Biotechnology group, NWU Mafikeng Campus, and Martin Dreyer, an eResearch support consultant at NWU IT.

Call for Contributions: Data Carpentry Ecology and Software Carpentry Curriculum Advisory Committees

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In mid-2017, Data Carpentry piloted a Curriculum Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Genomics curriculum. The goals for this committee were to provide general oversight, vision, and leadership for the full Genomics lesson stack, to ensure that the lessons stay up-to-date with existing best practices in the field, and to continue to serve the needs of genomics practitioners attending our workshops. Genomics Curriculum Advisors met after the initial Genomics lesson publication in November to discuss proposed structural and major topical changes to the lessons and will be helping the Genomics Maintainer team to make decisions about these changes as we prepare for a second release this year.

CarpentryCon - Hotel Accommodation Options

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hotel Accommodation for CarpentryCon 2018

We have two hotel options for you for CarpentryCon 2018. Both hotels are offering us a special CarpentryCon rate.

The special rates will be valid for the period of the event and available until the cut-off date; anyone looking to book after that date will be offered the best available rate at the time.

So please book before 18 April if you want to lock in the cheaper rate.

Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee 2018 February meeting

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 14 February 2018 at 18:00 UTC+0, the Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee had their 2018 February meeting. This post will cover the topics discussed and their resolutions.

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merge

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry have merged. Their Executive Council was elected, they have a new fiscal sponsor and a new logo. Also, they have hired Dr. François Michonneau to lead curriculum development efforts.

State of the State: Instructor Checkout

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This blog post is the second in a series examining the roles and contributions of the different parts of the Carpentry community. In case you missed it - read the first post in this series, about Maintainers.

Carpentry Instructors are the core of our community. Without Instructors, there would be no workshops. Because of the vital role that Instructors play in advancing the Carpentry mission, we as a community take preparing Instructors very seriously. Before becoming certified Instructors, trainees must show familiarity with our curriculum, demonstrate their teaching skills (with a focus on the Carpentry pedagogical model), and interact with the broader Carpentry community. Software Carpentry Instructors also need to demonstrate familiarity with Git and GitHub.

State of the State: Instructor Checkout

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

This blog post is the second in a series examining the roles and contributions of the different parts of the Carpentry community. In case you missed it - read the first post in this series, about Maintainers.

Carpentry Instructors are the core of our community. Without Instructors, there would be no workshops. Because of the vital role that Instructors play in advancing the Carpentry mission, we as a community take preparing Instructors very seriously. Before becoming certified Instructors, trainees must show familiarity with our curriculum, demonstrate their teaching skills (with a focus on the Carpentry pedagogical model), and interact with the broader Carpentry community. Software Carpentry Instructors also need to demonstrate familiarity with Git and GitHub.

Library Carpentry Governance - An Update

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Eight of us from Australia, the UK, the US, Canada, and South Africa met last week via zoom to discuss taking the Library Carpentry project forward.

We discussed the creation of a new website to replace this one, talked about what constitutes a Library Carpentry workshop, discussed who can teach the material, and and started thinking about what kind of governance structure we need to lead the work from now on. There was an update on the status of the IMLS-funded Library Carpentry Coordinator role to be based at CDL.

Mentoring Groups Showcase their Accomplishments

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We just finished our second round of mentoring groups and had an amazing showcase of their work and ideas. In this round, we were more specific and focused on multiple topic areas. There were groups on community building, lesson maintenance, and preparing for instructor checkout.

The feedback and outcomes were great! Participants were able to focus on specific goals, including teaching their first workshop and developing new lesson contribution material. Being part of a group that addressed something important to them, (e.g. developing new communities in Japan and Singapore), made the mentoring groups powerful and enjoyable.

Mentoring Groups Showcase their Accomplishments

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website We just finished our second round of mentoring groups and had an amazing showcase of their work and ideas. In this round, we were more specific and focused on multiple topic areas. There were groups on community building, lesson maintenance, and preparing for instructor checkout.

The feedback and outcomes were great! Participants were able to focus on specific goals, including teaching their first workshop and developing new lesson contribution material. Being a part of a group that addressed something important to them, (ex. developing communities in Japan and Singapore), made the mentoring groups powerful and enjoyable.

My Favorite Tool - Docker

Thu, 15 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What kind of tool is it?

Docker is a virtualization tool.

Why I like it

I use Docker every day - it’s the one piece of software that has changed the way I work in recent years. There are many other approaches to virtualisation but its versatility and ubiquity is compelling. I use it for many purposes - for rapidly obtaining and executing other open source software, for providing a predictable environment in which to test code that I’ve written, and for building and deploying my own and third-party applications. We use it in the RSE team at Imperial College to ensure that others can rapidly install and evaluate our work.

Valerie Aurora to Keynote at CarpentryCon 2018

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are excited to announce that Valerie Aurora will be one of four keynote speakers at this May’s CarpentryCon in Dublin.

Valerie is a software engineer turned diversity and inclusion consultant.

We want CarpentryCon 2018 to be a truly global, diverse and inclusive event, which is why we are so happy that Valerie has accepted our offer to speak there.

Valerie Aurora to Keynote at CarpentryCon 2018

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are excited to announce that Valerie Aurora will be one of four keynote speakers at this May’s CarpentryCon in Dublin.

Valerie is a software engineer turned diversity and inclusion consultant.

We want CarpentryCon 2018 to be a truly global, diverse and inclusive event, which is why we are so happy that Valerie has accepted our offer to speak there.

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.

Making the Case for CarpentryCon

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Getting a PhD is, was or will be a major career milestone for many in our community.

Yet getting a PhD, momentous as that achievement is, is really just the first step on the career ladder. Employers increasingly want other skills as well.

In all kinds of surveys, the same key skills keep popping up:

Communication skills. Teamwork. Problem solving. Ethical and intercultural understanding. Leadership. Critical thinking.

Carpentry Champions Call

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

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

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

Unveiling Our New Logo

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It must be the worst-kept secret in cyberspace - that the Carpentries have a new logo.

Now that Software and Data Carpentry have merged, we wanted a new logo to celebrate our coming together as the Carpentries, and to give that project its own distinct identity.

The new logo retains a ‘Carpentry’ feel - at the basic level, it represents a wrench around a hexagonal bolt. Yet it also conveys a sense of exhilaration and celebration - that magic moment when you ‘get’ something and your arms shoot up in celebration. There are many such ‘aha!’ moments in Carpentries’ workshops, so it is fitting that our logo represent not just the hard work of learning (the wrench) but the satisfaction of achievement and mastery that we gain (the ‘Yay!’).

Unveiling the Carpentries Logo

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Now that Software and Data Carpentry have merged, we wanted a new logo to celebrate our coming together as the Carpentries, and to give that project its own distinct identity.

The new logo retains a ‘Carpentry’ feel - at the basic level, it represents a wrench around a hexagonal bolt. Yet it also conveys a sense of exhilaration and celebration - that magic moment when you ‘get’ something and your arms shoot up in celebration. There are many such ‘aha!’ moments in Carpentries’ workshops, so it is fitting that our logo represent not just the hard work of learning (the wrench) but the satisfaction of achievement and mastery that we gain (the ‘Yay!’).

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.

State of the State: Carpentry Maintainers

Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

All of the great work that we do as The Carpentries is dependent on the hard work and creativity of our community of volunteers. Each of you plays a vital role in helping us fulfill our mission of spreading data skills and computational literacy to researchers and other professionals worldwide. Within our Carpentry community, there are a number of subcommunities of like-minded folks carrying out particular aspects of the Carpentry mission. This blog post is the first in a series focusing on one of our sub-communities - the Maintainers.

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.

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.

Be our Advocate

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Dear members of our community, we need your help.

Most of you probably know that our inaugural CarpentryCon will take place from 30 May - 1 June, 2018 at University College Dublin.

We would now like to ask for your help in helping us find sponsors to support this event.

We have written blog posts that lay out the case for support from commercial enterprises as well as from support from foundations and other grant-making bodies.

Foundations and Funders: Why Should You Sponsor CarpentryCon 2018?

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

CarpentryCon 2018 planning is now well underway. We have chosen a venue and a date, identified keynote speakers, and roughed out a program, but we are still missing one vital piece:

SPONSORS!

Why sponsor CarpentryCon?

CarpentryCon 2018 will teach the practical skills people need to lead 21st century research within academia and industry. By supporting us, you will help develop that next generation of research leaders, people who will attend CarpentryCon to develop the skills needed to take research forward.

Why Should You Sponsor CarpentryCon 2018?

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The inaugural CarpentryCon 2018 will take place on 30 May-1 June at University College Dublin.

Planning is now well underway. We have chosen a venue and a date, identified keynote speakers, and roughed out a program, but we are still missing one vital piece:

SPONSORS!

Why sponsor CarpentryCon?

CarpentryCon 2018 will teach the practical skills people need to lead 21st century research within academia and industry.

Workshop Template Enhancement Proposal

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the last couple of years, many emails and issues on GitHub requested moving the setup instructions in the Workshop Template to a separate page for valid reasons. To provide some reference, see swcarpentry/DEPRECATED-bc#415, swcarpentry/DEPRECATED-bc#729, swcarpentry/workshop-template#194 and swcarpentry/workshop-template#408.

What did we discover during those years and trials?

Finding the balance to accommodate long time and advanced instructors, novice or intermediate instructors and learners is as hard as carrying a watermelon with a tea spoon. So why are we having this discussion again?

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.

How do instructors get placed at workshops?

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

First, it is not first come, first served.

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

My Favorite Tool - Midnight Commander

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What kind of tool is it?

A text editor and file manager.

Why I like it

My favourite tool is Midnight Commander and its text editor (which also works as a standalone tool) Mcedit. These two utilities are powerful yet easy to use. They both run on the command line in Unix operating systems, but instead of typing commands, they work mostly by using menus and selecting things with arrow keys or a mouse. This makes them a kind of halfway house between a traditional command line and a GUI utility and in my opinion they bring together the best of both worlds.

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.

The Centrality of the Code of Conduct

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This is the first in a series of posts about Carpentries’ teaching practices. Subsequent posts will cover the other practices - live coding, sticky notes, helpers, challenges, etherpads - that make Carpentries’ workshops the success that they are.

I gave a talk recently for the Australian National Data Service on ’teaching the Carpentries way’. Originally I planned to cover six reasons why our workshops are effective, but ended up covering thirteen, with the thirteenth being the Carpentries’ Code of Conduct.

The Centrality of the Code of Conduct

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

This is the first in a series of posts about Carpentries’ teaching practices. Subsequent posts will cover the other practices - live coding, sticky notes, helpers, challenges, etherpads - that make Carpentries’ workshops the success that they are.

I gave a talk recently for the Australian National Data Service on ’teaching the Carpentries way’. Originally I planned to cover six reasons why our workshops are effective, but ended up covering thirteen, with the thirteenth being the Carpentries’ Code of Conduct.

Teaching Statistics in the 21st Century

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The late 1980s saw a wave of new undergraduate programs launched in computational physics, as the advent of affordable workstations and PCs made the power to compute and simulate more accessible. A decade later, though, many of those programs had drastically scaled back their ambitions or quietly wound down. The problem wasn’t the programming: the problem was that whenever a curriculum is designed as “X plus some Y”, it’s the Y that gets cut when time runs short, budgets are squeezed, or tough hiring decisions need to be made. “Computational physics” became “the physics we’ve always taught, but with assignments on computers” and then just “the physics we’ve always taught”.

Fourteen and Counting - People's Favorite Tools

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thank you to all the people who have sent in short posts about their favourite tools. We are up to fourteen now, and the variety of tools is great to see. Finding out what other people use - and possibly more importantly - why they use it, and for what, is a great shortcut for researchers. There are a bewildering number of research tools around. Getting a tip from someone in your discipline, or from someone who is doing a similar task to you, can really help.

My Favorite Tool - Twitter

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Why do I like Twitter?

At the risk of sounding like a shallow person with a short attention span, Twitter really is a favourite of mine. I tweet as cloudaus.

It’s not really Twitter’s fault that people use it for shameless self-promotion, for marketing, or for fighting culture wars. That side of it has probably turned many people off, which is a shame because Twitter has so many practical uses.

A Successful 2nd RSE Conference

Wed, 03 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The second RSE conference took place on the 7th and 8th of September 2017 at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI). There were over 200 attendees, 40 talks, 15 workshops, 3 keynote talks, one of which was given by our very own head honcho Mike Croucher (slides here), and geeky chats galore.

My Favorite Tool - QGIS

Tue, 02 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is an open source Geographic Information System.

QGIS is capable of advanced analysis and cartography, but I don’t use it for that.

In my research in hydrodynamic modelling, I deal with a lot of spatial data - coastlines, bathymetry, and the like - and this will eventually be processed and plotted using R, MATLAB or Python.

But if I’ve received a file and simply want to take a quick look at it, or if I want to quickly compare two files that use different coordinate systems and see if things line up, most of the time I can throw the file at QGIS and it will show it to me with a few clicks. This approach lacks the reproducibility of a coded solution, but it’s an awful lot quicker for a throwaway visualisation.

My Favorite tool - A Coding Sandbox

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is repl.it, a ‘sandbox’ tool to help me test and refine Python code.

Why do I like it?

It is an online tool for testing/running code. It allows you to write and run code in a number of different languages, and see the results. No R support I’m afraid, but it does have Python (2 and 3), Ruby, Haskell, Go, JavaScript and many more.

A Week o' Carpentry

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Bringing the Carpentries to the Federal Reserve Board staff

I ran Technical Training for the Federal Reserve Board for over 20 years, designing and implementing training programs tailored to the Fed’s specific needs to ensure staff had the computer skills necessary to do their jobs.

When I started bringing in the Carpentry workshops, research assistants (RAs), who come to the Board on two-year appointments to work with economists, were the intended audience, but permanent staff, notably technology analysts (TAs) and others in the research divisions who support the RAs and economists, also signed up for these workshops. The Board, and the Federal Reserve System as a whole, is definitely dealing with big data, and employs economists, technology analysts, and research assistants to turn collected and procured data into knowledge.

Green Stickies for 2017: Report from the Happy Holidays Green Sticky Party Calls

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When Carpentries’ staff score a win, we call it a #greensticky. So for our final community calls for 2017, we hosted two Happy Holidays Green Sticky Parties to celebrate wins we have had this year. The calls highlighted successes, both personal ones, and wins for the wider community.

Among the pluses reported were:

The upcoming Data and Software Carpentry merger

Plans to bring Library Carpentry into the fold

Planning for our 2018 CarpentryCon event

Starting bi-lingual (English/Spanish) teaching demos

Getting ideas for starting a community from the Community Champions calls

Teaching a Software Carpentry workshop for the first time

Successfully using Carpentry-style teaching in an undergraduate programming course

Getting to meet community members in person

Tracy Teal said that calls like these are the #greensticky, and no-one disagreed.

Our 2017 Community Service Award winner: Anelda van der Walt

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are happy to honor Anelda van der Walt as our 2017 Community Service Award winner. We received seven independent nominations for Anelda this year, which is a testament to her commitment to both individual people and the broader community.

Starting from scratch, Anelda planted the tiny seed that has now become the phenomenal growth of Software and Data Carpentry in South Africa, not to mention its spread to an ever-growing list of other African countries, such as Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Gabon, Mauritius, and Ethiopia.

Our 2017 Community Service Award winner: Anelda van der Walt

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are happy to honor Anelda van der Walt as our 2017 Community Service Award winner. We received seven independent nominations for Anelda this year, which is a testament to her commitment to both individual people and the broader community.

Starting from scratch, Anelda planted the tiny seed that has now become the phenomenal growth of Software and Data Carpentry in South Africa, not to mention its spread to an ever-growing list of other African countries, such as Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Gabon, Mauritius, and Ethiopia.

Announcing the 2018 Executive Council for the Carpentries

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Voting in the election for community governance of the Carpentries (Executive Council, formerly named Steering Committee or Board of Directors) closed last week. Out of the 501 members eligible for voting, 147 ballots were cast (29% turnout).

We are pleased to announce the four newly elected members of the Executive Council:

Raniere Silva

Lex Nederbragt

Amy Hodge

Elizabeth Wickes

Raniere and Lex received the highest number of votes and will serve two year terms; Amy and Elizabeth will serve one year terms.

Announcing the 2018 Executive Council for the Carpentries

Tue, 12 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Voting in the election for community governance of the Carpentries (Executive Council, formerly named Steering Committee or Board of Directors) closed last week. Out of the 501 members eligible for voting, 147 ballots were cast (29% turnout).

We are pleased to announce the four newly elected members of the Executive Council:

Raniere Silva

Lex Nederbragt

Amy Hodge

Elizabeth Wickes

Raniere and Lex received the highest number of votes and will serve two year terms; Amy and Elizabeth will serve one year terms.

Challenges Assessing Data Science

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Assessment Network was established as a space for those working on assessment within the open source/research computing community to collaborate and share resources. During our quarterly meeting in November, we engaged one another in a conversation revolving around data science education. This meeting was organized and hosted online by Kari Jordan, and six community members attended.

First, we discussed the definitions of data scientist, data analyst, and data engineer; second, we worked in pairs on a set of questions about assessing data science education.

Challenges Assessing Data Science

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Assessment Network was established as a space for those working on assessment within the open source/research computing community to collaborate and share resources. During our quarterly meeting in November, we engaged one another in a conversation revolving around data science education. This meeting was organized and hosted online by Kari Jordan, and six community members attended.

First, we discussed the definitions of data scientist, data analyst, and data engineer; second, we worked in pairs on a set of questions about assessing data science education.

My Favorite Tool - Todoist

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is Todoist, a task manager.

Why do I like it?

Todoist is a cross-platform ’to-do’ tool. I went through many different ones before settling on Todoist a few years ago and I now use it to organize everything from my household chores, grocery shopping and gift ideas for family members to my many work projects and non-work projects (things I do that are work-related but not apart of my actual job).

Poster Competition Now Open

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Design a Promotional Poster for CarpentryCon 2018

The Carpentries are excited to announce our poster design competition where some lucky member of our community will win a free registration for CarpentryCon 2018.

Are there any artists out there who could design a fantastic poster? If so, we want to see your design!

The winning designer will take home some fantastic Carpentries swag and gain free registration to CarpentryCon 2018. This includes registration for the conference only. It does not include travel to and from Dublin.

When Do Workshops Work?

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Author: Karen R. Word

Contributors: Kari Jordan, Erin Becker, Jason Williams, Pamela Reynolds, Amy Hodge, Maxim Belkin, Ben Marwick, and Tracy Teal.

“Null effects of boot camps and short-format training for PhD students in life sciences” is the provocative title of a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Those of us who enthusiastically design and deliver short-format training promptly took note, then scratched our heads a bit. We waited a little for a response, wondering if one or more of the programs that participated in the study might step up to their own defense. Nothing happened. We thought about letting it go - we’ve got our own programs, with distinct goals, and our own assessment data, so maybe this broad-brush study isn’t so important. But … it keeps being raised. Someone will bring it up here and there, asking what we think about it. Whenever this paper comes up in conversation, its title certainly throws some weight around.

When Do Workshops Work? A Response to the 'Null Effects' paper from Feldon et al.

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Author: Karen R. Word

Contributors: Kari Jordan, Erin Becker, Jason Williams, Pamela Reynolds, Amy Hodge, Maxim Belkin, Ben Marwick, and Tracy Teal.

“Null effects of boot camps and short-format training for PhD students in life sciences” is the provocative title of a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Those of us who enthusiastically design and deliver short-format training promptly took note, then scratched our heads a bit. We waited a little for a response, wondering if one or more of the programs that participated in the study might step up to their own defense. Nothing happened. We thought about letting it go - we’ve got our own programs, with distinct goals, and our own assessment data, so maybe this broad-brush study isn’t so important. But … it keeps being raised. Someone will bring it up here and there, asking what we think about it. Whenever this paper comes up in conversation, its title certainly throws some weight around.

Call for Contributions: Geospatial and Social Sciences Lessons

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Data Carpentry community has published two full workshop curricula in 2017, both targeted towards researchers in the life sciences. We had our first lesson release for our Ecology lessons in May, followed by the release of the Genomics workshop materials in November.

Data Carpentry lessons are domain-specific, and targeted towards helping researchers in particular domains gain the skills they need to conduct their research efficiently and reproducibly. We’re excited to broaden our reach to researchers outside of the life sciences starting in mid-2018 with the release of curricula for working with Geospatial and Social Sciences data.

CarpentryCon 2018 - Website is Live!

Thu, 07 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are excited to announce that our website for CarpentryCon 2018 is live.

CarpentryCon 2018 will take place at University College Dublin from 30 May - 1 June, 2018, with the overarching theme of “Building Globally, Connecting Locally”.

The three-day event will focus on professional development, community building and networking, as we aim to help skill up the next generation of research leaders through a combination of talks, workshops and breakout sessions.

Celebrate the Wins of 2017: Join the year's final community call

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When Carpentries staff get a win, we call it a #greensticky. These are things to celebrate with a resounding ‘Yay!’

So we decided to turn our regular December community call (our last for the year) into a Happy Holidays GreenSticky Party.

2017 has been a BIG year for our community. We negotiated the Carpentries merger, got planning underway for 2018’s CarpentryCon, trained a whole bunch of new instructors and trainers, and restarted our mentoring groups - and of course a ton of workshops were taught all round the globe. As we wind down for the holidays, it is worth taking time out to think over the great moments of the year.

Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee 2017 November meeting

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 16 November 2017 at 15:00 UTC+0, the Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee had their 2017 November meeting. This post will cover the topics discussed and their resolutions.

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merger

With the merger in 2018, some Git repositories will be owned by a new GitHub organization. The Instructor Training course material has already been moved, you can now find it at http://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/. Date for the migration will be announced in 2018. Instructions for migrating the repository can be find here.

Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee 2017 November meeting

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

On 16 November 2017 at 15:00 UTC+0, the Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee had their 2017 November meeting. This post will cover the topics discussed and their resolutions.

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merger

With the merger in 2018, some Git repositories will be owned by a new GitHub organization. The Instructor Training course material has already been moved, you can now find it at http://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/. Date for the migration will be announced in 2018. Instructions for migrating the repository can be find here.

Open Con Berlin - Impressions

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Along with fellow Software Carpenters Rayna Harris and Paula Martinez, I attended OpenCon 2017 held over the weekend of 11-13 November, 2017 in Berlin. The conference was held in the Harnack Haus in Dahlem, the home of the Max Planck Society, where the friendly ghosts of Einstein, Heisenberg and other stellar scientists smiled on our endeavours to promote open access, open education and open data.

Upcoming Membership Webinar

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Organizational memberships are a great way to build your local Carpentries’ instructor community.

Members organizations can run Software and Data Carpentry workshops more often, and can organize workshops for specific communities within their institution. As part of our membership services, we provide members with instructor training and mentorship, and give you easy access to pre- and post-workshop assessment surveys. As your organization leverages their membership to grow your pool of experienced instructors, we seek to find opportunities to connect common needs across our membership.

satRday Cape Town 2018

Sun, 03 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

satRdays are community-led, regional conferences to support collaboration, networking and innovation within the R community.

satRdays are the brainchild of Stephanie Locke, and were inspired to a large extent by the success of SQLSaturdays. SQLSaturdays focus on developing technical knowledge around SQL Server and related technologies. The first SQLSaturday was held in 2007, and there are now well over 100 events across the globe.

Jessica Upani: Nomination for 2018 Steering Committee

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2018 Election : Jessica Upani

Who am I?

My name is Jessica Upani. I am Namibian and I am a high school teacher. I am also a 4th year Mathematics and Computer Science undergraduate student at the University of Namibia. I am an executive of the Python Namibia society. We run Python workshops, meetups and Conferences all over the country.

Previous involvement.

My involvement with the carpentries started in April 2016 when I was one the instructors that were trained by Aleksandra Pawlik in Potchefstroom, South Africa. I then continued with my training and became a certified Software Carpentry instructor on 7th July 2016. My final checkout was done by Greg Wilson. He gave me my qualification. I did not do this alone. I was mentored by David Perez-Suarez. Since then, I hosted and taught two workshops locally. We paired our first workshop with Bertie Seyffert from South Africa. I also had a chance to meet the new instructors that were trained in Cape Town, May 2017.

Community Building Catchup

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

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

OpenCon in Berlin - Impressions

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Along with fellow Software Carpenters Rayna Harris and Paula Martinez, I attended OpenCon 2017 held over the weekend of 11-13 November, 2017 in Berlin. The conference was held in the Harnack Haus in Dahlem, the home of the Max Planck Society, where the friendly ghosts of Einstein, Heisenberg and other stellar scientists smiled on our endeavours to promote open access, open education and open data.

People's Favorite Tools

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A big thank you to everyone who has responded so far to the call for short posts about their favourite tools.

So far we have had Paula Martinez on R, with Bianca Peterson enthusiastically seconding, Jeff Oliver sharing his love of Git and GitHub, Kellie Ottoboni talking up IPython, and Thomas Arildsen on how the Jupyter Notebook facilitates his teaching. Juliane Schneider weighed in on the wonders of OpenRefine. Clifton Franklund likes RStudio, while Francesco Montanari is a fan of emacs.

My Favorite Tool - Asking for Help

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is asking for help. You may not think of it as a tool, but it’s something I use frequently to solve a wide range of problems, so I think it qualifies. Whether it’s saying, “I don’t know what to do next – does anyone have any ideas?” when teaching, or cold-calling people to see if they’ll host a workshop, asking for help has probably done more for me than Emacs and version control combined.

My Favorite Tool: Rasterio

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Rasterio is a Python spatial data library that has changed the way I work with large spatial datasets.

Ever struggled to do calculations with big datasets in proprietary GIS software? Re-project your results to analyze relationships with other data?

Rasterio makes manipulating gridded spatial data (rasters) simple and brings these data into the Python ecosystem.

Want to do some preliminary analysis on a low-memory machine?

North West University Mafikeng Data Carpentry workshop

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry workshop, 1-3 November, 2017

Background/Introduction

Conducting the first Data Carpentry workshop by members of NWU Mafikeng campus and teaching my (Caroline Ajilogba) first workshop was a great task with support from NWU and our mentor, Anelda van der Walt. The support from the co-instructors Martin Dreyer (NWU Potchefstroom) and Amy Hodge (Stanford University), and from helper Bennett Kankuzi (NWU Mafikeng) was great. Other helpers from the R study group at Mafikeng’s NWU campus, like Olubukola Aremu and Ayansina Ayangbenro, were available to enhance the workshop.

Our Steering Committee Candidates

Sun, 26 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Eight people have nominated to serve on the 2018 Steering Committee of the new, merged Carpentries.

The nominees so far are:

Samantha Ahern (UK)

Martin Callaghan (UK)

Auriel Fournier (US)

Amy Hodge (US)

Lex Nederbragt (Norway)

Raniere Silva (Brazil, but currently in the UK)

Juan Steyn (South Africa)

Jessica Upani (Namibia)

Elizabeth Wickes (US)

There is still time to put your name forward. Nominations will close on 1 December.

Call for Applicants: Mentoring Subcommittee Co-Chair

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Dear Carpentries Community,

How would you like to work first-hand on developing our ever growing instructor pool? A Mentoring Subcommittee Co-Chair position has just opened!

The leader serving in this year-long position (December 2017- December 2018) will share duties with the co-chair of the mentoring subcommittee, with a workload averaging 1.5 hours/week.

The expectations of the mentoring co-chairs are to host the monthly mentoring subcommittee meetings, facilitate opportunities for building connections across our community to better serve our instructors, and to manage the weekly instructor discussion sessions hosted on this etherpad.

Genomics Lesson Release

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Thanks to a Herculean effort from our Maintainers, the long-awaited Data Carpentry Genomics lessons have now been published on Zenodo! These lessons were originally developed through a hackathon in 2014, and have gone through several major rounds of revision since then. We had an Issue Bonanza in August and a Bug BBQ in September, with contributions from dozens of community members.

These contributions were critical to transforming the initial lesson drafts into a polished version, ready for teaching by any Carpentry instructor with a Genomics background. As with our previous lesson release, every contributor is an author, so thank you to all who have been involved!

Meet the Candidates

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Eight nominations have come in so far for the 2018 Steering Committee of the new, merged Carpentries.

The nominees so far are:

Samantha Ahern

Martin Callaghan (UK)

Auriel Fournier (US)

Amy Hodge (US)

Lex Nederbragt (Norway)

Raniere Silva (Brazil, but currently in the UK)

Juan Steyn (South Africa)

Elizabeth Wickes (US)

There is still time to put your name forward. Nominations will close on 1 December.

16S Metagenomics Workshop based on Data Carpentry: successes and challenges

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We ran a 16S metagenomics workshop based on Data Carpentry materials at the North-West University, South Africa, from 24-27 October. A combination of lessons from Data Carpentry, as well as specific workflows for 16S data analysis, were used. We modified most of the lessons according to our main (critical) lesson’s dataset that we were using for 16S analysis. The following topics were covered: spreadsheet organization, shell, 16S analyses on HPC (using Shi7, NINJA and QIIME), R genomics and specific plots of 16S data in R. We extended the workshop to three full days to fit in all the lessons and decided on an additional half-day where attendees would have the opportunity to work on their own data. Twenty-three participants attended the whole workshop.

A Mentoring Subcommittee Co-Chair position has just opened!

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

How would you like to work first-hand on developing our ever growing instructor pool? A Mentoring Subcommittee Co-Chair position has just opened!

The leader serving in this year-long position (December 2017- December 2018) will share duties with the co-chair of the mentoring subcommittee, with a commitment averaging 1.5 hours/week.

The expectations of the mentoring subcommittee co-chairs are to host the monthly mentoring subcommittee meetings, facilitate opportunities for building connections across our community to better serve our instructors, and to manage the weekly instructor discussion sessions hosted on this etherpad.

Amy Hodge: Nomination for 2018 Steering Committee

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2018 Election : Amy Hodge

A Little About Me

Hi all! My name is Amy Hodge, and I work for Stanford University Libraries. I have a PhD from Yale in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and spent about 10 years working at science database companies, where I discovered the elegance of SQL and the perfect role for me in enabling people to do better science. Since my undergraduate days I’ve been involved in teaching, mentoring, and software training, and my involvement with the Carpentries is a natural extension of these activities and my desire to enable people to do better science.

Samantha Ahern: Steering Committee Nomination

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Samantha Ahern: Steering Committee Nomination

How am I involved with the Carpentries?

I have been involved with Software Carpentry for four years. I participated in a Bootcamp back in 2013 and since then have been a helper for a number of Bootcamps and have taught in three in total - two in the last year.

I am a very newly qualified Instructor, literally completing the sign-off tasks in the last few weeks, but have been involved in Education and this type of learning in particular for a long time.

Work first-hand on developing our ever growing instructor community

Mon, 20 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
How would you like to work first-hand on developing our ever growing instructor community? A Mentoring Subcommittee Co-Chair position has just opened!
The leader serving in this year-long position (December 2017- December 2018) will share duties with the co-chair of the mentoring subcommittee, with a commitment averaging 1.5 hours/week.

The expectations of the mentoring subcommittee co-chairs are to host the monthly mentoring subcommittee meetings, facilitate opportunities for building connections across our community to better serve our instructors, and to manage the weekly instructor discussion sessions hosted on this etherpad.

Martin Callaghan: Nomination for 2018 Steering Committee

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2018 Election: Martin Callaghan

So, who are you?

I’m Martin Callaghan and I’m a Research Computing Consultant (part research software engineer, part trainer, part consultant and part outreach) at the University of Leeds in the UK, where I provide programming and software development consultancy across a diverse research community, including the Arts and Social Sciences, for Cloud and High Performance Computing.

It’s an exciting job where I get to work with researchers to understand their research questions and support them in developing and selecting computational platforms, tools and applications to help them answer those questions.

Raniere Silva: Nomination for 2018 Steering Committee

Thu, 16 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Who am I?

My name is Raniere Silva. I’m a Brazilian who currently lives in Manchester, UK, where I work for the Software Sustainability Institute as a Community Officer and help run the Institute’s Fellowship Programme. The programme supports, among other activities, Carpentry workshops and this incredible community in the UK and beyond.

Previous Involvement

I discovered Software Carpentry in 2013 after reading this blog post, being redirected to it by this announcement. Months later, I joined the 6th round of instructor training along side Leszek Tarkowski, Michael Crusoe, Christina Koch, Mark Laufersweiler, Jonah Duckles and many other fabulous instructors that I would only meet in person years later.

Lex Nederbragt: Nomination for 2018 Steering Committee

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2018 Election: Nomination by Lex Nederbragt

Who am I?

My name is Lex Nederbragt. I am a bioinformatician (senior engineer) at the Institute of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Norway. I also have a 20% associate professor position at the Institute of Informatics at the University of Oslo. My research and teaching involve genomics, bioinformatics and programming for biologists.

Previous involvement with The Carpentries

I hosted the first Software Carpentry workshop at our university in 2012 (we were very fortunate to have Greg Wilson, one of the founders of Software Carpentry, teach the workshop himself!). I became a Software Carpentry instructor in 2013 and a Data Carpentry instructor in 2016. I have taught at numerous Software and Data Carpentry workshops, both in Oslo, in Norway and abroad. In 2016, I also became an Instructor Trainer and I have co-taught a couple of Instructor Training workshops since then. Together with Karen Lagesen, I started a ‘Carpentry’ initiative at the University of Oslo which now has grown to a dozen local instructors, and another dozen helpers, and many workshops, some full two-day, standard Software or Data Carpentry workshops, but increasingly half to one-day workshops teaching just one lesson of the Carpentries material.
I have contributed to the unix, git, python and make lesson, and this year, I became one of the maintainers of the Data Carpentry ‘Wrangling Genomics Data’ lesson.
Finally, I am very proud of having been one of the authors of the ‘Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing’ paper that was published earlier this year.

My Favourite Tool - Videoconferencing

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool: Videoconferencing

I know most of the blog posts so far in this series have been about the tools people use to enable them to conduct research. However, I feel quite strongly that the video conference systems that allow me to speak to other people have had the most profound impact on my development as a researcher and educator over the past three years.

Nominating for 2018 Steering Committee

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Three nominations have come in so far for the new 2018 Steering Committee of the merged Carpentries.

The nominations received are from Juan Steyn (South Africa), Auriel Fournier (US) and Elizabeth Wickes (US).

There is still time to put yours in - nominations close on 1 December. Here is all the information you need to nominate.

There will be a Meet the Candidates opportunity on our upcoming community calls on 16/17 November (date and time will vary, depending on time zones).

Elizabeth Wickes: Nomination for 2018 Steering Committee

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2018 Election: Nomination by Elizabeth Wickes

Who am I?

I’m Elizabeth Wickes and I work as a Lecturer with the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I began this position in mid-2017, and previously worked as a Data Curation Specialist for the University Library at UIUC for 2 years. I have my MSLIS, and worked for 5 years at Wolfram|Alpha before beginning my master’s program.

Auriel Fournier: Nomination for 2018 Steering Committee

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2018 Election: Auriel Fournier

I am excited for the opportunity to stand for election for the 2018 Steering Committee of The Carpentries.

About Me

I am currently a postdoctoral research associate at Mississippi State University, based out of the Coastal Research and Extension Office in Biloxi, MS on the Gulf Coast. I am part of the leadership of a large (>45 partner, 200 person) cooperative network which is using structured decision making to inform decision making about bird conservation in response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I received my PhD in Biology from the University of Arkansas in May 2017 and before that received a B.S. in Wildlife Ecology and Management from Michigan Technological University. I’m an avid gardener, crochet/knitter and lover of dogs.

CAB-Alliance Bioinformatics Workshop in Franceville, Gabon

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the past five years, researchers from the University of New Orleans (UNO) in the USA and the Université des Sciences et Techniques de Masuku (USTM), Franceville, Gabon and University of Buea (UB) - have been working closely together as part of a larger collaborative initiative to map patterns of genomic and phenotypic variation in rainforest species across central Africa. This international partnership known as the Central African Biodiversity (CAB) Alliance is made up of a number of institutions in the US, Africa and Europe and is primarily funded through the National Science Foundation’s Partnership in International Research and Education program.

Juan Steyn: Nomination for 2018 Steering Committee

Thu, 09 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2018 Election: Juan Steyn

Hi! I’m Juan Steyn, currently employed at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources as project manager. I’m an enabler at heart and I want to contribute and give back to the African and international Carpentry community. I especially want to help ensure that the core values of the Carpentries get transferred and integrated into how our workshops are conducted within new loci. Africa has A LOT of potential and I would like to play my part to enable and catalyze this potential into action.

Running effective online meetings with Zoom (or Google Hangouts, or ...)

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Online meetings are a fact of life for most of us in the Carpentries and other distributed projects. So how do we make them as effective as we can?

This post came about after the Twitter discussion generated by this tweet from Titus Brown.

Here are some points I have thought of to make things work more smoothly. Feel free to comment.

Before the meeting:

Familiarize yourself with the agenda for the meeting. Are there things you need to prepare or figure out beforehand? Are there things you are wondering about? If there is no agenda, ask the chair to send one out.

Apply to Become a Carpentry Maintainer

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software and Data Carpentry are currently accepting applications to join the lesson Maintainer team. Carpentry Maintainers work with the community to make sure that lessons stay up-to-date, accurate, functional and cohesive. Maintainers monitor their lesson repository, make sure that PRs and Issues are addressed in a timely manner, and participate in the lesson development cycle including lesson releases. They endeavor to be welcoming and supportive of contributions from all members of the community.

Apply to Become a Carpentry Maintainer

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Software and Data Carpentry are currently accepting applications to join the lesson Maintainer team. Carpentry Maintainers work with the community to make sure that lessons stay up-to-date, accurate, functional and cohesive. Maintainers monitor their lesson repository, make sure that PRs and Issues are addressed in a timely manner, and participate in the lesson development cycle including lesson releases. They endeavor to be welcoming and supportive of contributions from all members of the community.

My Favourite Tool - RStudio

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is RStudio. This integrated development environment (IDE) is really a force multiplier for data analysis and reporting.

RStudio provides an excellent interface to the R programming language (that much should be obvious). However, it is much more than that. This application affords me easy workflows and shortcuts to interact with most of the other tools that I regularly use. These include:

My Favourite Tool - R

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

R can do anything - from making presentations, analyzing and plotting data to version control (Git).

I use it for absolutely everything! It’s not difficult to use and it’s free!

– Bianca Peterson, Temporary lecturer (Microbiology) & Project Coordinator (IT), South Africa

Have you got a favourite tool you would like to tell us about? Please use this form to add a bit of detail and we will do the rest. You can read the background to these posts here, or see what other tools people have written about.

Skills Training for Librarians: Expanding Library Carpentry

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Post from the University of California Curation Center of the California Digital Library

In today’s data-driven, online and highly interconnected world, librarians are key to supporting diverse information needs and leading best practices to work with and manage data. For librarians to be effective in a rapidly evolving information landscape, training and professional development opportunities in both computational and data skills must be available and accessible.

Skills Training for Librarians: Expanding Library Carpentry

Mon, 06 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Post from the University of California Curation Center of the California Digital Library

redirect_from: /blog/library-carpentry-cdl/

In today’s data-driven, online and highly interconnected world, librarians are key to supporting diverse information needs and leading best practices to work with and manage data. For librarians to be effective in a rapidly evolving information landscape, training and professional development opportunities in both computational and data skills must be available and accessible.

My Favorite Tool - Emacs

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is Emacs.

Emacs provides an extensible and unified framework to access nice interfaces to several other tools. For instance, it allows you to:

Keep notes, maintain TODO lists, plan projects, edit and automatically export documents to many formats (Org-mode).

Conveniently edit Python source code and, at the same time, send code regions to a Python shell, permitting a piece-by-piece interactive programming (Python mode).

Pack Your Bags for Dublin!

Fri, 03 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are excited to announce that the 2018 CarpentryCon will take place from 30 May - 1 June, 2018 at University College Dublin (UCD).

Yes, we are going to Ireland for the inaugural CarpentryCon!

A huge thank you to UCD for their bid - we are confident that this will be a fantastic venue.

We are also grateful to all the other community members who proposed bids to host CarpentryCon. All were compelling, and it was very hard to select one from so many fantastic options.

Pack Your Bags for Dublin!

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are excited to announce that the 2018 CarpentryCon will take place from 30 May - 1 June, 2018 at University College Dublin (UCD).

Yes, we are going to Ireland for the inaugural CarpentryCon!

A huge thank you to UCD for their bid - we are confident that this will be a fantastic venue.

We are also grateful to all the other community members who proposed bids to host CarpentryCon. All were compelling, and it was very hard to select one from so many fantastic options.

My Favourite Tool: OpenRefine

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is OpenRefine.

OpenRefine all the way, baby! I’m the curator of eagle-i, an RDF open access repository of stem cells, viruses, mice, core facilities, lab equipment and people. I use OpenRefine to facet by URI, by date, by label, to clean the data up, search for anomalies and export in csv, Excel or whatever format is needed for my purpose.

I use OpenRefine’s General Refine Expression Language functionality (GREL) to perform complex search and replace, to transform the data, to break up and combine strings.

People's Favourite Tools

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A big thank you to everyone who has responded so far to the call for short posts about their favourite tools.

So far we have had Paula Martinez on R, Jeff Oliver sharing his love of Git and GitHub, Kellie Ottoboni talking up IPython, and Thomas Arildsen on how the Jupyter Notebook facilitates his teaching. Juliane Schneider has now weighed in on the wonders of OpenRefine.

Expect more posts as people contribute further favourites. Even if your tool has already been mentioned, we would still welcome a post about it, as your use of the tool may be different.

Pilot Survey Focus Group Update

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In April 2017, Data Carpentry began to pilot a survey that includes skills-based questions. Check out the blog post about our assessment strategy, and the work involved leading up to this effort.

The survey includes the following statement:

Please enter a unique identifier as follows: Number of siblings (as numeric) + First two letters of the city you were born in (lowercase) + First three letters of your current street (lowercase). This identifier will be confidential to you and will help us pair your results with the post-assessment. Example: If I have 4 siblings, was born in Arlington, and live on Creekwater Street, my unique identifier would be 4arcre

This unique identifier is asked of respondents so that our staff can run paired analyses of the pre- and post-survey results to measure significant gains post-workshop.

My Favourite Tool: Jupyter Notebook

Sat, 28 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is … the Jupyter Notebook.

One of my favourite tools is the Jupyter notebook. I use it for teaching my students scientific computing with Python.

Why I like it:

Using Jupyter with the plugin RISE, I can create presentations including code cells that I can edit and execute live during the presentation to demonstrate the various aspects of Python that I introduce. It is a very good compromise between running scripts and typing in the command prompt on the projector screen vs. just showing static slides with code.

My Favourite Tool: IPython

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is … IPython.

IPython is a Python interpreter with added features that make it an invaluable tool for interactive coding and data exploration. IPython is most commonly taught via the Jupyter notebook, an interactive web-based tool for evaluating code, but IPython can be used on its own directly in the terminal as a replacement for the standard Python interpreter.

Why I like it

You can run Unix commands directly in IPython. For instance, if you want to load a file from another directory, it is convenient to cd into the directory from within the IPython window.

My Favorite Tool is Git

Wed, 25 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

I love Git and GitHub.

I only use them for work I care about. Examples include lesson development for R workshops, my recent performance review packet, and collaborative projects on species distribution modeling. Oh, and Software Carpentry workshop websites (obviously).

Why I like Git:

The version control system and the companion remote host system (GitHub or Bitbucket or CloudForge, etc.) provide a great versioning and collaboration platform, the highlights of which have been enumerated many times over and in such depth that I won’t talk about them here.

My Favourite Tool: Git/GitHub

Wed, 25 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool is …

I love Git and GitHub.

I only use them for work I care about. Examples include lesson development for R workshops, my recent performance review packet, and collaborative projects on species distribution modeling. Oh, and Software Carpentry workshop websites (obviously).

Why I like Git:

The version control system and the companion remote host system (GitHub or Bitbucket or CloudForge, etc.) provide a great versioning and collaboration platform, the highlights of which have been enumerated many times over and in such depth that I won’t talk about them here.

Call for Nominations to Joint Steering Committee

Mon, 23 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

EDITED 2017-11-07: “Board of Directors” is a legal term and can’t be used for a sponsored project. Changed to “Steering Committee”

As most of you know, Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry are merging into a new organization, provisionally called “The Carpentries”. This new organization will officially begin on January 1, 2018, with a hugely talented staff and dedicated community already in place.

Call for Nominations to Joint Board

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

EDITED 2017-11-07: Board of Directors is a legal term and can’t be used for a sponsored project. Changed to “Steering Committee”

Call for Joint Carpentries Leadership: Stand for election to the joint Steering Committee of the merged Carpentries organization

As most of you know, Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry are merging into a new organization, provisionally called “The Carpentries”. This new organization will officially begin on January 1, 2018, with a hugely talented staff and dedicated community already in place.

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?

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.

Library Carpentry: Update from the Community Calls

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Community members came together on 10-11 October for two calls about the future direction of Library Carpentry.

You can see the discussions from those calls on the calls etherpad.

It was great to have such a good roll-up for both calls, and we managed to make some important decisions about the future.

Website redesign

We voted to move ahead with Richard Vankoningsveld’s proposed redesign of the existing Library Carpentry website. John Chodacki would prefer the logo be white or grey rather than yellow, and Richard still has some work to do to get the blog to render in the same Agency theme.

RFCs and lessons learned

Tue, 17 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thanks to everyone for sharing questions and comments on our recent Request for Comments regarding the upcoming merger of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry. Now that the official response period for the RFCs has ended, the GitHub issues specific to the RFCs will be closed. We received comments from individuals across our community representing multiple stakeholders, including the Software Carpentry Advisory Council (representing member organizations) and the community at large (through the GitHub repository, private comments via the Google Form, and personal communication). Those of us working on the merger have been actively considering and discussing this valuable feedback and have been identifying areas requiring additional attention and clarification. We will be publishing blog posts over the next few weeks summarizing our thoughts and identifying future actions for each of the RFCs. You are welcome to continue communicating your questions or concerns to us through new issues in the GitHub repo. Below we describe the context behind a few themes and issues emerging from the RFC discussions which may not be immediately apparent but have factored heavily into our approach.

Blogging for the Carpentries - We Want to Hear From You

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This is an open invitation to our community members to share their knowledge.

We have a global community working in many different disciplines using a vast range of tools. On our blog, we would like to tap into that community experience and then share that hard-won knowledge.

This kind of information could help people new to a discipline, or might inspire others to try out a tool they have never used before.

Blogging for the Carpentries - We Want to Hear From You

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

This is an open invitation to our community members to share their knowledge.

We have a global community working in many different disciplines using a vast range of tools. On our blog, we would like to tap into that community experience and then share that hard-won knowledge.

This kind of information could help people new to a discipline, or might inspire others to try out a tool they have never used before.

My Favourite Tool: R

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My favorite tool for data analysis is R.

I have used it for a few years now, I feel at ease when I need to work with tabular data. Using R makes my work enjoyable. I can clean my data in one place - RStudio - and then work with it creating new graphics. I also enjoy learning new things in R. Its constant development gives you the chance to learn a bit more every day. This is thanks to a huge collaborative community that supports you, with quick answers, with examples, and with new packages.

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

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.

Work Cycle Ganymede Wraps Up

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are wrapping up Cycle Ganymede. Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Archiving Pre- and Post-Workshop Survey Data

What did we do?

During the previous work cycle, Data Carpentry launched new pre- and post-workshop surveys that included skills-based questions, and the ability for respondents to provide a unique identifier to facilitate future paired analyses. We archived the old survey data for Data Carpentry and created a draft RMarkdown report and plots for all of the data. Paula Andrea Martinez helped Kari Jordan with this. Because of the way the code is structured, there was no easy way to create a RMarkdown report that includes only selected plots. Hopefully, we will find a way round this for future reports.

All about Membership

Sun, 08 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are fortunate in the Carpentries to have many member organizations who support our work. However, if we are to continue reaching out to new disciplines and to build communities in under-served countries, we need a broader and more diverse membership base.

What are the benefits of membership?

Members receive priority access to instructor training and guidance about capacity building at their organization. Once institutions have a pool of local instructors, they can readily run low-cost local workshops that teach foundational computational and data skills to their staff and students. Memberships give Software and Data Carpentry revenue to ensure the ongoing development and maintenance of the lessons demanded by research communities. We work to give your local instructors support, ongoing mentorship and a forum for community lesson development. In addition, we have just launched round two of a targeted mentorship program to help new instructors develop their skills.

Mentoring is Back! Round Two of the Carpentries Mentoring Program begins October 25th

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Mentoring groups provide experienced instructors with the chance to help small groups develop confidence in teaching, lesson maintenance and community building

The inaugural Carpentries mentoring program was a great success, and we have used the feedback we received from both mentors and mentees to craft a new and improved mentoring experience in round two. The next round will run October 25th - January 10th.

Round Two of the Carpentries Mentoring Program begins October 25th

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website The inaugural Carpentries mentoring program was a great success, and we have used the feedback we received from both mentors and mentees to craft a new and improved mentoring experience in round two. The next round will run October 25th - January 10th.

According to round one participants, the benefits of mentoring included greater understanding of the challenges new instructors face, more clarity about why we teach what we teach, getting timely responses to questions, and community engagement.

Maintaining Lessons - Community Perspectives

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our September community call on lesson maintenance brought up many good ideas around the lesson maintenance process for Software and Data Carpentry lessons. If you weren’t able to make the call, below is a summary of our discussion and potential avenues for growth.

Our discussion focused around two major questions: what do the lesson maintainers do, and what are some of the reasons to be a lesson maintainer?

Trainer Training Announcement

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As the Carpentry community continues to grow, our instructor training is increasingly in demand! In September, we welcomed 13 new Instructor Trainers who will help us to meet that need. We are now accepting applications for the next group of new Trainers. In this round, we welcome all applicants, but are particularly keen to recruit trainers who can work in Latin America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. We would also like to recruit new Trainers who are fluent in Spanish.

Trainer Training Announcement

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

As the Carpentry community continues to grow, our instructor training is increasingly in demand! In September, we welcomed 13 new Instructor Trainers who will help us to meet that need. We are now accepting applications for the next group of new Trainers. In this round, we welcome all applicants, but are particularly keen to recruit trainers who can work in Latin America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. We would also like to recruit new Trainers who are fluent in Spanish.

1 - 30 September, 2017: Future of the Carpentries, New Staff Members, Community Service Awards, CarpentryCon

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

All the details on the joint future of the Carpentries explained. Please feel free to ask any questions that you need answered.

The very first ever Data Carpentry in Ethiopia was held and it was an extraordinary experience.

The Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee had their 2017 September meeting and have come up with some resolutions.

We are pleased to anounce we have three new staff members who will be working for the Carpentries part time: SherAaron Hurt is the new Workshop Adminstrator for the Carpentries, Elizabeth Williams has joined as a part-time Business Administrator, and Karen Word has joined the Carpentries and will be the Deputy Director of Instructor training.

If you feel there is a community member who is working extra hard to help our organization, please consider nominating them for a Community Service Award.

Tweets

Why is Python growing so quickly?

Carpentry instructors - some great advice here on making workshops better for people with Dyslexia.

Want to submit a Carpentries blog post but nervous about GitHub? You can use a form.

Know an unsung hero of the Carpentries? Nominate them for a Community Service Award.

Want to report on a workshop? Write a Software Carpentry blog post.

Read our newsletter, Carpentry Clippings, to keep tabs on our community.

Want more Carpentries? Support our growth by becoming a member organization.

Report of recent in-person staff meeting for both Carpentries - what we discussed.

We now have a discussion group just for #assessment, led by @DrKariLJordan.

Our newsletter will appear on Tuesday. Not a subscriber yet? Sign up here.

General

Everything you need to know about CarpentryCon.

Toads in Vancouver: using Stencila to teach SQL and R at UBC

Fri, 29 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of Stencila’s goals is to create an easy way for people who don’t yet code to learn data science and statistics skills, and to feel comfortable trying out powerful scientific computing languages like R, Python and Julia. We’re doing that by providing interfaces that are similar to the word processors and spreadsheets that they already use. It’s a way for people to “dip their toe” into code - without having to dive into the daunting ocean of IDEs, text editors, packages, version control etc.

Invitación a Participar / Invitation to Participate

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Invitación a participar

Las Carpentries, el Nodo Nacional de Bioinformática México (NNB), y la Sociedad Iberoamericana de Bioinformática (SoIBio) les invitan a participar en el proyecto Carpentry para América Latina.

Las Carpentries han generado material para enseñar a investigadores y estudiantes, las habilidades computacionales necesarias para realizar su trabajo de manera eficiente. Actualmente, las carpentries cuentan con más de una docena de lecciones creadas con técnicas de pedagogía actual. Estas lecciones se han promovido en talleres en más de 37 países. Carpentry para América Latina tiene la intención de promover este movimiento con la comunidad hispana.

Invitación a Participar / Invitation to Participate

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Invitación a participar

Las Carpentries, el Nodo Nacional de Bioinformática México (NNB), y la Sociedad Iberoamericana de Bioinformática (SoIBio) les invitan a participar en el proyecto Carpentry para América Latina.

Las Carpentries han generado material para enseñar a investigadores y estudiantes, las habilidades computacionales necesarias para realizar su trabajo de manera eficiente. Actualmente, las carpentries cuentan con más de una docena de lecciones creadas con técnicas de pedagogía actual. Estas lecciones se han promovido en talleres en más de 37 países. Carpentry para América Latina tiene la intención de promover este movimiento con la comunidad hispana.

The Carpentries' In-Person Staff Meeting

Thu, 21 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Software and Data Carpentry staff teams met for a two-day in-person meeting on 12-13 September in Davis, California. This was a very productive meeting - more on this below - and it also provided some staff the opportunity to meet others face-to-face for the first time. The team is geographically scattered with staff in the US, Australia and New Zealand. At the meeting, we welcomed new Workshop Administrator SherAaron Hurt, Business Administrator Elizabeth Williams, and Deputy Director of Instructor Training Karen Word (all part-timers) to what will be a merged staff team from 2018, when the planned merger of the two Carpentries will be complete.

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

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:

Request for Comment: Share your thoughts on the future of The Carpentries

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are now requesting comments on plans related to The Carpentries!

A blog post last week provided history and some context behind the planning still in progress for the eventual merger of Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry into a unified organization, tentatively called The Carpentries. An outline of the planned structure, roles, and responsibilities of The Carpentries is now available, and we request your feedback through a series of Requests for Comment and related GitHub issues by October 6, 2017.

Request for Comment: Share your thoughts on the future of The Carpentries

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are now requesting comments on plans related to The Carpentries!

A blog post last week provided history and some context behind the planning still in progress for the eventual merger of Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry into a unified organization, tentatively called The Carpentries. An outline of the planned structure, roles, and responsibilities of The Carpentries is now available, and we request your feedback through a series of Requests for Comment and related GitHub issues by October 6, 2017.

Software Carpentry Lesson Maintenance: Be Part of the Conversation!

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Come share your experience and ideas about maintaining the Software Carpentry lessons

We invite all members of the Software Carpentry community to participate in two upcoming events centered around maintaining our lessons:

Community Call this week on Thursday, September 21

Task Force for the future of the Software Carpentry lesson organization

Community Call

We will be discussing lesson maintenance on this week’s community call, happening on Thursday.
On the call, we’ll gather community aspirations and concerns about the current lessons and their maintenance. We also will ask for everyone’s input on how we can best support and recognize the valuable work of our maintainers and contributors. See the etherpad for times, agenda and to sign up. Anyone from the community is welcome to join.

Community Service Awards - 2017 Edition

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Is there a Software Carpentry community member you’ve noticed working extra hard to help our organization?

If so, consider nominating this person for a Community Service Award!

The Community Service Award was inaugurated last year to recognize the crucial role of volunteer contributions to the work of the Software Carpentry Foundation. This award acknowledges individuals whose work, in the Steering Committee’s opinion, significantly improves the Foundation’s fulfillment of its mission and benefits the broader community.

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.

The Carpentries' In-Person Staff Meeting

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software and Data Carpentry staff teams met for a two-day in-person meeting on 12-13 September in Davis, California. This was a very productive meeting - more on this below - and it also provided some staff the opportunity to meet others face-to-face for the first time. The team is geographically scattered with staff in the US, Australia and New Zealand. At the meeting, we welcomed new Workshop Administrator SherAaron Hurt, Business Administrator Elizabeth Williams, and Deputy Director of Instructor Training Karen Word (all part-timers) to what will be a merged staff team from 2018, when the planned merger of the two Carpentries will be complete.

Dyslexia and Coding

Sun, 17 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Hello,

I am dyslexic! :-)

Dyslexia is a polymorphic condition that affects more than just reading and writing. It is thought to be caused by poor short term memory, where short term memory is about equal to the length of time it takes to turn a key in a lock. A common analogy is that the CPU is good but the buffering on I/O is not good enough to keep up with the CPU. For example, it would be like having a keyboard or scanner with a buffering system that mixed up input or output and sometimes lost characters. This would also make it difficult to rapidly change from reading to writing and explains why doing things like reading, writing, listening, speaking and transcribing at the same time are more difficult for a dyslexic than for a non-dyslexic. I think this can make Software Carpentry a difficult way for a dyslexic to learn how to write programs, as it requires multi-tasking a variety of activities that are separately quite hard for a dyslexic. The rapid switching between them makes this worse.

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.

Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee 2017 September meeting

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 5 September 2017 at 14:00UTC+0, the Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee had their 2017 September meeting. This post will cover the topics discussed and their resolutions.

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merge

With the upcoming merge, this subcommittee needs to start thinking about streamlining the thinking process and disconnect from the organisations that maintain the lessons. The responsibilities for this subcommittee will stay unchanged:

Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee 2017 September meeting

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

On 5 September 2017 at 14:00UTC+0, the Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee had their 2017 September meeting. This post will cover the topics discussed and their resolutions.

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry merge

With the upcoming merge, this subcommittee needs to start thinking about streamlining the thinking process and disconnect from the organisations that maintain the lessons. The responsibilities for this subcommittee will stay unchanged:

Introducing SherAaron Hurt

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

This post originally appeared on the Data 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.

Reporting on the Second Software Carpentry Workshop in Namibia

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Background

After attending this year’s African Instructors Meetup in Cape Town South Africa, Jessica Upani and Gabriel Nhinda from Namibia started laying the groundwork for another Software Carpentry workshop for Namibia. The previous workshop took place about a year ago as part of a 12-month programme to build computing capacity in Africa. This year however, the workshop was initiated, organised and taught by exclusively local instructors and helpers, Gabriel and Jessica with assistance from Ruber.

Software Carpentry Introduces Mauritian HPC Users to Tools for Data Analysis

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) has been branded as one of the biggest scientific projects to date and spans not only country borders but also continents. Although the SKA’s primary aim is to address many of the questions around our universe, the spin-offs of this project will touch people from all research disciplines as well as communities around the SKA sites.

One of the spin-offs is expanded human and infrastructure capacity in terms of High Performance Computing (HPC) in other African countries. The South African Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) is involved in a programme named the HPC Ecosystems Project. The Ecosystems Project focuses on the distribution of decommissioned HPC equipment to be used as mid-tier systems at various sites across Africa. This is followed with training of the system administrators to run the equipment.

The First Ever Data Carpentry in Ethiopia

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Ethiopian Education and Research Network (EthERNet) from the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the German International Cooperation (GIZ) Sustainable Training and Education Programme (STEP), the Education Strategy Center (ESC) and Talarify organised its first ever Data Carpentry workshop for young academics and researchers in Ethiopia. The workshop was conducted over two and a half days from 14-16 August 2017 at Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAiT). The main aim was to increase data literacy for researchers and establish a community of good research data practice in Ethiopia in order to increase the presence of Ethiopian researchers in the global research community. Note: UNESCO Statistics Institute reveals that in 2016 1.1% of the global research community are researchers coming from Sub-Saharan Africa. On average 30.4% from all Sub-Saharan researchers are females, whereas Ethiopia counts 13.3 % female researchers out of all Ethiopian researchers.

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.”

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.

New Trainers On Board

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Software and Data Carpentry now have a brand-new batch of Trainers. The new Trainers completed their training this week and will start to train new Instructors soon. Adding this new cohort takes us up to 40 in Trainer numbers.

For those not familiar with our terminology, Trainers are the people who train other people to be Data and Software Carpentry Instructors. This is done through a two-day instructor training course that may be delivered in person or remotely. Trainers are vital to increasing our Instructor numbers, and thus to building our community worldwide.

Waxing poetical in a Software Carpentry workshop

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hi everyone! I just finished running my first segment of a Software Carpentry workshop. I massively overprepared last evening and my notes for the first four lessons of unix shell are on google drive if anyone would care to reuse them.

In any case, one of my students (who had audited one of my other classes) made the following tweet: “Never heard anyone present fundamental computing concepts so poetically as @DenubisX @swcarpentry #MacquarieUni”

All About CarpentryCon

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What is CarpentryCon?

CarpentryCon aspires to become a major learning, skill-building and networking event for our global Carpentries community. We want to help Carpenters develop the skills they need to get the careers they want. We want to help them create supportive local communities based on our values of openness and sharing. We also want to give newcomers the chance to network with more experienced people in our community, so that a range of hard-won knowledge can be passed along to a new generation of leaders.

Genomics Issue Bonanza Starts Soon!

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Only a few more hours until the Genomics Issue Bonanza! Join the community in a hacky-day dedicated to creating issues and simple PRs for cleaning up the Genomics lessons. You don’t need to be an expert in the materials - we need people to help search for broken links and typos too!

Click here to see the event start in your local time.

Feedback of Champions

Thu, 24 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jonah Duckles and I hosted our first Community Champions call on 22 August (23 August for us southern hemisphereans). Twenty-five people signed up for the call. We had attendees from the US (several locations), the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, plus me in Australia and Jonah in New Zealand. We also had a range of expertise - some old hands, and some keen to kickstart a brand new community.

Publishing our lessons, Version 2017.08

Thu, 24 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce the latest publication of Software Carpentry lesson materials, from release Version 2017.08. Although most of our lessons are fairly mature, we had
almost 100 new contributors. We have used this opportunity to improve the process through which lessons are released, some parts of which were previewed in this blog post. This release includes linked ORCID identifiers (visible on the Zenodo page next to the author’s name) and has allowed for individuals to opt-out as contributors. You can learn about the release process on GitHub, and can view this and previous archived versions on the release page.

15 July -15 August, 2017: Writing a blog post, Instructor Training Curriculum, Merger, League of Champions.

Fri, 18 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

It should not be a painful experience to write a blog post, so please reach out to us!

Have a look at the approved motions for the Carpentries merger.

We are pleased to announce the Instructor Training Curriculum has been updated and will be released end of August.

Tweets

Our Carpentry Clippings newsletter is out. Read it here if you missed it.

Contributed to a lesson? Let us know so you get credit.

Donate to Software Carpentry to support workshops in new places.

Want to get a Software Carpentry workshop at your institution? Here’s how.

Show your support for opensource datascience — become a NumFOCUS member.

Did you know we have a mailing list to discuss our R lesson + other R-related issues? Post questions there.

Building a community: 3 months of Library Carpentry.

General

Please feel free to provide suggestions to our Community Lead via the Google form.

The Totally Bearable Lightness of Being an Instructor ... So Finish that Training!

Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Also, there’s this thing at UCLA going on September 7-8 …

Greetings, my Library Carpentry community peeps! Hope your summer is going as well as mine, which means about as fine as the coffee in Twin Peaks, or a Fellini film - take your pick.

Several months ago, I wrote a post about the amazing time I had in Portland at csv,conf and at the Library Carpentry Instructor Training that Belinda Weaver and Tim Dennis taught, ably assisted by myself, John Chodacki and a spatula. We had a wonderful cohort of instructors-in-training, all of whom I know would rock a room with their Bash and OpenRefine instructional skills.

Upcoming Publication of Genomics Materials

Thu, 17 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

There’s been a lot of exciting work on the Genomics workshop materials over the past several months. A massive reorganization of the materials is underway, splitting the workshop into two separate tracks - one including R and the other including a variant-calling workflow. A host of folks have volunteered to serve as Maintainers for the revamped lessons, and others have joined a Curriculum Advisory Committee to provide high-level guidance on the workshop as a whole.

Instructor Curriculum Updated

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Sixty-seven pull requests were successfully merged during the recent update of the Software and Data Carpentry instructor training curriculum. Most of these PRs were merged during the recent 24-hour Bug BBQ that ran over 3-4 August. More than 20 instructors and trainers were involved with the update. A few pull requests remain to be merged before the material is ready to be re-released. This should happen by the end of August.

Motions approved for Data Carpentry & Software Carpentry Merger

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am happy to announce that the Steering Committees of both Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry have approved 4 motions regarding the structure and leadership of the mergered Carpentries organization. The approved motions are:

Motion 1

The Board of Directors for the combined organization will be composed of 9 members, each serving a two year term without limits on the number of terms. Five members will be appointed through a process of nomination to the board followed by voting by board members. The other four members will be elected by the membership of the organization.

Motions approved for Data Carpentry & Software Carpentry Merger

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

I am happy to announce that the Steering Committees of both Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry have approved 4 motions regarding the structure and leadership of the mergered Carpentries organization. The approved motions are:

Motion 1

The Board of Directors for the combined organization will be composed of 9 members, each serving a two year term without limits on the number of terms. Five members will be appointed through a process of nomination to the board followed by voting by board members. The other four members will be elected by the membership of the organization.

Reflections on Assessment

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website As I approach my one-year anniversary on staff with Data Carpentry, I’m reflecting on what we’ve accomplished this year. I came into this role with no data science experience whatsoever: self-efficacy had been the focus of my doctoral dissertation and post-doctoral work. That background knowledge made for an exciting time exploring our workshop survey data and letting the community know what our learners think about our workshops.

The Champions League

Mon, 07 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When people sign up for our newsletter, Carpentry Clippings, many mention community building as one of their key interests. We are lucky in the Carpentries to have so many people who want to build local groups. These people are our community’s champions. They are the hard workers who volunteer their time to organise and run local workshops, recruit new instructors and helpers, teach and maintain our lessons, serve on committees and task forces, and generally help further the Carpentries’ mission of skilling up researchers to do more efficient, reproducible science.

Helping the Helper - practical advice for Library Carpentry Helpers

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Post by Claire Wallnutt

A couple of months ago my line manager asked if I would be interested in helping out at an upcoming workshop our Library was helping to deliver. The workshop was entitled Library Carpentry. The first thing I asked was “is this to do with the Library Furniture Working Group?” A fair response if you ask me, as we do have a Library Furniture Working Group tasked with the job of creating a functional space (complete with said furniture) for our now empty Microfiche room. He explained it had nothing to do with carpentry actually, but was a software skills workshop aimed at information professionals borne from the Software Carpentry Foundation. Relieved, and with the image of me whittling a new piece of library furniture fading, I agreed to help.

Work Cycle Phobos Wraps Up

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’re wrapping up Cycle Phobos. Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Communication around Assessment

What did we do? Data Carpentry launched new pre- and post-workshop surveys. These surveys include skills-based questions and the ability for respondents to provide a unique identifier so that we can run paired analyses. We are in the process of phasing out the old surveys, and the new surveys have been added to Data Carpentry’s workshop template. An R-Markdown report of our old pre- and post-survey data was drafted during this work cycle. During the next work cycle, the report will be completed and the data archived for our website.

The Data Carpentry journey to University of Venda, South Africa

Wed, 02 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

My name is Ivo Arrey and I am a graduate student at the University of Venda, South Africa. I first encountered a Carpentry-style workshop in 2015 when I was still part of the South African Earth Observation Network and its Graduate Student Network (SAEON-GSN) committee that organised the annual Indibano. Like it has been the culture of previous meetings, we usually set aside a slot for a workshop that teaches a new skill to delegates. I had my first encounter to a new way of automating repetitive tasks using Git and Unix Shell which was a mouth-watering experience and later R for new methods of data analysis to explore. Then came the opportunity to attend the instructor training with Software and Data Carpentry in North-West University, Potchefstroom campus which I immediately knew was the best way to consolidate my hands-on for these new skills which I had begun to grapple with for some time now.

Bringing Data Carpentry to Florida State University

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

My name is Rachel Smart and I’m a graduate assistant for Digital Research and Scholarship (DRS) at FSU. I was adopted by DRS in mid-March when the Goldstein Library was reamed of its collection. It was devastating for the 2% of the campus who knew of its existence. Bitterness aside, I’m very grateful for the opportunity I’ve been given by the DRS staff who warmly welcomed me to their basement layer; here I’m being swiftly enthralled by the Open Access battle cry. The collaborative atmosphere and constant stream of projects never fails to hold my interest. Which leads me to Data Carpentry …

Bug BBQ to Update Instructor Training Materials

Thu, 27 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A new version of the Carpentry Instructor Training curriculum is scheduled to be published on 10 August.

To prepare for this release, we ran an Issue Bonanza on 13-14 July to identify bugs and issues such as typos and broken links. Now that these issues have been organised into a plan of work, we plan to resolve them with a Bug BBQ on 3-4 August. Help make sure the final product is polished and complete by getting involved.

Keep Calm and Write a Blog Post

Tue, 25 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Writing a blog post should not be hard. A blank screen can seem very daunting, but if you populate it with a few questions, such as Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?, then you have the genesis of a post.

Workshop report? Once you’ve answered the questions above, you’re pretty much done. Throw in something that went well or a funny story about something that didn’t, and that’s it.

Feedback on feedback

Thu, 20 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When I started as Community Development Lead, I posted a Google form to ask people in our community for feedback on what they thought was the main issue I should address.

I got a range of responses, from concerns about lesson maintenance to a call for more briefings to help people stay connected.

Also raised were instructor retention - how do we prevent burnout so good people don’t leave? - and instructor involvement - how do we increase the numbers of instructors reading our blog posts, signing up for the newsletter, getting involved in community calls and committees like mentoring?

1 - 15 July, 2017: Learner Impact, Instructor Training, Community Building, Author Information.

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Our pre- and post-workshop surveys show that the Carpentries have a significant impact on the learners.

We are working to better the instructor training material to ensure we have a good up to date curriculum.

You do not have to be an expert to be a good instructor.

Tweets

Are you on our mailing list yet? Sign up here to get our newsletter.

The teams at @swcarpentry and @datacarpentry keep fighting the good fight! Good enough practices in scientific computing.

Help bring workshops to new countries + communities in 2017 - make a donation to Software Carpentry.

Read our experiences in ELIXIR with @swcarpentry and @datacarpentry.

Research libraries and tools curation in digitalhumanities: new report.

Wonder what’s going on @swcarpentry? You can see our community calendar here - it will correct for your time zone.

General

You do not need to be an expert to be a workshop helper.

Library Carpentry at the University of Sussex

Mon, 17 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Post by James Baker

Last Wednesday 14 Librarians from 8 libraries in the Brighton area convened at the Sussex Humanities Lab for a Library Carpentry workshop. The session was organised by the University of Sussex Library and colleagues from there were out in force both to instruct and as helpers. The workshop covered Regular Expressions, Shell, Git (in a short introductory session organised by local company Serano), and OpenRefine.

Credit for lesson contributors

Sun, 16 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In 2016, Software Carpentry instituted a twice-yearly release schedule for our lessons (see here for previous releases). Lesson releases, representing a snapshot in time of the material’s development, are published through Zenodo and given a DOI for citation purposes. Releases serve a few purposes, primarily to provide a trackable record of the development of our materials and to allow attribution to community members who contribute to lessons. The lesson maintainers are included as editors, while all other contributors who have made changes (as tracked through GitHub) are represented as authors.

First time for everything

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This spring I found myself back in a new situation, an anxious instructor in front of a room full of anxious students. My last teaching was many years back, as a teaching assistant in graduate school, and then a few lectures as part of an intermediate-level course for graduate students. But those were rather theoretical, blackboard affairs. This was my first attempt at teaching software, and with live coding demos. Didn’t Steve Jobs himself say “never give a software demo”? (Okay, maybe not.) In the end though, I was happily surprised by the experience.

Help Update the Instructor Training Materials

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentry Instructor Training curriculum helps prepare new instructors to teach Carpentry workshops. It also impacts instructors’ teaching practices when they teach in other contexts, helping to spread the Carpentry pedagogical model and evidence-based teaching practices around the world!

We last published this curriculum in February. Since then, we’ve taught over 150 new instructors at a dozen training events. We’ve also welcomed ten new Instructor Trainers to our community, with fifteen more to join in September. We’ve learned a lot over the past six months and want to incorporate what we’ve learned before our next publication (scheduled for August 10th). Please join the Trainer community in updating these lessons!

Help Update the Instructor Training Materials

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentry Instructor Training curriculum helps prepare new instructors to teach Carpentry workshops. It also impacts instructors’ teaching practices when they teach in other contexts, helping to spread the Carpentry pedagogical model and evidence-based teaching practices around the world!

We last published this curriculum in February. Since then, we’ve taught over 150 new instructors at a dozen training events. We’ve also welcomed ten new Instructor Trainers to our community, with fifteen more to join in September. We’ve learned a lot over the past six months and want to incorporate what we’ve learned before our next publication (scheduled for August 10th). Please join the Trainer community in updating these lessons!

Two Workshops at NASA DEVELOP (or, Python De-Fanged)

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 8-9 June, 2017, Katie Moore, Deputy Data Management Team Lead for the NASA CERES Science Team, and Ryan Avery, Geoinformatics Fellow with the NASA DEVELOP National Program, ran a Self-Organised workshop in Hampton, VA.

On 12-13 June, 2017, Kunal Marwaha, a software engineer with Palantir, Kelly Meehan, Geoinformatics Fellow with NASA DEVELOP, and Ryan ran another Self-Organised workshop in Norton, VA.

Both workshops focused on building skills in NASA DEVELOP participants, who work on 10-week feasibility projects that demonstrate how to apply NASA Earth observations to environmental concerns to enhance project partner decision-making. In the process, both partners and participants gain a better understanding of NASA’s Earth-observing (EO) capabilities and improve their professional and technical capacity to use EO data. For Katie, Kelly, and I, these were the first workshops in which we taught entire lessons and we found it to be an extremely rewarding experience.

Analysis of Software Carpentry Workshop Impact

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’ve begun to look at our pre- and post- workshop surveys and are sharing the draft reports to stimulate conversation about our workshops and their impacts on learners. For this first cut, we looked at our post-workshop survey data.

From this survey data, we can see that learning to program can be quite intimidating for many learners. About 44.5% of Software Carpentry learners who responded to the post-workshop survey feel that at least one of the tools covered in the workshop they attended was either slightly or very intimidating to them before attending a workshop.

Meet the Folks

Sat, 08 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Conferences can be lonely places, especially for first-timers who don’t yet have solid networks in place. The bigger the event, the worse the problem. With so many people milling around, how do you find like-minded people, much less start a conversation?

The issue can be compounded if you’re in a minority. When you’re from an under-represented group, conferences can seem even more intimidating.

Open Channels

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I was writing a talk about community building in the Carpentries for the ANDS Tech Talk series, and found myself surprised at how many things we do.

Obviously, workshops are our key community-building activity. They help us reach new learners, give instructors the chance to practise teaching, and draw in new helpers. Many learners and helpers go on to become instructors themselves, which builds further momentum.

Teaching Library Carpentry at the New Librarians' Symposium

Thu, 06 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Post by Carmi Cronje

My colleague Fiona Jones and I recently taught a workshop called Introduction to the Library Carpentry Toolbox at the National Library Australia (NLA) for the ALIA New Librarians’ Symposium (NLS).

The New Librarians’ Symposium is held every two years - aimed at LIS and GLAMR students, managers, mentors, coders, hackers and more. This year’s was themed DIY Library Career, and held in Canberra 23rd-25th June. It was our first time at NLS so we weren’t sure what to expect, but it didn’t take long to get a sense of the positive environment outlined in their Inclusion Statement.

Library Carpentry chatrooms proliferate

Mon, 03 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

After the massive success of the 2017 global sprint, the Library Carpentry community decided it was time for create new chatrooms to handle the increasing volume of posts.

There are now three rooms - the Lobby which is a bit of a social, ‘meet-and-greet’ kind of place; lesson-dev for discussing lesson ideas, planning and maintenance; and a third room, workshops, for questions, discussions and debriefs about workshops past and upcoming.

Why be a helper at Software Carpentry workshops?

Sat, 01 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

“I’m not an expert on R”, “I don’t know any Python”, “I’ve never used Git” - these may be true statements but they should never stop you from helping out at a Software Carpentry workshop.

Even the workshop instructors themselves may not be “experts” - and all the better if they are not!

Experts don’t necessarily make the best teachers. Many have lost sight of - or, worse, patience with - the beginner mindset.

15 - 30 June, 2017: Reorganisational Timeline, HPC-in-a-day, Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing, Opensource Survey.

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

The reorganization timeline has been drafted and awaiting approval from the respective steering committees.

Learn about the HPC-in-a-day course that brings the fun back to HPC.

we are pleased to anounce the publication of Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing.

We are very excited for Maneesha Sane that is moving from Program Coordinator to Program Manager of the Carpentries.

Jobs

Software and Data Carpentry are looking to hire a part-time Workshop Administrator to help set up workshops and ensure that they run smoothly.

Tweets

Top 10 tips for image acquisition if you are going to do image analysis. Spread the word and happy quantifying!

Just out, “Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing”

Ten simple rules for collaborative lesson development.

Good essay on value of empathy in work. Empathy of @swcarpentry instructors humanizes technical skills for learners.

How open is your opensource? Check out the Open Source Survey.

General

Our secretary has commited to write a monthly blog post to ensure better transparency between the Steering Committee and the community.

Macquire University held their first ever instructor training and it went very well.

17 workshops were run over the past 30 days. For more information about past workshops, please visit our website.

Upcoming Workhshops:

July

ResBaz 2017- Python, ResBaz 2017 - R, University of Technology Sydney, University of Würzburg, University of Auckland, UQ Winter School , University of Chicago, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California San Francisco , University of Mauritius, Imperial College London, University College London, McMaster Software Carpentry Workshop.

August

University of Southampton, Washington State University.

September

University of Würzburg, Oregon State University/CGRB.

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.

Job Posting: Workshop Administrator

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

With the growth of Carpentry workshops all over the world, we are excited that Maneesha Sane is moving from Program Coordinator to Program Manager of Software and Data Carpentry. As Program Manager, she will continue to be involved in workshop coordination and instructor training and will oversee and ensure the quality and consistency of program operations. She will also work to develop processes, infrastructure and communications to consistently improve the workshop experience for instructors, hosts and learners.

Job Posting: Workshop Administrator

Mon, 26 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

With the growth of Carpentry workshops all over the world, we are excited that Maneesha Sane is moving from Program Coordinator to Program Manager of Software and Data Carpentry. As Program Manager, she will continue to be involved in workshop coordination and instructor training and will oversee and ensure the quality and consistency of program operations. She will also work to develop processes, infrastructure and communications to consistently improve the workshop experience for instructors, hosts and learners.

Steering Committee composition and operations

Sun, 25 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
You've hopefully seen [Belinda Weaver's post](https://software-carpentry.org/blog/2017/06/weaver_cdl.html) announcing her hire as Community Development Lead for Software and Data Carpentry, which also mentioned her stepping down from the Steering Committee. This means we (the Steering Committee) will continue our term of service with only six members. We are confident in our ability to continue our operations as normal despite this change. Thanks to Belinda for her service on the committee over the last year and a half, and we're looking forward to interacting with her in this new capacity.

Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing

Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce the publication of “Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing” by Greg Wilson, Jennifer Bryan, Karen Cranston, Justin Kitzes, Lex Nederbragt, and Tracy K. Teal, which is intended as a complement to 2014’s “Best Practices for Scientific Computing”. As the summary says:

Computers are now essential in all branches of science, but most researchers are never taught the equivalent of basic lab skills for research computing. As a result, data can get lost, analyses can take much longer than necessary, and researchers are limited in how effectively they can work with software and data. Computing workflows need to follow the same practices as lab projects and notebooks, with organized data, documented steps, and the project structured for reproducibility, but researchers new to computing often don’t know where to start. This paper presents a set of good computing practices that every researcher can adopt, regardless of their current level of computational skill. These practices, which encompass data management, programming, collaborating with colleagues, organizing projects, tracking work, and writing manuscripts, are drawn from a wide variety of published sources from our daily lives and from our work with volunteer organizations that have delivered workshops to over 11,000 people since 2010.

HPC in a day?

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Preface

In today’s scientific landscape, computational methods or efficient use thereof can be at the heart of the race for new insights, if not at the heart of the race with the academic competition. Learning how to automate tasks from data analysis to data preprocessing as taught by the carpentries provides the technical concepts to enter this race with an advantage.

If you just graduated a software/data carpentry boot camp and want to go beyond your laptop’s capabilities, the next step in academia is typically to approached the data center of your university or alike. There, a user account application has to be filed for the High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities. After some more formalities, storage and computing time is awarded and you can successfully log into the cluster. And then? Then either our carpenter is given a link to the wiki of the local cluster and how to use it. Sometimes there can be a short course on the mechanics of the HPC cluster and how to use tools that are installed on the cluster. That’s it and good luck.

Instructor Training at Macquarie University

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Executive Director Jonah Duckles and I ran instructor training for new member institution Macquarie University in Sydney on 19-20 June.

There were a few firsts at this workshop - Jonah’s first time as an instructor trainer, my first day in the job as the new Community Development Lead for Software and Data Carpentry, and Macquarie’s first-ever instructor training event.

We may also have had the biggest-ever workshop etherpad, coming in at 1400+ lines, but that would be a tough claim to substantiate. Certainly the eventual size of the etherpad mirrored the deep engagement of attendees, who all worked very hard.

New monthly updates from the secretary

Tue, 20 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After 6 months, I feel that I’m settling into my role as Software Carpentry Steering Committee Secretary. In an effort to improve communication and transparency between the Steering Committee and everyone else, I am commiting to writing or co-writing a montly blog post to keep you abreast on news from each meetings.

Check out these new blog post summaries of the in-person Software Carpentry Steering Committee Meeting and of the in-person SWC/DC merger group meeting.

1 - 15 June, 2017: Steering Committee retreat, Community Development Lead, Library Carpentry Instructors,CarpentryCon.

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

The Carpentries might look a bit different in future.

The Software Carpentry Steering Committee retreat went really well and they have provided five key areas in which the committee wil provide oversight.

We are pleased to welcome Belinda Weaver as our new Community Development Lead we wish her all the best!

Tweets

For detailed review computation and data: Research Software Engineers report.

A good read. A Comprehensive Survey on Open Source.

Awesome, Tireless, Excitable Library Carpentry Champion Belinda Weaver is the new Software Carpentry Community Development Lead!

If you care about research data practices & have #genomics #bioinformatics experience we’ve got a great opportunity.

Hear about how Software Carpentry built community on campus through University of Oklahoma Libraries from Carl Grant and Sarah Clayton.

Sheffield University is now a Software Carpentry Parnter!

General

Library Carpentry will have some new instructors soon and we cannot wait to welcome them to the instructor community.

Timeline for the Data Carpentry & Software Carpentry Reorganization

Sat, 17 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On Jun 8 & 9, we met in-person to continue discussing how to proceed with the merger of the Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry organizations to best achieve our strategic goals and serve our communities. We are happy to report that is was a very productive meeting.

We spent most of the meeting discussing the structure of the future organizational leadership. We have drafted a number of motions that we will present to our respective steering committees for approval at our next meetings. Among the motions, we will propose that the combined Carpentries governing structure be made up of both appointed and elected members. Additionally, we propose that it is in the best interest of the organization to seed the future steering committee with bylaws, which will be enumerated, written, and approved in the coming months.

Timeline for the the Data Carpentry & Software Carpentry Reorganization

Sat, 17 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

On Jun 8 & 9, we met in-person to continue discussing how to proceed with the merger of the Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry organizations to best achieve our strategic goals and serve our communities. We are happy to report that is was a very productive meeting.

We spent most of the meeting discussing the structure of the future organizational leadership. We have drafted a number of motions that we will present to our respective steering committees for approval at our next meetings. Among the motions, we will propose that the combined Carpentries governing structure be made up of both appointed and elected members. Additionally, we propose that it is in the best interest of the organization to seed the future steering committee with bylaws, which will be enumerated, written, and approved in the coming months.

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!

The road to CarpentryCon 2018

Sat, 10 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Imagine a global community event where Carpentries members and aficionados come together for a short period to exchange experiences, discuss lessons and debate teaching practices. Visualize a space where keynote speeches are closely complemented by community-driven lightning talks, and round-table panels are supported with ad-hoc informal meetings to share stories about challenges and successes. Finally, to complete the picture, consider a number of satellite events, such as social gatherings, carpentry workshops and new lesson developments. Well, this is our vision for CarpentryCon 2018!

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

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!

The Endless Sprint

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The recent Library Carpentry sprint exceeded my expectations, and then some!

Around 107 people signed up on our organising etherpad, either to work remotely or to contribute at one of the 13 sites in seven countries around the globe. That’s a big step up from the 2016 numbers of six sites and around twenty people working on the material.

The sprint was organised as part of the 2017 Mozilla Global Sprint. Library Carpenters comprised around one-sixth of that sprint workforce, and our more than 850 GitHub events - pull requests, forks, issues raised, commits and merges - outpaced the rest of the field by miles.

Instructor Access to Workshops

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

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

Instructor Access to Workshops

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Software 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.

New Community Development Lead

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am very pleased to be starting as the new Community Development Lead for Software and Data Carpentry. Building communities, helping people connect, fostering skills and learning, brokering solutions - these are the things that drive me.

Jobs I have had include librarian, repository manager, newspaper columnist, Internet trainer and IT project manager. I ran the library system for the City of London libraries in the 1980s, and have just finished working for a non-profit organisation making eResearch infrastructure available to university researchers. In my spare time, I like to read (a LOT), bake bread (and cakes), see as many films as I can, especially foreign/art house ones, and grow herbs and vegetables in the garden.

Projects for Cycle Phobos

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’ve been enjoying the added focus and sense of accomplishment we’ve gained from working in cycles. If there’s something you’re excited about for the next round, let us know! If you’d like to join (or organize) a team for one of the next few cycles, let us know! Please post an issue on our conversations repo or email ebecker@carpentries.org.

Our third cycle - Cycle Phobos (May 29th through July 21st)

Our third cycle started this week and goes through July 21st. We focused on planning this first week. Here’s what we’re hoping to accomplish in this cycle.

Apply to Become a Carpentry Instructor Trainer!

Wed, 31 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentry community is growing! This month we welcomed ten new Instructor Trainers to our community. Now we are looking for the next group of new Trainers.

Carpentry Instructor Trainers run instructor training workshops, lead online teaching demonstrations, and engage with the Trainer community about how best to train new instructors. Trainers are also actively involved in developing and maintaining the instructor training curriculum. We meet regularly to discuss our teaching experiences and stay up to date on policies, procedures, and changes to our curriculum.

Apply to Become a Carpentry Instructor Trainer!

Wed, 31 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentry community is growing! This month we welcomed ten new Instructor Trainers to our community. Now we are looking for the next group of new Trainers.

Carpentry Instructor Trainers run instructor training workshops, lead online teaching demonstrations, and engage with the Trainer community about how best to train new instructors. Trainers are also actively involved in developing and maintaining the instructor training curriculum. We meet regularly to discuss our teaching experiences and stay up to date on policies, procedures, and changes to our curriculum.

Summary of the 2017 Software Carpentry Steering Committee Retreat

Wed, 31 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Steering Committee met in person on June 7-8 in Davis, California. The committee members have unique journeys that brought them through the community to having a seat on the steering committee. Importantly, we have a unified vision for the future of the Software Carpentry Foundation and the roles of the steering committee. Below is a brief summary of the motions passes and detailed description of the five key areas over which the Steering Committee will continue to provide oversight.

Cycle Deimos wrapup

Thu, 25 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’re wrapping up Cycle Deimos! Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Assessing Our Impact on Learners

What did we do? Data and Software Carpentry launched a long-term assessment survey in March 2017. The goal of this survey is to hear from our learners about what has transpired in their work and career since completing a Carpentry workshop. More information about this survey and our assessment efforts in general is located on the Assessment pages of both the Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry websites. The results show that a majority of respondents gained confidence in working with data (65%) and in using the tools we teach (77%), and also improved their coding practices (70%) as a result of completing a Carpentry workshop. Most of our respondents (86%) were also motivated to continue learning after the workshop, demonstrating our continued impact on learners.

Summary of May Community Call: Restructuring the Carpentries

Fri, 19 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thanks to those of you who attended the May Community Calls, the topic of which was restructuring of Software Carpentry (SWC) and Data Carpentry (DC) into a single unified (umbrella) organization, with SWC and DC continuing as lesson organizations within the umbrella.

As the Chair of the SWC Steering Committee, I am one of the representatives from each organization tasked with developing a plan of action for how the restructuring will proceed over the next ca. six months. I am gratified by how much our community cares about its future, and what we (as community) believe is important to target as we proceed in planning. The following items highlight major discussion points synthesized from both community calls, and a complete set of notes is available on the etherpad.

Three Instructors, Two Coasts and One Spatula

Wed, 17 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the space of a year, interest and participation in the Library Carpentry community has exploded like an amoeba who over-ate at an algae banquet and attempted one too many pseudopods.

For Library Carpentry, though, this is a good thing; the pseudopods are propelling us forward across institutions, disciplines, and continents. The community, grounded in collaborative tools like Github and Gitter (I always want to type Glitter) is coalescing around lesson development and holding new workshops. Why is the buzz so strong? I think it’s a combination of relentless energy from people like Belinda Weaver and Tim Dennis (to name just a few), the acceptance and active encouragement of new people who want to contribute in some way, and the mutual recognition by all of us that in any one thing, we are all absolute beginners, and we all give each other permission to be terrible until we aren’t.

1 - 15 May, 2017: Lesson Printing, Instructor training, Successes of the Carpentries.

Mon, 15 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

Printing our lessons has never been easier!

Sign up for the community call about the restructuring of the carpentries.

##Tweets

Heartworming to hear about the success of Software and Datacarpentry from Dr Karli Jordan.

Share your fun coding applications to inspire learners.

##General

The second in-person Instructor training for South Africa took place and was very successful.

What are the reasons why we volunteer our time so enthusiastically toward the Carpentries.

May Community Call: Restructuring the Carpentries

Sun, 14 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Steering Committee (SWC SC) announced back in February that we were initiating discussion with Data Carpentry about potentially merging into a single organization. Members from the SWC SC and the Data Carpentry Board have been meeting regularly since then, identifying the advantages and logistical challenges associated with a restructured organization. More recently, we passed a motion approving the following structure: “A Carpentry umbrella organization and a set of Lesson Carpentries. The umbrella organization is primarily responsible for finances, administration, and facilitating policy. Each Lesson Carpentry is primarily responsible for lesson development and maintenance.”

What is the reward for empowering others?

Sun, 14 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Following a few round-table discussions with Software Carpentry instructors, I gained some insight into what drives so many of us to volunteer our time so enthusiastically. I came to the conclusion that many of us share a sense of accomplishment when we empower others through mentoring and education. Software Carpentry gives us a fountain-full of opportunities to contibute through community developed lessons, community supported workshops, and world-wide community conversations. We start out volunteering a little when there is time, but we soon carve out more and more space in our schedule for Software Carpentry events and activities that provide the opportunity to empower others.

Instructor Training in South Africa 2.0

Tue, 09 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the main goals of our community is to make Software and Data Carpentry workshops accessible for all researchers from all disciplines and all regions of the world. In the past three years workshops in South Africa and other African countries have started gradually picking up and I think we may soon see exponential growth!

This has been made possible thanks to a lot of effort and hard work from a number of amazing people, including Anelda van der Walt. In 2014 we realised that the biggest obstacle to running workshops in Africa, was the lack of qualified trainers on the continent. Since then we’ve put significant focus on building a local instructor pool to enable research organisations in the region to run Software and Data Carpentry training. In 2015 several instructors were trained online. Last year North West University at Potchefstroom hosted the first in-person Instructor Training with attendees from South Africa and other African countries. Just last week, between 30th April and 2nd May, we (Anelda, Kari Jordan and Aleksandra Pawlik) ran another Instructor Training in Cape Town with 28 participants.

How to print our lessons?

Mon, 08 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

From the time that I joined Software Carpentry, I remember two feature requests that often showed up on our list of issues. The first one was links to help navigate the lessons and the second one was a way to print the lessons. Adding these two features was challenging because the limited information that is available as metadata by Jekyll (or Pandoc, which we used for a while). In addition, we want to have a “real” solution, instead of a workaround that is going to stop work in a few months. Although as software developers we knew that at every release of Jekyll, or any other library, that we are using exist a chance that our pipeline will break.

Data Carpentry Genomics comes to the Netherlands

Thu, 04 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Twenty-five life science researchers from across the Netherlands and Germany joined the event on March 22nd and 23rd in Science Park Amsterdam. The workshop covered multiple aspects of working with genomics data.

Lex Nederbragt from the University of Oslo, kicked off the event with an introduction to the core dataset. The rest the first day focused on working with R in RStudio environment to explore, clean and visualise metadata in a tabular format, presented by Mateusz Kuzak from the Netherlands eScience Center and has been wrapped up by Anita Schurch from UMC Utrecht introducing the Unix shell and file system navigation.

Plans for Windows Installer

Thu, 04 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In March, we had two email threads on our discuss mailing list related to nano on Windows machines The first thread was about “nano not found”, a bug on our installer that we never managed to trace. The second thread was about some “misbehaviour” of nano on Windows, and the suggestion to use Atom as the default text editor. The suggestion to use Atom started a long discussion where instructors described their reasons to use nano and why Atom is inadequate which lead us to start investigating ways to install nano properly on Windows. On May 3rd, Kate Hertweck, Maneesha Sane, Naupaka Zimmerman, Rémi Emonet and I met online to draft a plan—taking into consideration all of the feedback that was provided in the past month—to solve the problem with nano on Windows.

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!

1 - 30 April, 2017: Library Carpentry, Instructor training, relevant to Learning.

Sun, 30 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

Great news for Library Carpentry, we won the British Library Labs Awards 2016.

University of Puerto Rico taught an Instructor Training Workshop and it was special in many ways.

Libarary Carpentry along with Mozilla science lab will have a lesson sprint in June 2017.

##Tweets

Have you considered making a donation to Software Carpentry?

Author Carpentry a research training initiative complementary to Software and DataCarpentry.

A great atricle for a Software Carpentry Workshop.

To folks in Software Carpentry: please take the survey in this blog post and sign up for the community calls!

##General

Library Carpentry sprint in June

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Lesson maintenance is necessarily an ongoing task, especially with fledgling lessons where workshops taught reveal gaps or issues with existing material. Development of new lessons may also spring from the same source. Who hasn’t thought, after teaching: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could add x?”

But lesson maintenance and new development are probably best done as a shared activity, which is why the Library Carpentry community has signed up to work on lessons intensively during the 2017 Mozilla Science Lab global sprint on 1-2 June. Check out our sign up etherpad for information about our plans.

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

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.

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!

Software tools for unix shell: Survey and April community call

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Code of Conduct includes a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reference to nondiscrimination based on “choice of text editor.” While a choice of software may seem trivial, this particular discussion has led to more than one heated exchange among programmers. In fact, the Discuss list in March was very active concerning issues with the Windows installer, which provides access to the nano text editor through Git for Windows (used in both the Software Carpentry Shell and Git lessons). That discussion eventually transitioned to consideration of alternative software tools we might consider using and moved over to GitHub, where you can read more about the opinions and options voiced by participants.

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.

Optimised for Learning

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
In 2014 I fell in love with Software Carpentry. I wasn’t quite sure what it was that was *that* appealing about the workshops, but I knew we had to run more of these in South Africa.
I had been following the activities and blogs of Software Carpentry since 2012 when I started working at a next generation sequencing (NGS) facility as lead (only) bioinformatician. Working with our clients I found that most of them had no idea how to deal with NGS data and very often didn’t know how/where to access computing infrastructure that would allow them to analyse their data.

What's new in Library Carpentry

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

There is lots of current Library Carpentry activity. Our big news is Library Carpentry won the British Library Labs award in 2016 for teaching and learning. The prize money has since been used to fund Library Carpentry workshops in the UK, with one in Sheffield just completed, and another upcoming in Taunton in June.

Tim Dennis (UCSD) and I are running Software Carpentry instructor training for 30 librarians in Portland, Oregon, on 4-5 May, after csv,conf. I am then teaching Library Carpentry at MIT with Juliane Schneider (ex-UCSD, now working for Harvard) on 15 May.

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.

Projects for Cycle Deimos

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’ve been enjoying the added focus and sense of accomplishment we’ve gained from working in cycles. If there’s something you’re excited about for the next round, let us know! If you’d like to join (or organize) a team for one of the next few cycles, let us know! Please post an issue on our conversations repo or email (ebecker@carpentries.org)[mailto:ebecker@carpentries.org].

Our second cycle - Cycle Deimos (March 27th - May 19th)

Our second cycle starts this week and goes through the middle of May. Here’s what we’re hoping to accomplish in this cycle.

Long-Term Assessment Strategy

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website A fair amount of discussion around assessment took place during the Software and Data Carpentry Instructor and Helper Retreat. One of the recommendations that came out of this retreat was to include skills-based questions in our pre- and post-workshop surveys to improve the accuracy of our survey results. We know that our learners come to our workshops having varying knowledge levels for programming. A way that we can capture this information, and determine whether our workshops make a difference in learner’s ability to work with data, is to add skills-based questions to our surveys. With the help of our community, we have done just that.

Our first work cycle - Prometheus

Sun, 26 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re wrapping up our first work cycle! Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Planning for Data Carpentry Ecology Lessons Release

What did we do? This cycle we started the process for Data Carpentry’s first lesson release - for our Ecology lessons. During the Issue Bonanza 3/16-3/17, fifteen energetic members of our community and staff submitted a total of 134 issues forcus on items related to our lesson release checklist. Data Carpentry staff and maintainers will be going through these issues in preparation for our Bug BBQ (4/6-4/7). Stay posted for announcements about the Bug BBQ!

Our first work cycle, Prometheus

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’re wrapping up our first work cycle! Here’s what we accomplished over the past six weeks and what we’re still working on. To help with any of these projects, please get in touch!

Planning for Data Carpentry Ecology Lessons Release

What did we do? This cycle we started the process for Data Carpentry’s first lesson release - for our Ecology lessons. During the Issue Bonanza 3/16-3/17, fifteen energetic members of our community and staff submitted a total of 134 issues focused on items related to our lesson release checklist. Data Carpentry staff and maintainers will be going through these issues in preparation for our Bug BBQ (4/6-4/7). Stay posted for announcements about the Bug BBQ!

Get Involved With Mentoring

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Are you a new Software or Data Carpentry instructor? Do you remember what it was like to be a new instructor? Are you interested in improving your own teaching skills? Do you want to connect with other instructors to share teaching ideas and experience?

The mentoring committee is a group of Software and Data Carpentry community members who organize initiatives to support instructors and we’re looking for new members.

Get Involved With Mentoring

Wed, 08 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Are you a new Software or Data Carpentry instructor? Do you remember what it was like to be a new instructor? Are you interested in improving your own teaching skills? Do you want to connect with other instructors to share teaching ideas and experience?

The mentoring committee is a group of Software and Data Carpentry community members who organize initiatives to support instructors and we’re looking for new members.

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.

1 - 28 February, 2017: Inclusivity, Career Pathway Panel, Community Development Lead, BaseCamp.

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

The Carpentries stand for inclusivity and freedom of movement for each and every volunteer, researcher, or professional in industry. If you have been affected by any action or policy that is preventing you from partaking in the carpentries in any way, please contact us.

The second Career Pathway Panel will be held on 1 March 2017, please register.

##Tweets

Have you considered making a donation to Software Carpentry?

ResBaz 2017 was a big success! Thank you to all that participated.

Need a helping hand to get started with coding? Have a look at our website.

Have you subscribed to our monthly newsletter?

##Jobs

A Year to Build a Software and Data Carpentry Community at the University of Florida - The Impact of a Local Instructor Training Workshop on Building Computing Capacity

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

This January was the one year anniversary of our effort to bring regular Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry workshops to the University of Florida. These workshops are aimed at helping students, staff, and faculty gain the computing skills they need to be successful in our data-driven world. The Carpentries are international organizations that provide materials, instructor certification, and organization of multi-day workshops on basic software development and data analysis tools. In January 2016 a Software Carpentry instructor training workshop held at the University of Florida Informatics Institute provided the start of our efforts. Since then, instructors trained here as well as experienced instructors already in the UF community have held four workshops, reaching 98 participants, including 70 students, 14 staff and 11 faculty. The participants received training in programming languages like R and Python, version control with Git and GitHub, SQL database queries, OpenRefine, and Excel spreadsheets.

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:

Reproducible Data-Driven Discovery

Fri, 24 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

I spent the two weeks in January hanging out with some awesome scientists who are all passionate about the future of science. I was participating in two professional development events with support from Data Carpentry, and I’d like to share some of the highlights.

A Curriculum Development Hackathon for Reproducible Research using Jupyter Notebooks

On January 9–11, 2017, I attended my first hackathon at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science! The event was organized jointly by Data Carpentry and the Jupyter Notebook project. The goal of the hackathon was to develop a two-day workshop curriculum to teach reproducible research using the Jupyter Notebook. There attendees were a group of 25 scientists from the US, Canada, and the UK with diverse backgrounds with a unique set of skills and expertise. I was one of a handful of attendees that uses R Markdown more than iPython or Jupyter Notebooks; however, after seeing the notebook’s power and utility, I’m really excited about adding this to my reproducible workflow.

Run a workshop this Spring!

Fri, 24 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website Did you know that 95% of Data Carpentry learners are first-timers? As a community we’ve impacted hundreds of learners around the globe, and 93% of our learners told us that their level of data management and analysis skills were higher because of our workshops!

We’re doing very well as a community, so let’s keep up the good work. We want to encourage you to either request a workshop, or run a Self-Organised workshop this Spring (March-May).

A Year to Build a Software and Data Carpentry Community at the University of Florida - The Impact of a Local Instructor Training Workshop on Building Computing Capacity

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This January was the one year anniversary of our effort to bring regular Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry workshops to the University of Florida. These workshops are aimed at helping students, staff, and faculty gain the computing skills they need to be successful in our data-driven world. The Carpentries are international organizations that provide materials, instructor certification, and organization of multi-day workshops on basic software development and data analysis tools. In January 2016 a Software Carpentry instructor training workshop held at the University of Florida Informatics Institute provided the start of our efforts. Since then, instructors trained here as well as experienced instructors already in the UF community have held four workshops, reaching 98 participants, including 70 students, 14 staff and 11 faculty. The participants received training in programming languages like R and Python, version control with Git and GitHub, SQL database queries, OpenRefine, and Excel spreadsheets.

Beginning the conversation: Potential merger with Data Carpentry

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Newcomers to our community frequently request clarification regarding the distinction between Software Carpentry (SWC) and Data Carpentry (DC). SWC and DC are two independently established and operated organizations that share a common goal of promoting education in reproducible science skills, both in data literacy (DC) and software development (SWC).

Despite our separate organizational structures, SWC and DC maintain close ties, and have begun moving over the last year or so towards increased connectivity. Staff interact with leadership and members of both communities, and are sometimes shared hires between both groups. We offer joint institutional memberships. We’ve worked together to implement shared policies, and have released statements which reflect our commitment to shared values.

Carpentries Career Pathways Panel - Marianne Corvellec, Bernhard Konrad, Aleksandra Pawlik

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Wednesday, Mar 1, 3pm PST / 6pm EST / 11pm UTC / 9am AEST (next day)

On Wednesday, March 1, the Carpentries will host the second of three Career Pathway Panels, where members of the Carpentry communities can hear from three individuals in careers that leverage teaching experience and Carpentry skills. (Note: The date of this second panel was shifted from the originally-proposed date of Feb 22 due to scheduling considerations.)

Carpentries Career Pathways Panel - Marianne Corvellec, Bernhard Konrad, Aleksandra Pawlik

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Wednesday, Mar 1, 3pm PST / 6pm EST / 11pm UTC / 9am AEST (next day)

On Wednesday, March 1, the Carpentries will host the second of three Career Pathway Panels, where members of the Carpentry communities can hear from three individuals in careers that leverage teaching experience and Carpentry skills. (Note: The date of this second panel was shifted from the originally-proposed date of Feb 22 due to scheduling considerations.)

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!

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.

How we're getting things done

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Adopting work cycles

The Data and Software Carpentry staff have been working together to make progress on projects that are important for our community. To help us do this, we’re trying out a new work process based on BaseCamp’s six week work cycle. You can read their blog post if you’re interested in the details of how structuring a work cycle works. We’re picking a small handful of projects to focus on for each six week cycle, with each staff member working on one or two projects. For each project, we’re setting realistic goals we know we can accomplish before the end of the cycle and holding ourselves accountable to meeting those goals. We’re spending the first two weeks of the cycle planning those goals, dividing up the work into teams, and setting timelines to make sure we stay on track. We envision this workflow having some specific advantages, including:

How we’re getting things done

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Adopting work cycles

The Data and Software Carpentry staff have been working together to make progress on projects that are important for our community. To help us do this, we’re trying out a new work process based on BaseCamp’s six week work cycle. You can read their blog post if you’re interested in the details of how structuring a work cycle works. We’re picking a small handful of projects to focus on for each six week cycle, with each staff member working on one or two projects. For each project, we’re setting realistic goals we know we can accomplish before the end of the cycle and holding ourselves accountable to meeting those goals. We’re spending the first two weeks of the cycle planning those goals, dividing up the work into teams, and setting timelines to make sure we stay on track. We envision this workflow having some specific advantages, including:

Transfer of Learning

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website Have you ever experienced déja vu? It’s when you have the feeling that what you’re currently experiencing has already happened. It can be extremely awkward, right? It’s a sensation that leaves you saying to yourself, “I did this already. This happened.” So, what do you do? Do you carry out the scenario as you remember it happening, or change it up? What about your perceived past experience makes you perform differently in the current experience?

Standing for Inclusivity

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our goal as Software and Data Carpentry is to build a community teaching digital research skills. We teach essential computing skills to thousands of researchers in academia and industry each year. As an international organization we rely on the volunteer efforts of hundreds of researchers and professionals from around the world. Our volunteers come from diverse backgrounds, countries of origin, and beliefs. These individuals generously donate their time with the goal of helping to speed the discovery of new knowledge and the creation of new technology.

Standing for Inclusivity: a Foundation for Our Teaching and Community

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Our goal as Software and Data Carpentry is to build a community teaching digital research skills. We teach essential computing skills to thousands of researchers in academia and industry each year. As an international organization we rely on the volunteer efforts of hundreds of researchers and professionals from around the world. Our volunteers come from diverse backgrounds, countries of origin, and beliefs. These individuals generously donate their time with the goal of helping to speed the discovery of new knowledge and the creation of new technology.

Moving Forward

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As of January 30th, Greg Wilson has stepped down from his role as Director of Instructor Training to start a new position as Shopify’s Computer Sciences Education Lead.

Instructor training will continue under the guidance of Erin Becker, Data Carpentry’s Associate Director and Maneesha Sane, Data and Software Carpentry’s Program Coordinator. Erin has a strong background for this role from her postdoc at University of California, Davis studying the effectiveness of training methods for transforming instructional practices. She has been involved with the Carpentry community as an instructor trainer, a member of the Mentorship Subcommittee, and leader of the effort to form an instructor mentoring program.

Moving Forward

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website
As of January 30th, Greg Wilson has stepped down from his role as Director of Instructor Training to start a new position as Shopify’s Computer Sciences Education Lead.

Instructor training will continue under the guidance of Erin Becker, Data Carpentry’s Associate Director and Maneesha Sane, Data and Software Carpentry’s Program Coordinator. Erin has a strong background for this role from her postdoc at University of California, Davis studying the effectiveness of training methods for transforming instructional practices. She has been involved with the Carpentry community as an instructor trainer, a member of the Mentorship Subcommittee, and leader of the effort to form an instructor mentoring program.

Announcing the 2017 Steering Committee

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

The new steering committee is comprised of

![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/hertweck_kate.jpg) Kate Hertweck

![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/harris_rayna.jpg) Rayna Harris

![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/koch_christina.jpg) Christina Koch

![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/kuzak_mateusz.jpg) Mateusz Kuzak

![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/lagesen_k.jpg) Karin Lagesen

![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/mcclatchy_sue.jpg) Sue McClatchy

![]({{ site.url }}/files/people/weaver_belinda.jpg) Belinda Weaver

Turnout and Voting Tallies

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

Best recipe - just add statistics and science

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We’d like to talk about our experiences working together as a domain scientist and a statistician and encourage you do this too!

When we say working together, we mean that we collaborate in the best sense – we each bring our strengths and those strengths are complementary. We have some suggestions for you as you get started. First, the domain scientist should look at how statistics is organized at their institution. Does your university have consulting statisticians or research-active faculty or both? Consulting can also be done as part of statistics students’ training. Most larger universities have both consulting and research. Some scientific questions naturally flow into research on new statistics methods and concepts, and other science questions are a better fit for an analysis method that has already been published. Talk to the consulting center first if you have one.

The Community of Carpentry Enthusiasts at the University of Wisconsin

Wed, 25 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

I am so thrilled that we have been asked to comment on our growing Software and Data Carpentry community at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While I initially joined the greater Software Carpentry community as part of my ongoing role in providing local workshops (four years ago!), I must say that I’ve been happy to contribute back, well outside of my typical work week. These organizations do so much for the UW-Madison campus, as does our local community of ‘Carpentry’ enthusiasts.

The SQL Ecology Lessons

Mon, 23 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

I am fond of saying that ecologists should not be afraid of big data – instead, we have to deal with small, complex, and poorly connected data. Understanding how we can stay on top of things, data-wise, is becoming more and more important. And some of the practices used to collect a small amount of data do not scale well at all when the amount of data increases, even if slightly.

Carpentries Career Pathways Panel: Raniere Silva, Geneviève Smith, Tiffany Timbers

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Tuesday, January 24, 7am PST / 10am EST / 3pm UTC / 2am AEST (next day)

On Tuesday, January 24, the Carpentries will host the first of three Career Pathway Panels, where members of the Carpentry communities can hear from three individuals in careers that leverage teaching experience and Carpentry skills.

Anyone who has taught at a Carpentry workshop in the last three months is invited to join, and should register ahead of time in order to be invited to the call. Registration is limited to 20 people per session, so please only commit if you are sure you will attend. Attendees can register for any number of these sessions. Future, monthly, panel sessions will occur on different days and at different times. Each session will last one hour and will feature a different set of panelists.

Carpentries Career Pathways Panel: Raniere Silva, Geneviève Smith, Tiffany Timbers

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Tuesday, January 24, 7am PST / 10am EST / 3pm UTC / 2am AEST (next day)

On Tuesday, January 24, the Carpentries will host the first of three Career Pathway Panels, where members of the Carpentry communities can hear from three individuals in careers that leverage teaching experience and Carpentry skills.

Anyone who has taught at a Carpentry workshop in the last three months is invited to join, and should register ahead of time in order to be invited to the call. Registration is limited to 20 people per session, so please only commit if you are sure you will attend. Attendees can register for any number of these sessions. Future, monthly, panel sessions will occur on different days and at different times. Each session will last one hour and will feature a different set of panelists.

South Africa's North-West University Becomes Software and Data Carpentry’s first African Partner

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In November 2014 the first large-scale Software Carpentry event was run in South Africa as part of the eResearch Africa conference in Cape Town. Since then 15 more Software, Data, and/or Library Carpentry events were run by the Southern African community across many disciplines and several institutions.

![Feedback from the NWU Genomics Data Carpentry Workshop in September 2016]({{ site.filesurl }}/2017/01/Feedback-SA-DC-Genomics.png)

The North-West University has been heavily involved in further developing the Southern African Carpentry community. In 2015 NWU led the development of a 12-month proposal that kicked off in April 2016 with the first South African in-person instructor training event. Since 2015 NWU has been involved in four internal Software and Data Carpentry events as well as four events run at other Southern African institutions. The university currently has five qualified instructors as well as two preparing for check-out. Instructors hail from diverse disciplines such as genomics, digital humanities, chemistry, and IT.

South Africa's North-West University Becomes Software and Data Carpentry’s first African Partner

Fri, 20 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

In November 2014 the first large-scale Software Carpentry event was run in South Africa [1] as part of the eResearch Africa conference [2] in Cape Town. Since then 15 more Software, Data, and/or Library Carpentry events were run by the Southern African community across many disciplines and several institutions [3, 4, 5].

Soft(ware) Skills

Thu, 19 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

I think, in the end, technology and data science are about communication.

As a biologist with a physics degree, I’ve always been called on by my peers to help out with the more ‘mathy’ parts of their work. As early as my masters, my friends and collaborators would send me their data, here and there, to have a look and make suggestions for how to proceed. More often than not, I’d either send it back to them asking lots of questions, or spend hours of my own time, cleaning, manually manipulating data until it was in a form that I could query it and looks for patterns.

1 - 15 January, 2017: CarpentryCon, Steering Committee Elections, Rubic for online Instructor training, TalkPython.

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

If you are interested in attending or helping with the planning of CarpentryCon, please sign up!

Steering Committee elections will take place on January 23-27, and all members will be receive a ballot via email. Please look at the membership details to ensure you get the email.

##Tweets

Have you considered making a donation to Software Carpentry?

Talkpython episode #93 Spreading Python through the sciences with Software Carpentry.

Huge thank you to the instructors who joined the new mentoring program!

8 best practices to improve your scientific software.

Sign up for the Collaborations Workshop 2017.

First DTL programmers meeting for 2017 scheduled for January 20 in the Netherlands.

##General

Software Carpentry Steering Committee Candidates 2017

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2017 Steering Committee elections and January Community Call

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

Community Call

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

Announcing for Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee

Fri, 13 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the issues that we have with the styles, lesson-example, and workshop-template repositories is that some issues or pull request just sit around for a long time because of the lack of ownership of those repositories. Going on with the Proposal for Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee, that will try to solve that issue, we would like to announce that Subcommittee calendar for 2017.

|———–+—————————————————————–| | Month | Activities | |———–+—————————————————————–| | February | Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee meeting. | | April | Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee meeting. | | May | Repositories freeze for release. | | June | Lesson release and Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee meeting. | | September | Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee meeting. | | October | Repositories freeze for release. | | November | Lesson release and Lesson Infrastructure Subcommittee meeting. | |———–+—————————————————————–|

Software Carpentry on TalkPython

Thu, 05 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On January 3rd, 2017 TalkPython published a podcast interview with our Executive Director, Jonah Duckles, that was recorded on December 6th, 2016. If you have friends who are interested to know about Software Carpentry and are fan of listen podcast (or not) the record is a great way for them to discovery what we are and how we operate.

In the past, our staffs were interviewed in other podcasts by Open Science Radio and Podcast.init that podcast fans should check out.

Announcing the CarpentryCon Proposal

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

To date, we have not yet had an opportunity to bring together all the members of our communities. Enter: CarpentryCon! We are proposing a two-and-a-half day conference, tentatively held in May 2017 at the University of Michigan.

We envision an event that brings together members of the Carpentry community, including instructors, partners, advocates, and staff, together with people sharing similar interests from around the globe. We will have a “come and learn” format that is different from most conferences with session on topics such as teaching methods, curriculum development, community organization, and leadership skills. Opportunities will be provided for participants to come together informally to share stories about challenges and successes. There will be at least one session where attendees can share how they have incorporated Carpentry techniques into their own research and teaching, and/or how they have grown their local Carpentry community. The final list of sessions will be determined by the program committee in consultation with the community, balancing “who wants to learn what?” with “who’s willing to teach what?”.

Rubric for Open Instructor Training

Tue, 03 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Foundation’s Steering Committee recently resolved to run four open online instructor training sessions per year in order to help support people whom we otherwise might not be able to reach. Since there are likely to be many more applications than spaces, we have developed a rubric for ranking requests for training. This applies only to people who are applying for spots in open training sessions: people who are receiving training through institutional partnership agreements will continue to be nominated by their institution as before.

1 - 31 December, 2016: Instructor Training, Community Service Awards, Career paths, Steering Committee Elections.

Sat, 31 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

We are pleased to announce the first ever Library Carpentry instructor training in 2017.

The very first Software Carpentry community service awards have been awarded.

Greg Wilson will be taking up a position as Computer Science Educator Lead at Shopify, and will continue to work as a volunteer with the Carpentries.

We are exited about the upcoming series of panel discussions on the variety of career paths available for our community members.

##Jobs

Career Pathways Panel Discussions

Wed, 28 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are excited to announce an upcoming series of panel discussions designed to help our community members become informed about the variety of career paths available to computationally literate members of their fields. Panel discussions will be held virtually in the months of January, February and March (tentative dates, below) with each session featuring 3-4 senior community members in Carpentry-related professions, including: tenured faculty, communicators/consultants, research software engineers, industry scientists, etc.

2017 Election: Belinda Weaver

Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hello everyone. I am standing again as a candidate for the Steering Committee, having served on it this year for the first time.

About me

I have been involved with Software Carpentry for about three years. I organised the first workshop in Brisbane in 2014. I certified as an instructor myself in 2015 and taught at two workshops that year. In 2016, I taught at eight workshops, all of which I either organised or helped to organise. During 2016, I and other Queensland instructors have taken Software Carpentry to five cities in Queensland - Brisbane, Townsville, Toowoomba, Gold Coast and Rockhampton - a huge improvement on the number of workshops run in 2015 (three).

2017 Election: Karin Lagesen

Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2017 Election: Karin Lagesen

I have been a member of the Software Carpentry Steering Committee for two years, first as secretary and then as vice chair. My involvement with the SCF started in 2012, when I attended a workshop in Oslo, Norway. I signed on as an instructor in 2013 and became an instructor trainer this year. I have around 10 workshops, including instructor training, under my belt. As a member of the SC, I have mainly focused on Software Carpentry operations and on the development of instructor training and instructor trainers. In addition to serving on the Steering Committee, I am also a member of the mentoring committee. Although I have not been able to be as active in the mentoring committee this year, I have previously worked on developing programs focusing on integrating new instructors and on helping new instructors teach their first workshop.

2017 Election: Mateusz Kuzak

Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hi, I’m standing up for election to the Software Carpentry Steering Committee 2017.

Me & Carpentries

My background is life science. I currently work at the Netherlands eScience Center in Amsterdam. Apart from being a developer on various research software projects, I’m involved in Center’s training activities and software development best practices.

I got sucked into in Software Carpentry world through Elixir Data Carpentry Pilot organised by Aleksandra Pawlik. During hackathon in Helsinki, together with Francois Michonneau and few other people we kickstarted ggplot2 part in R-ecology-lesson. From day one I learned a lot about the mechanics of SC, lesson development and logistics of the workshops.

2017 Election: Christina Koch

Thu, 22 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

To begin, I present:

Notable events in Christina’s Software Carpentry career:

2013-April: Graduate from grad school (Masters degree in mathematics).

2013-May: Attend Software Carpentry workshop (and see git and Python for the first time).

2014-January: Teach first Software Carpentry workshop.

2014-March: First time travelling abroad for Software Carpentry.

2014-May: Hear about a job through the Software Carpentry blog.

2014-October: Get the job (which is still my job).

2014-November: Become a lesson maintainer.

2015-December: First time leading an instructor training.

2016-January: Switch roles, from lesson maintainer to mentoring committee chair.

2016-June: Teach first Data Carpentry workshop.

To this list, I would like to add:

Christmas Instructor Discussion

Thu, 22 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On December 20th we hosted our two last Instructor Discussion Session from 2016. We started 2016 with Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing Sessions that run twice (in different times) every two weeks and during the year we change its name to reflect the modifications made to better accomodate their inclusion on the Instructor Training pipeline as well as the increase of offers (twice every week). The Steering Committee is very grateful for all the work from the Mentoring Subcommittee as well all Instructor Discussion Session hosts without help would be impossible to provide all the hours of sharing experience among members of our community.

Instructor Traininig Intercontinental

Thu, 22 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The end of the calendar year is a usual opportunity to make look back at the past 365 days. The summary of mine would be “Instructor Training Intercontinental”. I have always considered myself to be incredibly lucky working with Software and Data Carpentry and certainly in 2016 I hit another jackpot. I run 7 Instructor Training workshops, in 6 countries on 3 continents. But the highlight was, as it has always been with SWC and DC, the people.

Career Pathways Panel Discussions

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are excited to announce an upcoming series of panel discussions designed to help our community members become informed about the variety of career paths available to computationally literate members of their fields. Panel discussions will be held virtually in the months of January, February and March (tentative dates, below) with each session featuring 3-4 senior community members in Carpentry-related professions, including: tenured faculty, communicators/consultants, research software engineers, industry scientists, etc.

How I Developed a Workflow for Success in Graduate School

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

My home state of Michigan and the surrounding Great Lakes area cradles 20% of our planet’s freshwater resource and yet growing up next to these ecosystems, I knew almost nothing about their biological inner workings. Now, as a PhD student and environmental microbial ecologist, I explore the most abundant and amazing inhabitants of the lakes in my backyard: the diverse communities of tiny microbes.

2017 Election: Kate Hertweck

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am excited to stand for election for the 2017 Software Carpentry Steering Committee (SWC SC). I hope you’ll consider supporting me in this year’s election so I may continue to serve our community.

Previous experience with Software Carpentry:

Some folks might consider it insanity for a tenure-track assistant professor to volunteer so much energy to the Carpentries, but in reality, the time I’ve spent on the SWC SC has been essential to my development of an effective model of leadership. The following points highlight my contributions to our community:

2017 Election: Rayna Harris

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
I am really excited to stand in election for the 2017 Software Carpentry (SWC) Steering Committee so that I can continue to serve this amazing community.
##Software Carpentry Involvement I was first exposed to Software Carpentry by April Wright, who suggested that I attend the Instructor Training Workshop at UC Davis in January 2015. In 2015 I co-taught workshops at UT Arlington and New Mexico State University, I co-organized the Austin-based Instructor/Helper Retreat, served on the Mentoring and Assessment Subcommittee.

Rayna Harris's Year in Summary 2016

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A year in review

I want to thank you for giving me the prilege to serve on the Software Carpentry Steering Committee. Here is a very brief recap of the year. Click this link to read my 2017 election post.

A year ago, I said I would focus my efforts on:

integrating data from the mentoring and debriefing sessions with the assessment surveys to understand the degree of workshop effectiveness

Software Carpentry workshop in severe conditions

Mon, 19 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Usually the main struggles preceding Software and Data Carpentry workshops involve the laptop setup, signposting the room and making sure the washrooms are unlocked. But the recent workshop in New Zealand, held at National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) was facing much more extreme conditions.

The day before the workshop New Zealand was hit by what is now known Kaikoura earthquake. Wellington, where the NIWA offices are, was also affected. Fortunately, NIWA buildings remained safe and the hosts, Fabrice Cantos and Wolfgang Hayek, decided to go forward with the workshop.

Join our new Mentorship Program!

Fri, 16 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentry community is growing quickly! Over a hundred new instructors have been trained in the past two months. These new instructors join our community because they’re excited to help fellow researchers who are struggling to analyze their data and because they share our commitment to reproducibility and open access. In spite of these shared values, however, a third of our instructors never go on to teach with us.

Teaching Support IT Job at UCL Physics and Astronomy

Thu, 15 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re looking for someone with IT skills, and interests in teaching and physics, to work with us at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCL (University College London).

This is a system manager job with an emphasis on supporting our teaching, and will involve a wide range of responsibilities, including managing a Linux cluster and interfacing PCs to lab equipment as well as providing first-line support for the university Windows environment.

Congratulations to Greg on his new position!

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

As many of you will know by now, Greg Wilson, Director of Instructor Training for Software Carpentry (and thus indirectly also for Data Carpentry), has announced that he will step down from his position at the end of January 2017 to join Shopify as their Computer Science Education Lead. We’re very excited about this new opportunity for Greg to continue to reshape how people learn computer and data science skills, and we are enthusiastic to see where his creativity and passion about democratizing digital literacy skills take him next. Greg is also the reason we are here in the first place, and so this is an opportunity to say thank you to him.

Next Steps

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry has accomplished an amazing amount over the past six and a half years, but a new opportunity has come up for me here in Toronto, and after a great deal of thought, I’ve decided to pursue it. At the end of January 2017, I will be taking a position as a Computer Science Education Lead at Shopify, where I will help with their CS education partnerships. I’m excited to have a chance to work for change locally, but also look forward to continuing to be involved in the Carpentries as a volunteer, and to many more discussions of teaching, open science, and how awful Git truly is.

Community Service Awards 2016

Tue, 13 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce the recipients of the Software Carpentry Foundation's first community service awards, which are given annually to recognize work that improves the Foundation's fulfillment of its mission and benefits the broader community:

After becoming an instructor, Christina Koch immediately started taking on extra responsibilities. She has taught countless workshops, been a lesson maintainer, played a major role in the mentoring committee, and become an instructor trainer.

Climate Science and the Command Line

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Climate science has a pretty high profile these days, particularly in my personal area of research, which involves quantifying the role humans have played in climate change (otherwise known as “climate attribution”). Behind the glamorous media coverage and international meetings, however, research in this field centers around the most unglamorous tool of all: the command line. From data management and workflow coordination to remotely accessing supercomputing facilities and backing up code, the command line is the most critical part of my toolbox. Let me explain…

Don't forget to submit your post to stand for the 2017 Steering Committee

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you’ve considered running for the 2017 Software Carpentry Steering Committee, please submit your blog post announcing your intentions by December 23. More information about what to include in your post can be found in the original announcement.

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

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.

Growth Mindset

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website Each of us is born with a unique set of interests. Along the way we develop beliefs about our interests, and those beliefs determine whether we choose to cultivate our interests as we progress through adulthood.

For example, I think I’m a pretty “okay” singer, but I’ve always wanted to be a dynamic performer and sing in front of large audiences. Therefore, I learned to read music, joined several choruses and ensembles over the years, and frequently sing karaoke. I even auditioned for the American television series The Voice!

Discovering the data science community, becoming part of it, and expanding it

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

My path to becoming part of a data science community was happenstance. I started programming as a graduate student because I wanted to increase the spatial and temporal scales of my analyses. The scale increase was from one location for a few months to the entire coast of Western North America for many years. For larger scale analyses, I needed satellite data, which I downloaded from a data repository. I learned to use shell scripts to automatically download data because going through 5 to 10 internet links to manually download hundreds of files was tedious. The files with satellite data were large and in special file formats so I learned how to access and analyze them using R.

Instructor Training for Librarians

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are pleased to announce that we are partnering with csv,conf (a community conference for data makers everywhere) to run an instructor training class specifically geared for people interested in Library Carpentry. The class will take place in Portland, Oregon, on May 4-5, 2017; for details, please see the full announcement.

Instructor Training for Library Carpentry

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that we are partnering with csv,conf (a community conference for data makers everywhere) to run an instructor training class specifically geared for people interested in Library Carpentry. The class will take place in Portland, Oregon, on May 4-5, 2017; for details, please see the full announcement.

Making art with Python: Projects after Software Carpentry

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This March I signed up for a Software Carpentry class and learned Python for the first time. I had a great time at the workshop, and I wanted to share one of the first Python projects I completed thanks to Software Carpentry.

I originally signed up for the workshop for my PhD research in mosquito behavior. I needed to automate some video analysis tasks, and several friends recommended learning Python. I ended up making the video analysis work (thanks Software Carpentry!), but this blog is actually about a Python art project that I worked on right after finishing the class.

Building Genomics Data Analysis Capacity at NWU

Wed, 07 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The North-West University in South Africa boasts two next generation sequencing (NGS) platforms and additionally receive terabytes of NGS data annually from local and international service providers. Research projects with NGS components exist in the areas of Microbiology, Zoology, Botany, Nutrition, Agriculture, and more.

The three biggest challenges experienced by researchers and postgraduate students in terms of data analysis are as follow:

many of the students entering NGS projects have limited prior exposure to molecular techniques such as Sanger sequencing and PCR, and genetics concepts;

there is limited access to bioinformatics support and training (although there is lots of access to short interventions like 1- or 2-day workshops with no sustained follow-up);

and they are not aware of the range of research compute infrastructures which are available to them.

In September 2016, the NWU eResearch Initiative helped to establish a Genomics Hacky Hour (GHH) Study Group to support postgraduate students and researchers using NGS technologies. The original intention of the GHH was to bring researchers together to work on their current projects. However, limited shared NGS vocabulary hampered constructive communication amongst researchers and it was decided that specific topics would be discussed during the first few sessions, lead by a study group leader.

2017 Election: Sue McClatchy

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hi,

I’m a bioinformatician at a research lab in rural Maine, U.S.A. My path here has been winding, varied, and fraught with good luck. I had the good fortune to find Software Carpentry some years ago, and in my travels have never found anything quite like it. I’m honored to be part of this community and now want to give back by contributing my experience and expertise.

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.

Hand-crafted relational databases for fun and science

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

I’m a microbial ecologist that is primarily interested in understanding the ecological causes and consequences of plant-microbe interactions. Like many ecologists these days, my research spans the gamut from field to lab to laptop. Often the work involves collecting some leaves from plants in the field or from plants in a greenhouse, and then culturing from those leaves the fungi that live asymptomatically within them (a.k.a. endophytic fungi). Sometimes studying these communities relies on culturing the organisms in Petri dishes, and sometimes on directly extracting the DNA or RNA from the samples and sequencing that. One of the hardest things for me has been simply keeping track of what samples came from where, when, and who did what to which samples. To give an example: Let’s say I’ve got a fungal culture growing in a Petri dish, and I want to know how many times it has been subcultured (that is, regrown from an existing culture), when those subculturing events happened, what kind of plant tissue the original progenitor culture came from, and where that plant tissue itself came from out in the field. Oh and then downstream, I also want to know something about all the other such fungi that came out of that same plant and all their metadata as well. And I want to be able to get all of that programmatically.

Making use of Data Skills

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Data Carpentry learners and instructors come from a variety of backgrounds and research disciplines. Many of us, myself included, don’t think of ourselves as “computer people.” We’re here because, at some point in our career, we found ourselves doing repetitive and error-prone computational tasks by hand when someone looked over our shoulder and said “Why on earth are you doing it like that!?” This person may then have leaned over our keyboard, typed for a few minutes, and finished the work that would have taken us the rest of the day. At least in my case, this happened routinely, every time a certain person happened to walk past my work station, until it eventually became more work to try to justify my process (“But I only have to do this once”. I’d say) than to capitulate and try to learn the computer magic.

15 - 30 November, 2016: Instructor Training, UCSF Library, Code of Conduct, Announcement List, Steering Committee minutes.

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

We are gratefull that Open Instructor training is going well with participants from all over the world.

##Jobs

The UCSF Library’s Data Science Initiative is looking for a biomedical researcher, please visit the UCSF recruit site.

##Tweets

Remember to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Incase you missed it, the low volume announcements list is up, please sign up.

Think of replacing awk with bioawk, you can contibute to the development.

##General

UCSF is Hiring

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The UCSF Library’s Data Science Initiative is hiring! We are looking for a biomedical researcher with an entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for programming in R/Python, bioinformatics, data curation, statistics, data visualization (or all of the above) to serve as the Scientific Lead for our Data Science Initiative. We are taking a broad approach to data science, and are looking for someone who will work to identify the data science needs of the UCSF research community, help build a Library-based hub for data science activities, develop programs and events, and teach workshops and classes. To find out more about this position please visit https://aprecruit.ucsf.edu/apply/JPF01144.

Collaborative Lesson Development for Semester-long Courses

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

When did you realize you belonged to the Carpentry community?

My first encounter with the Carpentry community was early in my PhD training, way back when Software Carpentry was teaching programming lessons using brilliantly narrated videos. I knew then that a basic understanding of computer programming was an important part of a strong career in science. What I didn’t expect was to get inspired by a community of scientists and teachers that promotes openness and collaboration throughout their work.

The Python ecology lessons

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Why We Teach It

In the Beginning

A lot of what are now the Python materials came out of a Data Carpentry Hackathon in 2014 when Software Carpentry was under the Mozilla Science Labs umbrella. At the time, Data Carpentry was a fledgling organization and really only had a small amount of materials on R and Excel. As you can see from the Etherpad from that hackathon, people were pretty excited about getting some of those materials translated to Python.

The R ecology lessons

Mon, 28 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Data Carpentry lessons are aimed at learners who have never programmed before. Learning something new, especially coding, can feel intimidating. Yet learners attending our workshops are motivated as they realize it is a skill they will eventually need to master to be able to manage and make sense of the data they are generating in their research. When learning a programming language, you eventually need to master two things: the syntax of the language (e.g., where the parentheses and the commas go), and the intricacies of the language that will make you write less code and faster code (e.g., taking advantage of the vectorized operations). The first can be learned relatively quickly, the second takes years of practice. One of the advantages of learning the basics of programming during a workshop is that we can teach learners good practices from the start, rather than having to go through the painful experiences that typically accompany self-learning experiences.

Forming a Community-Developed Code of Conduct: What we learned.

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Codes of Conduct are important because they define behavior expectations for a community and encourage positive relationships, and because of their importance, care must be taken when they are being developed. Defining the standards to which people will be held when they act as part of a community is inherently difficult. Everyone has slightly (or sometimes radically) different ideas about what counts as acceptable behavior, and most people are surprised that their idea of “acceptable” isn’t shared by all. On the other hand, some people reject the notion that any (legal) behavior should preclude them from being part of a community. In a group like the Carpentry community, with a fluid membership and a culture of co-operative, consensus based decision-making, the development of these standards must be a community process that can handle this complexity. How does this collective ‘you’ decide on behavioral rules for the community that reflect the diverse voices present? And how does this ‘you’ balance the need to provide clear boundaries without writing a comprehensive rule book?

Minutes of Steering Committee Meeting

Mon, 21 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The Steering Committee informs that the minutes of their third quarter are now linked on [the Software Carpentry Foundation page]({{site.url}}/scf/) as well on the [README of the board GitHub repository]({{site.github_url}}/board). If you have critics and suggestions related to the minutes please send those by email to our Secretary, Raniere Silva, at [raniere@rgaics.com](mailto:raniere@rgaiacs.com).
In the forth and last quarter, the Steering Committee will focus to wrap and documenting some procedures to make the transition to the next Steering Committee smoother than this year, something that started with the Amending Steering Committee Election Procedures that you voted last October.

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.

Open Instructor Training

Sat, 19 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

(Originally posted on the Data Carpentry blog.)

After workshops and conferences, we frequently get questions from people who are interested in teaching with the Carpentries. We’re overjoyed by this interest and excited to bring more committed and enthusiastic instructors into our community. Unfortunately, until recently, we haven’t had the resources to open up our instructor training program, and have been holding training events primarily with Partnering institutions.

1-15 November, 2016: Research in Action, The Jackson Laboratory, Reproducability of Research, Announcement List, RStudio.

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

Listen to the postcast about Research in Action by Dr. Tracy Teal, Executive Director of Data Carpentry.

##Jobs

The Carter Lab at The Jackson Laboratory is seeking a Postdocoral fellow in Computational Genetics.

The Carter Lab at The Jackson Laboratory is seeking an Associate Research Scientist in the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease.

The Churchill Lab at The Jackson Laboratory is seeking a Postdortoral fellow in systems biology.

The Jackson Laboraty has a scientific sofgtware engineer position avalable.

##Tweets

Programming with GAP

Fri, 18 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Links to the GAP lesson in this blog post have been updated to reflect the lesson moving to The Carpentries Incubator.

Software Carpentry is more than just a set of workshops and lessons. It is also a way to develop lessons, one that we have used successfully to create a lesson on Programming with GAP.

GAP is an open source system for discrete computational algebra. It provides a programming language with the same name; thousands of functions implementing various algebraic algorithms; and data libraries containing extensive collections of algebraic objects. GAP distribution includes its detailed documentation; even more materials on learning GAP and on using it in teaching a variety of courses are available on GAP homepage here.

Open Instructor Training

Wed, 16 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

After workshops and conferences, we frequently get questions from people who are interested in teaching with the Carpentries. We’re overjoyed by this interest and excited to bring more committed and enthusiastic instructors into our community. Unfortunately, until recently, we haven’t had the resources to open up our instructor training program, and have been holding training events primarily with Partnering institutions.

In response to this sustained community interest, Data and Software Carpentry re-opened applications in July for anyone interested in instructor training, regardless of affiliation. This two-day intensive training covers aspects of pedagogy critical for teaching our target audience, including creating useful formative assessments, motivating learners, dealing with cognitive load, and understanding how subject-matter expertise is developed. We also teach signature Carpentry instructional practices, including live coding and the use of sticky notes to track learner progress.

Software engineer position at The Jackson Laboratory

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A scientific software engineer position is available immediately at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, ME. This position reports to the Associate Director of Jackson’s Computational Sciences Scientific Computing (CSSC) team that is primarily responsible for developing software applications for scientific research programs. The individual in this position is responsible for developing software applications and systems to support genetics and genomics research including but not limited to web-based technologies and systems. A senior level candidate will lead development of complex projects, from high-level requirements, involving teams that may include other software developers, bioinformatics analysts, statisticians and scientists.

Belonging: Developing a Community of Practice among Data Carpentry Learners

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website Two schools of thought regarding learning and how it is achieved are the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor.

The acquisition metaphor asserts knowledge is acquired individually, applied, and transferred.

The participation metaphor asserts knowledge is formed by becoming a member of a community of practice.

The computational scientist of old personifies the acquisition metaphor. She is someone who learned and worked in isolation, spending hours upon hours coding and debugging until her problem was solved.

Analysis of Data Carpentry Workshop Impact

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website It’s funny. When I first started working for Data Carpentry, I had never heard the phrase, “reproducible research”. I can tell you now that having attended a Software Carpentry workshop, Data Carpentry workshop, and a Software/Data Carpentry instructor training, I wish I had learned the skills we teach when I first began my PhD program.

I even confessed to my colleagues that the data I left behind for up and coming grad students is so disorganized, I sent them an e-mail to apologize! This community has made a believer out of me, and for good reason: Our workshops work.

Computational Genetics Postdoc Position with The Jackson Laboratory

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The [Carter Lab] (https://www.jax.org/research-and-faculty/research-labs/the-carter-lab) at The Jackson Laboratory is seeking a Postdoctoral Fellow in computational genetics and systems biology. Our group is developing novel computational methods to derive biological models from large-scale genomic data. The strategies we pursue involve combining statistical genetics concepts such as epistasis and pleiotropy to understand how many genetic and environmental factors combine to control disease-related processes in animal models and human studies. We are especially interested in dissecting the genetic complexity of autoimmune disease, neurodegeneration, and cancer.

Research Scientist Position at The Jackson Laboratory

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carter Lab at The Jackson Laboratory is seeking an Associate Research Scientist in the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. [Our group] (https://www.jax.org/research-and-faculty/research-labs/the-carter-lab) is developing novel computational methods to derive biological models from large-scale genomic data. The strategies we pursue involve combining statistical genetics concepts such as epistasis and pleiotropy to understand how many genetic factors combine to control disease-related processes in neurodegeneration. We are therefore seeking an individual with expertise in epistasis analysis as it pertains to studies of Alzheimer’s genetics in humans.

Systems Biology Postdoc Position with The Jackson Laboratory

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The [Churchill Lab] (http://churchill-lab.jax.org/website/) at The Jackson Laboratory is seeking a Postdoctoral Fellow in systems biology. Our group applies a systems approach to study the genetics of health and disease. We develop new methods and software to improve the power of quantitative trait locus mapping and high throughput sequence analysis. We are especially interested in the genetics of aging and metabolic disorders.

RStudio Training and Consulting Directory

Wed, 02 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

RStudio maintains a directory of people who provide training and consulting for R using their flagship product. If you have taught R for Data Carpentry or Software Carpentry, have an established training and/or consulting practice, can provide some positive references from previous clients, please contact Garrett Grolemund about adding your profile.

A Reproducibility Reading List

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Prof. Lorena Barba has just posted a reading list for reproducible research that includes ten key papers:

Schwab, M., Karrenbach, N., Claerbout, J. (2000) Making scientific computations reproducible, Comp. Sci. Eng. 2(6):61–67, doi: 10.1109/5992.881708

Donoho, D. et al. (2009), Reproducible research in computational harmonic analysis, Comp. Sci. Eng. 11(1):8–18, doi: 10.1109/MCSE.2009.15

Reproducible Research, by the Yale Law School Roundtable on Data and Code Sharing, Comp. Sci. Eng. 12(5): 8–13 (Sept.-Oct. 2010), doi:10.1109/mcse.2010.113

Peng, R. D. (2011), Reproducible research in computational science, Science 334(6060): 1226–1227, doi: 10.1126/science.1213847

Diethelm, Kai (2012) The limits of reproducibility in numerical simulation, Comp. Sci. Eng. 14(1): 64–72, doi: 10.1109/MCSE.2011.21

Setting the default to reproducible (2013), ICERM report of the Workshop on Reproducibility in Computational and Experimental Mathematics (Providence, Dec. 10–14, 2012), Stodden et al. (eds.), https://icerm.brown.edu/tw12-5-rcem/ // report PDF

Sandve, G. K. et al. (2013), Ten simple rules for reproducible computational research, PLOS Comp. Bio. (editorial), Vol. 9(10):1–4, doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003285

Leek, J. and Peng, R (2015), Opinion: Reproducible research can still be wrong: Adopting a prevention approach, PNAS 112(6):1645–1646, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1421412111

M. Liberman, “Replicability vs. reproducibility — or is it the other way around?,” Oct. 2015, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21956

Goodman, S. N., Fanelli, D., & Ioannidis, J. P. (2016). What does research reproducibility mean? Science Translational Medicine 8(341), 341ps12–341ps12, doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf5027

The papers themselves are great, but what really adds value is the way they're ordered, analyzed, and connected. If you're trying to make sense of all this, or trying to help others do so, it's a great place to start.

Library Carpentry workshop call

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

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Library Carpentry is software skills training aimed at the needs and requirements of library professionals (that is, coding and data manipulation that goes beyond the use of familiar office suites). It is made by librarians, for librarians to help you:

automate repetitive, boring, error-prone tasks

create, maintain and analyse sustainable and reusable data

work effectively with IT and systems colleagues

better understand the use of software in research

and much more..

Training takes places in face-to-face workshops where one or more of the developed modules are taught. Modules are also made available online (CC BY, published via GitHub Pages) for self-directed study or for adaption and reuse by library professionals.

Tracy Teal on Research in Action

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The latest podcast from Research in Action features Dr. Tracy Teal, Executive Director of Data Carpentry. In 33 minutes (plus a couple of bonus clips), Tracy talks about the mission of Data Carpentry, how it came to be, and how people can get involved as learners, instructors, and lesson developers. It’s a great introduction for newcomers, and has a lot of tidbits that long-time participants will find fun and interesting as well.

18 - 31 October, 2016: Community Call on Assessment, Steering Committee, Library Carpentry, Machine Learning.

Mon, 31 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

Several members of our community have published a new paper on Ten Simple Rules for Digital Storage.

Library Carpentry is one year old and still gaining momentum.

The Steering Committee election is taking place in January 2017, please consider standing.

##Tweets

@UniOslo is an affiliate of the @Swcarpentry foundation

The latest comnbined capentries newsletter is now online.

##General

A new book on machine learning with python has been released. You can find it at O’Reilly Media

Close Cousins

Sun, 30 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our process for developing and maintaining lessons has grown and changed over time. Simultaneously but separately, an organization called the Programming Historian has crafted a diverse set of open, reusable lessons on computing skills for people working in the digital humanities (DH), and their process is different from ours in some interesting ways.

The main elements of our approach are:

A first version is created by:

someone writing something on their own (or translating something they’ve written before),

a group of people getting together at a hackathon to create a roadmap, or

someone driving an open design process of the kind used for our new Python lesson or Zack Brym’s new visualization lesson.

The lesson is put in a GitHub repository. Everyone is invited to submit enhancements and changes by filing issues and/or submitting pull requests, and to comment on other people’s submissions. This is a doubly-open process: both the submissions and the reviews are tied to the GitHub usernames of their creators, which in turn are usually tied to their actual identities.

One or two people act as the lesson’s maintainers (a term we borrowed from open source software projects). Their role is primarily editorial: they either review PRs themselves or make sure that other people review them, and have final say over whether changes are merged or not.

We publish our lessons twice a year by tidying them up and then archiving them at Zenodo, which gives each of them a DOI. Everyone whose work has been merged into the lesson is listed as a contributor, and the maintainers are listed as editors (because that’s a role everyone in academia understands).

The strengths of this approach are that the community maintains the lessons (we’ve had about 400 distinct contributors in the past three years), while the editor-vs-contributor distinction allows us to recognize people who are doing extra work. Its weaknesses are that big changes are more difficult to make than they would be if there was a single author, and there’s no incentive for people to do reviews: someone’s name doesn’t show up in the bibliographic record for a lesson if “all” they did was craft hundreds of lines of thoughtful feedback.

New Book: Tidy Text Mining with R

Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A new online book has recently been published that may be of interest to our community:

Tidy Text Mining with R

This book provides resources and examples for people who want to use tidy tools from the R ecosystem to approach natural language processing tasks. The intended audience for this book includes people who don’t have extensive backgrounds in computational linguistics but who need or want to analyze unstructured, text-heavy data. Using tidy data principles can make text mining easier, more effective, and consistent with tools already in wide use like dplyr, broom, and ggplot2. Topics covered in the book include how to manipulate, summarize, and visualize the characteristics of text, sentiment analysis, tf-idf, and topic modeling.

The Rest Is Yet To Come

Sat, 29 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I co-taught an instructor training workshop earlier this week, then taught a second one on my own a couple of days later. I made some pretty big mistakes in both: I kept interrupting my co-instructor in the first, while in the second, I told too too many stories, made jokes about hipsters and Javascript programmers when I’d told participants not to belittle people in class, and shut down discussion a couple of times when I had no authority to do so.

What the Carpentries Mean To Me

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

October 26 marks my 3rd Github cakeday. It also marks my 3 year anniversary since my first Software Carpentry workshop as a learner. The icing on the cake (haha?) is that it’s also Open Access Week.

My first computer science course was in high school. I got though the class with a healthy amount of struggling, but I never thought I’d make it in computer science because some of my fellow classmates got though the class so effortlessly. My rationale at the time was: if this is what it takes to be good at computer science, I’d never make it. I graduated with a BA in psychology/behavioral neuroscience, and minors in biology and computer science.

Call for Candidates for the 2017 Steering Committee

Mon, 24 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry will hold its annual election for the Steering Committee of The Software Carpentry Foundation on January 23-27, 2017. Please consider standing for this election to help shape the future direction for our commmunity. The roles and responsibilities of members of the Steering Committee are available here.

If you are a qualified instructor who has taught at least twice in the past two years, or have done non-teaching work for the community, you can both stand for election and vote. Please visit the list of current members to see who is eligible to stand and vote in our election. If you believe you qualify as a member but are not listed there, please contact us as soon as possible.

Programming as Theory Building

Sun, 23 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I was recently reminded of a thought-provoking but often-overlooked essay by Peter Naur from 1985 called “Programming as Theory Building” (scan here, plain text here). He suggests that, “…programming properly should be regarded as an activity by which the programmers form or achieve a certain kind of insight, a theory, of the matters at hand. This suggestion is in contrast to what appears to be a more common notion, that programming should be regarded as a production of a program and certain other texts.” His thoughts on what programmers actually do, especially when modifying programs, seem directly relevant to most research software development. In particular, when the Jupyter Notebook and R Markdown are discussed as ways to make research more reproducible, I wonder if part of that is to encourage the programmer to make her theory of what she’s doing explicit.

A Comparison of Online and In-person Instructor Training Workshops

Sat, 22 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have co-taught three instructor training workshops this year (one online and one in-person with Christina Koch and one online with Greg Wilson.

Overview

Too long to read? Here’s an overview in tabular form.

Feature In-person Online

networking excellent poor to very good

Etherpad use poor excellent

displayed on screen the web? slides? the instructor
webcast view of other learners

time commitment prep + class time +
travel + paperwork prep + class time

private communication in-person Slack & email

technical difficulties medium high

Networking

In-person: I think the most amazing feature of an in-person workshop is the networking. There is something about face to face conversation during activities and over coffee, beer, and dinner that really solidifies personal relations. I became a certified instructor in January 2015 at UC Davis instructor training workshop taught by Greg Wilson, Tracy Teal, Bill Mills, and Aleksandra Pawlik; I consider all four of these people to be close colleagues now, and I’m going to be visiting a handful of other workshop participants in November when I visit California. Also, I regularly talk to SWC/DC instructors on-line, but there is something about meeting them in-person that feels like its the first time we’ve met face-to-face.

Library Carpentry is One Year Old

Sat, 22 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The indefatigable James Baker recently wrote a blog post summarizing what’s happened with Library Carpentry in the past year. It summarizes their lessons, their workshops, how Library Carpentry is managed, and much more. Announcements and initial discussion take place on Gitter, and new members are welcome to join–please check them out.

Cambridge Instructor Training 19-20 September 2016

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last month, Steve and Karin taught an instructor training workshop at the University of Cambridge, sponsored by the R Consortium. The event was organized by Laurent Gatto, a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, with help from Paul Judge and Gabriella Rustici from the University of Cambridge Bioinformatics Training facility. 25 trainees from a diverse set of backgrounds spent two days getting to know each other and learning how to teach, and several have already completed the checkout process. You can read a full write-up on the SSI website, and we hope to be able to organize a repeat in the new year.

Community Call on Assessment

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Dr. Kari L. Jordan, Data Carpentry’s Deputy Director of Assessment, will be speaking on the Community Call on the impact our workshops have on our learners. Kari will cover the results of our post-workshop surveys including learner attitudes, learner data management and analysis skills prior to and following our workshops, and learner attitudes toward Data Carpentry instructors. Come and hear about our successes and share your thoughts. It’s going to be an informative community call.

Community Call on Assessment

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Dr. Kari L. Jordan, Data Carpentry’s Deputy Director of Assessment, will be speaking on the Community Call on the impact our workshops have on our learners. Kari will cover the results of our post-workshop surveys including learner attitudes, learner data management and analysis skills prior to and following our workshops, and learner attitudes toward Data Carpentry instructors. Come and hear about our successes and share your thoughts. It’s going to be an informative community call!

Ten Simple Rules for Digital Data Storage

Thu, 20 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new paper whose author list includes several members of our community:

Edmund M. Hart, Pauline Barmby, David LeBauer, François Michonneau, Sarah Mount, Patrick Mulrooney, Timothée Poisot, Kara H. Woo, Naupaka B. Zimmerman, and Jeffrey W. Hollister: “Ten Simple Rules for Digital Data Storage”. PLOS Computational Biology, Oct 20, 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005097.

Their ten rules are:

Software Carpentry at Oklahoma State

Wed, 19 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I recently instructed Git for the third time at a Self-Organised workshop on the Oklahoma State University main campus. I enjoy instructing and helping with the Software Carpentry workshops (and hopefully will get to do a Data Carpentry soon) and each workshop is always different from the last, so I was excited to participate again.

Because of a scheduling conflict, we only had the lab for five hours on Day One. In five hours (with two 15-minute breaks), we went through the entire bash shell lesson without many hiccups. One thing we did create for the bash shell lessons was a series of three-question quizzes we launched live on Socrative before each break. The learners had good feedback about this and felt it was a good way to break up the lessons and provided a good review of concepts they had just learned.

12 September - 17 October, 2016: Community Service Awards, Steering Comminty Elections, Lesson Maintainers Meeting, Newsletter, Carpentries Community Call.

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

The very first Community Service Awards will be awarded before the end of the year.

We are pleased to welcome two new Intsructor Trainers to the Carpentries.

Please vote on the special election to amend the procedure of the Steering Committee elections.

Some highlights on the progress made by our lesson maintainers on streamlining our decision-making process.

The first joint Carpentries newsletter is out, please sign up.

##Jobs

Machine Learning with Python

Mon, 17 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A new book has recently been published that may be of interest to our community:

Introduction to Machine Learning with Python

Data driven approaches have taken over many empirical sciences and many business application. Machine learning algorithms are one of the most important tools for extracting knowledge and making decision based on complex datasets. This book takes a practical approach to machine learning, using Python and the scikit-learn library. Starting from the basics, it explains how and when to use machine learning, discusses common methods and points out pitfalls for beginners. Every method and example comes with code in the form of Jupyter notebooks. The book requires a basic understanding of the Python programming language and some familiarity with NumPy. Experience with matplotlib is helpful to gain a better understanding of the visualizations.

October 2016 Maintainers' Meeting

Thu, 13 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This week’s meeting of our lesson maintainers made some great progress in streamlining our decision-making process, and we hope to begin implementing some of the changes discussed in the next few weeks. The major highlights are:

Creation of a developers’ subcommittee: We’re creating a new subcommittee that will be in charge of decision-making for template and style changes common to all lessons. Each maintainer will still be responsible for PRs/issues specific to their lesson. I will contact folks who indicated interest in participating, and am pleased we have folks from both SWC and DC; if anyone not currently acting as a maintainer would like to take part, please contact Kate Hertweck.

In Memoriam: Hans Petter Langtangen

Tue, 11 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hans Petter Langtangen’s books Python Scripting for Computational Science and A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python taught many of us how to do numerical computing with Python. He passed away yesterday after a long struggle with cancer; while I only had the privilege of meeting him in person twice, we corresponded frequently during Software Carpentry’s early years, and he was always helpful, insightful, and enthusiastic. He will be missed.

Beth Duckles on the Practice of Measuring

Mon, 10 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Dr. Beth Duckles, who did a valuable study of our instructor community earlier this year, gave a talk at the recent Measuring the Impact of Workshops workshop titled “The Practice of Measuring”. It’s a very useful 50 minutes, particularly for those of us who have backgrounds in the physical rather than social sciences.

Vote Next Week to Amend Steering Committee Election Procedures

Mon, 10 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last month, the Steering Committee announced a special election to amend the procedure for Steering Committee elections. The election itself will take place next week (Oct 17-21, 2016). All members will receive a ballot via email to cast their vote regarding this revision via electionbuddy. Please take a moment to check the current membership list and contact us by email to let us know of any omissions. As per our bylaws, our membership includes any certified instructor who has taught at least twice in the past two years (i.e., since October 2014) or has made other significant contributions to Software Carpentry in the opinion of the Steering Committee.

Request for Review: ESIP's Software Guidelines

Wed, 05 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

ESIP (the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners) has been developing research code/software guidelines for the earth observation and geosciences communities, and would appreciate feedback on the current draft before the end of October. If you have suggestions or feedback for:

Interoperability

Jupyter notebooks as code or documentation

The proposed progression model

Sustainability or adoption/reuse

please chime in. (Look in the right margin of the browser page for the hypothes.is controls that will let you add and view comments.) As a taste of what they’re doing, here’s a table of their stakeholders’ user cases and desired outcomes:

And Now There Are Three

Tue, 04 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A new book has just been published that covers much of the same material as Software Carpentry, and a great deal more: Paarsch and Golyaev’s A Gentle Introduction to Effective Computing in Quantitative Research: What Every Research Assistant Should Know. It covers almost everything I would want to see in a one-semester course for new research students: the Unix shell, data organization, the basics of Python, data analysis, “geek stuff” (including hardware and algorithm analysis), numerical analysis, some worked examples, Python extensions, and preparing manuscripts with LaTeX.

Congratulations to Our New Instructor Trainers

Tue, 04 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to welcome Karin Lagesen and Anelda van der Walt to our team of instructor trainers. Karin and Anelda have been very active in all of our activities–Karin is now in her second year on the Steering Committee, and Anelda has been the driving force behind our growth in South Africa–and we are very grateful that they are willing to give even more to our community.

Python as a Second Language

Tue, 04 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Donny Winston, Joey Montoya, and I taught a one-day class for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Python as a Second Language last week. As its introductory blurb says, “This lesson is an introduction to programming in Python for people who are already comfortable in some other language such as Perl or MATLAB.” The notes are still very much under development, but having delivered it twice, we’re pretty confident that it can actually be delivered in one day. We would be very grateful for feedback: please file issues in the GitHub repository to let us know what you think, to add more exercises and bullet points, or anything else.

Perth Software Carpentry - A Tale of Three Trainers

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Andrew

Perth’s journey into Software Carpentry began when Andrew Rohl attended eResearchNZ in 2014, for which he has to thank Nick Jones of NeSI for financial support. There he met the director of the Mozilla Science Lab, Kaitlin Thaney, and learned about the Software Carpentry movement. Fast forward to the end of the year and David Flanders was arranging a “Train the Trainer” Software Carpentry course in Melbourne and he even had funds to cover travel costs for those selected to attend! Andrew convinced Raffaella Demichelis, a fellow computational chemist, to also apply and they were both fortunate enough to be chosen. They enjoyed the training in February 2015, followed by the first Research Bazaar conference and returned to Perth enthused.

Two Studies of Online Communities

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Two recent papers may be of interest to this community. The first is from Adam Crymble at The Programming Historian a distributed group of digital humanities scholars that has built some excellent tutorials on software tools. Its title is Identifying and Removing Gender Barriers in Open Learning Communities, and its abstract reads:

Open online learning communities are susceptible to gender barriers if not carefully constructed. Gender barriers were identified in The Programming Historian, through an open online discussion, which informed an anonymous user survey. The initial discussion pointed towards two barriers in particular: a technically challenging submission system and open peer review, as factors that needed consideration. Findings are put in context of the literature on gender and online communication, abuse, and online learning communities. The evidence suggests that open online learning communities such as The Programming Historian should work actively to promote a civil environment, and should listen to their communities about technical and social barriers to participation. Whenever possible, barriers should be removed entirely, but when that is not feasible due to financial or technical constraints, alternatives should be offered.

Software Carpentry Workshop Attendance: a New Zealand Perspective

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Having taught and helped at a series of workshop over the past few months Tom Kelly, PhD Candidate in Genetics at the University of Otago, wrote up some of his reflections on the issues related to workshop attendance. This spurred further discussion via email among the New Zealand instructors. We decided to put these thoughts together in hope that this could help other sites struggling with the attendance problems.

SWC: First Impressions

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This post is a simple telling of the beginning of my experience with SWC and hopefully first of many encounters with SWC as a community as well as a learning experience. I attended a session a couple of months previously and was very impressed by my experience. I had a chat to the other attendees and found that their experience as complete beginners was as positive as someone who had some experience in python, git and shell as I did. I have always held a firm belief that digital literacy in research and education is both vital and sadly lacking, my own experience is entirely self taught throughout a university education, so it is no surprise that myself and my fellow attendees were drawn to the SWC workshop to fill that gap. SWC addressed the digital gap in research, and had me so hooked that I just had to stay involved. Over the next couple of months I looked for any opportunity; I incorporated just the python novice material into an independent workshop that I ran on Python for data pipelines, and now I have just instructed my first SWC session. The more involved I get the more I feel like SWC is something that I want to be involved in, because it addresses an important need in research, and because it does so in a way that is accessible and tailored by its community. I think my experience with SWC is not unique, and that hundreds of people around the globe have been in the same boat as I was. In fact I am sure it is not unique, as every contact I have seems to be with people as interested as I am.

Teaching Programming to the Blind

Fri, 23 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Andreas Stefik (who discusses what we know about the usability of programming languages in this entertaining podcast) has worked extensively on computing education and programming tools for the visually impaired. When asked earlier this week how to teach programming to the blind, he sent the response below. We’re grateful for his comments, and for Evan Williamson’s recent pull request to improve the accessibility of our lessons.

I think I can - Self-Efficacy and the Carpentry Learner

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Little Engine that Could had it absolutely right. Thinking you can is one of the best ways to succeed at a host of activities ranging from public speaking and bungee jumping to cooking a souffle and learning R. What the Little Engine didn’t know, however, is that this concept of “thinking I can” is actually a theory known as self-efficacy, and plays a major role in how we approach our goals.

Teaching at the Board

Tue, 20 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This post originally appeared on Chris Hamm’s personal blog.

Software Carpentry is a non-profit organization that teaches basic computer skills. The lessons for these courses assume no prior knowledge among the learners. I am a certified instructor for Software Carpentry and its sister organization, Data Carpentry.

I have taught two Software Carpentry workshops at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC and they were very different from one another. Both workshops were successful but for very different reasons. This post explores the reasons why (I think) they were so different.

Systems Biology Postdoc Position with The Jackson Laboratory

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carter Lab at The Jackson Laboratory is seeking a Postdoctoral Fellow in computational genetics and systems biology. Our group is developing novel computational methods to derive biological models from large-scale genomic data. The strategies we pursue involve combining statistical genetics concepts such as epistasis and pleiotropy to understand how many genetic and environmental factors combine to control disease-related processes in animal models and human studies. We are especially interested in dissecting the genetic complexity of autoimmune disease, neurodegeneration, and cancer.

Show Me Your Model

Sun, 18 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As far as I can tell, there are no published studies showing that version control is better than mailing files around or sticking them in shared drives. I believe it is–I wouldn’t work on a project that didn’t use version control–but nobody’s ever gathered data, compared it to a model, and published the result.

One reason, I think, is that we don’t know how to measure the productivity of programmers. “Lines of code per hour” clearly isn’t right: good programmers often write less code, or spend their time on the parts of problems that have the highest thinking-to-coding ratio. Without some operationalization of “better” and “worse”, it’s hard to rank or compare alternatives.

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.

Community Service Awards

Sat, 10 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Foundation relies on volunteer efforts to achieve many of its goals. It is now inaugurating a Community Service Award as a way for its Steering Committee to recognize work which, in its opinion, significantly improves the Foundation’s fulfillment of its mission and benefits the broader community. Details are available on this page; nominations are welcome at any time, and we will make the first awards before the end of this year.

The Discussion Book

Sat, 10 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hot on the heels of Small Teaching (which we reviewed last week) comes Brookfield and Preskill’s The Discussion Book. Its subtitle is “50 great ways to get people talking”, and that’s exactly what it delivers: one succinct description after another of techniques you can use in classes or meetings to get everyone talking productively. Each one is covered in three or four pages with the headings “Purposes”, “How It Works”, “Where and When It Works Well”, “What Users Appreciate”, “What to Watch Out For”, and “Questions Suited to This Technique”.

17 August-12 September, 2016: Steering Committee, Google Summer of Code, rOpenSci, Small Teaching, Ten Simple rules.

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

We are amending the steering committee election procedures.

Some members of our community co-authored research papers, and would appreciate some feedback.

A very succesful Google Summer of Code 2016 has come to an end.

Openness can still lead to a frustrating situation.

You can now log in to the etherpad to let us know if you will be attending the monthly Carpentries Community Call.

##Tweets

Excel might be to blame for your conversion mistakes.

Software Sustainability Institute fellowship programme 2017 applications now open.

Learn how to make your research analysis better and reproducible at PyConZA 2016.

Read more about Academic archetypes.

What would you like to have at the Brisbane Research Bazaar (ResBaz)?

A good read on how to be a Modern Scientist.

If you have innovative ideas for open science the arnold foundation may be the place for you.

##Vacancies

Responding to your Learners

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

Picture for a moment one of your undergraduate university courses, or a recent meeting of your department’s research seminar. If your experience is typical, more likely than not the instructor or presenter came in with a prepared set of materials on a slide deck (or for the old-school, on projector overheads), talked at you for an hour, maybe asked if there were any questions, and then packed up and left. If this sounds familiar, you’ve probably had lots of experience with the standard lecture.

September Carpentries Community Call

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

This post originally appeared on the Software 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.

Post-doc Position with rOpenSci

Wed, 07 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The rOpenSci project based at the University of California, Berkeley seeks to hire a postdoctoral scholar to work on the research activities funded by the grant titled “Fostering the next generation of sustainable software and reproducible research practices in the scientific community”. The project develops open source software to promote reproducible research practices in the scientific community. The postdoctoral scholar will focus on a research topic aligned with their own interests in order to better understand and improve scientific software practices. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Google Summer of Code 2016 ended

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As announced in April, we had some Google Summer of Code Students working with us this year.

Manage workflow for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry instructor training

Chris Medrela, under the mentoring of Greg Wilson and Piotr Banaszkiewicz, worked on AMY implementing instructor training workflow that is already in use as we reopened instructor trining.

Result-aggregation server for the installation-test scripts for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry

Prerit Garg, under the mentoring of Piotr Banaszkiewicz and Raniere Silva, worked on a web server that receive and store information provided by the installation script.

Small Teaching

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Elizabeth Green’s Building a Better Teacher changed how I think about teaching, and sparked some good discussion in our community. Therese Huston’s Teaching What You Don’t Know had a similar impact a few years earlier, and now there is James Lang’s Small Teaching.

As its title suggests, Lang’s book focuses on little things that teachers can do right now to improve their teaching, rather than on big, systemic changes that might have larger impact, but which require larger effort (and probably buy-in from other people). To be included, a practice had to:

We Still Can't Have Nice Things Together

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last year I used YAML and Norway to explain why why we can’t have nice things. We’ve just stumbled over a problem that has forced us to re-do some of the work we did to publish our lessons a couple of months ago, and which illustrates how openness can still be frustrating to actually do. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.

GitHub can publish repositories as website.

If the user’s ID is gloom, and the project’s name is despair, then the GitHub repository’s URL is http://github.com/gloom/despair. If that repository has a branch called gh-pages, GitHub automatically creates a website at http://gloom.github.io/despair.

Feedback Sought on Two Papers

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We would be very grateful for feedback on two papers co-authored by members of our community:

Taschuk & Wilson: “Ten Simple Rules for Making Research Software More Robust”.

Wilson, Bryan, Cranston, Kitzes, Nederbragt, & Teal: “Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing”.

Each paper has a link at the top to send us email; we look forward to hearing from you.

Election Announcement: Amending Steering Committee election procedures

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Steering Committee will be holding a special election on October 10-14 regarding the following amendment to Steering Committee elections:

“Following an election, the new Steering Committee will meet jointly with the previous Steering Committee for no less than 60 days. For meetings during the first 30 first days, the new SC will not have voting privileges. After 30 days, voting privileges are transferred to the new SC.”

September Data Carpentry All-Stars!

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

As a community-led organisation, Data Carpentry depends on our active and highly-engaged volunteer community to carry out many of our core activities. Volunteer efforts span a wide range of activities, including teaching workshops, developing and maintaining lessons, and training and mentoring new instructors, among many other efforts. Without the commitment of our volunteers, Data Carpentry would never be able to reach such a broad learner base and to make such a huge impact on our learners.

Library Carpentry is coming to Africa

Fri, 19 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

The first Library Carpentry workshop in Africa will be held in Pretoria, South Africa on August 25 & 26. Here is the site for the workshop which is being generously hosted by CSIR.

This Library Carpentry workshop is supported by NeDICC, North-West University and Talarify.

Ten Ways to Turn Off Learners

Fri, 19 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

PLOS has published a very useful set of articles called Ten Simple Rules that covers everything from effective statistical practice to winning a Nobel Prize. I’m just as interested in what not to do and what mistakes to avoid, so as part of our instructor training course, I’d like to put together a list of ten simple ways you can turn off your learners. My first five are listed below; if you’d like to add your own, comments would be very welcome.

Teaching Library Carpentry to Librarians at UCSD

Wed, 17 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I sort of knew what I was getting into. I’d done the excellent instructor training in February at UC Davis, which is a good thing, because I didn’t know the first thing about instruction. I didn’t know the first thing about organizing workshops, either, but I figured what the hell; my colleague and partner-in-crime Tim Dennis had reserved the big conference room in our library, which is really hard to get. If you’re in academia you know the first rule, which is never waste a reserved prime conference room. With lots of prompts and help from my colleague Tim Dennis, we put together a Library Carpentry workshop at UC San Diego.

1 -16 August, 2016: Assessment Deputy Director, Policy Subcommittee, Code of Conduct, Workshop Resources, Bug BBQ, and Vacancies.

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

Dr. Kari L. Jordan has been appointed as Data Carpentry’s new Deputy Director of Assessment.

Join the Policy Subcommittee and/or provide feedback on the Reporting Guide for handling potential Code of Conduct Violations.

Data Carpentry has put together a terrific resource for workshop organisation.

Read about our recent Bug BBQ that was held in the lead up to publishing our lessons.

##Vacancies

NCSA at the University of Illinois are looking for applicants for the position of Training Coordinator.

NumFOCUS is looking for a full-time Projects Director.

##Tweets

2016 Bug BBQ Summary

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At the beginning of the summer, the Software Carpentry community joined forces hold their first ever Bug BBQ. The goal of this event was to squash as many bugs in our core lessons as possible before we published and shipped the new version (2016.06) of the lessons. In addition to the goal of getting a large amount of work done as quickly as possible, we also aimed to use this event to engage and connect with our world-wide community.

Training Coordinator Position at NCSA

Wed, 10 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Computational Science and Engineering program and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign seek applicants for the position of Training Coordinator. This position will report jointly to the Director, CSE and the Assistant Director for Scientific Software and Applications at NCSA. The Training Coordinator will enable cutting-edge research involving the use and/or development of advanced digital software and hardware across all disciplines by delivering, coordinating, and administrating training programs for students and researchers at the University of Illinois and area institutions, including industry. The individual in this position will play a key role in the research life of the campus, identifying important computational and data science skills and technologies and demonstrating how they can be used to solve problems in computational science and engineering and other disciplines.

Code of Conduct and Call for Volunteers for Policy Subcommittee

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Carpentries are proud to share a common Code of Conduct (CoC), which outlines acceptable standards of behavior for our community members and those interacting with the Carpentries at in-person events and online spaces. Historically, however, we have not had an official process for reporting potential Code of Conduct violations or for adjudication and resolution of reported incidents. Thanks to input from our community, we recognize that defining these procedures is an important step in ensuring that any such issues are dealt with transparently in order to keep our community welcoming and safe for all.

Code of Conduct and Call for Volunteers for Policy Subcommittee

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

The Carpentries are proud to share a common Code of Conduct (CoC), which outlines acceptable standards of behavior for our community members and those interacting with the Carpentries at in-person events and online spaces. Historically, however, we have not had an official process for reporting potential Code of Conduct violations or for adjudication and resolution of reported incidents. Thanks to input from our community, we recognise that defining these procedures is an important step in ensuring that any such issues are dealt with transparently in order to keep our community welcoming and safe for all.

Resources for Running Workshops

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A successful workshop is the result of coordinated effort among many different types of participants, including instructors, helpers, hosts, learners and staff. Software and Data Carpentry offer two types of workshops: Self-Organised and Centrally-Organised. These workshop types differ in terms of instructor training requirements, fee structures, and participant responsibilities, with local hosts and instructors at Self-Organised workshops taking on administrative responsibilities normally handled by Carpentry staff.

Resources for Running Workshops

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A successful Data Carpentry workshop is the result of coordinated effort among many different types of participants, including instructors, helpers, hosts, learners and Data Carpentry staff. Data Carpentry offers two types of workshops - Self-Organised and Centrally-Organised. These workshop types differ in terms of instructor training requirements, fee structures, and participant responsibilities - with local hosts and instructors at Self-Organised workshops taking on administrative responsibilities normally handled by Data Carpentry staff.

Announcing our new Deputy Director of Assessment

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

We are very happy to announce that Dr. Kari L. Jordan will be joining us as the new Deputy Director of Assessment! Kari is coming from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL where her postdoctoral research was focused on understanding the factors that influence faculty adoption of evidence-based instructional practices. She is also adjunct faculty at Embry-Riddle and teaches a Graphical Communications course. Prior to her postdoc, Kari completed a PhD in STEM Education at Ohio State. Her thesis focused on strategies for improving self-efficacy and sense of belonging in first-year engineering students. She holds a BS and MS in mechanical engineering from Michigan Tech. Kari’s experiences in educational research are closely aligned with Data Carpentry’s efforts to create a welcoming and inclusive workshop environment that enhances learners’ confidence and helps them build identities as data-driven researchers. As the Deputy Director of Assessment, Kari will be focusing on assessment of workshop learning outcomes, including both skill-based and identity-based outcomes.

Data Carpentry's New Deputy Director of Assessment

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Data Carpentry has just announced that Dr. Kari L. Jordan will be joining them as the Deputy Director of Assessment. Kari holds a PhD in STEM Education from Ohio State University, and has worked most recently at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, where her postdoctoral research focused on understanding factors that influence faculty adoption of evidence-based instructional practices. To learn more, please see the post on the Data Carpentry website or follow Kari as @drkariljordan on Twitter.

Heuristic Evaluation for Novice Programming Systems

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have recently been reading and enjoying a new paper by Michael Kölling and Fraser McKay titled “Heuristic Evaluation for Novice Programming Systems”. In it, the authors say:

With the proliferation of competing systems [for novices], the problem [of evaluation ] has become more complicated. Not only should we ask the question whether such kinds of tools are helpful at all (which many instructors strongly believe them to be, even in the absence of hard evidence), but we need to decide which of a significant number of competing systems is “better” for a given task in a given context. Educators have to make choices, not only between using an educational IDE or not, but between a number of direct competitors.

How Well Do Developers Understand Open Source Licenses?

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

You are invited to participate in a survey on software licensing designed to investigate how well software developers understand common open source software licenses. We are looking for software developers that have built or are currently building on open source software in their projects (and I am personally interested in hearing from people building open source software for research). The study is being conducted by Prof. Gail Murphy (murphy@cs.ubc.ca) and graduate student Daniel Almeida (daa@cs.ubc.ca); participating in the anonymous online survey will take approximately 30 minutes. If you are interested in participating, please go to:

NumFOCUS Project Director

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

NumFOCUS (the organization which shelters Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, and several other open science projects) is seeking to hire a full-time Projects Director to develop and run a sustainability incubator program for NumFOCUS fiscally sponsored open source projects. This is the first program of its kind, with opportunity for enormous impact on the open source ecosystem. The learnings from this program will be public, meaning it has the potential to change how all open source projects are managed. For more information, please see the job posting.

Seymour Papert 1928-2016

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Seymour Papert passed away on Sunday at the age of 88. I never had the privilege of meeting him, but Software Carpentry would probably never have existed if I hadn’t stumbled across his inspirational book Mindstorms. You can read more about his life and work here; when you’re done, please go and help someone learn something—I think he’d have liked that.

Library Carpentry in Toronto

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On July 28-29, a group of volunteers from the University of Toronto’s libraries ran a two-day workshop for thirty-five of their fellow librarians. People came from as far away as Sudbury, Ottawa, New York City, and even Oregon to spend two days learning about:

regular expressions,

XPath and XQuery,

OpenRefine,

programming in Python, and

scraping data off the web.

While there were inevitably some hiccups getting software installed on learners’ machines, everything ran pretty much on schedule, and the instructors got through most of the material they had planned to cover. What was particularly nice was the way the modules fit together: the Python lesson closed by showing people how to write programs using regular expressions, while the scraping lesson referred back to the XPath material.

Library Carpentry workshop at James Cook University, Townsville

Fri, 29 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held a two-day Library Carpentry workshop at James Cook University, Townsville on 14–15 July, 2016. The workshop was a first on several fronts - the first course run by Software Carpentry trainers Jay van Schyndel and Daniel Baird from the JCU eResearch Centre and the first Library Carpentry course run at JCU. Collin Storlie, the local QCIF eResearch Analyst, agreed to help out too.

How was the workshop proposed?

1 - 28 July, 2016: Lesson Publication, Instructor Training Open, Creating New Material, Revamped Lesson Template, and Instructor Testimonial.

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

Congradulations and thanks to everyone who contributed to Version 2016.06 of the Software Carpentry lessons which have just been published.

You can now partner with Software and/or Data Carpentry to develop new lessons. Get in touch to discuss your ideas.

Please take note of our new lesson template.

##Intstructor Training

Apply now for online instructor training.

Some frequently asked questions about the reopening of the Instructor training have been addressed.

Why attend a Software & Data Carpentry instructor training workshop?

About ten hours is all you will need to qualify as an instructor after the initial training event.

##General

How Software Carpentry can help you switch careers

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

You’ve heard how Software Carpentry is important not only to get your research done but also to make it better and thus more likely to be published.

It might even get you a job in your favourite field of research.

But, for those of us who do not like to do the same thing forever, Software Carpentry skills can help you switch to another career.

More on Instructor Training

Tue, 26 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Since we announced yesterday that we are re-opening applications for instructor training, several questions have come in by email and on Twitter. We’ve answered the general ones below, and will update this post as others arrive.

Why are you running open-enrollment classes?

Our primary goal is to increase our reach: many geographic regions and research disciplines are sparsely represented in our instructor pool, or not represented at all, and we are always conscious of the need to maintain and improve diversity.

How does this relate to instructor training for partner organizations?

Partner organizations are guaranteed a certain number of instructor training slots as part of their agreement with us, and those trainings are given priority over open-enrollment offerings.

How many classes are being offered, and how many spaces are available?

We are currently planning to run two classes, each for about 30 participants.

Where will the training take place?

These two classes will take place online, and will run over two full days. We will choose dates and times to accommodate as many people as possible.

How are participants going to be selected?

We will select participants based on previous involvement with Software and Data Carpentry, location, research discipline, previous teaching experience, ability to commit time to teaching and mentorship, and all of the other factors in the application form.

When will selections be made?

We will start notifying people in a few weeks (i.e., the second half of August).

In what time zones will classes take place?

We haven’t decided yet, but they will be aimed at different timezones so that we can accommodate the widest possible range of participants.

Will you offer more open-enrollment classes in future?

Yes.

Wil people have to re-apply to take part?

No: we will keep all applications, and contact people as spots become available to see if they’re still interested.

Software Carpentry at Curtin

Tue, 26 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The first Software Carpentry workshop to be held at Curtin University (and the third so far in WA) started on Monday 18 July. We decided early to experiment with the timetable and spread the course over four half days. Monday was for the [Unix Shell](https://twitter.com/CurtinIC/status/754850455797190657), Tuesday and Wednesday for [Programming with Python](https://twitter.com/CurtinIC/status/755613286192721920) and Thursday for [Version Control with Git](https://twitter.com/CurtinIC/status/755959937574907904).
We offered 40 places, and it was already fully booked with a couple of weeks to go. Most participants were from Curtin University, but there were also some attendees from CSIRO and other places.

Genomics R Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Auckland, New Zealand

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A two day Software Carpentry workshop with R was held at the University of Auckland Winter Bootcamp on 11-12 July. After a brief battle with the projector in the room, Day 1 consisted of an eventful morning session on Unix Shell, the spontaneous explosion of a glass door, followed by an introduction to programing with R.

Reopening Instructor Training

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

For the last ten months, the Software Carpentry Foundation has worked toward three goals for its instructor training program:

Make the content more relevant.

Increase the number of people able to deliver instructor training.

Find a format that meets everyone’s needs in a sustainable way.

We have made a lot of progress on all three, and are therefore now able to offer instructor training once again to people who aren’t affiliated with our partner organizations, but would like to teach Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, or both (as the course is shared by both organizations). If you wish to apply to take part in one of the two open-enrollment classes we will offer this fall, please fill in the form at:

Reopening Instructor Training

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

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

For the last ten months, the Software Carpentry Foundation has worked toward three goals for its instructor training program:

Make the content more relevant.

Increase the number of people able to deliver instructor training.

Find a format that meets everyone’s needs in a sustainable way.

They have made a lot of progress on all three, and are therefore now able to offer instructor training once again to people who aren’t affiliated with our partner organisations, but would like to teach Data Carpentry, Software Carpentry, or both (as the course is shared by both organisations). If you wish to apply to take part in one of the two open-enrolment classes they will offer this fall, please fill in the form at:

Showing Changes When Teaching

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A key - but challenging - part of learning to program is moving from writing technically-correct code “that works” to writing high-quality code that is sensibly decomposed into functions, generically-applicable and generally “good”. Indeed, you could say that this is exactly what Software Carpentry is about - taking you from someone bodging together a few bits of wood in the shed, to a skilled carpenter. As well as being challenging to learn, this is also challenging to teach: how should you show the progression from “working” to “good” code in a teaching context?

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 Tale of Two Workshops

Fri, 22 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Brisbane and Toowoomba are 125 km apart in Queensland. Software Carpentry workshops were held in both cities a week apart (11-12 July and 18-19 July). I taught at both.

The Brisbane R workshop was held at The University of Queensland. This was a tie-in workshop for the annual UQ Winter School in Mathematical and Computational Biology. Attendees are generally very keen to learn as they want to emulate the amazing computational work they have seen demonstrated during the week by the stellar speaker line-up at the Winter School. We had no trouble filling a workshop with 40 places, and no-one left the workshop. It was one of the best workshops I have organised - the buzz in the room was palpable and the feedback was overwhemingly positive.

Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Auckland - Winter bootcamp, New Zealand

Wed, 20 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A two day Software Carpentry Workshop wiht Python was held at the University of Auckland 11-12th July as part of Winter Bootcamp. For myself,it was the first time helping with Software Carpentry training. It was a great experience to assist as a collaborator, helping others resolving problems with software installation and hands-on exercises, but also learning from all the unexpected situations that could happen with different people around the room, with different laptops, configurations, and different sets of skills.

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.

Lesson Incubation

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry Steering Committees recently approved [a process for supporting the incubation of new lessons. The goal is to provide a clear path for creating new material and getting it into the hands of people who can teach it while taking into account the resources we have available and the need to maintain lessons as well as create them. If you would like to build something substantial for either of the Carpentries, we’d enjoy hearing from you. (Please also see the announcement on the Data Carpentry site.)

Publishing Our Lessons, Version 2016.06

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce the publication of Version 2016.06 of the Software Carpentry lessons. Thanks to a lot of hard work by their maintainers and Rémi Emonet (who has acted as release manager), we have:

removed the need to build and commit HTML (everything except our R lessons is now pure Markdown);

updated the appearance of the templates (including a top menu, a nicer color scheme, and previous/next links); and

merged over 3100 pull requests from over 200 people.

Our materials are far from perfect, but we're very proud of what our community has built. Please see the releases page for links to the archived release, and the main lessons page for links to the updated lessons.

Using RMarkdown with the new lesson template

Fri, 08 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our lesson template is getting a face-lift. Actually, it is a lot more than that: all the internal mechanics are also affected.

What’s new with the template?

The lesson maintainers have developed a new template that comes with features that have been repeatedly requested such as an easy way to navigate among episodes within a lesson: there are now “previous” and “next” arrows in each episode.

Why attend a Software & Data Carpentry instructor training workshop?

Wed, 06 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
*Note:* the following post was written by Carrie Andrew, University of Oslo, after a request to write a testimonial of her participation in a Software/Data Carpentry instructor training workshop.
The SWC/DC initiative is a cutting-edge program that promotes computer and data skills to those who need the greatest help, but are often the most put-out to learn: beginners. It is taught by an ever-increasing, diverse assemblage of people across private and public, academic and non-academic, research institutions. The common denominator is that all have an interest and motivation to promote computer and data skills within STEM organizations. Even more interesting: The program is designed to be self-destructing. Once educational and research organizations are globally saturated with keen, well-trained individuals who can stand-in as the SWC/DC person(s) for their institutions, the initiative promises to end. When the need is met, it self-destructs, thus promoting change from the bottom-up, a grass-roots initiative for our futures!

Instructor Training Completion Times

Tue, 05 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

How long does it take to complete instructor training once the class itself is done? Two dozen people who recently qualified told us this:

Reading Lesson(s) Writing Exercise Discussion Session Lesson Demo Total

1.0 0.5 2.0 0.5 4.0

5.0 1.0 2.0 1.0 9.0

5.0 3.0 2.0 3.5 13.5

2.0 0.5 1.0 1.0 4.5

10.0 3.0 1.0 5.0 19.0

5.0 2.0 1.0 3.0 11.0

1.0 2.5 1.0 10.0 14.5

16.0 4.0 4.0 8.0 32.0

1.0 1.0 1.0 1.5 4.5

2.0 1.0 2.0 2.0 7.0

1.0 0.5 1.5 0.5 3.5

5.0 2.0 2.0 1.0 10.0

7.0 2.0 2.0 1.0 12.0

3.0 0.5 2.0 1.5 7.0

3.5 1.0 1.0 2.5 8.0

1.0 1.0 2.0 3.5 7.5

6.0 1.0 2.0 3.0 12.0

2.5 1.0 1.0 2.0 6.5

5.5 1.0 2.5 3.0 12.0

2.0 2.0 1.5 2.0 7.5

10.0 2.5 3.0 1.5 17.0

5.0 1.0 4.0 1.5 11.5

5.0 3.0 2.0 0.5 10.5

6.0 2.0 1.5 1.0 10.5

2.5 3.5 2.0 5.0 13.0

1.5 0.5 0.8 2.5 5.3

Min 1.0 0.5 0.8 0.5 3.5

Ave 4.4 1.7 1.8 2.6 10.5

Median 4.3 1.0 2.0 2.0 10.3

Max 16.0 4.0 4.0 10.0 32.0

There are a few outliers (which may be due to different interpretations of what time should be assigned where), but overall these numbers are pretty consistent, and will be shared with future training course participants.

Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Otago, New Zealand

Mon, 04 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A three day Software Carpentry workshop was held at the University of Otago from June 29 - July 1. The instructors for the course were Mik Black, Nick Burns, Murray Cadzow, David Eyers, Tanya Flynn and Tom Kelly, with Anthony Shaw and Riku Takei providing additional assistance as helpers. This was Tanya’s and Nick’s first time teaching at a SWC workshop, so it was great to add them to our Otago carpentry team.

1 - 30 June, 2016: Efficacy and Usefulness, Minutes, Discussions, Onboarding Documents, Teaching Undergraduates, and Library Carpentry Material

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

Have you previously attended a Software Carpentry workshop? Get involved with the follow-up study on “The Efficacy and Usefulness of Software Carpentry Training” by completing a survey. Feedback on your experience will be greatly appreciated!

Minutes of the Steering Committee Meeting is available - suggestions to modify the workflow of the minutes are welcome!

##Discussions

Please add your comments to the topics in ongoing discussions.

There is a discussion on the mailing list about “onboarding” documents for laboratories or small research groups. Also see Lab Carpentry.

Mexican/Spanish speaking instructors are needed for a Software Carpentry workshop later in the year. Please let us know if you’re interested to teach.

Read about approaches and experiences on teaching python to undergraduate geoscientists.

##Other

Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A two day Software Carpentry course was hosted at the University of Canterbury (UC) the 22nd and 23rd of June. The instructors, all of whom are from UC and are certified Software Carpentry instructors, were Paul Gardner (School of Biological Sciences), Richard Clare (QuakeCoRE), and Constantine Zakkaroff (Accounting & Information Systems). They were aided by three helpers: Christopher Thomson, Viktor Polak and Michael Gauland. Organising the event was greatly assisted by Sung Bae of the New Zealand eScience Institute (NeSI). NeSI also sponsored the refreshments for the coffee breaks during the workshop.

Three workshops in Brazil

Thu, 30 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
In Brazil, like in many other countries that we are starting to run workshops, there are many open questions that we need to answer such as

how do we advertize our workshops?

do we charge a registration fee? If yes, how much do we charge?

how do we create a local community after the workshop?

how do we get new partners after create a local community?

Thanks to the work of many instructors like Anelda van der Walt, Belinda Weaver, Bill Mills, Lex Nederbragt, Selene L. Fernandez-Valverde, and Tiffany Timbers we are getting some hypothesis to the questions above across the world. In terms of Brazil, the three workshops that we ran in May added more data to help answering the questions.

Minutes of Steering Committee Meeting

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The Steering Committee informs that the minutes of their last meeting held last week are now available on [GitHub](https://github.com/swcarpentry/board/blob/master/minutes/minutes-2016-06-16.md).
As the Secretary, I’m sorry for the delay to release the minutes of the meetings due some experiments on the workflow to write the minutes. Now I’m happy with the workflow that we have in place that will assign one ID for all our motions making easy for us to refer them. I still want to make a few improvements on the workflow to make the minutes more machine redable.

Teaching Library Carpentry

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
## Teaching Library Carpentry
I ran a two-day ‘Library Carpentry’ workshop for librarians at The University of Queensland on 13-14 June. The class covered

jargon-busting and data structures

writing and using regular expressions

command line tools to find data in files

version control

OpenRefine for data cleanup

Eighteen people from six organisations attended, out of a pool of 26 who intially expressed interest. (In the small lab I was using, I only had room for 18.)

Workshop Satisfaction Survey

Wed, 22 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
## Calling all Software Carpentry workshop attendees!
I’d like 10 minutes of your time to complete a survey about the Software Carpentry workshop you attended.

Why should you bother?

The data will be useful for Software Carpentry in the future planning of workshops.

While individual Software Carpentry workshops are assessed at the time of delivery, no long term follow-up study has been done on the efficacy of the training delivered, nor of any impact the training might have had on attendees’ work practices, further skills acquisition, or subsequent career paths.

Ongoing Discussions

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We've been using GitHub issues to manage discussions for the last eighteen months or so. It's working pretty well: when something on the main mailing list looks like it's going to run for a while, we push the conversation over to GitHub so that people who want to go into more detail can do so without flooding other people's mailboxes.

I've being going through those discussion issues while tidying up our lessons for their next release, and found a few that are still relevant, but which never reached a resolution. If you have thoughts on any of these, please go ahead add your comments—if your ideas don't get folded into the lessons this time, they will next.

Teaching Python to undergraduate geoscientists: A summary of our approaches and experiences over the years

Sat, 18 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In 2010, a new course commenced at Imperial College London that aimed to teach undergraduate geoscience students how to program in Python. Over the course of five years (2010 to 2014 inclusive) our teaching methodology evolved significantly in response to student feedback and examination performance. The course lecturers (Gerard Gorman and myself, Christian Jacobs) along with several of our Teaching Assistants also undertook Software Carpentry instructor training which offered a fantastic pedagogical insight into how to effectively teach novices how to program. As a result, many of our teaching techniques were influenced by this which helped to greatly improve our course. In this blog post we summarise what we changed throughout the five years and why, in the hope that this will benefit other instructors currently offering, or planning to offer, an undergraduate computer programming course.

Software Carpentry and HPC class hits Palmerston North (New Zealand)

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
On 7th and 8th June 2016 we gave a Software Carpentry training consisting of four blocks. We started with bash (presented by Markus, Landcare Research Hamilton), Python (Ben, Landcare Research Palmerston North), went on to git (Hannes, Massey University) and finally had a session around using High Performance Computing (HPC) as it is offered by the NeSI, the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (Wolfgang, NIWA Wellington and NeSI). This last session is not one of the official SWC modules, but was taylor-made and rounded up the training very well, as it used the skills acquired during the preceding three sessions. It included hands-on training, working remotely on the NeSI Pan cluster in Auckland; all attendees managed to log on and submit jobs to the SLURM scheduler successfully.
This was a very successful workshop with almost 40 attendants, organised and presented by a mixed team of new and more experienced instructors. The participants were very responsive and there was a lot of learning happening for the attendees and for instructors. The feedback was mostly positive and the negative feedback was very constructive. An aspect mentioned by several participants was that the number of attendees was probably too large, possibly with respect to the venue size - something we have to consider in the future. The logistical support with refreshments, received from the Massey in the person of Colleen Blair, was behind the scenes, but timely and well prepared. So we had a hydrated group, and a lot of fun was had by all. The new friendships made will hopefully lead to more cooperation between colleagues. Hannes’ favourite critique was: “It is impossible to listen and type as well!” – Note to self :)

How to approach selecting a license for data release

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

A question recently came up on the SWC Discuss mailing list about how to select a license for publicly released data. Answering these questions without knowing the life story of the data in question can only be done in vast generalities, but there are some nearly universal issues that everyone should consider.

No person will be able to tell you definitively which license is the best. Your selection will be determined by the kind of data you are using, community standards, and your personal preference. There are pros and cons to permissive versus restrictive licenses, which you will need to evaluate using your own preferences.

Workshop at Unicamp

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
A Software Carpentry workshop took place at Unicamp (State University of Campinas, Brazil) on May 23rd and 24th. Raniere Costa was the host and lead instructor, while Felipe Bocca, Monique Oliveira, and I completed the instructor's team.
Day 1: Although we had issues with the first booked classroom due to the student’s strike against budget cuts in public university education, Renato Santos gave the Unix shell lesson without problems. To solve the complication with facilities, we found an available computational lab to continue the workshop with the help of professor Doctor Francisco de Assis Magalhães Gomes Neto, IMECC’s director. After lunch, Felipe Bocca taught some R and then Raniere Costa taught RMarkdown.

Library Carpentry - update

Tue, 07 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Last week a global team of volunteers spent two days improving and enriching the original Library Carpentry materials. Belinda Weaver describes this AMAZING effort in a blog post.

The upshot of this is that the original materials have been superseded. To find the latest Library Carpentry lessons, please now head to https://github.com/data-lessons where the community will continue to update, maintain, and improve the lesson materials as they as used and reused across the globe!

Updating Library Carpentry

Mon, 06 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
A global team worked to update the [Library Carpentry](https://github.com/LibraryCarpentry) curriculum and lesson material at this year’s [Mozilla Science Lab Global sprint](https://science.mozilla.org/programs/events/global-sprint-2016).
The work kicked off in Brisbane, where Clinton Roy, Natasha Simons and I worked with Carmi Cronje in Sydney to start the ball rolling. Matthias Liffers came online in Perth two hours later. At 5.30 pm our time, we handed over to teams in South Africa, the Netherlands, and the UK, led by Anelda van der Walt, Mateusz Kuzak, and James Baker respectively.

9 - 31 May, 2016: The First Bimonthly Report, Instructor Data Analysis, R Instructor Training, Measuring the Right Stuff, RSE Conference, and a Bug Barbeque

Tue, 31 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

The 2016 Steering Committee’s first bimonthly report provides an overview on happenings in the community in the past two months. The joint partnership agreement with Data Carpentry is now available, together with a written version of the instructor training model, a call for subcommittees and task forces, and an official space on Facebook. Make sure to read the Code of Conduct in support of our welcoming, friendly, and diverse community.

##Instructor training

Further Analysis of Instructor Training Data

Tue, 31 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Following [Erin Becker's analysis of our instructor training data]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2016/05/first-analysis.html), Byron Smith has done [another analysis](http://blog.byronjsmith.com/instructor-survival.html) using survival statistics. The three key figures are:

What Digital Humanists Also Do

Mon, 30 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Following up on [an earlier post]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2016/05/what-digital-humanists-do.html), here are two more user stories from digital humanists to help us figure out what they need and how we can help.
Gamma

Gamma is a senior scholar working on two projects. The first looks at communities of workers and architects in the Medieval and Renaissance eras, and relies on records of specific buildings, diaries of artisans, sketches, and building plans (some of which are very large: the width of a sidewalk, and the length of a city block). The end goal is to learn about the people who created the buildings, who they did the work with, the processes they used, what they were paid, and so on, and more broadly to understand the social network of people involved in creating the great buildings of the time.

What Digital Humanists Do

Wed, 25 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
I have started gathering user stories from humanists to give us a better sense of what they do and how (or whether) our kind of skills training might help. Two of these are summarized below; there's a lot to think about, but the most important observation is that DH really is different in important ways from what Software and Data Carpentry have been doing so far.
Alpha

Alpha is studying the meeting of cultures in a text which mixes vernacular (Judaeo-Provençal) and Hebrew. The text’s author was a physician, and says in the introduction that the vernacular was for women and children, while the Hebrew was for men. The text exists in only one hand-written manuscript from 1401, which is based on the book of Esther used in the Purim holiday.

Darwin Data Carpentry at Charles Darwin University

Mon, 23 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##First Data Carpentry workshop in Darwin Australia##

The COMBINE Data Carpentry R workshop at Charles Darwin University was filled with joy, enthusiastic attendees and extra degrees of warm.

This was a Self-Organised workshop led by COMBINE with help of local organisers mainly from the Menzies School of Health Research. After some emailing back and forth, three months before the workshop, we planned to have an R data carpentry workshop based on the answers of a custom-made survey (prepared by Steven). Then, two COMBINE instructors were called, so Westa and I volunteered for this workshop and started with preps. The workshop was capped for 30 people with a nominal fee to cover for catering ($50 AUD). People were well-disposed and a good sign was that 45 days before the workshop the registration reached its limits. Later on, there were 2 dropouts and we were able to add 2 people from the waiting list.

First Analysis of Instructor Training Data

Fri, 20 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Following up on [Wednesday's post about instructor training stats]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2016/05/looking-for-a-model.html), Erin Becker (Data Carpentry's new Associate Director) has [posted an analysis](http://www.datacarpentry.org/blog/instructor-metrics/). I was very surprised to discover that less than 20% of people trained over a year ago haven't taught yet: I believed the number to be much higher. 51% of those trained in the last 12 months haven't taught yet, but that's less surprising, since in many cases there simply hasn't been time. Overall, we seem to be doing pretty well...

Instructor and trainee involvement

Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

This analysis is meant to answer questions about the extent of the non-teaching instructor and the non-certified trainee issues.

Analysis and Data Files

The RMarkdown that generated this document: Completion_rates.Rmd
The data: In the Data Carpentry metrics repo the files instructor_data_5_17_16_no_ids.csv and trainee_data_5_18_16_no_ids.csv

Questions

Questions to be answered include:

What percent of fully certified instructors haven’t taught?

Overall

Only those > 1 year past training

What percent of one-time instructors have only taught at their home institution?

A Common Sense Review of a Software Carpentry Workshop

Wed, 18 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Re-posted with permission from the author's blog.

Rationale

This Fall, I am teaching graduate-level biostatistics. I have not had the good fortune of teaching many graduate-level offerings, and I am really excited to do so. A team of top-notch big data scientists are hosted at NCEAS. They have recently formed a really exciting collaborative-learning collective entitled ecodatascience. I was also aware of the mission of Software Carpentry but had not reviewed the materials. The ecodatascience collective recently hosted a carpentry workshop, and I attended. I am a parent and use common sense media as a tool to decide on appropriate content. As a tribute to that tool and the efforts of the ecodatascience instructors, here is a brief common sense review.

Looking for a Model

Wed, 18 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Updated: this CSV file has information on who taught when. The three columns are the person's unique identifier, the date on which they first qualified, and the dates on which they taught. (If someone has taught multiple times, there is one record for each teaching event.) People who haven't taught at all are at the bottom with empty values in the third column. Erin Becker's analysis of this data is posted on the Data Carpentry blog and discussed here.

R Instructor Training

Tue, 17 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website Thanks to generous sponsorship from the R Consortium, Software Carpentry is running a two-day R instructor training class in Cambridge, UK, on September 19-20, 2016. If you are active in the R and/or Software and Data Carpentry communities, and wish to take part in this training, please fill in this application form. We will select applicants, and notify everyone who applied, by June 30, 2016; those who are selected will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation. If you have any questions, please mail training@software-carpentry.org.

R Instructor Training Applications Open

Mon, 16 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Thanks to generous sponsorship from the [R Consortium](https://www.r-consortium.org/), Software Carpentry is running a two-day R instructor training class in Cambridge, UK, on September 19-20, 2016. If you are active in the R and/or Software and Data Carpentry communities, and wish to take part in this training, please fill in [this application form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1py7-vm6ZGHKZD_lixAlaAeQnWk9llEnK5sOEydI2Ipc/viewform). We will select applicants, and notify everyone who applied, by June 30, 2016; those who are selected will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation. If you have any questions, please mail [training@software-carpentry.org](mailto:training@software-carpentry.org).
Please note that as a condition of taking this training:

Software Carpentry in Brisbane

Sat, 14 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Brisbane Software Carpentry sputtered into life some time in 2014 when scattered local supporters finally met and began to form a group. Having heard about the initiative via Twitter, I managed to contact Nathan Watson-Haigh who got me on to the Aus/NZ mailing list. Then I met Philipp Bayer (now in Perth) and we started planning our first workshop at The University of Queensland. PyCon Australia was coming up in Brisbane and we were able to get Damien Irving from Melbourne and Tim McNamara from New Zealand to teach for us as they were in town for that. So we ran our first ever Software Carpentry workshop with Python at UQ in July 2014.

First bimonthly report from 2016 Steering Committee

Wed, 11 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
On May 8th and 9th the Steering Committee had an in-person meeting at Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory to conclude the discussions during the first two months and make plans for the next ten months of activities. In the following weeks we will write more about the results of the in-person meeting on the blog but for now we want to give you an overview.
Partnerships

Our Executive Director is doing an amazing job increasing the number of Software Carpentry partners. Last year, we were asked to provide a join partnership agreement with Data Carpentry and after months of work this agreement is now available.

First Conference of Research Software Engineers: Call for Participation

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The [RSE Conference](http://www.rse.ac.uk/conf2016) on September 15-16, 2016, in Manchester will be the first conference to focus exclusively on the issues that affect people who write and use software in research. We're looking for submissions that will investigate and communicate ideas and expertise from the RSE community.
This is not a standard academic conference! We welcome researchers, but we also want to hear from people who may not typically attend conferences.

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!

24 April - 4 May, 2016: Subcommittees and Task Forces, Partnerships, Instructor Training, A Vacancy, Lab Meeting, Bug Barbeque, Discuss, and New Videos and a Book

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

The 2016 Steering Committee invites you to help organize and develop resources and activities to support our community members by proposing new initiatives in the form of subcommittees and task forces. Full instructions on the proposal process can be found here. The Steering Committee will gladly help! Also check out the subcommittee listing for information on existing and past subcommittees.

Joint partnerships are now offered by Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry! Read the partnership information on how to become a partner and get in touch.

Vacancy

Data Carpentry is hiring a Deputy Director of Assessment. Visit the Data Carpentry jobs page for a full job description and application procedure.

Events

Tune in to the Software Carpentry Lab Meeting on May 10th to discuss what’s new and upcoming in the community. Check out the Lab Meeting Etherpad for the schedule and connection details.

Join the worldwide Software Carpentry Bug Barbeque on June 13 to help fix bugs in Version 5.4 of Software Carpentry lessons before publication. All contributors will receive credit for your hard work with a citable object.

Conversations

A recent conversation on the discuss mailing list prompted the creation of two new issues open for discussion in GitHub:

How should we deal with high-volume discussions on the mailing list?

Is the Code of Conduct saying what the community want/need it to say and how should it be enforced?

Videos and Books

Greg Wilson published a video of “things not to do while teaching”. The material is great to use during instructor training to demonstrate to instructor trainees what we’re trying to avoid when teaching and is based on suggestions made in this discussion on GitHub.

Support Data Carpentry by buying the book How to Be a Modern Scientist written by Jeff Leek. The book includes guides for reviewing papers, reading papers, career planning, and giving talks.

Iñigo Aldazabal Mensa (CSIC-UPV/EHU) provided a video of him explaining Software Carpentry in great detail at the 2016 HPC Knowledge Portal Conference - Software Carpentry: teaching computing skills to researchers.

Other

Did you recently participate in a Software Carpentry workshop and had questions that weren’t answered by the lessons? Do you teach workshops and hear questions from participants that can’t be addressed by the existing materials? Please add these questions to this post.

What have we learned from our lesson discussion sessions so far? We welcome all new instructors to provide feedback about their experience of the sessions by commenting on the post.

Aleksandra Pawlik recently blogged about her experience when she visited South Africa for the first face-to-face Software and Data Carpentry Instructor Training in Africa.

Planning on running a Software Carpentry workshop with R? Read how three sticky notes and chocolates helped participants in the Sotware Carpentry workshop at Griffith University.

Staff members from iDigBio gave their perspective on attending a Software Carpentry workshop. They encourage all researchers who’d like to work with the iDigBio datasets to particpipate in a workshop near them or request one at their own institution.

16 workshops were run over the past 16 days. For more information about past workshops, please visit our website.

Upcoming Workhshops

May: University of Toronto, Bancroft Building - University of Toronto, Charles Darwin University, University of British Columbia, University of Cambridge, CSDMS Annual Meeting, Royal Holloway - University of London, SciPy Latin America, UBC Koerner Library, University of British Columbia, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Oklahoma State University, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, McMaster University - Kenneth Taylor Hall (KTH) B121, Colorado Special Libraries Association @ CU Boulder, Lund University, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Standards and Technology, South Florida Water Management District, University of Toronto, Centro de Competência em Software Livre

June: University of Wisconsin - Madison, University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez, Université Bishop’s, University of Cincinnati, NeSI-Massey Albany Software Carpentry, LANGEBIO-Cinvestav, University of Wisconsin - Madison, SIB @ University of Lausanne, University Library Basel, Materials Physics Center - University of the Basque Country, NERC / The University of Leeds, NERC / The University of Leeds

July: R workshop - The University of Queensland, Philippines

October: UC San Diego

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.

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.

Software Carpentry Bug BBQ

Wed, 04 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry is having a Bug BBQ on June 13th

Software Carpentry is aiming to ship a new version (5.4) of the Software Carpentry lessons by the end of June. To help get us over the finish line we are having a Bug BBQ on June 13th to squash as many bugs as we can before we publish the lessons. The June 13th 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 website.

Software Carpentry with R at Griffith University

Wed, 04 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
We had 27 people register to attend, with 22 attending the first day. We offered these workshops free of charge so we had been cautious about drop-out numbers.
I had 2 who had previously mentioned they were only coming to partial sessions and one dropped out the next day. We accepted everyone who registered and attempted the software install (our capacity was 30).

Save the Date: Software Carpentry Lab Meeting May 10

Tue, 03 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry’s next Lab Meeting calls will be at 14:00 UTC and 23:00 UTC, May 10th; all are welcome to join in to discuss what’s new and upcoming in the Software Carpentry community. Connection details are on the Lab Meeting Etherpad.

Our first feature for the month is the new Subcommittee and Task Force program, recently announced by the 2016 Steering Committee. Following on the success of our subcommittees in 2015, the Steering Committee has decided to open up the process of proposing and running projects and committees that advance Software Carpentry’s mission and enrich our community to all of our community members. More details on the proposal process can be found here; tune into the Lab Meeting to here more comments and ask questions from the program designers.

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.

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.

Buy This Book and Support Data Carpentry

Fri, 29 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Thanks to the efforts of Len Epp at Leanpub and Tracy Teal at Data Carpentry, 50% of the royalties from the book *[How to Be a Modern Scientist](https://leanpub.com/modernscientist/)* will be donated to Data Carpentry. The book is pay what you want with a suggested price of $10. I am very excited to help support the efforts of Data Carpentry since I believe data science education is a fundamental need in the modern scientific era.
About the book: The face of academia is changing. It is no longer sufficient to just publish or perish; we are now in an era where Twitter, Github, Figshare, and Alt Metrics are regular parts of the scientific workflow. Here I give high level advice about which tools to use, how to use them, and what to look out for. This book is appropriate for scientists at all levels who want to stay on top of the current technological developments affecting modern scientific careers. The book is based in part on the author’s popular guides including guides for

Summarizing Our Lesson Discussion Sessions

Fri, 29 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

For the first four months of this year, we ran hour-long lesson discussion sessions to give people going through instructor training a chance to ask questions of people who had taught our material several times. Trainees told us they were useful for getting information and as a way to meet more of the community. We have now decided to merge those sessions with our weekly workshop debriefing sessions in order to turn up the volume on both aspects, so this seems like a good time to summarize what we’ve learned so far ourselves.

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.

Call for Software Carpentry Foundation Subcommittees and Task Forces

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Purpose and Rationale

Software Carpentry is volunteer-powered organization that is rapidly growing. One of the greatest things about Software Carpentry is the huge diversity of people that have come together to collaborate, teach, and share ideas and resources. Your contributions to the community have made Software Carpentry a huge success!

To meet the needs of our growing community, the 2015 Steering Committee Launched the first Subcommittee program to allow groups of members to organize and develop resources and activities that support our members.

Data Carpentry is Hiring a Deputy Director of Assessment

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
[Data Carpentry is hiring](http://www.datacarpentry.org/jobs/)!
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.

Questions, Answers, and Lessons

Sun, 24 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

While working on an outline of a new lesson on Python, I began thinking about the overall coherence of what we teach. In particular, I started to worry that we might be teaching some things because we teach them, i.e., that the curriculum might lose its connection to researchers' actual issues.

One method for keeping things grounded in the other field I still occasionally work in (empirical software engineering) is called Goal, Question, Metric. As the name suggests, it defines three questions: what are you trying achieve, what questions do you need answered in order to achieve it, and what metrics will you accept as answers to those questions. An educational equivalent is Question, Answer, Lesson: what questions do novices have, what answers do competent practitioners give them, and what lessons are needed to teach those answers. (The "do novices have" modifier is crucial: in order for our workshops to be appealing, they must answer the questions that novices actually have, not the ones we wish they would ask.)

Welcome to Google Summer of Code Students

Sat, 23 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Thanks to a lot of hard work from some members of our community and members of others open source scientific projects we are happy to welcome the students and mentors that will participate on Google Summer of Code this year under NumFOCUS umbrela.

Student Project Mentors

Bhargav Srinivasa Dynamic Topic Models for Gensim Lev Konstantinovskiy, Radim Rehurek and Devasena Inupakutika

Chris Medrela Manage workflow for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry instructor training Greg Wilson and Piotr Banaszkiewicz

Akash Goel Upgrade to datapackage.json standard for EcoData Retriever Henry Senyondo and Ethan White

Patrick Kofod Mogensen Improving the state of Optim.jl for JuliaOpt Miles Lubin

Prerit Garg Result-aggregation server for the installation-test scripts for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry Piotr Banaszkiewicz and Raniere Silva

Ramchandran Muthukumar Presolve Routines for LP and SDP within Convex.jl for JuliaOpt Madeleine Udell

Hannah Aizenman Categorical Axis for matplotlib Michael Droettboom and Thomas Caswell

This is the second year that NumFOCUS participate on Google Summer of Code and they have more than the double of slots from last year. Selecting the students was very difficult due the high quality of the proposals that are archived on GitHub.

Instructor Training in South Africa

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Thanks a lot of hard work from Anelda van der Walt and the support from the [North-West University](http://www.nwu.ac.za/), [University of Cape Town](http://www.uct.ac.za/) and [Talarify](http://www.talarify.co.za/) we were able to run the first face-to-face instructor training in South Africa. We trained 23 new instructors from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya. The event was a great success and we are looking forward to expansion on Software and Data Carpentry workshops South Africa and other African countries.
Anelda has been developing Software and Data Carpentry in South Africa for a while now and her efforts led to this first face-to-face Instructor Training. We started off on Sunday, 17th April . evening with a short ice-breaking session of lightning talks during which the participants talked about “The coolest thing about their job” for 2 minutes. Everyone had something interesting to say. What was even more impressive, nobody ran over time, which is not the usual case.

10 tips and tricks for instructing and teaching by means of live coding

Wed, 20 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the key teaching practices used at Software and Data Carpentry workshops is ’live coding’: instructors don’t use slides, but work through the lesson material, typing in the code or instructions, with the workshop participants following along. Learning how to teach using live-coding is best done in practice, with feedback from peers (this is why it is included in instructor training). Nonetheless, this post lists ten tips and tricks to help you get started.

So You Want to Make a Screencast

Wed, 13 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
I am the author of [Learning Cython](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920046813.do), a new series of videos teaching [Cython](http://cython.org/). There are over 70 videos, making up around five and a half hours of content. If you're involved in education, you may have considered making a screencast like these and I'd like to give a short overview of what that entails.
Publisher

You may be happy to self-produce and self-host, and I would be too except that I was approached by a publisher and made an offer to produce the videos for distribution on their site. How this happened is interesting: in 2015, on a whim, I decided to submit a Cython talk proposal for PyCon AU. My talk got accepted, and a few weeks before the conference the publisher contacted me and made the offer.

Carpentry week 2016 at the University of Oslo

Tue, 12 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Cross-posted from the author’s blog.

In March 14-18 2016 we organised the first Carpentry week at the University of Oslo. After a mini-Seminar on Open Data Skills, there was a Software Carpentry workshop, two Data Carpentry workshops and a workshop on Reproducible Science as well as a ‘beta’ Library Carpentry workshop.

The Software and Data Carpentry effort at the University of Oslo, aka ‘Carpentry@UiO’, really started in 2012 when I invited Software Carpentry to give a workshop at the university. The then director, Greg Wilson, came himself and gave an inspirational workshop – recruiting Karin Lagesen and I to become workshop instructors in the process. Karin and I graduated from instructor training spring 2013 and have been giving a couple of workshops in Oslo and elsewhere.

Installation Video Tutorials

Tue, 12 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
I recently created videos for installing the software needed for most Software Carpentry workshops. Links for these videos are now added to the lessons template for a workshop and listed below.
Windows:

Git Bash and SWC installer

Python

R/Rstudio

Mac:

Shell, git and nano

Python

R/Rstudio

So far, we only have Windows and Mac videos. If anyone wants to make Linux versions, I’m happy to answer any questions. Or if you want to make the recordings and not the voiceover, I’m willing to narrate.

Changes on Mentoring Subcommittee

Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The first quarter of 2016 is almost over and so far the Mentoring Subcommittee have been very quiet although we have continued hosting the post workshop debriefing sessions and the pre-workshop helping session.
We have been quiet because we were busy with the Steering Committee election and reorganization of the volunteer hours from our members since six of them (Belinda Weaver, Bill Mills, Karin Lagesen, Kate Hertweck, Rayna M Harris and I) were elected as Steering Committee members. In addition to this some members had to temporarily reduce their volunteer hours for various reasons but are now back to help us.

Designing a New Novice Python Lesson

Sun, 10 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last November, I volunteered to pull together a new full-day lesson on Python suitable for people with no previous programming experience. It has taken longer to come together than I expected, but that’s partly because I saw it as an opportunity to create a full-length example of the “backward” lesson design method we teach in the instructor training class.

What we have so far is in this GitHub repository, which is rendered at this site. We would be very grateful for input: if you think crucial topics have been left out, please say so, while if there’s stuff that could be removed or re-ordered, please say that as well.

Maintaining a Lesson

Mon, 04 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After two years as a Software Carpentry lesson maintainer of r-novice-inflammation, I am stepping down so that I can spend more time on my research (this thesis appears unwilling to write itself) and with my family. This therefore seems like a good time to summarize what’s happened and what I’ve learned for the benefit of anyone planning to become a maintainer.

A Bit of Background

Software Carpentry really started growing the number of workshops and instructors in 2012. At the time, there were two main sets of lessons in place: the version 4 SWC lessons written by Greg Wilson and others in 2010-11, and a set developed by The Hacker Within, a student group at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. (These were referred to as the THW lessons, and can be found in the old boot-camps repository.)

AMY release v1.5.1

Sun, 03 Apr 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re very pleased to announce the newest (v1.5.1) release of AMY, our workshop management tool. This release is special because:

it contains more bugfixes than new features

we had a number of submissions from prospective Google Summer of Code 2016 (GSoC) students.

GSoC students that submitted fixes or new features to AMY:

Shubham Singh added “Notes” field to instructor profile update form

Nikhil Verma found and fixed “List duplicates” page error when no duplicates existed

Shubham Singh added new tag “hackaton”

Chris Medrela found and fixed 404 page for revisions that didn’t exist

Additionally Nikhil Verma is working on getting certificates to generate from within AMY, but this will probably land in v1.5.2.

rOpenSci is Looking for a Community Manager

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thanks to their recent funding, rOpenSci is now looking for a community manager. Their mission is to expand access to scientific data and promote a culture of reproducible research and sustainable research software; to aid that, the community manager’s job will be to broaden the understanding and reach of rOpenSci to the researcher community. For details, please see the full announcement.

An R-based Instructor Training Sponsored by the R Consortium

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The R consortium Infrastructure Steering Committee awards have been officially announced and we are happy to confirm that our proposal to organise an R-based instructor training was successful.

We will organise an in-person instructor training that will focus on R. While the content of the training will not change as such, code-related exercises and examples that the participants will be working with will be focused on R, and will be made available to the R instructor community to help them improve their teaching. The full proposal is available here.

Announcing the Open Science Grid User School 2016

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you could access hundreds or thousands of computers for your scholarly work, what could you do?

How could it transform your work?

What discoveries might you make?

We are seeking applicants for the 2016 Open Science Grid (OSG) User School, which takes place 25–29 July at the beautiful University of Wisconsin in Madison. Participants will learn to use high throughput computing (HTC) to harness vast amounts of computing power for research, applicable to nearly any field of study (e.g., physics, chemistry, engineering, life sciences, earth sciences, agricultural and animal sciences, economics, social sciences, medicine, and more).

Hello, Spatio-temporal Data Carpentry

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Data Carpentry have just announced the availability of an introductory lesson on working with geospatial data developed in conjunction with NEON (the National Ecological Observatory Network). For details, please see the full announcement on Data Carpentry’s blog.

Hello, Spatio-temporal Data Carpentry

Mon, 28 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

By: Leah Wasser
NEON Supervising Scientist, Education & Public Engagement
@leahawasser

I am sitting here in my hotel room in Oslo, Norway, floating on a high from the past few days of Carpentry workshops. We taught the NEON / Data Carpentry spatio-temporal Carpentry lessons for the first time this week at the University of Oslo in Norway. These lessons are the result of unique a collaboration between the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and Data Carpentry. I thought I’d take some time to share my experiences with creating and teaching the lessons, while letting the community know that this great new resource is available for both workshops and self-paced learning!

2015 Annual Report

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’re pleased to announce the publication of the first SCF annual report summarizing what we have done this year to to further our goals of promoting reproducibility and reliability in all branches of science, and helping researchers be more productive.

You can download the annual report here.

Python Education Summit at PyCon 2016

Wed, 23 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Python Education Summit is a gathering of educators from all venues (school, colleges, universities, community workshops, online courses, government) that share interest and passion in teaching Python. It is an interesting opportunity for Software Carpentry instructors to get inspiration and tips from educators in completely different contexts.

Schedule

The Summit will take place at the Oregon Convention Center, same site of PyCon, on Sunday, May 29th, the 2nd day of the tutorials and the day before the main conference starts. It will run from 9am to 4:30pm.

4 - 18 March, 2016: Instructor Trainee Mentoring, Debriefing vs Lesson Sessions, Version Control, Big Data in Biology Summer School, New Lessons

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Instructor Training

How can we help instructor trainees complete their training? Belinda Weaver is working hard to support new instructors in Australia. Do you have any other ideas?

Several opportunities are now available for new and experienced instructors to join the conversations about workshops. Should we be combining various sessions to better integrate new and old instructors and give more options for participation?

You can also read about the abovementioned discussions in the latest summary of instructor debriefing rounds 4 and 5.

##Conversations

Software and Data Carpentry Instructor Training Comes to Africa

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

by Anelda van der Walt

North-West University eResearch, UCT eResearch, and Talarify are excited to announce that a Software & Data Carpentry Instructor Training event will take place in Potchefstroom, North-West Province, South Africa from 17 - 20 April 2016.

The lead trainer will be Aleksandra Pawlik, a Data Carpentry Steering Committee member. She will be joined by several of the more experienced South African instructors who provide additional support working with the trainee instructors.

Software and Data Carpentry Instructor Training Comes to Africa

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

North-West University eResearch, UCT eResearch, and Talarify are excited to announce that a Software & Data Carpentry Instructor Training event will take place in Potchefstroom, North-West Province, South Africa from 17 - 20 April 2016.

Our lead trainer will be Aleksandra Pawlik and several of the more experienced South African instructors will also join the workshop to work with the trainee instructors.

In line with a previous post from Belinda Weaver about helping new instructors through the pipeline, this workshop will form part of a larger 12-month programme to help new instructors truly integrate into the community. The programme, an initiative of the three hosting organisations and currently under development, will include supporting instructor trainees to:

New Maintainers

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
We are pleased to announce that [Harriet Dashnow]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#dashnow_harriet) and [Daniel Chen]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#chen_daniel) have agreed to take over maintenance of [the R inflammation lesson]({{site.github_url}}/r-novice-inflammation). Our thanks to them for volunteering, and to [John Blischak]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#blischak_j) and [Denis Haine]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#haine_denis) for all their hard work over the past year and more.
We are also grateful to Erik Bray, who has volunteered to take over maintenance of our Windows installer. As we have grown, we have come to depend on our community to do more than just teach (and yes, I just said “just”). If you would like to get involved in maintaining lessons, mentoring new instructors, or other non-teaching tasks, please give us a shout.

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefings, Rounds 04 and 05

Thu, 10 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
On February 23, Rayna Harris, Sheldon McKay, and Tiffany Timbers ran the 4th round of post-workshop instructor debriefing. On March 8th, Rayna Harris, Raniere Silva, and Belinda Weaver ran the 5th round of post-workshop instructor debriefing.
New lesson materials

Data Carpentry Genomics Lesson. Greg Wilson recently sent out an email about updating the lesson maintainer roles for Software Carpentry to jump-start finalizing the Ecology and Genomic lessons. These aren’t final yet, but the Iowa State University instructors spent about considerable time putting together a genomic lesson. You can view the Git repository with their lessons here.

3rd Annual Big Data in Biology Summer School

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at The University of Texas at Austin is hosting the 3rd Annual Big Data in Biology Summer School May 23–26, 2016.

The 2016 Summer School offers eleven intensive courses that span general programming, high throughput DNA and RNA sequencing analysis, proteomics, and computational modeling. These courses provides a unique hands-on opportunity to acquire valuable skills directly from experts in the field. Each course will meet for three hours a day for four days (either in the morning or in the afternoon) for a total of twelve hours.

A Proposal for Helping Instructor Trainees Finish

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Instructor training is one way we grow our community worldwide. Yet many people who go through instructor training never go on to teach at a Software Carpentry workshop. Can that be fixed? I suggest that shepherding people though the final stages might help with completion rates.
When the idea of running instructor training in Brisbane was originally mooted, I set up a survey, very early on, to record expressions of interest from people who might want to train. I tweeted that several times in the months leading up to the training. The survey captured name, email address, institution, discipline and how each applicant had heard about the survey. I wish now I had also asked ‘why do you want to train’ or ‘why do you deserve a place over someone else?’ as that would have helped me sift through the candidates.

Should We Combine Debriefing and Lesson Discussion?

Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Belinda Weaver recently posted [a proposal for helping instructor trainees finish]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2016/03/proposal-instructor-trainees.html). While reading her post and writing out [the current instructor training workflow]({{site.github_url}}/board/pull/81) for the benefit of GSoC students, I started wondering if it might also make sense to combine the workshop debriefing sessions with the trainee mentoring sessions: a couple of regularly-scheduled slots each week (times chosen to accommodate all comers) would be easier to wrangle, and trainees would get to meet more existing instructors and hear about their in-class experiences. We'd still need some sort of sign-up mechanism to keep numbers manageable, and we'd need someone to report back on which trainees had asked well-informed questions, and it would mean less coupling between the discussion and the specific lesson(s) trainees were working on, but the first two aren't new work (we're doing them already) and the third might actually be a good thing, particularly if we follow up on another suggestion and have people attend a discussion *before* submitting their lesson change. Please add comments to this blog post to let us know what you think of the idea, and to [Belinda's]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2016/03/proposal-instructor-trainees.html) to give her feedback as well.

Complexity vs. Subtlety

Sat, 05 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
I gave a lightning talk on Software Carpentry for the [OICR](http://oicr.on.ca/) yesterday, and in discussion afterward, [Jonathan Dursi](http://www.dursi.ca/) made an observation that I've been thinking about since. He wondered whether the key difference between commercial software and scientific software is *complexity* versus *subtlety*. For example, the software that manages workplace insurance payouts for the province of Ontario is complex because it has to handle every regulatory change since the mid-1920s. None of the its rules and exceptions are intellectually taxing, but by the time you turn them into a service, provide a dozen different interfaces for different business roles, and make the whole thing fault tolerant, the software is incredibly tangled.
A lot of scientific software is relatively straightforward by comparison, so long all you look at is the control flow. It’s the specific calculations that are hard: what differencing scheme or statistical test to use, what convergence criteria or significance measure to apply, and so on. And yes, there are a lot of fiendishly tricky algorithms in science, but they’re often hidden in libraries built and maintained by specialists who work and think like software engineers.

16 February - 3 March, 2016: New Steering Committee, Software Carpentry Value Proposition, Webinar, Vacancies, Community Building, Instructor Training, and Modern Scientific Authoring

Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights

Our new steering committee has been elected. Congratulations to Rayna Harris, Kate Hertweck, Karin Lagesen, Bill Mills, Raniere Silva, Belinda Weaver, and Jason Williams!

Looking for a good model to show potentially interested stakeholders what value Software Carpentry brings? Jonah Duckles, our executive director, shared his views. Let us know how we can improve on this?

##Webinars

DataONE is hosting Greg Wilson for a webinar titled Research Computing Skills for Scientists: Lessons, Challenges, and Opportunities from Software Carpentry on 8 March 2016 at 9am Pacific Time.

##New

Communities: The Foundation of Impactful Workshops

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

Applications due March 1st: 2016 eScience Data Science for Social Good summer program

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The University of Washington eScience Institute, in collaboration with Urban@UW and Microsoft, is excited to announce the 2016 Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) summer program. The program brings together data and domain scientists to work on focused, collaborative projects that are designed to impact public policy for social benefit.

Modeled after similar programs at the University of Chicago and Georgia Tech, with elements from our own Data Science Incubator, sixteen DSSG Student Fellows will be selected to work with academic researchers, data scientists, and public stakeholder groups on data-intensive research projects. Graduate students and advanced undergraduates are eligible for these paid positions.

Bioinformatics Training Impact Coordinator

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The Bioinformatics Training Facility of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge is looking for a Training Impact Co-ordinator. The post-holder will develop (building on existing work), implement, monitor, analyse and report on a comprehensive system of training metrics/key performance indicators across the portfolio of [ELIXIR](http://www.elixir-europe.org/) and [EXCELERATE](https://www.elixir-europe.org/news/elixir-accelerates-major-horizon-2020-funding) bioinformatics training activities. For more information, please see [the full ad](http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/9571/).

Welcome to the 2016 Steering Committee!

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

Rayna Harris

Kate Hertweck

Karin Lagesen

Bill Mills

Raniere Silva

Belinda Weaver

Jason Williams

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

For those interested, the raw results are available here.

More of a Difference Than You Realize

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
We received this after an online instructor training workshop earlier this week, which reminded me that small differences for some people can be large ones for others:

Thanks for a great workshop the last two days… I wanted to share a separate positive comment that I should have included on the Etherpad: I’m profoundly/severely hard-of-hearing in both ears, and depend quite a bit on lip-reading when listening to people. As such, I have great difficulty with online material if the audio is bad, the speaker is not well lit, or the speaker is simply not on video.

Building Software, Building Community: Lessons from the rOpenSci Project

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
[Carl Boettiger]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#boettiger_carl), [Scott Chamberlain]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#chamberlain_s), [Ted Hart]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#hart_t), and [Karthik Ram]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#ram_k) have just published a paper titled "[Building Software, Building Community: Lessons from the rOpenSci Project](http://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com/articles/10.5334/jors.bu/)", in which they describe what they've learned by growing the [rOpenSci](http://ropensci.org/) project There are a lot of great ideas here that other groups could borrow, and of course you can keep up with their news by [following their blog](http://ropensci.org/blog/).

A Counterpoint to Collaborative Lesson Design

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Discussion of our proposed lesson on [on modern scientific authoring]({{site.github_url}}/modern-scientific-authoring) is an instructive counterpoint to our previous post extolling the virtues of [collaborative lesson development]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2016/02/designing-lessons-collaboratively.html). The aim of the lesson is to show researchers how to write and publish in the early 21st Century---or more honestly, to persuade them to stop mailing each other copies of Microsoft Word files and start using something else. After a long-winded opening (which I'll cut substantially), the [current introduction]({{page.site}}/01-mess.html) summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of six options:

WYSIWYG on the desktop (Microsoft Word).

WYSIWYG on the web (Google Docs).

Desktop typesetting (LaTeX).

Web-based typesetting hybrids (Authorea, Overleaf).

HTML.

Markdown.

It concludes that for the foreseeable future, many researchers will continue to prefer WYSIWYG tools rather than typesetting tools requiring compilation (such as LaTeX and Markdown). However, since most researchers are already familiar with WYSIWYG tools, and since typesetting tools are easier to integrate into reproducible workflows, the lesson will focus on LaTeX for mansucripts and Markdown for the web.

Checking the Balance

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Added 2016-02-22: this strong critique of the Terrell et al preprint mentioned in the opening paragraph of this post is worth a careful read.

It's been a depressing couple of weeks. On top of yet more reports of universities turning a blind eye to sexual harassment for years, a new paper of gender bias in open source shows that, "...women's contributions tend to be accepted more often than men's. However, when a woman's gender is identifiable, they are rejected more often." This comes on top of earlier studies (like this one) showing that women are substantially under-represented in online forums like Stack Overflow, even when compared to computing as a whole.

Our New Instructor Pipeline

Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Last fall, we decided to [reboot]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2015/09/rebooting-instructor-training.html) our [instructor training course]({{site.github_io_url}}/instructor-training/). We've [tried a lot of things]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2015/12/three-flavors-of-instructor-training.html) since then, and one of the biggest successes has been [our new checkout procedure]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2015/12/instructor-training-checkout-procedure.html). In brief:

After completing the instructor training course, the trainee picks one of the core lessons from each of the Carpentries she wants to teach and submit a new exercise for that lesson.

Designing Lessons Collaboratively

Mon, 15 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
A few days ago, I asked for feedback on a new Python lesson aimed at people who've never programmed before. The [outline]({{site.github_url}}/python-novice-gapminder/blob/gh-pages/index.md) had already received several rounds of feedback from a handful of people, but there were still lots of comments:

As always, the choice of tools attracted a lot of discussion. Jeremy Metz opened by saying, “I worry that the use of a more abstract environment like the Jupyter Notebook might confuse and add an additional barrier to people wanting to ‘really’ use Python.” I agree that the Notebook imposes an extra cognitive load, since it’s so different from anything else novices are likely to have seen, but it has become the tool of choice for many scientists for good reasons: it’s stable, cross-platform, encourages reproducible practices, and has a great, supportive community. We’re also starved for alternatives: the audience for this class isn’t required to have seen the shell, so running scripts from the command line is out, and all of the Python IDEs we’ve tried have significant shortcomings for our audience.

NGS Summer 2016: Analyzing Next-Generation Sequencing Data

Sun, 14 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
A two-week residential course on next-generation sequencing is being offered at the Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University on August 8-19, 2016. The course's directors are Prof. Matt MacManes (U. New Hampshire) and Prof. Meg Staton (U. Tennessee, Knoxville), and instructors will include Prof. Ian Dworkin (McMaster U.), Prof. Torsten Seemann (U. Melbourne), Shaun Jackman (PhD candidate, UBC) and others. More information, or to register, please see [http://bioinformatics.msu.edu/ngs-summer-course-2016](http://bioinformatics.msu.edu/ngs-summer-course-2016).
Note: if you are running a course that might be of interest to our community, please let us know.

Announcing New Unix Shell Maintainer

Fri, 12 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After an application and selection process, Ashwin Srinath has been selected as a new co-maintainer of the Unix Shell lesson, joining Gabriel Devenyi and replacing outgoing maintainer Christina Koch.

Introducing Ashwin

Ashwin is a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University, and soon-to-be member of Clemson’s Cyberinfrastructure Technology Integration (CITI) research computing group. His research areas include computational fluid dynamics, and high-performance computing. He spends most days programming and making mistakes, and some days teaching others how not to make them. Ashwin has formerly served as co-maintainer for the Software Carpentry MATLAB materials.

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 03

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
On Tuesday, February 9th, we ran the 3rd round of Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing Sessions. Rayna and Raniere hosted the morning debriefing session. The even session was cancelled due to low attendance.
New lesson materials

Blogging as a Collaborative Git Exercise. The SFU group created a new Git exercise in which pairs of learners wrote guest blog posts for the others site. Then learners experienced conflict resolution with a controlled lesson where paid edited the same line of the guest blog post. This was an engaging exercise that allowed learned to see successful collaboration and conflict resolution. Stay tuned for a dedicate blog post from Bruno Grande about the exercise.

What worked well

A 5-day Hybrid Data / Software Carpentry Workshop. The 2016-01-25-Utrecht group covered a lot of material in this 5 day workshop (Spredsheets, OpenRefine, Python 3, Unix, SQL, Git, Make, and HPC)! While most of the materials were used as is, updates to the Data Carpentry Python lesson have already been pushed and merged.

Context when teaching Numerical Methods

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
As a director of the [Centre for Doctoral Training in Next Generation Computational Modelling](http://ngcm.soton.ac.uk/) I spend plenty of time thinking about, working with, and particularly teaching Numerical Methods. The [general intro course](https://github.com/IanHawke/NumericalMethods) I give is Maths focussed, has around 100 participants, has about 50 contact hours over 12 weeks, and gets a range of interested students from Maths, Physics and Engineering.
The past two weeks I’ve been teaching Numerical Methods for the Centre for Doctoral Training in New and Sustainable Photovoltaics. With around a dozen participants, many of whom had minimal theory or coding background, and only 10 hours available, some changes in the teaching were required. Most of these followed Software Carpentry approaches: live coding, Jupyter notebooks, sticky notes, and a set of “authentic” examples to train underpinning principles.

A New Lesson on GAP

Tue, 09 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
We are pleased to announce that [Alex Konovalov](http://blogs.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/alexk/) and his colleagues have created a Software Carpentry-style lesson on [the computational algebra system GAP](http://www.gap-system.org). The lesson is at [http://alex-konovalov.github.io/gap-lesson/](http://alex-konovalov.github.io/gap-lesson/), and the repository for it is at [https://github.com/alex-konovalov/gap-lesson](https://github.com/alex-konovalov/gap-lesson). It was taught at [a recent workshop](https://kkwakwa.github.io/2015-11-16-manchester-codima/), and feedback can be viewed [here](https://github.com/alex-konovalov/2015-11-16-manchester-codima-feedback/blob/master/raw-feedback.md).
We are now starting to develop a lesson on SageMath. We invite collaborators, please watch the repository if you’re interested in following along, and add a comment to this issue if you’re interested in contributing.

Open Science Radio Podcast

Tue, 09 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Matthias Fromm and Konrad Förstner recently interviewed Greg Wilson for their Open Science Radio podcast. You can listen to it [here](http://www.openscienceradio.de/2016/02/09/osr038-software-carpentry-with-greg-wilson-en/), or explore their other recordings.

Correlations

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We've run instructor training both online and in person for several years, so it's time to look at how they compare. The raw data shows:

the event's start date

its unique identifier (which we call a "slug")

whether it was online

how many people took part

how many completed training after this course (both as an absolute number and as a percentage)

how many completed after taking a later course (in both forms)

how many have never completed

how many have taught at least once since taking the course

The plot below then shows completion rates and follow-through teaching rates (as percentages) versus cohort size, tagged by whether the training event was online or in person, for all events that took place at least one year ago. (I've used that cutoff to give participants a fair chance to teach after completing their training.) It also shows the absolute number of participants and the follow-through teaching percentage by date.

Come a Long Way, Got a Long Way to Go

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
[Simon Oxenham recently reported](http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/we-need-to-rewrite-the-textbook-on-how-to-teach) on [a new report](http://www.nctq.org/dmsStage/Learning_About_Learning_Report) from the National Council on Teacher Quality that examined how well teacher training courses and textbooks convey evidence-based teaching practices. The sad answer is, hardly at all:

The report finds that out of 48 texts used in teacher-training programs none accurately described fundamental evidence-based teaching strategies comprehensively. Only 15 percent had more than a single page devoted to evidence-based practices; the remainder contained either zero or only a few sentences on methods that have been backed up by the decades of scientific findings that exist in the field of educational psychology.

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 02

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
On January 26, we ran the 2nd round of Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing Sessions. Rayna and Christina hosted the morning debriefings while Bill and Raniere hosted the evening debriefing. A topic of interest today was on installations. Read on for details.
Thoughts on the “check installation” scripts

There is in an ongoing discussion about whether or not the “check installation” scripts for workshop pages should be updated. So, we asked the attendees how often these were being using and how useful they were. Some comments we received were:

Software Carpentry as a University Course

Fri, 05 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The inaugural Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry Instructor and Helper Retreat is over! It was a long day, packed with tutorials, demos, and discussions. I (Daniel Chen) led a round table discussion with Tiffany Timbers and Jenny Bryan. You can watch the discussion and/or read the notes on etherpad.

Active Workshops

Tue, 02 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
A few days ago, we were asked what was the greatest number of simultaneous workshops we'd ever run. I didn't know, but it was an easy enough question to answer from our records:

I’m sure better visualizations are possible (if you want to create one, the raw data is here), and we should find some way to show that the burst starting in April 2014 is actually a couple of workshops that were spread out over several weeks, but I think the trend line is pretty cool.

Two Pages of Evidence

Tue, 02 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Andreas Stefik and his colleagues have written [a two-page summary](http://quorumlanguage.com/evidence/evidence.pdf) of what we actually know about usability and programming language design. There aren't nearly as many results yet as we want or need, but what the people working in the field have shown is that we actually can answer these questions scientifically, and that answering them correctly actually does have an impact.

17 January - 1 February, 2016: SCF Election Candidates, Lessons Learned, Instructor Survey Results, and an Intermediate R Lesson

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights: Steering Committee Election

The 2016 Software Carpentry Foundation Steering Committee election dates are set for February 15-19. Remember to join our Community Lab Meeting on 9 February to meet the candidates.

Read more about the candidates for the 2016 elections by following the links below:

Dhavide Aruliah

Jonathan Guyer

Rayna Harris

Kate Hertweck

Karin Lagesen

Cam Macdonell

Lauren Michael

Bill Mills

Giacomo Peru

Raniere Silva

Anelda van der Walt

Leanne Wake

Belinda Weaver

Jason Williams

##Published

SSI is hiring a Communications Officer!

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The [Software Sustainability Institute (SSI)](http://software.ac.uk/) is recruiting a [Communications Officer](http://software.ac.uk/news/2016-01-27-were-hiring-communications-officer-help-us-disseminate-software-best-practice) to communicate the activities of the Institute, and raise its profile in the research community and the general public. SSI has been Software Carpentry's long-standing partner and coordinates our workshops in the UK. They are looking for an enthusiastic individual with a track record in dissemination and outreach. Ideally, they'll have had experience of working with researchers and/or writing technical articles, as well as an understanding of what it takes to nurture a great social media presence and successfully promote events.
For more details and to apply, please see the advert on the University of Edinburgh website (search for vacancy reference ID 035330).

Elsewhere on the Web

Fri, 29 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Our instructors teach a lot more than just Software Carpentry. For example, [Christie Bahlai]({{site.baseurl}}/team/#bahlai_christie) has started teaching a course on "Open Science and Reproducible Research". You can [follow the course blog](https://osrrcourse.wordpress.com/) or check out the materials in [the course repository](https://github.com/cbahlai/OSRR_course)---contributions from the community are very welcome. The course already includes lots of interesting ideas, and there's more to come.
Elsewhere, Tiffany Timbers is organizing several half-day workshops at Simon Fraser University as part of Titus Brown’s Data Intensive Biology training program. These workshops will be hands on and supported by several TA’s in addition to the instructor. All are welcome to participate, regardless of discipline or training level—please feel free to distribute these events widely. And if you cannot attend locally because of geography, please note that several of them are being streamed on YouTube:

A New Version of 'Lessons Learned'

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
A new version of "Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned" is [now available on F1000](http://f1000research.com/articles/3-62/v2). We think it's an interesting complement to the [instructor survey]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2016/01/instructor-survey.html), and we hope you enjoy them both.

Instructor Survey Report

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

To recap, we asked the following questions:

How did you get interested in doing Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry?

How do you use the skills you teach in Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry in your daily work?

What is the benefit (personally and/or professionally) to you in being involved with the Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry Community?

What examples do you have of how the Software Carpentry/Data Carpentry Community have benefited others (students, labs, university groups)?

What suggestions do you have for improvement?

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

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.

Meet the 2016 Election Candidates

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

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

In alphabetical order by last name the candidates are:

Our Introduction to Git Has Been Published

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Our short paper "A Quick Introduction to Version Control with Git and GitHub" has been [published in PLOS Computational Biology](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004668). It is freely reusable under a Creative Commons Attribution license, and we hope you and your colleagues find it useful.

Presenting Materials for Intermediate UseRs

Mon, 18 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We’ve been teaching R workshops for over a year now at the University of Melbourne, and one thing we’ve noticed is the disparity in skill level among workshop attendees. Researchers generally fall into one of two catergories:

Absolute novices: those who have heard of R, but have never touched a programming language before.

Regular users: those who are using R in their research, possibly on a regular basis. They can modify scripts, and have a general understanding of the language basics, but want to extend their knowledge.

What Are Your Favorite Cartoons?

Mon, 18 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
As we're updating our lessons this year, I'd like to add a few more cartoons that relate directly to what we teach. Two of my favorites are [this description of how most scientists manage revisions](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1531) and [this summary of how many people react to unwelcome evidence](http://www.felienne.com/archives/4404). What are yours, and what lessons would you add them to? Please add links in the comments on this page (and please make sure what you link to has enough information for us to contact artists and make sure we have permission to re-use their work).

6 January - 16 January, 2016: Election Candidates, SCF Strategic Plan, New Book, Pre-Workshop Help Sessions, AMY Version 1.3, Mistakes, and Recorded Lessons

Sat, 16 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights: Steering Committee Election

The 2016 Software Carpentry Foundation Steering Committee election dates are set for February 15-19. Please make sure your name is on the members list to cast your vote.

Read more about the candidates for the 2016 elections by following the links below:

Belinda Weaver

Cam Macdonell

Leanne Wake

Kate Hertweck

Dhavide Aruliah

Jason Williams

Karin Lagesen

Rayna Harris

Lauren Michael

Raniere Silva

Bill Mills

Giacomo Peru

Anelda van der Walt

Jonathan Guyer

The Software Carpentry Foundation strategic plan as developed by the current steering committee is available.

##New

18 Months of Progress

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
[My talk at SciPy](https://youtu.be/1e26rp6qPbA?t=1748) in 2014 quoted one of our instructors as saying:

The most frustrating things for me are

people are more willing to submit new material…that to improve existing material or review another person’s PR and 2) instructors teaching bootcamps using other lesson material. This experiment in collaborative lesson development is doomed to fail if

people don’t make iterative changes to lesson material and 2) the end product isn’t used in live bootcamps.

18 months later, I’m very pleased by how much better we’re doing. Almost all of our instructors are now using our lessons rather than legacy material of their own. just as importantly, dozens of people have submitted pull requests in the last couple of months alone. Some of those are exercises required to complete instructor training, but others range from minor bug fixes to major refactorings.

2016 Election: Anelda van der Walt

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
## Who am I?
I have always been involved with, and am passionate about, multidisciplinary, multi-institutional projects. Over the last six years most of my work has focused on collaboratively providing support and training to researchers at various institutions across South Africa. Initially the support focussed specifically in areas of Next Generation Sequencing as I was employed by two national *omics platforms, but more recently I’ve participated in local eResearch initiatives. Through eResearch I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with researchers from a broad array of disciplines including life scientists, medical doctors, engineers, linguists, historians, and more. While I may not be the most computationally advanced person in this community, I have a knack for creating connections between those who need help and those who can help. I specifically love to work with people who are blissfully unaware of the power of technology, and upon exposure, blossoms into the greatest advocates and users with huge impact.

2016 Election: Giacomo Peru

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

2016 Election: Giacomo Peru

Ciao a tutti. Many thanks for taking a minute or two to read this post about my candidature for our Software Carpentry Steering Committee. As you’ll see, it was a long way from programming that I was reared, yet this opportunity for closer involvement with our work and its future brings together so much of what I have been doing all these years. Here’s why…

2016 Election: Jonathan Guyer

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Background

My training is in Materials Science and Engineering and I have done both computational and experimental research in fields like semiconductor crystal growth, electrochemical interfaces, and additive manufacturing. I co-authored the FiPy partial differential equation Python framework to support my simulations and to enable others to use these methods. I have spent my professional career at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology and been leader of the Mechanical Performance Group for the past two years.

2016 Election: Bill Mills

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Meet Bill

I’m Bill Mills, a scientific software developer based in Vancouver, Canada, currently spearheading web development for the GRIFFIN collaboration at TRIUMF.

In two years with SWC, I’ve taught seven workshops in addition to five live Instructor Trainings, across five countries. Over the past year I have sat on SWC’s Mentorship Committee; my most visible work there was as co-organizer of our first Instructor and Helper Retreat.

2016 Election: Dhavide Aruliah

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
My name is Dhavide Aruliah. I am standing for election to the Steering Committee of Software Carpentry for 2016.
Who am I?

By training, I am an applied mathematician and computer scientist. From 2004 to 2009, I was a tenure-track assistant professor at UOIT (the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, ON, Canada). From 2009 to 2015, I was an associate professor with tenure at UOIT. In mid-2015, I left my academic career to join Continuum Analytics.

2016 Election: Jason Williams

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

#2016 Election: Jason Williams

With benthic sensuous pleasure I offer up myself as candidate for the 2016 Steering Committee.

There are those (mom, the U.S. Department of Justice) who have labeled my apoplectic fits a sign of ‘weakness’, but I have found them to be a source of extraordinary strength. With this strength I pledge to bring Software Carpentry to places no one imagined it could (or should) go. As other candidates hail HYDRA, I’m proud to be the first and only candidate to come out in favor of all the things you believe in, and strongly (though perhaps not uncategorically) opposed to the things that displease you.

2016 Election: Karin Lagesen

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
For the past year, I have served as the Software Carpentry Steering Committee’s secretary. My involvement with the SCF started in 2012, when I attended a workshop in Oslo, Norway. I signed on as an instructor in 2013, and have taught 9 workshops since then. In addition to serving on the Steering Committee, I am also a member of the mentoring committee, where I have focused on ways of giving our instructors hands-on experience with the teaching material, with the goal of making it easier for new instructors to get started. I am also currently training to become an instructor trainer.
I have a PhD in bioinformatics from the University of Oslo, and am currently employed at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and the University of Oslo. My background is in both computer science and molecular biology. Since I have formal training in both fields, I am frequently the one to translate the biological problem into a computational one. I have often been called upon to teach people with little to no training in computer science how to do their bioinformatics analyses. This means introducing them to Unix, to command-line work and to basic programming. Working in such multi-disciplinary situations has made me very aware of how hard it can be to move into a field far removed from your core area of expertise. This makes the values and skills that Software Carpentry teaches particularly important to me.

2016 Election: Lauren Michael

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
## About Me

B.Sc. Biology, Chemistry - Truman State University

M.Sc. Biophysics - University of Wisconsin-Madison

3 years instructing with SWC; certified Fall 2014

9 SWC workshops organized/helped; 8 as an instructor

1 DC workshop organized/helped

Relevant Volunteer Work

Social Media Manager for Midwest Ultimate, 2013-2014

Science Editor and Writer for the Daily Cardinal, 2011-2012

Currently

Research Computing Facilitator at UW-Madison’s large-scale computing center, the Center for High Throughput Computing, where I lead user interaction efforts and spend much of my time working directly with researchers to:

2016 Election: Raniere Silva

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
My name is Raniere Gaia Costa da Silva and I'm standing for re-election to Software Carpentry Steering Committee because working on the Steering Committee in 2016 was fun and a great way to meet some of the amazing members of Software Carpentry community.
Background

I have a B.Sc. in Apply Mathematics from the University of Campinas, Brazil, and in the last year I worked as a freelancer software developer using most of the time Python and Javascript. This year I will move to the UK for work on the University of Manchester and collaborate with The Software Sustainability Institute.

2016 Election: Rayna Harris

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Background

I am pursuing a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology at The University of Texas in Austin. My thesis research in Hans Hofmann’s lab focuses on understanding transcriptional responses to spatial learning with single neuron resolution.

Since 2012, I’ve been deeply involved with enhancing graduate student education through 1) the Neural Systems and Behavior (NS&B) course at the Marine Biological Laboratories and 2) the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (CCBB) at UT Austin. At NS&B, I teach molecular approaches to neuroscience and supervise student research projects. With the CCBB, I organize workshops and symposia to promote sharing of ideas and expertise across departmental boundaries. It’s been awesome to see theses, manuscripts, tweets, and blogs acknowledge these programs for advancing student’s professional development.

2016 Election: Kate Hertweck

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hello fellow educators and coding enthusiasts! I’m terribly excited to offer myself as a candidate for the Software Carpentry Steering Committee. See below for answers to a few questions you might have about whether I’d be a good fit.

Who are you?

I’m an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Tyler in small but diverse Biology Department. My position is officially described as bioinformaticist, but I specialize in comparative genomics and collaborate on many different types of biological data analysis. I teach graduate and undergraduate classes in bioinformatics, genomics, and plant taxonomy.

A New Book from Mark Guzdial

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Regular readers will know that I am a huge fan of Mark Guzdial, a professor at Georgia Tech whose group does world-class work on computing education, and who [blogs about it](https://computinged.wordpress.com/) regularly and incisively. Mark has just [released a new book](https://computinged.wordpress.com/2015/12/23/book-released-learner-centered-design-of-computing-education-research-on-computing-for-everyone/); you can [preview the contents](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2635522/LCD-CE-TOC-Preface-Dec2015.pdf) if you want, or just head straight to [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Learner-Centered-Design-Computing-Education-Human-Centered/dp/1627053514/) and order a copy.
In it, Mark asks what it means to talk about teaching everyone to program, and whether we should we have the same goals for a mass audience as we do for professional software developers. If not (and he makes the “not” case pretty convincingly), then how do we design computing education that works for graphic designers, high school teachers, and everyone else? His answers are based on both his own experience and his comprehensive knowledge of CS Ed research, and is a solid, readable, and purposeful introduction to the latter. It’s definitely going to be on the reading list for future instructor training classes…

Archiving Videos

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
People have been asking for videos of our lessons more and more frequently over the past few months, so we have begun archiving links on [the lessons page]({{site.baseurl}}/lessons/#video). If you have more, please send them our way (either as a pull request against the lessons page in [our website's GitHub repo](https://github.com/swcarpentry/website/blob/gh-pages/pages/lessons.html) or [by email](mailto:{{site.contact}}).

Pre-workshop help sessions for 2016

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Are you preparing to teach a workshop in a few months? Have you been trained as an instructor but are hesitant to sign up to teach? Has it been awhile since you taught and are interested in learning what’s new in a lesson? Are you thinking about teaching a new (or just new-to-you) lesson?

The mentoring subcommittee is pleased to announce the institution of regularly scheduled help sessions for folks who are interested in feedback on their workshop plans. The first hangouts of 2016 are planned for Wednesday, January 20 at 10:00 and 19:00 EST and are open to the entire community. You can view possible topics for discussion and sign up to attend on the etherpads for the morning and evening sessions. These discussions are planned for every two weeks and will be included on the community calendar.

2016 Election: Leanne Wake

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
## Academic background
You can find me in the Department of Geography in the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK. In 2010 I obtained my PhD in Geophysics from Durham University, UK. I would describe myself, broadly, as an Earth system modeller. I try to understand the workings of a complex world through the 0s and 1s of code but I have been known get my hands dirty with fieldwork!

2016 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 01

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
On January 11, 2016 we ran the 1st round of post-workshop instructor debriefing of the calendar year! The mentoring committee ran 22 debriefing session in 2015, and we are exciting about continuing to host and improve these sessions this year.
Interestingly, all instructors present participated in 3-day format Software Carpentry workshops. Read on to find out more about the changes made, what worked well, and what didn’t.

A Strategic Plan for the Software Carpentry Foundation

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Foundation Steering Committee held a strategic planning meeting in August. In that two-day, intensive meeting, we focused on developing a long term strategic plan for the Software Carpentry Foundation. The process emphasized identification of our stakeholders and mission. It also used the results of our community survey to identify our strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats that face the organization. The resulting Strategic Plan was developed over the course of the in-person meeting and summarized into a document. With vital feedback from the Advisory Council, whose role is to offer advice and guidance to SCF on strategic matters, we arrived at the document that now resides here.

Online Workshops from UC Davis

Tue, 12 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
We have been experimenting with half-day workshops on specialized topics that are broadcast over the web. They have been [going very well](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2015-d3.js-annoc.html), so we are planning to do more in the first half of 2016, with about half of them broadcast this way. The tentative schedule is below; all workshops will run 9:15am-12:15pm, Pacific Time. If you would like to present something yourself in one of the open slots, please [file an issue](https://github.com/dib-lab/dib-training/issues) or leave a comment on [this post](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2015-training-for-q12-2016.html) --- we think this could be a really good way to field-test new material that Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry instructors could use for more advanced audiences.

2016-01-20: Camille Scott, pydoit - local+remote

2016-01-27: Raniere Silva, advanced git - local+remote

2016-02-17: Tiffany Timbers, regular expressions and Python - local+remote

2016-02-19: Ariel Rokem, scipy.optimize - local+remote

2016-02-29: Adelaide Rhodes, sphinx + webhooks + bitbucket - local+remote

2016-03-07: Titus Brown, Amazon Web Services - local+remote

2016-03-28: Titus Brown, Short-read trimming and quality eval - local+remote

2016-04-06: Daniel Chen, intro git (SWC lesson on git) - local+remote

2016-04-08: Daniel Chen, advanced git (branching and merging, etc.) - local+remote

2016-04-11: open

2016-04-13: Titus Brown, TBD

2016-04-18: Titus Brown, TBD

2016-04-27: Meeta Mistry, TBD

2016-05-11: Marian Schmidt, Rmarkdown - local+remote

2016-05-13: Ted Hart, TBD - local+remote

2016-05-18: Heer group on VEGA - local+remote

2016-06-06: Titus Brown, TBD

2016-06-10: Titus Brown, TBD

2016-06-13: open

2016-06-15: open

2016-06-22: Titus Brown, TBD

2016-06-29: Titus Brown, TBD

Change Strategies in STEM Education

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I recently had a chance to read:

Maura Borrego and Charles Henderson: "Increasing the Use of Evidence-Based Teaching in STEM Higher Education: A Comparison of Eight Change Strategies". *Journal of Engineering Education*, 103(2), DOI 10.1002/jee.20040.

The abstract says:

Background Prior efforts have built a knowledge base of effective undergraduate STEM pedagogies, yet rates of implementation remain low. Theories from higher education, management, communication, and other fields can inform change efforts but remain largely inaccessible to STEM education leaders, who are just beginning to view change as a scholarly endeavor informed by the research literature.

Good Communities (Kinds Of)

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Back in October, [Sarah Sharp](http://sarah.thesharps.us/) posted a really useful article titled "[What makes a good community?](http://sarah.thesharps.us/2015/10/06/what-makes-a-good-community/)". In it, she divided online tech communities into six levels (numbered from zero, of course) according to how welcoming and supportive they are. I would put Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry in Level 1, and say that we're starting to do meaningful work toward Level 2. I would appreciate feedback of two kinds:

If you agree, what should we do in 2016 to get to Level 2?

If you don’t, where are we falling short of Level 1 (or Level 0)?

What the Data Says About Novice Programming Mistakes

Sat, 09 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
I recently had a chance to catch up with this paper from 2014:

Neil C. C. Brown and Amjad Altadmri: “Investigating Novice Programming Mistakes: Educator Beliefs vs Student Data”. ICER'14, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2632320.2632343.

Its abstract says:

Educators often form opinions on which programming mistakes novices make most often – for example, in Java: “they always confuse equality with assignment”, or “they always call methods with the wrong types”. These opinions are generally based solely on personal experience. We report a study to determine if programming educators form a consensus about which Java programming mistakes are the most common. We used the Blackbox data set to check whether the educators’ opinions matched data from over 100,000 students – and checked whether this agreement was mediated by educators’ experience. We found that educators formed only a weak consensus about which mistakes are most frequent, that their rankings bore only a moderate correspondence to the students in the Blackbox data, and that educators’ experience had no effect on this level of agreement. These results raise questions about claims educators make regarding which errors students are most likely to commit.

2016 Election: Cam Macdonell

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Background & SWC Involvement ----------
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. My involvement with Software Carpentry began in 2009 as a helper. I helped at a handful of Edmonton bootcamps before completing instructor training in 2013. I have been an instructor for 9 bootcamps, 6 for Software Carpentry and 3 for Data Carpentry.

A Year Of Software Carpentry in South Africa

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
After the [Software Carpentry workshop]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2014/12/cape-town-swc.html) ran jointly with the [eResearch Africa conference](http://www.eresearch.ac.za/eresearch-africa-2014)in November 2014, we were looking for opportunities to run more workshops in South Africa in 2015. In May we ran our [first remotely instructed workshop]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2015/06/remote-workshop-cape-town.html) (with thanks to [Laurent Gatto](https://twitter.com/lgatt0) and Software Carpentry for the remote option) focusing only on R to counter possible time loss due to technical glitches. Then it was onto [remote instructor training]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2015/05/online-instructor-training.html) together with two groups on other continents (one in the USA and another in the UK) in June. Six new instructors were trained, four of them having gone on to teach one or more subsequent workshops. In July we joined forces with [UCT eResearch](http://www.eresearch.uct.ac.za/) to host a [third local workshop](http://www.eresearch.uct.ac.za/news/software-carpentry-powerful-initiative), joined by an experienced SWC instructor, [Matt Lammens](https://mlammens.github.io/) from the US, who happened to be visiting. Another workshop was offered in conjunction with the [SAEON Graduate Student Network Indibano](http://www.saeon.ac.za/enewsletter/archives/2015/october2015/doc11) in September. The next one was co-organised by [Adrianna Pińska]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2015/10/jozihub-workshop.html) from the Cape Python User Group in October in Johannesburg. In November 2015 we ran the sixth Software Carpentry workshop in 12 months at [North-West University](http://www.nwu.ac.za/).
In all, six new instructors were trained, approximately 28 helpers recruited, and more than 200 learners from over 18 local organisations have participated in the 6 workshops between November 2014 and November 2015. There have been a number successes, but of course also some large, and small, bumps in the road.

Announcing the Data Science Journal

Wed, 06 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The [Data Science Journal](http://datascience.codata.org/) is, as its title suggests, a journal dedicated to the advancement of data science. The first thing that's good about it is that you won't get random emails about it with poor grammar and wild claims about its impact factor that begin with DEAR ESTEEMED RESEARCHER....
Even though it’s about data science, it’s not obsessed with building ever better recommender algorithms for Netflix or mining twitter feeds. Its focus is very much on its application in the policies, practices, and management of open data. It tries to take as wide a definition as possible when considering the subject. Data can be originally digital or converted from other sources, and it also considers every research discipline. The journal will have digital humanities papers rubbing shoulders with bioinformatics papers with social science papers.

AMY Version 1.3

Tue, 05 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
In the past month we've seen two releases of AMY: v1.2.1 and v1.3. This blog post (originally published on [my personal blog](http://piotr.banaszkiewicz.org/blog/2016/01/01/amy-release-13/)) contains a joined release notes for both of them.
Bug fixes

wrong URL used in event validation or import/update features is now indicated (and we won’t receive wrong notifications about it)

properly throw 404 on some pages (previously: 500)

spaces are striped from Person and ProfileUpdateRequest fields (names, emails)

disable location inputs on event details page if online country was preselected

New features

use custom-built jQuery-UI (so that we no longer have conflicts with Bootstrap’s tooltip module)

Greg updated the script used to send instructors “Hey, update your info” mails (it’s getting removed later on)

it’s possible to add memberships per host

new badge: DC instructor

new logic for dealing with two instructor badges

timeline of TO-DO items

basic models (e.g. lessons, tags, academic levels, etc.) are now manageable from Django’s admin interface

all persons view: add filtering by workshop type person taught at

remove blurred production database in favor of generated fake database

mailing script turned into better Django management command

bulk upload now shows generated username and suggested people with matching names

show preview of event on SWC website

API: filter events by tags

No longer with us

Greg removed some unused scripts (test-command-line-upload.sh) and commands (parse-instructor-info.py)

notifications about invalid HTTP header Host

other removed scripts and commands

January and February don’t seem busy for me, so I hope to have more done on AMY in the coming months. I also want to thank Prof. Ethan White for his support of my work through December, and for extending his support for the next two months.

A Data Programming CS1 Course at the University of Washington

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
People who are interested in integrating Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry ideas into the undergraduate curriculum may enjoy reading Anderson et al's paper "A Data Programming CS1 Course" (*SIGCSE'15*, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2676723.2677309). From the abstract:

This paper reports on our experience teaching introductory programming by means of real-world data analysis. We have found that students can be motivated to learn programming and computer science concepts in order to analyze DNA, predict the outcome of elections, detect fraudulent data, suggest friends in a social network, determine the authorship of documents, and more. The approach is more than just a collection of “nifty assignments”; rather, it affects the choice of topics and pedagogy.

Lessons as Lab Protocols

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A roundabout chain of references led me to Abbott et al’s “Programs for People: What We Can Learn from Lab Protocols” (presented at VL/HCC 2015) which looks at how lab protocols are similar to and different from programs. On the one hand, a lab protocol describes the steps to be followed to (for example) prepare a particular kind of sample for analysis. On the other hand, “human plans are more like descriptions or predictions than prescriptions of what actions a person will take given the most likely sequence of future actions; they are resources for anticipating likely future events. In programming language terms, perhaps, they are more declarative than imperative in that people draw on knowledge of the whole plan rather than blindly following each step.”

Discussion Sessions

Sat, 02 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
At the end of last year [we announced a new checkout procedure for instructor training]({{site.baseurl}}/blog/2015/12/instructor-training-checkout-procedure.html). This new procedure has "an hour-long group discussion led by an experienced instructor" and we are looking for instructors interested in lead the sessions.

Welcome to 2016

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
The Mentoring Subcommittee hope that you and your family had a incredible Christmas and amazing New Year.
We are slowly backing from holidays but we already have a busy agenda for January so we give a heads up for a few important dates:

Mentoring Subcommittee Meeting on January 11th.

This will be our first meeting this year and we will have some discussions about our plans for 2016. If you want to join us you will find informations at http://pad.software-carpentry.org/scf-mentoring. You can use the etherpad for suggestions or send them by email to mentoring@lists.software-carpentry.org.

Plans for 2016

Mon, 28 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Twelve months is a long time. A year ago I was wrapping up my second month without an income and had serious doubts about whether Software Carpentry was going to be viable. Today, our new Executive Director and Program Coordinator are in place, our workshop administration tool is ticking over nicely, we're about to elect our second Steering Committee, we've published our lessons, we have a growing number of partners and affiliates, our reboot of instructor training has taught us a lot, and those are just the things I've bookmarked.

New Words Needed

Sat, 26 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown recently asked (on behalf of a friend) what people think of the term and practice of "hardening" software, by which he meant making research software more robust, more easily usable, and possibly scalable. Several people responded that "hardening" is usually used to mean "make more secure", and that what Titus's correspondent was really asking about was something we don't have a simple word for: making software ready for production use. As Morgan Taschuk wrote, this involves eliminating hard-coded paths, adding useful error messages, incorporating command-line flags to turn features on and off, and many other things that aren't really necessary if the program is only ever used by its author on her own machine and data, but are essential to institutional scale-up, i.e., to making the software usable by other people, in other places, on other problems.

Assessment Update - 2015

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

About a year ago, I hoped to help answer the question, "Is our students learning?" We are now a bit closer to an answer, and I wanted to update the community about what we have accomplished this year. First, I want to thank and acknowledge the assessment subcommittee and Blake Joyce, who helped to define tasks, possibilities, and provided significant feedback. Especially here I wanted to thank Daniel Chen, Jeramia Ory, and Rayna Harris who put in a lot of hours moving things along.

Pushing Ahead in Puget Sound

Sun, 20 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As regular readers will know, our instructor training classes are heavily over-subscribed: even after the classes we ran this fall, we still have over 400 people on our waiting list, some of whom have been there for months.

One of these is Billy Charlton, who works for the Puget Sound Regional Council. Keen to sharpen his team's technical skills, and unable to wait any longer for a training course, he taught himself as much as he could about what and how we teach, then went ahead and ran a workshop using our materials. His report on his experiences is inspiring, as is the feedback he received from participants, and a great way to end a busy year.

Instructor Training Checkout Procedure

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After a lot of discussion, we have come up with a new procedure for completing instructor training for Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry. Its goals are to ensure that people are familiar with the lesson material while introducing them to our community. The steps are:

Three Flavors of Instructor Training

Fri, 18 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been a busy few months for instructor training: along with a two-day class at the University of Manchester, we also wrapped up a pilot of a new kind of multi-week course and a two-day version of the same material. We have also been training four new trainers, and have put the first complete draft of the training materials online. Here's some of what we think we've learned so far.

Data Carpentry to adopt Reproducible Research Curriculum

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

by Karen Cranston

Part of the mission of Data Carpentry is to encourage and enable reproducible research. The core Data Carpentry curriculum teaches researchers approaches and skills that are fundamental to reproducible research, such as scripting and data management. We are also adopting a Reproducible Research curriculum that explicitly focuses on reproducible techniques and some of the next steps, including version control and data publishing. This is an update on the efforts on this curriculum so far, and we expect to have it available soon as a Data Carpentry workshop option.

More on Educational Engineering

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In my experience, the term "educational engineers" doesn't seem to have caught on to describe any particular activity, but I can provide some examples of people bringing ideas from the research to inform teaching. There's a range depending on what counts as "building".

November 11 - December 16, 2015: 2016 Steering Committee Election, Projects, Instructor Training and More, Lessons, Workshop Feedback, and Data Carpentry is Hiring.

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

The Software Carpentry Foundation will hold its annual Steering Committee election in February 2016. Active Software Carpentry community members are invited to both stand for and vote in the elections.

The first candidate for the Steering Committee elections is Belinda Weaver. Learn more about her history with Software Carpentry and see what she plans to do for the community in 2016.
Want to contribute to Software Carpentry, but don't know how? There's a fantastic array of projects including development of new lessons, fixing up old ones, and much more. Jump in or contact us if you're interested in participating.

Other News

The past month saw a huge amount of Software Carpentry activities including:
Instructor Training events and feedback

Many Software Carpentry workshops were run and several people provided great write-ups about these. Write-ups are also available for a number of other workshops from which the Software Carpentry community could learn a great deal.

A few exciting developments in Data Carpentry

New lessons were developed and ideas to improve existing lessons were discussed

Several other posts have been published by community members

2016 Election: Belinda Weaver

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I co-organise, run and teach at Software Carpentry workshops in Queensland, Australia, and frequently tweet about them and other Software Carpentry activities as @cloudaus

I first heard of Software Carpentry on Twitter in 2013 and thought it was a great initiative. Through the A/NZ mailing list, I made contact with Australian Software Carpentry trainers, and was able to organise the inaugural Brisbane bootcamp in July 2014, flying in instructors from Melbourne and Auckland.

Educational Engineering

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the participants in this week's instructor training course mailed me to say, "[We] were discussing some of the ideas we were talking about in educational research and I feel like we are missing 'educational engineers'. Does this discipline exist? I feel like we don't really have the people to take the research that's been done and build something with it."

The answer is that we actually do have educational engineers: at the K-12 level, many of the people who write textbooks and other learning materials have lots of training in pedagogy, and the curriculum they create goes through the same sort of careful review that plans for a new dam go through. But that's usually not true in higher education: most of the people who write textbooks at the post-secondary level are domain experts with little or no training in pedagogy. And even in K-12, people with no background in education at all frequently overrule experts on both content and method.

Community Calendar Available

Thu, 10 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

During this year we host many events for the community including lab meetings, sub-committees and de/briefing sessions. Unfortunately we fail to let everyone know of the events and to try solve this problem next year we are launching a community calendar. If you want to add the community calendar into your agenda you should use https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/oseuuoht0tvjbokgg3noh8c47g%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics.

Teaching For Loops

Thu, 10 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A few days ago, Karin Lagesen asked people what metaphors they use when teaching for loops. It kicked off an entertaining thread. When we talk about pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in instructor training, this is exactly the kind of thing we mean:

Feedback on Practicum Proposal

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have wanted for some time to give newly-trained instructors more experience with workshop materials and our teaching methods before sending them into the field. The mentoring committee and other community members have now created a proposal for doing this, and would like to test it out early in 2016 with participants in the two training session that ran this fall. We have therefore created a short questionnaire to find out whether our plan is feasible and takes us in the right direction.

Introducing the Research Bazaar

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the lessons Software Carpentry has learned over the years is that there's no substitute for a face-to-face learning experience. The unscripted interactions that occur between instructors, helpers and participants at our workshops are as important, if not more important, than the formal teaching syllabus itself. Of course, we aren't the only educator in the digital research space to which this lesson applies. The social aspect of in-person learning experiences is equally important to the various organisations, eResearch departments and libraries around the world tasked with "up-skilling" the next generation of digital researchers.

Software and Data Carpentry Workshop in Stockholm

Wed, 09 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On April 14, three Software Carpentry Instructors from Stockholm, Radovan Bast, Olav Vahtras and myself got an email from Greg Wilson:

Subject: Any interest in putting together a workshop for Stockholm this summer?

Bank of America Merrill Lynch to sponsor the first Workshop for Women in Science and Engineering in the UK

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very happy to announce that the first UK Software Carpentry Workshop for Women in Science and Engineering received generous support from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The event will take place on 14 and 15th December at the University of Manchester.

Call for Candidates for the 2016 Steering Committee

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry on Podcast.__init__

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

Announcing Instructor Training Materials

Mon, 07 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that the lessons for our instructor training course are now available online and in this GitHub repository. They have evolved a lot in the three and a half years since we started running this class, and more improvements would be welcome: please file issues or send pull requests to fix, extend, or otherwise improve the material.

Launching Pre Workshop Help Session

Fri, 04 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Organizing one workshop isn't easy and sometimes things out of your control go wrong in the last minute like the internet access on the room is very slow. After months of discussions of what could be done to help instructors and hosts when organizing their workshops and being prepared for the show time the Mentoring Subcommittee decided to test some helping sessions.

First Workshop in Venezuela

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last November Francisco Palm taught the first ever Software Carpentry workshop in Venezuela, the second country from Latin America to enter in our list of previous workshops. We are very excited with our expansion across Latin America and we hope to add more countries to that list next year.

Learners from the first workshop in Venezuela.

Francisco allowed us to share some of his words about the workshop:

Intel to sponsor the first Workshop for Women in Science and Engineering in the UK

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very happy to announce that the first UK Software Carpentry Workshop for Women in Science and Engineering received generous support from Intel. The event will take place on 14 and 15th December at the University of Manchester.

Library Carpentry - Fin, for now

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Library Carpentry was an exploratory programme of four three-hour software skills sessions focused on the needs and requirements of the library professionals. For further details, see the outline post. Sessions were held on Monday the 9th, 16th, 23th, and 30th of November 2015 at City University London. We thank the Centre for Information Science for generously agreeing to host Library Carpentry.

Library Carpentry is far from over, but we now into a phase of reflection and planning. If you are interested in what happened during this exploratory run, I direct your attention to two blog posts:

Software Carpentry workshop at EITN in Paris

Wed, 02 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Python workshop on November 19-20th at the EITN was the first course organised at European Insitute of Neuroscience in Paris. The course offered a practical introduction to Python programming and scientific software development for PhD students and post-docs. The programme followed closely the syllabus recommended by the Software Carpentry.

Data Science for Social Good: an Experiment in Data Science Training

Tue, 01 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Data science faces many challenges in the traditional academic setting. At the same time, many research fields are becoming increasingly dependent on data science tools and techniques. A key element in tackling these challenges is the education of a new generation of researchers that are fluent in both their research domain and in data science methodologies. In this post, we discuss an immersive approach to training in data science, the University of Washington eScience Institute's inaugural Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) program.

Software Sustainability Institute Funding

Tue, 01 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Sustainability Institute, a partner organization which is committed to cultivating world-class research through software, has received £3.5M in funding to continue its valuable support for the UK's research software community. Two new funders, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), have joined forces with the Institute's original funder, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), to continue to invest in research that is underpinned by software until at least 2019. For the full announcement, please see this post on the SSI site.

Congratulations!

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.

December Instructor Training - Announcing Selected Groups

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thank you to all the teams that applied for instructor training that sent us applications. Selection of the teams was a very difficult tasks because

the applications were excellent,

we had a small amount of time to discuss all the applications and

we need to improve capacity to support the demand we see for instructor training.

The mentoring subcommittee has selected the teams that inform at their cover letters that booked a room for the instructor training at

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.

December Instructor Training Selection Debrief

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

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.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 22

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

There were relatively few attendees at the 22nd round of debriefing for instructors on November 10, but we thought we'd include a few quick notes about two specific topics: using Software and Data Carpentry workshops to reach out to potential users of high-performance computing (HPC) resources, and exploring new lesson materials related to databases.

High Performance Computing

University of Manitoba hosted a Software Carpentry workshop at the end of October in conjunction with Compute Canada. In addition to the normal half-day lessons in Unix shell, Git, and intro to Python, this workshop featured an introduction to using WestGrid/Compute Canada resources on the afternoon of the second day. The instructor for this workshop, Hossein Pourreza, said that this last lesson module was used as a capstone for helping reinforce and integrate material from the previous lessons, and appeared well-received by the students. Given that there are few training opportunities for using the cluster, this appears to be a great way to introduce new potential users to the basic tools they'll need to get started with larger-scale analysis.

2015 Software + Data Carpentry Instructor and Helper Retreat

Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software and Data Carpentry recently held their first ever Instructor + Helper Retreat. The aim of this event was to bring instructors and helpers together remotely and at local sites around the world for a day of sharing skills, trying out new lessons and ideas and discussing all things instructor and helper related. This Retreat attempted to meet these goals via 17 local meetups in North America, Europe and Australia, 14 sessions broadcast globally via Google Hangouts on Air, and many people participating remotely by watching and asking questions at the global broadcast sessions.

In addition to bringing the community together, the Retreat also has generated additional resources surrounding many topics of interest to Software and Data Carpentry instructors and helpers; the global broadcast sessions are archived on YouTube (pending session leaders leaving them up) and can be watched at any time. The links to these videos are archived on the Retreat website. Notable other moments from retreat as captured via twitter can be accessed here.

A New Lesson on Testing

Sun, 22 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Katy Huff has just posted a new lesson on testing and continuous integration with Python drawn in part from the book that she and Anthony Scopatz recently published. There's a lot of useful material in here, all of it tested in the classroom—please check it out.

Applications for December Instructor Training Are Now Closed

Fri, 20 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Applications to take part in December's two-day instructor training class are now closed. We received more than three dozen applications from four continents, including over 400 people, and will let people know early next week whether they have been selected. Groups that we can't include in this round will be given priority to take part in the new year.

The Morea Framework

Fri, 20 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I first met Philip Johnson, a professor of Computer Science at the University of Hawaii, through shared interests in empirical software engineering research and Google Summer of Code. He has recently been developed the Morea Framework for creating structured course websites using GitHub and Jekyll. "Morea" stands for "Modules, Outcomes, Readings, Experiences, and Assessments", which are the five main elements the framework supports. As you can see from the project gallery, it's much more structured than our lessons. It also requires more tooling—Morea Framework sites are built using custom Jekyll plugins, and the source relies much more heavily on include files than our template—and it's geared very strongly toward traditional semester-long courses.

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!

rOpenSci Announces $2.9M Award from the Helmsley Charitable Trust

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

rOpenSci, whose mission is to develop and maintain sustainable software tools that allow researchers to access, visualize, document, and publish open data on the Web, is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant of nearly $2.9 million over three years from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. The grant, which was awarded through the Trust's Biomedical Research Infrastructure Program, will be used to expand rOpenSci's mission of developing tools and community around open data and reproducible research practices.

Test-Driven Data Analysis

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My former colleague Nick Radcliffe has started posting a series of article on test-driven data analysis, in which he explores systematic ways of checking whether one-off data analyses are correct. It'll be really interesting to see how the series unfolds, and comments on the posts would be very welcome.

A Practical Computing Course

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

While it was not a SWC course, this summer Casey Dunn and I taught a 12-day Practical Computing summer class at Friday Harbor Labs. It was a great group of students—mostly somewhat beginner level—and we covered regular expressions, the shell, Python, R + ggplot, Git, graphics, and bit of electronics. The centerpiece (which the students really got into) was a personal project that was applicable to their own interests and which they solved with some combination of the tools we covered. Many of the students went from zero experience to having a script that actually gave them insight into the real-life research back home.

CourseSource: A(nother) New Hope

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I came across CourseSource a few weeks ago, and I'm pretty excited:

CourseSource is an open-access journal of peer-reviewed teaching resources for undergraduate biological sciences. We publish articles that are organized around courses in biological disciplines and aligned with learning goals established by professional societies representing those disciplines.

Miscellaneous Projects

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This post is a bit of a link fest, but after talking about how to contribute at yesterday's instructor retreat, I thought it might be useful to post a few additions to our projects page.

Python Lesson Rewrite

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Recent analysis and introspection regarding Software Carpentry's Python lesson has led us to conclude that the lesson would benefit from a complete rewrite. The subcommittee on lesson development met twice to plan much about the new lessons (yes, that's plural). This post will describe our plans for the new lessons.

We're going to write two new Python lessons, one intended for students who are completely new to programming (the "novice" lesson), and another for students with some programming experience in any language (the "intermediate" lesson). Data Carpentry also targets new programmers so we'll be developing the new novice lesson in collaboration with DC, and both DC and SWC will use the lesson. We decided to use Gapminder data for both the novice and intermediate lessons in order to have a consistent experience and approachable, meaningful data (and because some lessons are already using it).

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 21

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentoring subcommittee held the 21st round of debriefing for instructors on October 27. We had some great discussions with a few instructors about recent workshops and their experiences with implementing a module on imposter syndrome and methods for integrating lessons throughout the workshop.

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.

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.

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!

October 27 - November 10, 2015: Maneesha Sane, Retreat Activities, Instructor Training, Code Review Revisited, and a WiSE Workshop.

Tue, 10 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Meet Maneesha Sane, the Software Carpentry (and now Data Carpentry) course coordinator.

Our instructor/helper/community retreat is planned for 14 November with participating sites around the world. Line-ups include roundtable discussions, open house sessions, Worldwide Library Hour, and more. Join us virtually or live for the whole day or only the sessions of interest.

Conversations

Do you have any experience with code review? David Pèrez-Suárez described his experience over ten years and asks some interesting questions.

R Foundation Announces Code of Conduct Policy

Sun, 08 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The R Foundation recently announced that all conferences it supports must have a code of conduct. They encourage other R meetings to adopt codes of conduct as well, stating that:

A code of conduct serves two important purposes. Firstly, it sends a clear message to those outside the community that an R conference is a professional and comfortable working environment for all participants. Secondly, it provides a mechanism for reporting and monitoring any incidents of harassment that may occur.

Clarification about December Instructor Training

Fri, 06 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Since we announced that the applications for December Instructor Training we have received many questions. We are now amending the announcement to clarify some things that have come up.

Teaching Bimodal Workshops with a Large Range

Thu, 05 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Teaching a technical class always has its challenges. Teaching a technical workshop covering 3 or more topics over the span of 2 days is what makes us Software Carpentry instructors.

A common observation instructors have is the class demographics are bimodal/multimodal. There are students who attend the workshop with little to no experience, some have been using the tools we teach but want a more formal course, and finally, a student may know some of the tools, but use the workshop to learn Git or Python, for example. How do we as instructors deal with workshops where the range of student skills is extremely high?

This post is a case study of my most recent workshop and a call for help and discussion about we should do to make our workshops enjoyable for everyone. In many ways it is a complement to Peter and Cam's post Pulling In Those Left Behind.

Introducing Maneesha

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 20

Sun, 01 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On October 13th, the mentoring subcommittee held the 20th round of debriefing for instructors. At this round, we have a great discussion text editors, workshop organization and challenges for learners.

Adrianna Pińska wrote a great post about the workshop in Johannesburg that you should check out.

Data Carpentry in Africa

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Data Carpentry website

by Matt Collins at iDigBio x Data Carpentry conducted its first workshop on the African continent in September! As part of the pre-conference training week held before the Taxonomic Databases Working Group’s (TDWG) annual conference, Deb Paul, Matthew Collins, Libby Ellwood and Kevin Love put on a two day Data Carpentry workshop at the Multimedia University of Kenya. We taught the ecology lessons (spreadsheets, OpenRefine, R, but no SQL) to participants from 12 African countries. The participants were all graduate students and young researchers whose travel and participation in both the training week and the TDWG conference were paid for by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation. This was a significant investment on their part to build capacity for biodiversity informatics in Africa and we were excited to have Data Carpentry be a part of the effort.

Pulling In Those Left Behind

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A common challenge that arises before or during a workshop is that participants' prior expertise in programming or broadly speaking their abilities of using computers for science is distributed randomly. At best, this distribution peaks at the expectations of the instructor. Usually, this distribution is quite wide and thus a considerable portion of the participants do lack the necessary predispositions for the workshop level, or have a slower learning rate or simply are too shy to ask questions. I recently taught a follow-up workshop to the Software Carpentry (SWC) Novice material and struggled to keep the pace of teaching at a level so all learners would come along. Given the feedback on the SWC mailing list (see the original post), this problem occurs quite often. Thus, this blog post is a summary of the discussion initiated among fellow SWC instructors on how to pull in those learners again that fall behind or how to pace/design a course so that a minimal portion of learners fall behind.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 19

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On September 29th the mentoring subcommittee held the 19th round of Instructor Debriefing and had some interesting discussions about our lessons and opportunity for learners after the workshop.

Code Review - a Needed Habit in Science

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

More than a year ago, Marian Petre and Greg Wilson wrote an article about reviewing code, but I was not aware of it until last week when Greg talked about their findings in a workshop in London (though it had been mentioned here before). I have been reviewing code for years, however I have not realised that I was doing so till GitHub made it easy. Reading code from others feels the same as proofreading a Spanish text (or any other text), where you have to pay attention to the orthography, the grammar and whether it says what it's meant to say (or it does what it's meant to do).

October 19 - 26, 2015: 500 Workshops and 16,000 Participants, Retreat, Debriefing Sessions, Digital Data Storage, and A Science Competition.

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

The Software Carpentry team has now run more than 500 workshops for 16,000 participants!

Remember to join our global instructor/helper retreat on 14 November. If you care about training, join a site near you or dial in via Google Hangouts.

Dates

Please take note of the planned dates for upcoming debriefing sessions for instructors.

Publications

Ten Simple Rules for Digital Data Storage: A new article on the importance of considering data storage and metadata tagging that started as a discussion on the Software Carpentry mailing list.

Opportunities

Are you building products or developing services to advance Open Science? Read more about the global science competition launched by the Wellcome Trust and NIH.

Site Planning for the Instructor and Helper Retreat

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

With less than three weeks to go before Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry's first ever Instructor and Helper Retreat coming up on November 14, many of the lead organizers for sites around the world got together this week to discuss plans and ideas for the event. Our goal for the retreat is to create opportunities for instructors, helpers, and the community to get together to practice teaching, break ground on new lessons, and start discussions. Here are just a few of the ideas coming up that you can get involved with.

Software Carpentry for Women in Science and Engineering UK

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Sustainability Institute in collaboration with ARCHER and Women in HPC is organising the first Software Carpentry workshop for Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) in the UK. The event will take place at the University of Manchester on 14-15 December 2015.

Visualizing Repository Activity

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am updating the lessons learned paper, and would like to include histograms showing how many people have contributed how often to our lessons. More specifically, I have 9 data sets (one for each lesson), ranging in size from 5 to 16 records, in which each record shows a number of commits and how many people have committed that often. For example, the data for our SQL lesson is:

Call for Applications to December Instructor Training

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This blog post was amended with the information from this other post.

This blog post was updated with the answers that we got so far.

As we announced previously, we will run another round of the free/open Instructor Training in December. People who are interested in participating in this round can now apply to take part.

Recent Statistics

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

Debriefing Sessions and Winter Recess

Sat, 24 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are getting close to the begin of 2016 and although there will be some workshops between Christmas and New Year the Mentoring Subcommittee will give a winter recess for the debriefing session. But there will be some debriefing sessions before then:

Ten Simple Rules for Digital Data Storage

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Edmund Hart, Pauline Barmby, David LeBauer, François Michonneau, Sarah Mount, Timothée Poisot, Kara Woo, Naupaka Zimmerman, and Jeff Hollister have just posted a pre-print on PeerJ titled Ten Simple Rules for Digital Data Storage. The paper is a distributed collaborative effort spawned from a thread on the Software Carpentry instructors mailing list and further carried out on GitHub. There are a lot of good ideas in it, many of which we should fold back into our lessons, and we hope it will spark more collaborations in our community.

Open Science Prize

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Wellcome Trust and National Institutes of Health have launched a global science competition for new products or services to advance open science. Up to six teams stand to win US$80,000 each to develop their ideas into a prototype or to advance an existing early stage prototype. The prototype judged to have the greatest potential to further open science will receive $230,000. For more information, see the announcements on the Wellcome site and from the NIH, or visit the prize website.

Programming Historian Live

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Originally posted at http://cradledincaricature.com/2015/10/21/programming-historian-live/.

On 19 October curious historians descended on the British Library for Programming Historian Live. The Programming Historian is a suite of open access, peer reviewed lessons that provide practical instruction to historians thinking about using data, code, and software in their research. It is co-edited by 2013 Software Sustainability Institute Fellow Adam Crymble and it does an amazing job at bringing the methods and motivations of the (small but growing) Digital History community to the wider historical profession. This "Live" spin-off, funded by my 2015 Software Sustainability Institute Fellowship, was designed to take into account the fact that whilst some of us learn just fine through self-directed tutorials, others need the mental space, in person support, and peer pressure of seminar style learning.

Inserting Software Carpentry Graduates into Coding Communities

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the issues I'd like to see Software Carpentry tackle is what happens to learners after they've attended a workshop.

October 5 - 18, 2015: Jonah Duckles, Instructor/Helper Retreat Still Growing, Peer Reviewed Lessons, Data Management, and AMY 1.0 Released.

Sun, 18 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Meet our new executive director, Jonah Duckles.

14 sites worldwide have registered for the first ever Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry instructor and helper retreat on 14 November. If you care about training, join a site near you or dial in via Google Hangouts.

Lessons

The obvious next step for the Software Carpentry lessons: Peer review

Contribute

Rayna Harris suggested we look at how Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry can play a role in teaching or disseminating information about data management plans. Please let us know if you are aware of good resources or would like to discuss how we can contribute as community?

AMY 1.0 was released. Django web programmers are welcome to join the development team.

Journals as Repositories

Sat, 17 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I had a really good conversation yesterday with Cath Brooksbank and Sarah Morgan, who do training at EMBL-EBI in Hinxton. During the conversation we touched on CourseSource, a peer-reviewed journal in which people can publish undergraduate biology lessons—not studies of the lesson's effectiveness, but the lessons themselves.

This is a brilliant idea, and thinking about it has made me realize why I've never been excited about online lesson repositories. We already have repositories for the things academics do: they're called journals. And we have portals (or aggregators, or whatever you want to call them): they are things like PubMed. What we don't have is people putting things into the system in the first place. Growing a separate parallel system to do those things for lessons hasn't worked: as far as I can tell, most of what's uploaded to lesson repositories just sits there.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 18

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On September 15th, the mentoring subcommittee held the 18th round of debriefing for instructors. At this round, we have a great discussion about teaching (or not) branches during the Git lesson and about Python packages used in examples.

Feedback from a Software Carpentry workshop at PyConZA 2015 in Johannesburg

Wed, 14 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On the 3rd and 4th of October we ran a Software Carpentry workshop associated with PyConZA 2015, a conference for Python developers in South Africa. The workshop ran concurrently with the post-conference sprints, in a neighbouring room in the same venue.

Because we expected little overlap between the attendees of the conference (who are mostly existing Python programmers) and the target audience of the workshop, we organized the workshop as a separate event with separate tickets.

AMY 1.0 Released

Sat, 10 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce the release of Version 1.0 of AMY, our online workshop administration tool. A complete list of features is included in this blog post, and this milestone describes what we're planning to do for Version 1.1. If you enjoy web programming in Django, you'd be welcome to join in.

Assessing Assessment

Sat, 10 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jason Williams and I met with two consultants at the University of Texas at the end of September to get feedback on Software Carpentry's post-workshop survey. They gave us detailed suggestions for improving six of the questions, and felt the rest were OK as they are. The feedback is given below; even without the whole questionnaire (which we will post shortly), we hope it's helpful.

A Summary of Debriefing Feedback on Our Python Lesson

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last month, we discussed results from a survey of how our instructors are teaching Python. We now have a summary of the feedback we've received in our bi-weekly debriefing meetings. The recurring themes are:

A greater choice of exercises and multiple choice questions would allow instructors to select domain specific examples and cater to varying levels of learner.

Some instructors added an explanation of the Jupyter notebook or Spyder IDE environments.

Some instructors added an explanation of basic Python datatypes before presenting the lessons.

Comments that there is too much material to fit into a workshop and that some sections seem rushed.

Request for a better explanation of the advantages of the Anaconda Distribution at the start of workshops and resources for post workshop learning.

Comments on presenters style were positive for funny and entertaining examples and negative for highly mathematical examples.

A Workshop in Brisbane

Wed, 07 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A sea of green stickies: that really sums up the 28-29 September Brisbane Software Carpentry bootcamp—it ran extremely smoothly. We had 40 people signed up (with a waitlist of six) but lost one at the last minute to acute appendicitis—ouch—and another to project deadlines. The remaining 38 comprised post docs (7), Master's candidates (2), PhD candidates (19), research technical support (4), and four people from industry (one from an NGO and three from a virtual lab). We also had one undergrad (a first for us) and one very bright high school student.

Data Management Plans: A Role for Software and Data Carpentry

Wed, 07 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I spent the better part of the last three weeks working on an NSF-IOS Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) proposal. Pretty much daily, I consulted this list of publically available grant proposals in the biological sciences to look at other people's proposals. It's an awesome resource if you want to see how people write their project description, but there are no links to example data management plans, facilities, summaries, etc. Where does one go for examples of or advice on these supplementary documents?

At least part of the answer is "here". The last page of NSF's information about Data Management Plan requirements, updated on October 1, urges readers to check out Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry for resources and training. This is a huge shout-out (see these tweets), so how can SWC and Data Carpentry do more?

More About Jonah Duckles

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

September 20 - October 4, 2015: A New Executive Director, Instructor and Helper Retreat, Data Visualisation Lesson, Teaching, and Lesson Citations

Sun, 04 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Please welcome our new executive director, Jonah Duckles!

Please join us on 14 November for the first international multi-site instructor and helper retreat. The blog post explains how you can get involved or host a site.

Lessons

Read about the new lesson on Data Visualisation with D3 and the pros of interactive data visualisation in Isabell Kiral-Kornek and Robert Kerr's post.

Contribute

We're actively revising our teaching practice and lesson design. The latest feedback from people who've taught the Python lessons is summarised and there's another opportunity for you to add your thoughts via a short survey or longer discussion. We'd love to hear from you!

We're still talking about the citation format for our lessons. You can follow the latest discussion and contribute your suggestions at the blog post.

Library Carpentry - Where and When

Sat, 03 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

Library Carpentry is an exploratory programme of four three-hour software skills sessions focused on the needs and requirements of the library professionals. For further details, see the outline post.

Library Carpentry sessions will be held on Monday the 9th, 16th, 23th, and 30th of November 2015. Sessions will start at 1730 and conclude by 2030. They will be held at City University London in room C304 (Tait Building, third floor, room 4). Directions are available on the City website. We thank the Centre for Information Science for generously agreeing to host Library Carpentry.

A Case for Online Data Visualization

Fri, 02 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This article originally appeared in The Research Bazaar.

Thorough data analysis is only one part of good research. Equally important is communicating the outcome well and accessibly. And visible research is accessible research.

Our main motivations for publishing our research results are:

making them openly accessible to the public,

informing fellow researchers about new outcomes that will help them in their research, and

strengthening our professional profiles.

Please Welcome Our New Executive Director

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that Jonah Duckles has accepted the position of Executive Director of the Software Carpentry Foundation, and will start on Monday, October 5, 2015. Jonah was most recently the Director of Informatics and Innovation at the University of Oklahoma where he partnered with researchers to improve their computational workflows while developing maker spaces for the campus. He holds a BS in Physics and an MS in Forestry and Natural Resources, both from Purdue, and has been a very active contributor to Software Carpentry for several years.

Citation Format

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Earlier this month, we published our lessons by giving them DOIs through Zenodo. As we said in an earlier post, though, we've been struggling to figure out (a) how to cite them in text and (b) how to express their metadata in standard bibliographic formats to produce those human-readable citations.

Thinking About Teaching

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A little over a year ago, we blogged about jugyokenkyu, or "lesson study", a bucket of practices that Japanese teachers use to hone their craft, from observing each other at work to discussing the lesson afterward to studying curriculum materials with colleagues. Getting the Software Carpentry Foundation up and running almost immediately pushed that aside, but now that the SCF is up and running, it's time to return to the subject. Discussion of how teaching practices are transferred is part of that; so are two other developments this week.

Announcing the 2015 Instructor and Helper Retreat

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Update: to stay current, please visit the Etherpad at {{page.etherpad}}.

The Mentorship Committee is very excited to announce the first ever Software & Data Carpentry Instructors & Helpers Retreat, happening worldwide on November 14. We're inviting all Software and Data Carpentry instructors and helpers to get together at sites around the world for a day of sharing skills, trying out new lessons and ideas and discussing all things instructor and helper related.

September 6 - 19, 2015: A Retreat, New Mentors, Instructor Training Update, Preparing Researchers, Interactive Excercises, and a Student's Experience.

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

The first Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry instructor and helper retreat will be held on 14 November 2015! Please get involved by hosting a local session or attending one. Remote participation will also be possible.

We have seven new members on the Mentoring Subcommittee. Thanks to Rayna Harris, Christina Koch, Sue McClatchy, Mariela Perignon, Phil Rosenfield, Michael Sarahan, and Belinda Weaver for joining us in this important task.

Instructor training has been revised. Read the blog to learn about the new plans for 2015 and beyond.

Jazib Askari, a remarkable 6th form Student at Altrincham Grammar School for Girls wrote about her Software Carpentry work experience.

Recommended

Christina Koch mentioned some fun interactive excercises for explaining concepts related to automation and version control in her latest blog.

Contribute

"What would you teach to prepare researchers better to do good science given the changing technological landscape?" An interesting post by Naupaka Zimmerman about being wrong, provenance, and structured data. What are your ideas?

Events

Join the Software Credit Workshop on 19 October 2015 in London to participate in the conversation about career advancement for research software developers.

Software Credit Workshop in London, 19 October 2015

Fri, 18 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Securing credit for research software is the subject of the Software Credit Workshop. This is taking place at the Natural History Museum, London, UK on the 19th October 2015.

Explore what contributions software can and should make for career advancement. Discuss ways in which you see software tools and applications supporting the current needs of researchers and software developers seeking credit for their involvement in research software. Identify and propose ideas for improving the way software’s contribution to better research are connected and how this should support appropriate reputational credit for research software enablers.

Join other funders, publishers, software developers, researchers, leaders, citation experts and altmetrics visionaries to make your thoughts heard and shape the conversation.

Find out more and register at www.software.ac.uk/software-credit.

Software Engineering Practices in Science

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Dustin Heaton and Jeffrey Carver have just published a paper titled Claims About the Use of Software Engineering Practices in Science: A Systematic Literature Review:

Teaching to the Workflow

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

"Teaching to the test" has a deservedly bad reputation, but what about "teaching to the workflow"? A group of us came together at the NCEAS Open Science Codefest last year and put together a paper on open science in ecology. In it, we sketch three examples of possible open science workflows (Figure 2 in the paper). In response, I was asked what Software Carpentry should teach to prepare people for working in those ways. My top three things are (in order):

Not Quite Lesson Material

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Originally posted on the author's blog.

Lesson plans are a funny thing. The Software Carpentry lessons are an odd balance of a lesson to be read (like a textbook) and a lesson plan for instructors, where they bring the text to life via speaking, live coding, and doing exercises.

This text format doesn't lend itself well to a few activities I've used in Software Carpentry workshops. So I'm going to throw them up here for other instructors to look at - feel free to add your own activities in the comments, or submit another blog post!

Rebooting Instructor Training

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Instructor training has been key to Software Carpentry's growth, but it was clear by the time our last online class finished in April that we couldn't and shouldn't keep doing it the way we had been: couldn't because of the time it ate up, and shouldn't because it wasn't doing enough to prepare people for actually teaching.

After five months of thinking, talking, and revising, we finally have a plan for rebooting the course. We are going to run it twice between now and the end of the year: once in the usual multi-week format, and once more compressed into two full days. We are also going to introduce some preparatory requirements, mentoring for new instructors, and mini-lessons to help ease people into organizing and running workshops. Finally, we will start training a few more people to run instructor training so that we can afford to give trainees more personal attention.

The full proposal is included below, and we will be contacting people who have applied for instructor training over the next few days to invite them to take part. I apologize right now for not being able to offer everyone a place right away, but if this reboot goes well—and I think it will—we should be able to start clearing the rest of our backlog soon.

How Teaching Knowledge Is Transferred

Sun, 13 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I hesitate to say so, but I believe that we pedagogues tend to exaggerate greatly the amount of change in educational practice that results from reading what other people say should be done...

— Stephen Corey, 1951

Being back in Edinburgh thirty years on has occasioned much reflection upon lessons learned. This has occasioned a re-reading of some papers by Prof. Sally Fincher, whose research group at the University of Kent studies the teaching and learning of computer science. In particular, I have been looking at what they have discovered about how educators share teaching practices. I hope these excerpts and reflections are of interest. (Note: section titles link to papers.)

Workshop at the University of Arizona

Sun, 13 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Workshop

Who: Practicing and aspiring research scientists

When: October 3 and 4, 2015 (9am - 5 pm on both days)

Where: UA Integrated Learning Center

How: Register at http://iplantsc.eventbrite.com

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 17

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship committee held their latest round of debriefing for instructors of recent workshops on Tuesday, September 1. Then, on Friday September 4th mentorship committee met for a regular bi-weekly meeting. Some comments from the committee meeting have made their way into this debriefing post.

Reporting on a Commercial Workshop

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On August 22, Marty McGuire (@schmarty) and I (@joshua_r_smith) taught a for-profit workshop based on Software Carpentry materials, particularly the novice Python lesson. This post is a debrief of that workshop.

August 27 - September 5, 2015: Lessons Published, ReScience, SSI Fellowships Open, Interview, and Mailman Threads as GitHub Comments.

Sat, 05 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Our lessons are now published! Please find important citation information in the blog post.

New

You can now publish your computational studies that replicates previous findings in ReScience.

The Art of Data Science by Roger D. Peng and Elizabeth Matsui has been published.

Greg Wilson's recent CS Education Zoo interview about Software Carpentry is available via YouTube.

Contribute

Do you know of a tool that can convert Mailman mailing list threads into comments on a GitHub issue?

Opportunities

Applications are open for the Software Sustainability Institute's Fellowship programme. Apply before 1 October 2015.

Our Lessons Have Now Been Published

Sat, 05 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been a long time coming, but we have finally published Version 5.3 of our core lessons. Please cite them as:

Announcing ReScience

Thu, 03 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's our great pleasure to announce the creation of "ReScience" which is a peer-reviewed journal that targets computational research and encourages the explicit replication of already published research, promoting new and open-source implementations in order to ensure that the original research is reproducible.

Running a Code Retreat

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I recently attended a scholarship retreat run by Google with about 40 other students. We spent one day doing a "code retreat" and I wanted to share my experience and what I learned about programming.

SSI Fellowship Applications Open

Wed, 02 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Fellowship Programme run by the Software Sustainability Institute funds researchers in exchange for their expertise and advice. The main goals of the Programme are encouraging best practice and gathering information about research software from all disciplines, and encouraging Fellows to develop their interests in the area of software sustainability (especially in their areas of work). The Programme also supports capacity building and policy development initiatives.

Better Teaching Practices

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It wasn't part of our original plan, but over time Software Carpentry has come to be about better teaching as much as it is about better computing. In aid of that, I would like to offer the following:

Three Graphs I Would Like to See

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I spent part of the weekend chatting with a friend in Cambridge who used to be science editor at The Independent and now edits Scientific Computing World. During those conversations, I realized that there are three graphs I'd really like to see:

GSoC 2015 Finished

Sun, 30 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This year's edition of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) has now finished. We are very happy with the outcome of the work of the three students that worked under the NumFOCUS umbrella that we helped to coordinate.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 16 (morning)

Fri, 28 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship committee held their latest round of debriefing for instructors of recent workshops on Tuesday, August 18. This post highlights the themes discussed in both the morning and evening sessions. Our participants included multiple levels of experience, including new instructors and experienced instructors who were preparing to teach again soon. The most difficult aspects of their experiences are described below, as well as things that work well and may assist in ameliorating problems.

August 18 - 26, 2015: Instructors' Retreat, Applying Discounts, Adding Lessons, Be a Mentor, Undergraduate Training, and Improving RStudio.

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Do you want to meet other Software Carpentry instructors and share your training experience? Let us know when you'll be available for our first Virtual Instructors' Retreat. We've already heard back from 60 people!

How do you know if a fee waiver or discount will apply to your Software Carpentry Workshop? Read our new guidelines.
Mike Jackson wrote about how easy and rewarding it is to add lessons to the Software Carpentry repertoire. It's inspirational to see the power of openness and collaboration.

Contribute

Join our mentoring sub committee — it's a great opportunity to simultaneously learn and give back.

Share your ideas for a Maths undergraduate Python curriculum with Ian Hawke (and us).

RStudio wants to hear from you about how to improve their software for training purposes. An interesting discussion is already under way.

Fee Waivers and Discounted Fees

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of weeks ago the Steering Committee met in person and one of the topics discussed was fee waivers and discounted fees for workshops and instructor training. Continue reading for our conclusions.

Virtual Instructors Retreat

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Mentoring sub-committee is planning a Virtual Instructors Retreat this fall. The goal of the event is to build community between instructors, as well as give us all a chance to practice our teaching and give and receive feedback from each other. This will be a day-long event where we meet in person with our local community, where possible, and remotely where meeting in person is not possible. World-wide, all groups will also interact with each other via internet conferencing for specific portions of the event.

We want as many of our instructors as possible to be able to participate, so please help us to do this by filling out this Doodle poll.

Also, we are interested in your ideas about such an event. Please feel free to mail any ideas, comments or questions to the Mentoring sub-committee.

Join the Mentoring Subcommittee

Sat, 22 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Mentoring Subcommittee is seeking for new members to help with the debriefing sessions and future activities. If you are interested in join us, please send a email to mentoring@lists.software-carpentry.org.

What Is ORCID?

Sat, 22 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Part of being a successful researcher lies in the ability to stand out from your peers, which can be done through making and being acknowledge for valuable and original contributions. Once acknowledged for one discovery this can then act as a springboard to allow your peers to identify your other scholarly contributions, or alternatively identify potential for future collaboration, or be used as a proof of your research skills when applying for further funding. In short, making your work and accomplishments known is crucial to success in academia.

Yet whilst so many functions of the academic process hang on the concept of citations and as such the ability to identify the researchers behind a piece of work, the actual means of identifying a researcher is not without its problems. For example how to identify the discoveries and related work of a specific "John Smith" after coming across one of the author's particularly informative publications? How do we keep up to date with a researcher's publications if they change their name? How do we keep track of a successful researcher who works across a number of institutions over the course of their career or who engages in work across a range of disciplines?

Feedback on Math with Python for Undergraduates

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Ian Hawke (who put together these notebooks on testing numerical code) is now putting together some Jupyter Notebooks to teach Python to first-year undergraduates in mathematics. He would be grateful for feedback, and we'd be grateful if you could give him some: we'll learn a lot about what we should teach from seeing what you think he should.

Experiences Adding a Lesson on Make

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In June I added a lesson on Automation and Make. In this blog post, I describe how the lesson evolved, my experiences in porting it into the Software Carpentry lesson template, and the community's response...

Improving RStudio as a Teaching Tool

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On Twitter, the RStudio support team requested suggestions for how to make RStudio better as a teaching tool. So I've started an issue on their support site for instructors to chime in with ideas. Go ahead and let them know what would make teaching with RStudio easier and better!

Stickers

Tue, 18 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Want to dress up your laptop? Software Carpentry stickers are now available from Sticker Mule. All proceeds will go to the Software Carpentry Foundation.

August 3 - 17, 2015: Data Carpentry Funded, Citations, Improving Our Lessons, and Lab Data Management.

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Fantastic news from our sibling organisation, Data Carpentry, who received USD 750,000 in funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Contribute

Do you have suggestions for the citation format of our lessons? Should all contributers be named? Please participate in this discussion to help us move forward with making our lessons citeable.

How can we improve the next version of our Python 3 lesson? Contribute to the discussion before September when content of the next release will be decided upon.

Meanwhile, a few posts focussing on preparing for and teaching various lessons have appeared over the past months. You can help improve what and how we teach by sharing your experience in terms of content, format, and preparation for teaching at a Software Carpentry workshop.

Have you designed and built a data management system for your lab or project? Please share your experience to help us rethink how we teach databases and their integration with other tools.

Science Track at PyCon UK 2015

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Today, researchers in the sciences, humanities and arts, all use code as an everyday part of their work. Often such code is written using the popular Python programming language. Thanks to generous funding from the Software Sustainability Institute, PyCon UK will have a track for scientists and other researchers who want to improve their coding skills, learn from colleagues, and discover new ways in which Python and its community can support their work.

Prepping for the Python Lesson

Sun, 16 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Inspired in part by Byron Smith's post about trimming our standard Python lesson, Christina Koch has written a post of her own about preparing to teach that lesson. She organizes her discussion around the motivating question that opens the lesson: "We have to accomplish a task (reading in data, analyzing and plotting it) by writing a program. How can we be smart about it?" It's a good read, as it shows how an experienced instructor thinks about (re-)designing teaching material. I hope her conclusions will feed into our discussion of how to revise the lesson (which we're going to decide in September).

Checking What We Teach

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back in May, Jonathan Klaasen wrote a post about setting up a lab data management system. After re-reading it, I think it's a good reality check on what we teach about databases: from what I can tell, we cover most of the information management needs that Jonathan touches on. I also think it could be a great motivating example for a lesson on databases, and on how to combine them with other tools like shell scripts. If you've ever built or used something like what Jonathan describes, I'd be grateful for comments describing where your setup is the same and where it's different.

Teaching in Bali

Fri, 14 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On July 2015, I was fortunate to receive an invitation to the first international workshop of the Diversity of the Indo-Pacific Network (DIPnet), which explains the "Bali" part, in order to teach R and the Unix command line during the first two days. The weeklong workshop was co-hosted by the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology and Indonesia Biodiversity Research Center (IBRC), and lead by Dr. Eric Crandall from CSU Monterey Bay. The theme of the workshop was "Molecular Ecology and Bioinformatics in Developing Countries", which featured lectures and labs developed by the invited participants in their area of expertise. For this, a two-day software carpentry workshop was very much needed to begin the week and prepare all participants for the computational sessions coming up in the week.

Data Carpentry Receives Grant from the Moore Foundation

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Reposted from the Data Carpentry blog.

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

Trimming the Python Lesson

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are close to releasing a new version of our standard Python lesson that uses Python 3 instead of Python 2. As soon as that's done, we're going to warm up this discussion about fixing that lesson. One new contribution to that is this post by Byron Smith about how he trimmed the existing lesson. If you have other experiences or comments, please add them to this GitHub issue so that we can make decisions in September about what to include in Version 5.4 in November.

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.

Publishing, Metadata, and Being Ahead of the Curve

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As described in earlier posts, we are publishing our Version 5.3 lessons through Zenodo to make it easier for people to cite them. We're getting closer, but there are still a few bumps in front of us, and we would like our readers to help us figure out what to do next.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 15

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The most recent installation of instructor debriefings by the mentoring subcommittee was held on August 4 to discuss recently completed workshops. We were joined by new instructors as well as a number of very experienced instructors (some of whom also maintain lesson repos), who all taught recently or are preparing to teach workshops. We highlight below a few of the main points from our discussions, including interesting new ideas, things that worked well, and things that were difficult.

A Workshop for Undergraduates at UC Berkeley

Thu, 06 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We ran a workshop for undergraduates at UC Berkeley on July 9-10, 2015. This was a quickly planned workshop from concept to completion (~19 days). I was excited to run a workshop geared towards undergraduates, especially those involved in research projects in the summertime.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 14

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On July 21 the mentorship team ran the 14th round of instructor debriefing session and received feedback from workshops at the NIH, UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

July 23 - August 2, 2015: Online Survey Still Open, Recorded Lessons Available, and Another WiSE Workshop Coming Up.

Sun, 02 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Complete the online SWOT survey before 5 August to help steer Software Carpentry in the right direction over the next few years.

Software Carpentry lessons from SciPy 2015 were recorded and is available in YouTube.

Opportunities

We're developing a template to provide solutions to challenges in a sensible way. Please share your ideas for a template with us.

Events

Another workshops for women in science and engineering will be held at UC Davis on August 17-18, 2015.

SciPy 2015 Workshop Videos

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry was pleased to present a full two-day workshop during the recent SciPy Conference tutorials. The entire conference was recorded, including all sessions of our workshop:

Shell

Python

Git

Scientific Python

The course materials are accessible via the workshop webpage and GitHub repo.

The course would not have been possible without the help of several Software Carpentry members: Azalee Bostroem, Matt Davis, Jess Hamrick, Ted Hart, Katy Huff, Thomas Kluyver, Jens Nielsen, April Wright, and Elizabeth Seiver. Many thanks to these talented folks and to the SciPy organizers for inviting us!

Solution for the Challenges

Tue, 28 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the enhancement that we have in mind for the next release of our lessons is to provide the solution for the challenges. Having the solutions will help instructors speed up when preparing the lesson for workshops and learners reading the lessons. Before we start adding the solutions will be great to have one template for how it should be write. If you have some suggestions, please add it at this issue on GitHub.

A Pair of Workshops

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Do you know your options for software licensing? Have you heard of new funders' requirements for software sharing? This workshop in Cambridge (UK) on Monday, September 14, is your chance to get expert advice on these and other questions about software licensing. Speakers include Neil Chue Hong, the Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, and Shoaib Sufi, the SSI's Community Leader.

The event is open to everyone and you are welcome to bring your questions to the workshop. There will lots of opportunities to discuss your queries at the sessions and during the dedicated networking lunch. For more information, please see the workshop's website.

There is also a workshop on Monday, October 19, at the Natural History Museum in London on getting credit for software. This workshop will explore what contribution software can and should make for academic reputational credit; i.e., how can the production of software tools and applications contribute to career advancement in the academic research setting for both researchers who build software as part of their research and developers who build tools and support research.

July 07 - 22, 2015: Hiring an Executive Director, Strategic Planning, SWC-inspired Book, Open Research Repository, AMY version 0.6, and New Team Members.

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Software Carpentry is entering the next phase and will be hiring a new Executive Director. Please apply if you are passionate about the mission of the Software Carpentry Foundation!

Do you want to help steer Software Carpentry in the right direction over the next five years? Help us by completing a short anonymous SWOT survey.

Changes

Two new coordinators, Maneesha Sane and Katarzyna Zaczek, have joined the Software Carpentry team, and we're saying goodbye to Amy Brown.

We've changed the workshop administration fees. Please read the post for details.

Resources

"Effective Computation in Physics" written by two Software Carpentry instructors, Anthony Scopatz and Katy Huff, is now available.

An Open Research Glossary generated through a crowd-sourcing effort with a number of named contributors is now available.

AMY version 0.6 has been released with a long list of new features and some fixes.

WiSE Workshop at UC Davis Aug 17-18

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that the latest in our series of workshops for women in science and engineering will be held at UC Davis on August 17-18, 2015. This workshop is aimed at those in science, engineering, medicine, or related fields who identify as women, female, or on the non-binary spectrum. Our instructors are experienced with creating safe spaces for those on the trans* spectrum, and one openly identifies as a trans woman; ensuring that we maintain an inclusive environment is a top priority for this workshop. For more information, or to register, please see the workshop website.

Changes to Workshop Administration Fees

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After discussion with our Advisory Council and Data Carpentry, we have agreed to make some changes to the administration fee we charge for workshops that we help organize in order to reflect the real cost of our staff's time and our overheads, and to reflect the value of the training. Please see the workshop request page for the updated pricing information.

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.

Welcome Maneesha and Katarzyna

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that Maneesha Sane (pronounced "sah-nay") will be joining us in August as our new Program Coordinator. Having coordinated and managed public events and mentoring programs for several organizations in the Philadelphia area, Maneesha retrained as a software developer. She has been managing events and matching mentors to learners for over a decade, and we are looking forward to working with her.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 13

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week the mentorship team ran the 13th round of instructor debriefing session and received feedbacks from the workshops at Brigham Young University (check Belinda's post about it), Johns Hopkins University, Notre Dame University, Pennsylvania State University, the Jackson Laboratory, the University of Queensland, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of Toronto - Women in Science and Engineering (check Pauline's post).

AMY Version 0.6

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Yesterday was the release day for AMY v0.6.. Here's what's new and what's changed in this release.

Help Software Carpentry's Strategic Planning

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The SCF Steering Committee is undertaking a strategic planning process that will help us to identify the SCF's working priorities for short- and long-term success, based on input from you.

Your input is crucial—we are beginning the process by asking that you identify key Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) facing SCF over the next five years via this anonymous survey. We will review the survey results, summarize key issues, and develop a summary and plan that addresses the issues raised.

To help, please fill in the SWOT Survey. Note that the survey asks for 3 answers for each strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats but you may fill out more or less as you see fit. Please fill out the survey only once and by August 5, 2015.

Top 10 Myths about Teaching CS

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Mark Guzdial (whose blog has been a frequent inspiration) recently wrote an article title Top 10 Myths about Teaching Computer Science:

The lack of women in Computer Science is just like all the other STEM fields.

To get more women in CS, we need more female CS faculty.

A good CS teacher is a good lecturer.

Clickers and the like are an add-on for a good teacher

Student evaluations are the best way to evaluate teaching.

Good teachers personalize education for students' learning styles.

High schools just can't teach CS well, so they shouldn't do it at all.

The real problem is to get more CS curriculum out into the hands of teachers.

All I need to do to be a good CS teacher is model good software development practice, because my job is to produce excellent software engineers.

Some people are just born to program.

The Open Research Glossary

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been knocking around for a while now, but this week saw a big new release of the Open Research Glossary, a crowdsourced glossary of terms, acronyms, tools and concepts in and around open science. There's a lot of jargon in this area and it's often a barrier to understanding for the uninitiated. For example: 'green', 'gold', 'diamond' and 'hybrid' open access are shorthand terms which aren't always fully understood.

The alphabet soup of acronyms are even worse! Take SHERPA/RoMEO for instance: it's a brilliant resource for checking author self-archiving rights relative to publisher-imposed restrictions and embargoes, but the name 'SHERPA/RoMEO' doesn't exactly make that clear. This glossary aims to elucidate all the need-to-know terms in open scholarship.

Software-Carpentry-Inspired Book: Released and On Sale!

Tue, 14 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're excited to announce the official release of "Effective Computation In Physics". This book was written by two Software Carpentry instructors, Anthony Scopatz and myself, Katy Huff. We were enormously inspired by the vision and work of the Software Carpentry community and expanded on that vision in the book to create a "field guide to research in Python." While examples and more advanced content are presented in the context of research in the physical sciences, the majority of the book will be useful to all researchers doing scientific computation. In book form, we were able to dive in and expand on best practices more deeply and more extensively than is possible in a workshop. We're extremely proud to have created "SWC in a book" as instructor Daniel Chen recently described it.

You (or your students and colleagues) can even get a 50% discount if you grab it before July 17th using the code: WKPYDP.

Teaching with Jupyter

Tue, 14 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We had a great birds of a feather session at the SciPy conference last week and decided to create a mailing list specifically for instructors who are interested in using the Jupyter Notebook for teaching. The aim of the mailing list is to provide a place for instructors to share materials, strategies, advice, etc. on teaching with the notebook and the logistics that are involved with that. If you're interested in joining the mailing list as well, you can add yourself at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/jupyter-education

Congratulations to Project Jupyter

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This is wonderful news: the Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation have just pledged $6M over three years to Project Jupyter (formerly known as the IPython Notebook). Fernando Perez of University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brian Granger of California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo will lead the project. Congratulations to them, their team, and their community—this is well deserved, and will help scientists all over the world in ways we cannot yet even imagine.

What I Learned in Brisbane

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Not a single negative was recorded about the people either teaching or helping out at the Brisbane Software Carpentry bootcamp last Thursday and Friday (2-3 July). There were a lot of positive comments though:

The workshop is great with passionate instructors

All the helpers in the room are very helpful and fun

Excellent support from helpers

Instructors readily available to help especially when falling behind or [we] need help understanding codes

Hiring a New Executive Director for Software Carpentry

Mon, 06 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Foundation seeks to hire a new Executive Director to build relations with partners, oversee the development of our curriculum, be Software Carpentry's spokesperson, and work with the Steering Committee to set our future direction. The successful candidate will initially be co-Executive Director, and will job-share with the current Executive Director during a brief transition period, after which they will become the new ED.

To apply, please send email to {{site.contact}} by July 31, 2015 with "Co-Executive Director" in the subject line, and include:

A brief resume or CV (approximately two pages).

A brief statement (approximately two pages) of what you would hope to accomplish in your first year as Executive Director. Please also include a paragraph about any work you may have done with Software Carpentry in the past and another about your experience working with other volunteer organizations.

We will begin interviews immediately after July 31, and hope to have someone in place no later than the end of August.

June 29 - July 06, 2015: Research Software Engineers, Not Changing Lesson Build Tools, and Moving to Python3.

Mon, 06 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Do you know what a Research Software Engineer is or why we desperately need to recognise the role RSEs are playing in research? Read about the history of RSEs and a fellowship programme available for RSEs in the UK.

Version 5.4 of our lessons will be released at the end of November, rather than mid-August, and lesson build tools will remain unchanged until then. Most importantly we'll be changing the Python lessons to run on Python 3.

Contribute

Are you looking for other ways to contribute to Software Carpentry? Visit our Projects page to see an exciting list of opportunities for you to get involved.

Our Next Big Step

Mon, 06 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

With Software Carpentry's rapid growth over the past couple of years, the combined responsibilities of being the Executive Directory and running the instructor training program have become more than a single person can manage. And after five years of working to grow Software Carpentry into the world-wide community it has become, I'd like to spend more time with my family.

The Software Carpentry Foundation is therefore hiring a new Executive Director. I will transition to running instructor training so that the new ED can devote themselves to building relations with partners, overseeing the development of our curriculum, being Software Carpentry's spokesperson, and working with the Steering Committee to set our future direction. Our new hire will initially be co-Executive Director, and will job-share with me during a brief transition period, after which they will become the new ED.

This is the next logical step in Software Carpentry's evolution, and one that we have been working toward for more than a year. As with the election of the Steering Committee in January, it's a sign that Software Carpentry is here to stay, and nothing could make me prouder.

Software Skills Training for Librarians - Programme outline and FAQ

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Library Carpentry website

In one way or another librarians play a crucial role in cultivating world-class research. And in most disciplinary areas today world-class research relies on the use of software. Software Carpentry offers introductory software skills training with a focus on the needs and requirements of research scientists. Library Carpentry offers comparable introductory software training with a focus on the needs and requirements of the library professionals.

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.

Pushing Back

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A week ago, we posted a proposal to use Jekyll to build our lessons rather than Pandoc. The immediate reaction was almost uniformly positive, but in the days since, people have pushed back on two fronts:

What is a Research Software Engineer?

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

By now, many people in the UK (well, many of the sort who read this blog) will have heard the term Research Software Engineer, but what exactly is an RSE, and what effect will the creation of this title have? To understand, we need to go back to the Software Sustainability Institute's Collaborations Workshop in early 2012 (summarized in these blog posts and others). Those discussions led to this position paper at Digital Research 2012, whose authors argued that:

June 17-28, 2015: A Lesson on Make, AMY 0.4 Released, Opportunities to Contribute, Practical Tips for Running Workshops, and Appointing a Program Coordinator.

Sun, 28 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Vacancies

Software Carpentry is hiring a Program Coordinator. Please see the blog post for more information.

Highlights

A new lesson on Make has been added to the Software Carpentry repertoire.

AMY 0.4 was released. New features are listed in the blog post.

Contribute

Would you like to contribute by recycling previously submitted assessment excercises and adding the best ones to our lessons? It can now easily be done by visiting the newly created repo of submitted MCQs and exercises.

Learner assessment has been receiving a lot of attention over the past months. A first draft of the new feedback survey is now available. We're looking forward to your comments/contributions.

Should we change our lesson templates to make use of Jekyll rather than Pandoc? Please contribute to the discussion to help us make an informed decision.

Greg Wilson summarised lessons learned from teaching instructors. There is again an opportunity for you to contribute to the direction instructor training takes in future. Let us hear from you?

Useful Tips

Splitting the terminal window allows the instructor to display recent commands while continueing with the lesson at the same time. Read the post by Raniere Silva to see how it's done.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 12

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentoring subcommmittee hosted instructor debriefings on 23 June 2015 to discuss recently completed workshops. We are delighted that so many new instructors are joining us at these sessions as a way to prepare for upcoming workshops, and welcome anyone else interested to attend as well. Below we highlight a few discussion points from our sessions, including issues with lesson pacing and Python installation, as well as tips on using the etherpad and GitHub organizations. A more in-depth synopsis of a recent workshop can be found in this fantastic post on Raniere Silva's blog.

Training Lessons

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I wrote about our experiments with the format of instructor training back in May. At that time, we had run the class as:

a multi-week online class,

an in-person two- or three-day class, and

a mixed mode with the trainees physically together for two days with the trainer coming in via teleconference.

We have since tried the mixed mode twice with the trainees at three different sites (three universities in Arizona for one run, and universities in Cape Town, Sheffield, and Ann Arbor for the other). We've also gathered a lot of feedback on what people want from instructor training and what its prerequisites should be. Here's what we've learned.

Workshop at CERN

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At the beginning of June Rémi Emonet, Kwasi Kwakwa, and Chelsea Chisholm ran a workshop at CERN. Rémi has just posted a review. It went well, and there are a lot of good ideas in his write-up—from using a whiteboard for diagrams to the IPython Notebook's successor (Jupyter) and some semi-improvised intermediate material.

Using Jekyll for Lessons

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A recurring complaint about our lesson template is that it requires authors to commit generated HTML files to their repositories as well as their Markdown source files. This is necessary because we use Pandoc to convert Markdown to HTML, but GitHub will only run Jekyll.

There were a bunch of reasons for using Pandoc instead of Jekyll, but it is now clear that the simplicity of only committing Markdown—i.e., of using GitHub pages the way they're meant to be used—is more important. We have therefore created a prototype of a Jekyll-based template (which is rendered here). The most important changes are:

Another Good Workshop in Brazil

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The indefatigable Raniere Silva has just posted a description of a workshop at the University of Ceará that he and Dani Ushizima just finished teaching. It went well, and there are a lot of good ideas in his write-up — please check it out.

Assessing Our Learners Part I

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Three weeks ago, Jason Williams, Jeramia Ory, and Daniel Chen met at the New York Public Library to work out an initial survey to assess our learners. Greg Wilson and Katerena Kuksenok joined virtually to provide feedback. The goal was to take the comments from the various initial GitHub issues and create a draft of an assessment survey for everyone to provide input. Our first draft is up, so please provide feedback at {{site.github_url}}/assessment/issues/6.

Program Coordinator Position Available

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry has grown and grown again since our re-launch in 2010. We are now helping thousands of scientists every year, and while many of our partners and instructors are now organizing workshops on their own, a lot of details still need to be sorted out to keep the whole show on the road.

We therefore wish to hire a Program Coordinator to manage our day-to-day operations. This paid position will initially be part-time, but we expect that it will convert to full-time after a probationary period if funding allows. The successful candidate does not need to be either a programmer or a scientist, but must be well-organized, and can be located anywhere with reliable Internet access. The full description is included below; to apply, please email {{site.contact}} with "Program Coordinator position" in the subject line and a resume (either attached as PDF, or a link to something online). And please help us spread the word: we're a fun bunch to work with, and this would be a chance for someone to help a lot of scientists get more done in less time, and with less pain.

Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Arliss Collins for all her hard work over the past year and a half. She is moving on to other duties now that our relationship with the Mozilla Science Lab has ended, but we couldn't have gotten through the past eighteen months without her. I'd also like to thank Amy Brown, who has come back to keep things going while we search for someone permanent, and welcome Kasia Zaczek, who is about to start handling workshops for us in Europe on behalf of Cyfronet in the same way that Giacomo Peru and Aleksandra Pawlik have been handling them in the UK on behalf of the SSI. Here's hoping that one day, somewhere, we can all get together for a group photo...

Recycling Training Course Material

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the past two years, more than 200 people have written multiple choice questions and other assessment exercises as part of Software Carpentry instructor training. Many of these are very good, some are excellent, and they all deserve a second look to see whether they should be integrated into our lessons.

Research-Based Course Design

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've written before about the breadth and depth of Juha Sorva's work on computing education. His latest contribution is a paper co-authored with Otto Seppälä titled "Research-Based Design of the First Weeks of CS1". In it, they tie the specifics of the new intro programming class at Aalto University directly back to CS education research. More specifically (from their abstract):

Splitting the Shell Window

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Raniere Silva has written a short post about a trick he found (via Kate Hertweck) for splitting the terminal window when teaching the shell so that recent commands stay visible at the top. It's a clever idea; we would welcome feedback from other instructors who have tried it or similar things. And if you have tricks of your own that you'd like to share, please let us know—we'd be happy to feature them here.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 11

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held our 11th round of instructor debriefing last week where we discussed the Software Carpentry workshops held at the University of Oslo, University of Connecticut, University of Campinas, University of the Basque Country, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, and Oklahoma State University, as well as a Data Carpentry workshop at the National Data Integrity Conference at Colorado State University. At this debriefing we also had 3 new instructors join us (who have yet to teach a workshop but will be teaching one in the near future) to gain an insight about what works (and what doesn't) at our workshops out in the wild.

Amy Version 0.4

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Today's the deadline for AMY v0.4. It contains a bunch of usability fixes, so all our admins should be happy :-)

Adding a Lesson on Make

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce the addition of a lesson on automation and Make, which was created by the SSI's Mike Jackson and Steve Crouch. The repository contains everything you need to teach it, and pull requests are very welcome.

Software Development Practices in Academia

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Derek Groen, Xiaohu Guo, James Grogan, Ulf Schiller, and James Osborne have just submitted a paper to arXiv.org titled "Software development practices in academia: a case study comparison". From the abstract:

Academic software development practices often differ from those of commercial development settings, yet only limited research has been conducted on assessing software development practises in academia. Here we present a case study of software development practices in four open-source scientific codes over a period of nine years, characterizing the evolution of their respective development teams, their scientific productivity, and the adoption (or discontinuation) of specific software engineering practises as the team size changes. We show that the transient nature of the development team results in the adoption of different development strategies. We relate measures of publication output to accumulated numbers of developers and find that for the projects considered the time-scale for returns on expended development effort is approximately three years. We discuss the implications of our findings for evaluating the performance of research software development, and in general any computationally oriented scientific project.

Why I Am Not Excited About Julia

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you hang out in scientific programming circles, you're probably heard of Julia by now. If you don't, or you haven't, it is:

Get More Done in Less Time

Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the past year, Alexandra Simperler has interviewed participants in Software Carpentry workshops to find out what impact we've actually had on their work. Her results are now available on arXiv.org:

The aim of this study was to investigate if participants of Software Carpentry (SC) get more done in less time. We asked 32 questions to assess 24 former participants to analyse if SC gave them the computing skills to accomplish this. Our research shows that time was already saved during the workshop as it could shorten the learning process of new skills. A majority of participants were able to use these new skills straight away and thus could speed up their day to day work.

Like Jory Schossau's study, Alexandra's work shows that workshop participants believe we're making their lives better.

June 10-16, 2015: Software Carpentry is Saving Time, Lessons Version 5.4, Greg's Time, Our Project List, and a Lesson on Reproducible Research.

Tue, 16 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Software Carpentry get more done in less time is the latest publication about Software Carpentry and the impact it's having on research. It reports research done by Alexandra Simperler and is available at arXiv.

Version 5.4 of our lessons is currently in the pipeline and due for release in the middle of August. Please join the discussions and participate in addressing new and existing issues to help us reach our next milestone.

Over the last few months a lot has improved in the way Software Carpentry operates. Greg Wilson revisited some changes and the impact on how his time is spent six months after election of the Steering Committee.

Do you want to know how you can help to move Software Carpentry forward? Take a look at our project list or get in touch. There are loads of opportunities for people with a wide variety of skills.

Resources

Titus Brown posted a lesson on reproducible research on YouTube.

A Lesson on Reproducible Computational Analysis

Mon, 15 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown has recorded a two-hour lesson on reproducible computational analysis and posted it to YouTube. Many thanks to the folks at ICER for making it available.

Updating the Project List

Mon, 15 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Updating my description of where my time goes made me realize that our list of things we need help with had fallen out of date. The highlights are below; please see the projects page for details, and get in touch if you'd like to help.

Routinely Unique

Sun, 14 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back in April, Jeffrey Chang wrote wrote an article for Nature in which he pleaded for those who analyze bioinformatics data to be recognized as creative collaborators in need of career paths. In it, he observed:

To give greater support to researchers, our centre set out to develop a series of standardized services. We documented the projects that we took on over 18 months. Forty-six of them required 151 data-analysis tasks. No project was identical, and we were surprised at how common one-off requests were. There were a few routine procedures that many people wanted, such as finding genes expressed in a disease. But 79% of techniques applied to fewer than 20% of the projects. In other words, most researchers came to the bioinformatics core seeking customized analysis, not a standardized package.

Where the Time Goes (Version 2)

Sun, 14 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last November, I wrote a post about where my time was going. A lot has changed since then, including my workload, so here's an update:

Running a Remote Workshop in South Africa

Sat, 13 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last month we ran a workshop at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The workshop instructors were Laurent Gatto (from the UK - coming in as remote instructor), and two local instructors - David Merand and Anelda van der Walt. We had four helpers in the room and 32 participants.

Warming Up for Version 5.4

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's time to start thinking about what should be in Version 5.4 of our lessons (which we plan to release in the middle of August to get us through to the end of the year). We have opened a discussion ticket for each of the core lessons on GitHub; please add your thoughts there.

Unix shell

Git

Mercurial

SQL

Python

R

MATLAB

Teaching at NIH

Thu, 11 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Reposted from Fan's blog.

I just finished my two day software carpentry workshop held at National Cancer Institute (NCI), Rockville, MD. The course went for 2 days, from June 9th to June 10th and taught by Jonathan Guyer, Adina Howe, and I. I was in charge of the unix shell and version control (git) sessions (Also many thanks to Dilip Banerjee, Lynn Young for the help!). Personally, I think the course went really well but there are definitely things I could adjust and improve in the future. Below is the run downs.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Thu, 11 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the beginning, there were tables: rows upon rows, with columns separated by commas or tabs or something more exotic. They were elegant but limited, so programmers said, "Let there be XML!" And lo, there came a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, for who among us can truly comprehend external (parsed) general entity declarations and the encoding thereof?

Call for Chapter Proposals: Software Engineering for Science

Wed, 10 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

With the continuing increase in the importance and prevalence of software developed in support of science, there is a need to gather a set of best practices and case studies to serve as a standard reference book. We are producing a peer-reviewed, edited book to address this need. The book will be composed of chapters related to one of three topics that address the important needs. The book will have three sections, each related to one of those topics. The outline below enumerates those sections along with examples of the types of chapters that would fit within those sections. We solicit proposals from interested authors. Chapter proposals should fit into one of the following book sections.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 10

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship team ran the 10th round of instructor debriefing session on May 26. Thanks to David Dotson, Daniel Chen, Sahar Rahmani, Christina Koch, David Merand and Laurent Gatto for feedback on their workshops. Rémi Emonet and Fan Yang, instructors at upcoming workshops, also attended.

May 29 - June 9, 2015: New Lesson About Data, SWC at ScipPy 2015, Updating our Lesson Templates, and Amy 0.3.

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Our latest addition to the Software Carpentry curriculum focuses on using Python to work with data on the web.

We've created an ambitious list of proposed improvements to our lesson templates and aim to have it implemented by September. Please add your comments or help us improve the templates.

Amy 0.3 has been released and include several improvements that will make administrators' lives easier.

Events

One of the aims of running a Software Carpentry workshop at SciPy 2015 is to provide Python novices with the basics ahead of the conference. There are still spaces available for the workshop.

A Remote Workshop at the University of Campinas

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Raniere Silva has posted a summary of a workshop at the University of Campinas at which Jennifer Shelton, Maneesha Sane, and Natalie Robinson taught over the web. 23 learners from 3 countries enjoyed lessons and pizza, and we learned a few more things about how to teach remotely.

Amy Version 0.3

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Version 0.3 of Amy, the web application we're building to manage workshops, has just been released. Among the improvements are:

many UI upgrades

autocompletion

password and permissions management

an easier way to award badges

and many others

It's already making our admins' lives better, and there are lots more improvements in the works. For details, please see Piotr Banaszkiewicz's recent blog post.

An Update on Publishing Our Lessons

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Just a quick update on publishing our lessons: we prepared the release on schedule, uploaded it to Zenodo, and then discovered that we couldn't actually specify editors through their web interface, only authors, even though "editor" is an allowed value in the metadata. We also couldn't specify "lesson" as a type: our choices were "publication" (which is pretty generic) or "presentation" (which isn't quite right). Figshare and COS wouldn't let us do this either, but Zenodo is now working on it. They hope to release it by the end of June, at which point we'll wrap this up.

Teaching at Monsanto

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we discussed in April, the Steering Committee decided to run a small number of workshops for companies this year in order to see how our material would work for them, and whether they'd be willing to pay a higher administration fee that we could then use to underwrite workshops for people who might not otherwise be able to host one. The first of these workshops was held at Monsanto, and seems to have gone well: experience reports from two of the instructors are included below, and we hope to repeat the experiment for other companies in the coming months. (If you know a firm that would like our help, please do introduce us.)

Updating the Lesson Template

Sun, 07 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of weeks ago, we asked our lesson maintainers what changes they would like to see in our lesson template based on their experiences getting Version 5.3 ready for publication. Their comments are summarized below; it's an ambitious list, but I think we can do most or all of this between now and September. If there are other things you think we should change in the way we structure lessons (rather than in particular lessons themselves), please add comments, and if you'd like to dive into one of these, please checkout the current lesson-template issues and create a pull request against the lesson-template repository.

Software Carpentry at SciPy 2015

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This year at SciPy 2015 Software Carpentry is excited to be running a full two-day workshop during the tutorials that precede the main conference. We'll be covering our standard topics of shell, introductory Python, and version control with Git. We'll also be teaching a unit introducing the basic libraries of scientific Python. Attendees need not have any experience with the topics we cover.

We have our usual goals of helping scientists do more in less time with less pain, but at SciPy we also have a bonus goal of easing Python novices into the conference. A technical conference can present a steep learning curve to people unfamiliar with the field and we hope that a Software Carpentry workshop beforehand will give attendees a boost before wading into the conference deluge by exposing them to basic Python concepts and fundamental scientific Python libraries.

There is still plenty of room in the Software Carpentry tutorial, so if this seems useful to you please register with SciPy. And if you know anyone who would benefit from a workshop and would be interested in the conference please share this with them. Hope to see you in Austin!

Teaching Biocomputing at UT

Wed, 03 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Becca Tarvin has just posted an article about her experiences teaching biocomputing at the University of Texas. Like last month's report on teaching geoscientists, it's a welcome chance to compare what Software Carpentry does with what's possible in more conventional academic settings. As Becca says in summary:

From student surveys we note that students benefit greatly from our online resources, including cheatsheets, markdown lessons, and example code, and they like live-coding more than PowerPoint presentations. Although it's difficult to keep attendance up over the semester, the students that attend/use the online resources greatly improve their coding abilities. We are working to improve the accessibility of our course to all levels of programmers by offering additional resources including Open Coding Hour and by creating an online forum.

Working With Data on the Web

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have just added a new short lesson called Working With Data on the Web to our repertoire. If you would like to help us improve it, please fork it on GitHub and send us comments or pull requests.

Workshop at OU Libraries

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

During 19-20 May 2015, I taught a Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Oklahoma (OU) at their fantastic Bizzell Memorial Libary with Jonah Duckles, Logan Cox, and Jeremiah Lant. Jonah and I taught in one room, and Logan and Jeremiah in the other (about 30 students in each room). Tuesday morning was the Shell with Jonah, Tuesday PM and Wednesday AM was Python with me (except the command line section which Jonah covered), and Wednesday PM was git with Jonah. This was my first time teaching the workshop so I decided to write up my observations and student feedback.

May 19 - 28, 2015: New Learner Assessments, Remote Instructor Training, Coding for Librarians, and Evolution of a Geoscience Computing Course.

Thu, 28 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Software Carpentry instructors are encouraged to help develop new assessments for learners by suggesting questions that should be asked of learners.

A two-day remote instructor course will be trialed across three sites on June 8-9. Watch this space for feedback about the experience.

Resources

Andromeda Yelton has produced a wonderful resource for librarians who code (or want to code) in the form of six articles titled "Coding for Librarians: Learning by Example".

Christian Jacobs, Gerard Gorman, and Lorraine Craig's paper on the evolution of their geoscience computing course and the influence of Software Carpentry is available from arxiv.org.

A Few Articles on Education

Mon, 25 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the past year, I've come to realize that Software Carpentry will only work if knowledge flows in several directions. Scientists need to learn about software development, but software developers need to learn about science, too. In particular, they need to learn that it's possible to study software and programming scientifically, which is what motivated yesterday's post about my favorite papers from ICSE 2015.

And both groups need to learn about evidence-based teaching practices and the politics that education is embedded in (because without an understanding of the latter, no change is possible). While I don't have a snapshot like ICSE to offer, here are a few recent articles I've found illuminating:

ICSE 2015

Sun, 24 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back when I was still trying to do science myself, my field of study was software engineering. The International Conference on Software Engineering is the big gathering for researchers in that area, and this year's has just wrapped up. Thanks to this Gist from Mike Hoye, I was able to browse the papers presented at ICSE and co-located workshops (like him, I'm outside the Great Paywall of Academia), and I've included titles and abstracts below from the ones I think readers of this blog might enjoy. They're only a fraction of what was presented, and I freely admit the sample is biased toward the things I understand and find interesting, but I hope they'll convince you that people are doing solid empirical studies in software engineering, and producing insights that we can and should act on.

Note: just over half of these papers (13 of 24) had an easily-findable version online. I'm not going to do the experiment, but I confidently predict that those 13 will be more widely read, and more influential, than the other 11.

Coding for Librarians

Fri, 22 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Andromeda Yelton (who has featured in this blog before) has written a set of six articles for Library Technology Reports titled Coding for Librarians: Learning by Example. From the introduction:

[This] draws from more than fifty interviews with librarians who have written code in the course of their work. Its goal is to help novice and intermediate programmers understand how programs work, how they can be useful in libraries, and how to learn more.

Three chapters discuss use cases for code in libraries. These include data import, export, and cleanup; expanded reporting capability; and patron-facing services such as improvements to catalog and LibGuide usability. Most of the programs discussed are short&mash;under a hundred lines—so that implementing or modifying them is within the reach of relatively novice programmers. Where possible, links to the code itself are provided. Several scripts are explained in depth.

Additional chapters focus on nontechnical aspects of library code. One chapter outlines political situations that have been faced by librarians who code and the solutions they have employed. Another chapter shares interviewees' advice on specific resources and strategies for learning to code.

Experiences with Geoscientists

Thu, 21 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Christian Jacobs, Gerard Gorman, and Lorraine Craig have written a paper titled "Experiences with efficient methodologies for teaching computer programming to geoscientists" that describes how their intro to computing course has changed over the last few years. It includes discussion of ideas they've borrowed from Software Carpentry, and some data on hwo students have responded. It's a good read, and we'd welcome more experience reports of this kind.

Plan to Assess Our Learners

Thu, 21 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The assessment subcommittee seeks to assess the effectiveness of the activities of the Software Carpentry Foundation (SCF). It met a few weeks ago and drafted an action plan on how to move forward to create a series of assessments for our learners. This action plan will be the basis on how further assessment tools will be developed.

Online Instructor Training Revisited

Tue, 19 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have now run instructor training in three formats:

an in-person two- or three-day class,

a multi-week online class, and

a hybrid version in which the trainees are co-located, but the trainer comes in via the web.

We've also gathered a lot of feedback on what people want from instructor training and what its prerequisites should be. Based on all of that, we're going to try to combine the best features of everything we've done so far.

May 12 - 18, 2015: 79 New Instructors and Instructor Debriefing Round 9.

Mon, 18 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

79 new instructors have qualified since the last announcement made in March!

Instructor Tips

Changing your prompt in the terminal when teaching the Shell lessons could provide more screen real estate. "export PS1='$ '" will change your current terminal only.

New Members of the Team

Sat, 16 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been several months since we last welcomed new instructors to the team. A lot of people have finished training since then, so please say hello to:

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 9

Wed, 13 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This week the mentorship team ran the 9th round of instructor debriefing session. Thanks to Andrew MacDonald, Doug Latornell, Evan Morien, Ewan Barr, Isabell Kiral-Kornek, Jackie Milhans, Kara Woo, Karl Broman and Tiffany Timbers for the great feedback of the workshops at Northwestern University, Simon Fraser University, Swinburne University of Technology, University of Melbourne and Washington State University.

May 6 - 11, 2015: Lesson Prep for Publication, Capturing Instructors' Commands, and Instructor Debriefing.

Wed, 13 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

15 people in 5 countries are preparing the Software Carpentry lessons for publication.

Instructor Tips

Do you find that participants fall behind during Software Carpentry workshops because they can't follow commands entered into the terminal? You can use redirect and Dropbox to create a live document for participants to follow.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 8

Fri, 08 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship team met last week for a discussion with instructors who recently taught, including workshops at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and University of Texas at Arlington (the latter of which was taught by both authors of this post). Three important issues emerged during our discussion: recording the instructor's shell code, using example scripts to model increasing complexity in coding, and preparing instructors/helpers with answers to challenges.

April 28 - May 5, 2015: GSoC Projects, Nightly Rebuilds, Katy Huff, and a PhD Starter Kit.

Tue, 05 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

The Google Summer of Code students have been selected. Well done to Piotr Banaszkiewicz, Ian Henriksen, and Amit Jamadagni!

Nightly rebuilds of the Software Carpentry lessons version 5.3 are now available.

People

Meet Katy Huff - chair of the Steering Committee and a member of the finance subcommittee.

Resources

Achintya Rao wrote a fascinating PhD Starter Kit listing some best practices and useful tools postgraduate students could find useful on their journey towards graduation.

Events

Learn about Research in the Cloud in Feltham this July.

Achintya Rao's PhD Starter Kit

Sat, 02 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Achintya Rao started a PhD last January, and in response to a request for advice from a friend, wrote a PhD Starter Kit that lists useful tools and practices. Most of them involve software of one kind or another, and it's interesting to compare the list to what we teach: if nothing else, it tells me that we really do need to figure out what to teach people about publishing science in the 21st Century.

Research in the Cloud in London

Sat, 02 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Mark Stillwell and others are running a Research in the Cloud workshop in Feltham (near London) on July 15-17. Along with the standard Software Carpentry curriculum, they'll teach modules on cloud computing, including deployment, configuration, and management of virtual machines. Please see his blog post for details, or the workshop web site to register.

GSoC Projects for 2015

Fri, 01 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're very pleased to announce that three students will be working on Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects under the NumFOCUS umbrella that we are helping to coordinate.

Getting to Know: Katy Huff

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This is the second in a series of posts about our contributors. We're posting these so our community can get to know each other better. If you'd like to be profiled, or you'd like to nominate another member, send an email to communications@lists.software-carpentry.org.

This profile is of Katy Huff, a member of our steering committee, who is also on the finance subcommittee. We already know a little about Katy from her election nomination post; now, read about her history with Software Carpentry and her surprising backup career plan.

April 21 - 27, 2015: The People Behind Software Carpentry, Debating Scientific Software, Learning Objects, and Ally Skills Workshops.

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Get to know the people behind Software Carpentry. First up: Matt Davis.

Conversations

A lively conversation about scientific software has been taking place on Titus Brown's blog, culminating (for now) in this post on popping the open source/open science bubble.

Recommendations

We'd like to encourage our instructors and lesson contributors to read about the paradox of learning objects as discussed by David Wiley.

Watch the video of the recent Ally Skills workshop offered by the Ada Initiative at PyCon 2015.

Getting to Know: Matt Davis

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The subject of the first of our "Getting to Know" series of contributor profiles is Matt Davis, a long-time Software Carpentry team member. Matt is the vice-chair of our Steering Committee, and the Software Carpentry Foundation liason for the Lesson Organization and Development subcommittee.

Ada Initiative's Ally Skills Workshop

Sat, 25 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Ada Initiative ran their Ally Skills workshop at PyCon 2015, and by all accounts it was useful and thought-provoking. They don't do an online version, but you can watch this video of a workshop at the Wikimedia Foundation. Recommended.

Van Lindberg's Keynote: Say Thanks

Sat, 25 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Van Lindberg, the chair of the Python Software Foundation, gave a really insightful keynote at PyCon 2015 last week. In a nutshell:

The PSF's greatest challenge is that it's short of time: it has one full-time and three part-time employees.

What can you do to help?

Say thanks to people for what they're doing.

Raise up and mentor others.

Persevere when trying something new. (Bonus points if you help someone out who doesn't look like you.)

How can a new organization grow up to be the PSF?

Don't rush it. (In particular, don't put too much process in place too soon.)

Default to openness.

Build a culture of service.

There's lots more, and you should watch the whole thing, but I think these are good guidelines for Software Carpentry (and most other things, too).

The Paradox of Learning Objects

Wed, 22 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Warren Code recently forwarded this post by David Wiley, a serial innovator in open education and educational reform. In it, he recapitulates the history of "learning objects" and the paradox at the core of the idea of remixing and reusing teaching material. Since Software Carpentry is (sort of) trying to do exactly that, I think everyone who's currently teaching for us or helping us meet our first publication deadline should look it over.

April 13 - 20, 2015: A DOI for Software Carpentry Lessons, Good Enough Scientific Computing Practices, Code Reviews, and Library Carpentry

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Publication of our lessons to obtain DOIs is planned for May 14th. Please help us tidy lessons up or get in touch if you have any experience in publishing lessons built in GitHub.

Conversations

Let's write a follow-up to our article "Best Practices in Scientific Computing" called "Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing".

Should or could Software Carpentry teach participants how to do code reviews? What are your thoughts?

Events

Library Carpentry is a new program piloted by James Baker. The first Library Carpentry event will be hosted in London in November 2015.

Learning in Both Directions

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have spent a lot of time thinking about how to assess the impact that Software Carpentry is having. We've done some small studies and collected a few testimonials, but it's been small potatoes compared to the 5000 people we taught last year alone.

After some back and forth with a colleague whose work I have admired for years, though, I realize that I've been trying to do this the wrong way. My training as an engineer taught me that only controlled, quantitative experiments were "real" science—that as Ernest Rutherford said, it's either physics or stamp collecting. I now understand that there are other rigorous ways to generate actionable insights, some of which are better suited to our needs than something like randomized control trials. More than that, I finally understand what one of my first teachers told me:

Teaching only works well when the teacher is also learning.

AAS Reflections

Sat, 18 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We just finished^* a workshop at the American Astronomical Society. I was lucky to recruit 3 instructors (in addition to myself) - Matt Davis, Erik Bray, and Phil Rosenfield. We also had Pauline Barmby volunteer as a helper (and on the fly instructor). While I wrote this blog post, you will see comments inserted by the instructors.

Close Enough Redux

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back in October, we explained why we don't teach testing in Software Carpentry workshops. In response, Ian Hawke has put together a really nice series of articles about how he would test a small numerical program. It's great content, and it also shows yet again how Jupyter (formerly the IPython Notebook) is changing the way scientists create and share ideas.

Invitation to Millions of Compute Hours: Announcing the Open Science Grid User School

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you could access thousands or even millions of hours of computing, how would it transform your research? What discoveries might you make?

Each year the NSF-funded Open Science Grid (OSG) selects a group of 25-30 students to attend the OSG User School, a week-long dive into high-throughput computing approaches, technologies, and skills, within a larger context of computational research design that students can take into their future careers as researchers. Students across the country from nearly any research discipline are invited to apply, and selected applicants will obtain direct access to the OSG beyond the duration of the school.

Library Carpentry

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We wrote about the digital skills classes at the British Library last October. We were therefore very pleased to see that James Baker, a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, is piloting a new program called Library Carpentry. The first run will take place in November 2015 at the Centre for Information Science at City University London; the program will consist of four three-hour sessions, each for 40-50 participants. The announcement has more details, including a call for participants and another for volunteers. Please check them out, and lend a hand if you can.

Publishing Our Lessons

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are one of the building blocks of academic bibliography systems. It's now possible to get a DOI for a GitHub repository (or more accurately, for the state of a GitHub repository at a particular point in time). We are going to use this to publish a citable version of our core lessons.

Korean Translation of Software Carpentry - version 5.2

Thu, 16 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Based on Software Carpentry version 5.2, we translated all the lessons in the form of pdf, html, mobi, epub, and azw3. It took almost 6 months: the first half spent on mostly lessons, and the second half spent on remainings. While translating and building various ebook formats, the original ebook production software of Software Carpentry seemed not to have upfront architectural concerns in terms of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (aka, CJK)characters problems. Also, we are wondering how to generate various ebook formats from the current developing lessons.

Quality Is Free - Getting There Isn't

Wed, 15 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Worried about the rising tide of retractions, Nature Biotechnology recently announced that, "Its peer reviewers will now be asked to assess the availability of documentation and algorithms used in computational analyses, not just the description of the work. The journal is also exploring whether peer reviewers can test complex code..." That's a welcome step in theory, but I worry about how it will play out in practice. Scientists already complain about how much time they spend reviewing papers: reviewing code as well will take even more time, particularly if:

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 7

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The mentorship team held our latest round of post-workshop debriefing sessions for instructors who taught recently. Instructors from workshops at Clemson University, University of Miami, University of Melbourne, University of Oklahoma Libraries, Harvard School of Public Health, and Weill Cornell Medical College joined us for our discussions, as well as a few new instructors who will be teaching in coming weeks. Here's a recap of common themes and highlights:

April 6 - 13, 2015: The Steering Committee, Workshops for Companies, and a Discussion of WiSE Events

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

A summary of the steering committee's activities has been provided by Karin Lagesen. Her post includes links to board meeting minutes and an overview of the newly-formed subcommittees.

Software Carpentry will be running five workshops for companies. Please get in touch if you are aware of companies that may be interested to participate in this pilot program.

Conversations

What are your feelings about women-only events to address the gender gap in STEM? Read about the experiences and observations from instructors during a recent WiSE workshop.

Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

April Wright recently wrote a blog post about the reproducibility of a paper she recently submitted. In it, she said:

How to Send a Pull Request to the Lesson Template

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At the end of last year we split out lessons to have one Git repository per topic that we teach. To ensure that all lessons have the same look we use one template for our lessons. If you want to create a new lesson from scratch we already have a nice step-by-step guide but what about if you want to contribute to the template itself? In this post I will explain how I wrote my pull request for our template.

The Future Then and Now

Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jon Udell's Internet Groupware for Scientific Collaboration taught me how to think about the web. He started work on an update a couple of months ago, and it has now been published by PLOS. What strikes me upon re-reading the first is how far we've come; upon reading the second, is how far we still have to go to make all of this normal. As William Gibson said, "The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed."

Reflections Following a Women in Science Workshop

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The number of women pursuing careers in STEM fields has increased over the last few decades, yet, there are still major gender gaps in the areas of mathematics, computer science, engineering and physics (Hill, Corbettt and St Rose, 2010). In the US, women make up close to 50% of the work force yet the percentage of STEM jobs occupied by women is only 25% (Beede, Julian, Langdon, McKittrick, Khan, and Doms, 2011). Part of this gap may be linked to biases and stereotypes that suggest "boys are better than girls" at math. These stereotypes can affect a girl's performance on tests and her perceived skill at math, ultimately influencing her decision to pursue a career and education in fields that require a foundation in mathematics and computing (Shapiro and Williams, 2011; Gunderson, Ramirez, Levine, and Beilock, 2012).

How does this relate to Software Carpentry? Software Carpentry's mission is "to teach researchers basic lab skills for scientific computing." Given that female participants may experience an added anxiety related to gender biases when learning computing skills, Software Carpentry instructors should be aware of these stereotypes and how they might affect their learners. Further, workshops with at least one female instructor can counteract these stereotypes by showing that women are skillful in computing tasks.

But how much intervention is necessary and could extra support for women actually be a detriment? Following a Data and Software Carpentry workshop for Women in Science at the University of British Columbia, we have thought about the advantages and disadvantages of holding a workshop for women only. We have posed the following question:

"Is a women-only Software Carpentry workshop helpful or harmful for increasing the number of women in STEM?" A few points in each category are given below.

The Steering Committee has Landed!

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Steering Committe has now had its first few meeetings. Minutes from them are up, please go have a look if you are wondering what we are up to!

A Project Inception Deck for Research Coding

Sat, 11 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've never seen the point of comparing programmers to ninjas or samurai, but the people who do so often have good ideas. One that I particularly like is the Agile Inception Deck from Jonathan Rasmusson's The Agile Samurai, which sets out a ten-step process for making sure that everyone involved in a new project is actually trying to build the same thing. The ten steps are:

Workshops for Companies

Thu, 09 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At our March 12, 2015 meeting, the Software Carpentry Foundation Steering Committee discussed whether and under what terms to provide workshops to for-profit corporations. There were no objections to the idea of doing workshops for corporations, but it is something new to Software Carpentry. We've decided to run a pilot program encompassing five corporate workshops so we can learn more about working with corporations. The pilot program will allow us to gauge corporate interest and collect feedback from instructors, coordinators, and others about how things go.

March 31 - April 6, 2015: A Lab Meeting, a LinkedIn Group, Two New Capstones, and Ideas for Instructors

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

A summary of last week's lab meeting is now available. Please take a moment to read through the highlights and notes.

Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry instructors are invited to join our newly-created LinkedIn group.

Resources

Do you need to create a brand new lesson repository? The new process is outlined with an example - please try it out and send us your comments.

Damien Irving created a capstone example specifically for oceanographers.

A biomedical engineering MATLAB capstone was made available by Isa Kiko.

Technical Challenges

Git on Mac OS X 10.8: Instructors can find or propose solutions to the "Lazy symbol" error when installing git on old Macs (Mac OS X 10.8)

April 2015 Lab Meeting

Fri, 03 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held our second lab meeting of 2015 on April 1st, and had near-record turnout. Notes from the Etherpad are included below; the highlights are:

We hope to have a first-quarter financial report by the end of this month. The good news is that there's lots of interest in partnerships and affiliations; the bad is that we're not collecting admin fees from nearly as many workshops as we need to.

We will charge for-profit organizations four times as much for organizing workshops as we charge universities and other non-profits; the extra money will be used to underwrite workshops for places that otherwise might not be able to afford to host them.

We have created a LinkedIn group for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry instructors — if you're a LinkedIn user, you're welcome to join. Leigh Sheneman and Lynne Williams have volunteered to moderate the group.

Peter van Heusden and Gabriel Devenyi have volunteered to help with system administration — our thanks to Jon Pipitone and David Rio for all their help over the past couple of years.

Noam Ross is putting together a lesson on how to get unstuck, and Christina Koch is managing work on some extra Unix shell material.

We hope to have the current lessons tidied up by the end of April so that we can give them DOIs, and thereby make it easier for everyone who has contributed to them to get proper credit for their work.

2015 Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 6

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held our sixth round of post-workshop debriefing last week. We discussed the Software Carpentry workshops held at the University of Arkansas, Utah State University, the University of Waterloo and the first Software Carpentry workshop ever held in Korea at the Korea Radio Promotion Association (and yes we now have lesson translated in Korean)! We were also joined by a Data Carpentry instructor who taught in a recent workshop at Espoo, Finland.

March 23-30, 2015: A Lab Meeting, a Dataset, NGS Course at MSU, and Postdoc Positions at BIDS

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

Please remember to join us for the next online lab meeting on April 1st at 10:00 and 19:00 Eastern time.

Resources

If you are looking for a teaching-ready dataset, take a look at Ethan Whites simplified version of the Portal Projects Database now availble in csv, json, and sqlite.

Events

A 2+1 week NGS course will be offered by Titus Brown and others from 10 - 21 August. Applications are now open.

EuroSciPy 2015 call for papers is open until 20 April. The conference will take place in Cambridge, UK on 26-30 August.

Opportunities

Berkley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) is inviting applications for Postdoctoral Researchers in Data Science. Apply before 20 April.

Teaching in Yangon

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On Sat 7 March I spent a full day teaching a Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Yangon with 23 archaeologists from the Department of Archaeology. The workshop is part of a training component of an archaeological research project funded by the Australian Research Council, the University of Washington and the University of Wollongong. The group included graduate students, tutors and lecturers. Archaeology in Myanmar has a strong art history flavour, partly due to its British colonial heritage (where archaeology and art history are often paired, compared to the where US archaeology is usually a sub-field of anthropology) but mostly due to the country's extreme isolation from the rest of the world, where archaeology has taken a scientific turn in recent decades. This isolation takes several forms: travel restrictions that make it difficult for locals to travel overseas, and until recently, for foreigners to visit; small library budgets that make it difficult for university libraries to keep their collections and subscriptions current; and slow and unreliable internet connectivity make browsing the web, watching videos, and downloading files a lengthy, uncertain and frustrating process. All of this meant that the group's familiarity with using computers for research was lower than what might be expected from a Western audience, and so we adapted the SWC materials to accommodate this. We knew we wouldn't get through as much as a typical workshop, but we had the advantage of everyone starting at an equivalent skill level, so the sticky notes all went up and down at much the same time and we had a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere.

Weekly Update: March 16 - March 22, 2015

Sun, 22 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

The next online lab meeting will take place on 1 April at 10:00 and 19:00 Eastern time. Remember to sign up.

Resources

Jenny Bryan contributed a Gapminder data package now available through CRAN which might be helpful in setting up for Software Carpentry workshops.

Data Carpentry developed new material for teaching dplyr using their ecological dataset.

Opportunities

Students can apply to participate in our Google Summer of Code projects until 19:00 UTC on 27 March 2015. We have several exciting projects available.

Insight Data Science launched a new seven week fellows program in Health Data Science.

April 2015 Lab Meeting

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The next Software Carpentry online lab meeting will take place on Wednesday, April 1 (no, really) at 10:00 and 19:00 Eastern time. (As usual, we will hold the meeting twice to accommodate people in different time zones.) Please sign up on this Etherpad to let us know whether you'll be attending, and if so, and what time. We'll post an agenda next week; if there's anything you'd particularly like to discuss, please let us know.

And Now We Are Three

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The four core topics that every Software Carpentry workshop is supposed to teach are automating tasks using the Unix shell, structured programming in Python, R, or MATLAB, version control using Git or Mercurial, and data management using SQL. In practice, many workshops omit the fourth, either because instructors want to put more time into the first three, or because they don't think SQL is relevant to their learners.

The Steering Committee has therefore voted to take SQL out of the core. This doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be taught: it's still useful for many researchers to know, and the best way we've found to introduce key ideas in data management like atomic values, keys, and how to handle missing information. However, if instructors and learners would rather cover something else, they can do so.

Weekly Update: March 7 - March 15, 2015

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Conversations

Get some fantastic teaching tips from novice and seasoned trainers. Join the conversation by adding your tips.

Useful advice is given about what to pack when you teach. Your contributions can potentially help fellow trainers.

The Steering Committee has voted to remove SQL from the list of core topics for workshops. Instructors should still teach it if they think it's right for their audience, but they may also now use that time for more programming, testing, or other topics.

Workshop at iPlant

Tue, 17 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The iPlant Software Carpentry Workshop in February at the University of Arizona in Tucson was an awesome realization of iPlant's and BIO5's collaborative nature. Bringing together iPlant, BIO5, the UA and Software Carpentry, this workshop served a large group of students and staff from a wide variety of backgrounds and a wide array of interests. 53 participants registered within 36 hours of publicizing the workshop. Participant demographics were as follows:

Teaching Tips

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week's post on what's in your bag generated so many useful comments that we'd like to follow it up with another: what tips do you have for new instructors? The ones we've collected so far are listed below; please tell us what else we should tell people who are about to teach for the first time (and what else we should remind experienced instructors about).

What Do People Want to Learn?

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the planning phase of organizing a Software Carpentry workshop for my home department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry I started to wonder what participants want to learn. I designed a short survey to answer this question, and from my small department, ~20% (30 people) filled it in. Here's what they said:

2015 Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 5

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At our fifth round of post-workshop debriefing this week, we discussed workshops held at the New York Academy of Sciences, the University of Oslo, and the University of British Columbia. This was a very instructive meeting with important lessons learned from the perspective of both new and veteran instructors. One of the key take-home lessons is that new instructors would benefit from attending an instructor debriefing prior to doing their first workshop.

What's In Your Bag?

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What do you have in your knapsack when you travel to teach a workshop? My list is:

Weekly Update: Feb 28 - March 6, 2015

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights: Do you want to help shape the future of Software Carpentry? The Software Carpentry Foundation is now calling for volunteers to serve on various standing committees.

NumFOCUS has been selected as a Google Summer of Code mentoring organisation. Students can apply between 16 and 27 March 2015.

A Contributor Covenant was added to our lessons and other repositories to promote a harassment-free environment for contribution to Software Carpentry.

Resources: An early release version of Bioinformatics Data Skills is available via O'Reilly. Vince Buffalo's book is highly recommended for both novice and experienced bioinformaticians.

Opportunities: Scientific Software Engineer positions are available at the UK Met Office

Changes: Daisie Huang will be taking over from Jess Hamrick to maintain our Git lessons with Ivan Gonzalez. Our thanks to Jess for all her help.

Shape The Future of Software Carpentry in an SCF Standing Subcommittee

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Foundation Steering Committee was elected to pursue ambitious goals driven by the voices and expertise in our community. We are therefore thrilled to announce a set of community-driven subcommittees aimed at initiatives essential to the Software Carpentry Foundation.

Today, we are asking for representatives from the community to support this effort and shape the future of Software Carpentry. Please step forward to volunteer for the standing committee most important to you. Committee members will be asked to dedicate a few hours per month. To join us, please email the SCF Steering Committee with your name and a few sentences about your interest.

Funding Software Carpentry Workshops

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry workshops are taught by volunteers, but hosts need to fund instructor travel, accommodation as well as our administrative fees of $750-$1250. While these costs are low, it can sometimes be a challenge to get funding for your first workshop, especially if others are unfamiliar with SWC. Here are some successful strategies that hosts have used to fund workshops:

Workshop in Krakow

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last weekend we (Paulina Lach and Piotr Banaszkiewicz, both from AGH; Klemens Noga from Cyfronet and myself from Cztery Bity organized a workshop in Kraków. We decided to do itourselves, as a group of certified Software Carpentry instructors, which was simply a faster and more effective solution than finding an institution which would act as a host. However, we received significant support from a few organisations. The PhD Students' Association at the Jagiellonian University offerred the venue. Thanks to the support provided by ACC Cyfronet AGH and Cztery Bity we were able to offer small catering. We were also supported by great helpers: Iwona Grelowska, Jakub Kruczek and Tomasz Jonak, all from AGH and Marcin Klimek, from Cztery Bity.

NumFOCUS Accepted as Google Summer of Code Mentoring Organization

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A few weeks ago we announced that we would help NumFOCUS apply to Google Summer of Code (GSoC) as a mentoring organization. Yesterday the list of mentoring organization was announced and NumFOCUS had been selected.

The Most Viewed PLOS Biology Paper of 2014

Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We were very pleased to learn that the most viewed article in PLOS Biology in 2014 was "Best Practices for Scientific Computing", written by Dhavide Aruliah, C. Titus Brown, Neil Chue Hong, Matt Davis, Tommy Guy, Steven Haddock, Katy Huff, Ian Mitchell, Mark Plumbley, Ben Waugh, Ethan White, Paul Wilson, and yours truly. According to Stavroula Kousta, the article has been viewed more than 66,000 times.

Adding a Contributor Covenant

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Foundation's Steering Committee has voted to add a Contributor Covenant to our lessons and other repositories. Like the Code of Conduct for our workshops, the Contributor Covenant's aim is to ensure that participation in Software Carpentry is a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, or religion.

Ten More Instructors

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's a pleasure to welcome another ten instructors from the Southern Hemisphere to our team:

The First Software Carpentry in Korea

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week, xwMOOC xwMOOC ran the first Software Carpentry workshop in Seoul. The workshop delivered not only an introduction to Unix Shell, Git and GitHub, Python and SQL but also computer science unplugged, rur-ple, python for informatics and cloud basics. Listening to attendees feedback, attendees concerns such as software business, all about what start-ups should know, how software business environment looks like and so on are provided during three days workshops.

Weekly Update: Feb 21 - Feb 27, 2015

Sun, 01 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Conversations: How do you fund your SWC workshops? Please join the conversation.

Should we remove old material when adding new in order to keep the lessons manageable? Should people have to teach the standard material a couple of times before introducing their own? Please contribute your ideas.

Resources: Remember to sign up for Software Carpentry's mailing lists. They are rich resources for scientific computing.

Great R cheat sheets available at RStudio include sheets for dplyr, tidyr, Shiny, and R Markdown.

A preview release of RStudio v0.99.315 is now available for testing and feedback. New features include for example the removal of the 1K row limit in Data Viewer.

IPython 3.0 has been released - congratulations to the whole team.

So you think you can data? The rOpenSci Hackathon is going to host a friendly data challenge between Hadley Wickham and Wes McKinney - please follow this GitHub issue for news.

Quotable: "This is @swcarpentry: try to teach enough in two days that things people find on the internet make a little more sense." @jiffyclub

Eleven New Instructors

Sat, 28 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's a pleasure to welcome another eleven instructors to our team:

2015 Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 4

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We had our fourth post-workshop debriefing of the year this week, in which we discussed recent workshops at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and Michigan State University. All four instructors from the Krakow workshop attended the debriefing and we had a fairly in-depth discussion about that workshop

Improving Instruction

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been quite a year for Software Carpentry instructor training: we had a great session at UC Davis (see also this excellent post from Rayna Harris) and another at the Research Bazaar kickoff in Melbourne. We've also started the twelfth round of online instructor training with 75 participants, making it our largest yet.

All of this has led to a flurry of activity in our GitHub repositories. The comments and pull requests are very welcome, but we need to keep three things in mind:

We already have more material than we can cover in two days.

We are not our learners.

No lesson survives its first presentation intact.

Wrong Is Useful: Lessons as Packages

Fri, 27 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

"What would Greg do? [pause] OK, now that we've ruled that out..."
— overheard

I wrote a post last July about using package managers like RPM, Homebrew, and Conda to track dependencies between lessons, so that a student could say something like conda install unit_testing and get a lesson on unit testing, along with the code, sample data, and other lessons it depends on. I also mused that it could help make research more reproducible: after all, a paper is just a lesson on something that's never been taught before.

Weekly Update: Feb 14 - Feb 20, 2015

Sun, 22 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights: We're looking for mentors and projects for Google Summer of Code: please get in touch if you have questions or suggestions.

Research Bazaar was again a highlight on Twitter this week, and Damien Irving summarised plans for Software Carpentry in Australia and New Zealand.

Conversations: An interesting conversation about "Library Carpentry" started by James Baker took place on Twitter.

New resources: A new Browsercast tutorial "Creating a workshop website" was published. Please let us know if you have any comments.

An early release of "Effective Computation in Physics" has been made available. The book is relevant to scientists of all kinds

Opportunities: SciPy call for participation is open. Please submit your proposal for tutorials, talks, or posters.

Call for Data Science Fellow applications through the Berkley Institute for Data Science is now open.

Applying to Google Summer of Code

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

During last week's Steering Committee meeting we talked about applying to Google Summer of Code as a mentoring organization and decided to contact NumFOCUS to suggest that they applying as a umbrella organization for all the projects they support. NumFOCUS agreed, and for the past few days we have been racing to fill in the application.

Software Carpentry Set to Explode in Australia and New Zealand

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Given the global success of Software Carpentry (10,000 learners and counting), it's easy to forget that the first two-day workshops were held only three short years ago. Excited by the potential of the project in those early days, Josh Madin (Macquarie University) and myself (University of Melbourne) pooled our funds and got Greg Wilson out to Australia to run the first ever workshops outside of Europe and North America. Since those initial Sydney and Melbourne workshops in February 2013, an additional 15 have been held around Australia and New Zealand and there are a dozen or so active local instructors.

Managing GitHub Notifications

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

SWC has many GitHub repositories for lessons, websites, and workshops, and we have many conversations about our work take place through GitHub issue threads. Since GitHub creates e-mail notifications of repositories and issues you participate in, that means you can quickly start getting loads of e-mail.

While it's helpful to be kept abreast of developments on a project, if you get a flood of GitHub messages you won't see what's important. Here's a quick primer on fine-tuning your notifications so that you only see what you want, gleaned from this helpful conversation:

Workshop at the University at Albany, SUNY

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We recently ran a workshop hosted by the University at Albany, SUNY's Department of Informatics. The workshop ran on the weekend of January 31 and February 1, 2015 with the following schedule:

Day 1 AM: Automating tasks with the Unix shell (instructor: Thomas Guignard)

Day 1 PM: Building programs with Python (instructor: Jeramia Ory)

Day 2 AM: Version Control with Git (Jeramia)

Day 2 PM: Managing data with SQL (Thomas)

Weekly Update: Feb 07 - Feb 13, 2015

Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights: NeSI (New Zealand) became a SWF affiliate.

SWC instructor training at the Research Bazaar in Australia created a lot of activity on Twitter this week - 50 trainees attended the workshop.

Conversations: Daniel Chen made his "Project Cookie Cutter" bash script available and triggered a conversation about this. Please get in touch with us via GitHub or email us if you use cookie cutter project templates or have comments.

Vacancies: The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is looking for a Science Educator/Evaluator in Boulder, Colorado.

NeSI Becomes Software Carpentry Affiliate

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) has become an affiliate member of the Software Carpentry Foundation.

Online Scientific Collaboration: The Sequel

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jon Udell's Internet Groupware for Scientific Collaboration taught me how to think about the web. He's now revisiting that report, and would like our help. Details are below; please give him a shout if you can help.

Science Educator/Evaluator Position at NEON

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is looking for a Science Educator/Evaluator (SEE). This person will coordinate development and implementation of NEON's Education and Public Engagement (EDU) program/product evaluation plans. The program includes web-based educational resources, university student programs, and citizen science programs, as well as learning resources for university students and faculty. The SEE will coordinate the development of measures for assessing implementation and outcomes of existing programs and new programs as they are developed. The SEE will also work with scientists/science educators to develop learning modules that are pedagogically appropriate for undergraduate students and assessment tools that enable evaluation of the effectiveness of these learning modules. An important part of this effort will be coordination of collection and analysis of data to assess NEON EDU program impact on a variety of audiences (including university students and faculty, scientists, the general public, educators (formal and informal), and other program stakeholders). The SEE will work closely with NEON EDU management and with contractors hired to provide external evaluation of EDU program goals. The SEE will work out of NEON HQ offices in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information, please see the full advertisement.

2015 Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 3

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We had our third post-workshop debriefing of the year yesterday, in which we discussed several recent workshops. The most important point was probably that workshops are running more smoothly today than they did a year ago, even for first-time instructors.

Cookie Cutter

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I was first introduced to William Stafford Noble's paper "A Quick Guide to Organizing Computational Biology Projects" when Ivan Gonzalez and I taught Harvard last November. Noble describes how scientists in Computational Biology should set up their project folders so code, results, outputs, figures, and papers are all in easily understandable locations. He also writes about how one should run experiments (using driver scripts) to make workflows reproducible, readable, and understandable to others (and your future self).

Plot This

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The most useful little guide to visualization I've ever found is the decision tree created by Andrew Abela, which you can find here. Do you want to show a comparison, a distribution, a relationship, or a composition? If it's a comparison, is it among items or over time? Each choice leads to a different kind of plot, and while you may not agree with all the choices, it makes the reasoning behind them concrete.

Weekly Update: Jan 31 - Feb 06, 2015

Mon, 09 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights: SWF gets 2 new affiliates (iPlant and Lab for Data Intensive Biology at UC Davis) and a new partner (University of Washington).

Conversations: "...what matters most in teaching is the act itself - the verb": some observations on teaching and a book recommendation.

Scientific coding and software engineering: what's the difference? A post by Daisie Huang: please add your comments.

Rewarding Software Sharing by Mapping Scientific Software A post by Chris Bogart: please share your ideas.

Events: SWC instructor training and Intro to Web Programming at Lawrence Berkeley Lab: March 2015

rOpenSci Unconference: March 2015

Software Sustainability Institute's Collaborations Workshop: March 2015

Other News: Eight new instructors

Scientific Coding vs. Software Engineering

Sun, 08 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Daisie Huang recently wrote a great article for the Software Sustainability Institute's blog titled "Scientific coding and software engineering: what's the difference?". As a professional programmer who has become a scientist, rather than a scientist who's learned how to program, she has a fresh take on the differences between what those two groups do. Comments on her post would be very welcome.

Rewarding Software Sharing by Mapping Scientific Software

Sat, 07 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Sharing software you write with other scientists can magnify the impact of your research, but there can be a surprising amount of sometimes thankless extra work involved. I work with a group at Carnegie Mellon's Institute for Software Research who have been asking scientists what that extra work is, and what motivates them to do it—despite a sometimes uncertain link between that extra work and the ways many of them are evaluated in their jobs. We're looking at ways of measuring and mapping software and its impacts, in order to help scientists demonstrate the positive impact that their work on shared software has on science. We're running an experiment that you can help with.

2015 Post-workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 2

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Greg Wilson and I recently hosted a second post-workshop debriefing session for January to capture more experiences and lessons learned from instructors in the field. This meeting was attended by 10 instructors covering four recent workshops. We discussed how the workshops went, what worked, what didn't, and what could be improved.

Software Sustainability Institute's Collaborations Workshop 2015

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Sustainability Institute's Collaborations Workshop 2015 (CW15), which will be held on March 25-27, 2015 in Oxford, UK, focusses on software, best practice and the social side of working past the boundaries of traditional disciplines and roles to accelerate research outcomes—or put differently, interdisciplinarity done right!

What will you learn by attending:

The social and technical sides of interdisciplinary working.

Examples of best practice of when it's been effective - and horror stories of when it has not.

Examples of techniques and technologies that could be applied from one discipline to another - discipline hopping.

University of Washington Becomes Software Carpentry Partner

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that the eScience Institute at the University of Washington has become a partner of the Software Carpentry Foundation.

Welcome Our Newest Instructors

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's a pleasure to welcome another eight instructors to our team:

Workshop in Illinois

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week (29-30 January), Matthew Turk (NCSA), Ivan Gonzalez (Martinos Center), David LeBauer (UIUC, and a new SWC instructor), and I (Neal Davis, CSE, UIUC) taught a SWC workshop co-sponsored by NCSA and CSE. We introduced two innovations into the workshop model different what that used in prior events I've participated in:

iPlant Becomes Software Carpentry Affiliate

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that the iPlant Collaborative has become an Affiliate Member of the Software Carpentry Foundation.

Lab for Data Intensive Biology at UC Davis Joins Software Carpentry as an Affiliate

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that the Laboratory for Data Intensive Biology at UC Davis has joined the Software Carpentry Foundation as an Affiliate Member for three years starting in 2015. "We've been long-term supporters of Software Carpentry, and Affiliate status lets us support the Software Carpentry Foundation in a tangible way," said Dr. C. Titus Brown, the lab director. "This status also gives us the opportunity to include Software Carpentry as part of a larger biological data science training program at UC Davis."

Nouns and Verbs

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've spoken and written many times about how puzzled I am that massive, open collaboration on lessons is so rare in the age of Wikipedia and open source software development. Hundreds of people have helped build the Wikipedia articles on Marvel Comics and the planet Mars, and hundreds more have helped build things like the Django web programming framework; why then are teachers still writing all their own slides and handouts?

As is frequently the case, the answer might be that I've been asking the wrong question. When I brought this up last week in an online call organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation, Phil Barker said:

"One difference between Wikipedia and OER [open educational resources] is that editing Wikipedia is about moving to consensus on facts, [but] editing teaching material is about tailoring it to specific local requirements (different teaching styles, different students, different curriculum standards)."

Our First Workshop in South Korea

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that our first workshop in South Korea will be taking place in Seoul later this month. Many thanks to Kwangchun (Victor) Lee for organizing and teaching, and to the Korea Radio Promotion Association for hosting.

rOpenSci Unconference in March 2015

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The good folks at rOpenSci have just announced that their second annual unconference (which will actually be more like an unhackathon) is happening at GitHub's headquarters in San Francisco in March 2015. They're also hosting a Data Science Social on March 26 - please see their site for details.

Weekly Update: Jan 24-30, 2015

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights: New steering committee selected

We have now taught ten thousand people

Conversations: Keeping momentum going after workshops

Factors and formulae in R lessons

Other News: First new instructors of 2015

Our first workshop in South Korea

Workshops in March at Lawrence Berkeley Lab

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I will be teaching a two-day Software Carpentry instructor training course on March 10-11, 2015 at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and a one-day course on web programming on March 13, 2015. Details are given below; the instructor training is open to LBL staff and to graduate students and staff associated with the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, while the web programming class is reserved for LBL staff alone.

Announcing 2015 Steering Committee

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The election for the Software Carpentry Foundation's Steering Committee is now complete. 122 ballots were exercised out of 179 mailed out, and our new committee is:

Interim Steering Committee Meeting: Dec 16, 2014

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Foundation Interim Board Meeting: Dec 16, 2014

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

Cast Your Vote

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Voting is now open for Software Carpentry's new Steering Committee. If you are a member, you should have received a ballot by email from elections@electionbuddy.com. If you did not, please check your spam folder; if it is not there, please get in touch and we will sort it out as quickly as we can.

The Other Ninety Percent

Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Ninety percent or more of learning a skill takes place outside formal lessons as people try things out for themselves and turn attention into habit. This works best if a mentor is on hand to answer questions and provide feedback, but our workshop format doesn't lend itself to that: in most cases, our instructors are back on a plane (or back in their own lab) as soon as they're done teaching, so our learners have to make sense of what they've just been shown on their own. Based on follow-up discussions and Jory Schossau's work, here are things they stumble over in order of increasing pain:

Welcome Our First New Instructors of 2015

Sat, 24 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the best parts of this job is welcoming new instructors to our team. Many of this year's first group have already helped with workshops, and I hope to have a chance to teach with all of them before too long.

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

Call for ELIXIR Node Coordinators

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the 2015 ELIXIR Pilot Projects focuses on supporting training in collaboration with the Data and Software Carpentry initiatives. The pilot "Working up and building the foundation for Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry within ELIXIR" includes a series of initial events across different ELIXIR Nodes. In order to achieve the goal of running Data and Software Carpentry (DC/SWC) workshops, promoting the DC/SWC teaching model, developing and sharing of the training materials, it would be useful if not essential, that each ELIXIR Node has a DC/SWC Coordinator.

Improving the Balance

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jennifer Martin's recent article "Ten Simple Rules to Achieve Conference Speaker Gender Balance" reminded me that while we've been reporting the number of workshops we've run, and the number of people who've attended, we haven't reported the gender balance among our instructors in a while. I did a quick check, and the result was sobering. From a high of almost 30% eighteen months ago, our instructor pool is now only 18% female. It seems that as we grow, we are regressing to computing's unfortunate mean: from a higher of 38% in the early 1980s, the proportion of computer science degrees awarded to women has dropped to 15-18%, and CS is the only STEM discipline where the gender balance has actually been getting worse over the past few decades.

University College London Becomes Software Carpentry Affiliate

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that University College London has become an affiliate of the Software Carpentry Foundation. We are grateful for their support, and look forward to working with them more closely.

Post-Workshop Instructor Debriefing, Round 1

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the first two weeks of January 2015, 14 Software Carpentry workshops were held at various locations. Every workshops brings its share of lessons learned and new experiences, particularly with new instructors coming online. On January 14, Greg Wilson hosted a post-workshop debriefing meeting attended by 21 instructors from 10 recent workshops. We got together to discuss how the workshops went, what worked, what didn't, and what could be improved.

Workshops in Oxford

Wed, 21 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford hosted its first Software Carpentry workshop on 13th and 14th January. Instructor and co-organizer Philip Fowler has blogged about it, and included both photographs and some bubble charts of the feedback he received.

Separately, James Allen has blogged about the first and second days of a separate workshop that he ran at Oxford for people in atmostpheric, oceanic, and planetary physics. This was James' first time teaching for us, and his summary of things that he thinks could be improved includes some ideas that we'll fold back into the main notes.

Feedback from Workshop at UFSC

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last December we ran another R-based SWC workshop at University of Santa Catarina (Florianòpolis, SC, Brazil). The primary target audience encompassed grad students from the Biology Faculty who had some experience in programming and R. Raniere Silva (an undergrad in Applied Maths at UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil) co-taught the workshop with me and the Ecology grad students Renato Morais Araùjo and Juliano Bogoni (Department of Ecology and Zoology) acted as our hosts and in situ organizers.

Orwell, Dickens, and How We'll Know We're Done

Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I started working on a short capstone example last month to show learners how to get a badly-formatted reference list out of an Excel spreadsheet and into a relational database so that it would be easy to answer questions like, "Who has co-authored papers with whom?" I'd like to work up another capstone as well, but there's a problem: I can't actually do it myself for reasons that are both technical and political.

2015 Election: Adina Howe

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hi! My name is Adina Howe, and I thank you for considering my qualifications to serve on the Steering Committee of the Software Carpentry Foundation.

Software Carpentry has played a major role in my professional development, and I would argue played an integral role in my ability to fulfill my dreams as becoming a tenure-track professor. In 2008, I participated in a Software Carpentry workshop at Michigan State University as a postdoc. At the time, my research required some computational prowess that I did not possess. SWC provided me a foundation, resources, and mentors to help me improve my skills and discuss my frustration and eventually success! This impact (and great instruction and mentorship) insprired me to join as one of the first round of instructors (2011-ish). For more details, please feel free to peruse my complete vitae.

2015 Election: Ivan Gonzalez

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've been an instructor since September 2013 and have taught 10 workshops so far. I'm finishing a master's in Science Communication and work at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. I would propose three things to the new Committee: improve our outreach and communication strategies, expand Software Carpentry to other regions and languages, and strengthen the mentoring program for new instructors.

2015 Election: Jonah Duckles

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

2015 Election: Tim Cerino

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On the first day of my first programming job, my boss handed me 700 lines of spaghetti code written in PL/1 and asked me to "fix it." On paper, I was a Research Assistant at an Economic Policy think-tank. I had taken a few Computer Science classes and had coded for fun as a kid and in college. But at that moment I felt that I had entered the world of "real" coding. (Ultimately the "fix" was to completely discard the code and redo everything using proper testable modular code, but I digress...)

2015 Election: John Blischak

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I feel I would be a good addition to the Steering Committee of the Software Carpentry Foundation because 1) I am a scientist that had to learn programming on the job, just like our target audience, 2) my experience performing many roles within SWC, most importantly as the maintainer of the R lesson materials, and 3) my goal to increase the collaborative aspect of our lesson development process.

2015 Election: Jason Williams

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

"You can trust in Jason, he's your friend!" — Decent People

I can't recall ever running in an election - rule by fiat is what "just feels right" to me. I have on occasion thought about running for office but I usually lack ambition (although I'm attracted to power). The fantasy of being the candidate people vote for even though he is clearly against their interest just makes my pedipalps tingle. So, when I learned about the Software Carpentry Foundation election, I thought, "let's try that!"

2015 Election: Jeramia Ory

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At SciPy 2013, I had the good fortune to attend a tutorial lead by Matt Davis and Katy Huff. As an undergraduate educator in the sciences, I was immediately impressed with the people and excited to try their approach with my students. Matt encouraged me to complete instructor training, which I did in April of 2014.

2015 Election: Karin Lagesen

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have been involved with Software Carpentry since I attended a workshop in Oslo, Norway, in 2012. I started out as a student, then went through the second round of instructor training, before being an instructor at my first workshop in 2013. Since then, I have organized one workshop and been an instructor at five others. I have also been involved with revamping the pre-assessment forms. This work has been very fulfilling and challenging on very many levels, and I now want to expand on my efforts by volunteering for the steering committee.

2015 Election: Sheldon McKay

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I started my career as a molecular biologist working in the data-intensive field of functional genomics, enventually becoming a full-time bioinformatician. With the perspective of a person who transitioned from the wet lab to informatics, I have often served as a liaison between researchers and software developers and truly enjoy empowering scientists by teaching them computing skills to accelerate their research. Over the past decade, I have contributed to a variety of outreach and training efforts in scientific computing. When I learned about Software Carpentry, its mission resonated with me and I wanted to get involved. I completed instructor training in May 2014 and have been an instructor at six workshops since then and continue to do about one workshop every six weeks. I also serve as a volunteer topic maintainer for SQL. I am very proud to be associated with the Software Carpentry Foundation and have a lot of experience to offer. I would like to contribute more to our ongoing success by becoming a member of the steering committee.

Language Wars and Others

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We often get asked, "Why do you teach [X]? Why don't you teach [Y]?" where X and Y are random permutations of Perl, Python, R, MATLAB, Julia, C++, and Javascript, or equally random permutations of different version control systems or text editors. There are three answers:

Practical Computing for Biologists (and Other Scientists)

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are big fans of Steve Haddock and Casey Dunn's book Practical Computing for Biologists, which covers everything we do and more (and is suitable for all kinds of scientists, not just biologists). We were therefore very pleased to learn that they are running a course at Friday Harbor Laboratories this summer. The outline is below, and applications are due on February 1st.

2015 Election: Aleksandra Pawlik

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My first degree was in Computer Science. When I started the university I had very little idea about programming. I struggled a lot. I graduated very discouraged and convinced that I just couldn't do it. But then eight years later Greg asked me if I'd like to be a Software Carpentry instructor. I finished the instructor training and I realized that had I been taught differently, maybe now I'd have a great career as a software developer. But then, I wouldn't be writing this blog post.

Introducing Software Carpentry

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we said in December, we're planning to use the latest incarnation of Browsercast as a web-native alternative to screencasting for recording and presenting our slideshows. Katy Huff has just recorded the first of these, which you can watch on GitHub. We'd be very grateful for feedback both on its content and on Browsercast in general.

Thanks to RStudio

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our thanks to RStudio for their generous donation to help us run Software Carpentry workshops. Inspired by the innovations of R users in science, education, and industry, RStudio develops free and open tools for the R community. These include the RStudio development environment as well as the shiny, ggvis, and dplyr packages (among many others). RStudio also offers enterprise-ready professional products to make it easier for teams to scale and share work.

2015 Election: Raniere Silva

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A year and a half ago I read the announcement of the Mozilla Science Lab by Mark Surman and that way I discovered Software Carpentry. Months later, I was participating in the 6th round of Instructor Training, and since then I have:

taught at all 6 workshops held in Brazil,

improved the lessons and helped new instructors do so too,

suggested changes to the new layout of our lessons and helped in the transition, and

publicized Software Carpentry.

Volunteering with Software Carpentry is one of the things that I'm really proud of doing and I'd be honored be a member of the SCF Steering Committee.

Instructor Training at UC Davis

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, we ran a live instructor training class at UC Davis. Over 40 people from all across the country got a lightning introduction to the basics of educational psychology and instructional design, and had a chance to hear how and what we teach.

January 2015 Lab Meeting

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We will hold our next online lab meeting at 11:00 and again at 19:00 Eastern time on Thursday, January 22, 2015. People who are standing for election will have a chance to talk about what they hope to do and to answer questions from other members, and we'll present updates on our finances and on our new workshop and lesson templates. If you're planning to attend, please add yourself to this Etherpad. We look forward to seeing you then.

2015 Election: Katy Huff

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry has been part of my life for over six years, I began as an instructor, organizer, and curriculum developer and have been honored to grow as a researcher alongside Software Carpentry as it evolved over that time. In these years, I have organized and taught over a dozen workshops and have, for the last four months, served as an interim Steering Committee member. I have also made an effort to expand the reach of Software Carpentry as a co-author of both the Best Practices paper and a new O'Reilly book, "Effective Computation in Physics: Field Guide to Research in Python." Of course, none of this pays the bills. For that, I am a nuclear engineer...

2015 Election: Matt Davis

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In January 2012 I had the good luck to be in one of Greg Wilson's first workshops after he rebooted Software Carpentry in the current two-day format. I ended up as a helper in that workshop, and a month later I was in Toronto teaching Python as Software Carpentry's first volunteer instructor. Over the past three years I have:

taught at more workshops than I can remember

helped transition our materials from SVN to GitHub

written lessons and ipythonblocks

recruited and mentored new instructors

publicized Software Carpentry at conferences

Volunteering with Software Carpentry has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done and I'd be honored to continue helping as a member of the SCF Steering Committee.

Research Software Engineer Position at the Oxford e-Research Centre

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Research Software Engineer position available at the Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford, UK (Java, Python, Web-app, Database, Semantic-web).

2015 Election Nominations

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we announced last year, an election will be held on January 26-30 for the seven positions on the Steering Committee of the Software Carpentry Foundation. If you are a qualified instructor who has taught at least twice in the past two years, or have done a significant chunk of non-teaching work for Software Carpentry, you can both stand for election and vote. We strongly urge you to consider standing: if you're willing and able to commit to giving the Foundation 3 hours a week, you'll help thousands of scientists. It'll be fun, too: few things in life are more satisfying than working with a dedicated bunch of people to make something useful happen.

In order to stand for election, you must write a blog post to introduce yourself to the community by Friday, January 16. This post must be around 500 words long, can be written in any format (e.g. question and answer, paragraph text), and must be titled, "2015 Election: Your Name". It should explain:

what your background is,

what your previous involvement with Software Carpentry has been, and most importantly

what you will do as a member of the Steering Committee to contribute to the growth and success of Software Carpentry.

2015 Election: Damien Irving

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Damien Irving has withdrawn from the election in order to focus on completing his thesis. We're grateful for his work on the interim Steering Committee, and wish him the best of luck with his PhD.

The Future and Funding of Science

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I was talking with friends over the holiday about the future of science and how it might one day be funded. Since it'll be ten years before I'm proven wrong, it seems like a good topic with which to start the new year.

Projects, Projects, Projects

Sun, 28 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have updated our projects page with links to:

things we're building ourselves, and

things that our members are building.

The first list includes the templates for lessons and workshop websites, a a tool for managing workshops (for which we're using Django), the latest version of Browsercast, and more. The second list has everything from active papers to utilities for simulating vacuum thermionic energy conversion devices. If you'd like to help with the first, or if you're a member and would like your project listed in the second, please get in touch.

Welcome Aboard

Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A lot of people qualified as instructors this fall and winter, thanks in part to the live sessions we ran in Charlottesville, Norwich, and Seattle. They join the 86 other people who received their badge this year; we look forward to seeing them all run workshops before 2015 is over.

Interim Steering Committee Meeting: Dec 2, 2014

Fri, 19 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Foundation Interim Board Meeting: Dec 2, 2014

All I Want for Christmas is a Pull Request...

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we said back in October, we're splitting the existing lesson repository into smaller and more manageable pieces. To do that, we have defined a new template for lessons, and have been extracting the history of the existing material from the current repository. (We wanted to get the entire history of each lesson so that people would receive credit for the work they've done.) The second step has taken longer than planned, but we now have all of the core novice lessons in repositories of their own:

Standing for Election

Thu, 18 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

From 26-30 January, an election will be held for the seven vacant positions on the inaugural Steering Committee of the Software Carpentry Foundation. This will be one of the biggest steps in the project's journey from two guys staying up until 3:00 am fourteen years ago to write lessons on Perl for scientists at Los Alamos to a mature open project run by the volunteers it belongs to.

If you are a qualified instructor who has taught at least twice in the past two years, or have done a significant chunk of non-teaching work for Software Carpentry, you can both stand for election and vote. We strongly urge you to consider standing: if you're willing and able to commit to giving the Foundation 3 hours a week, you'll help thousands of scientists get more done in less time and with less pain. It'll be fun, too: few things in life are as rewarding as building something, and our members are building something extraordinary.

In order to stand for election, you must write a blog post to introduce yourself to the community by Friday, January 16 (i.e., a full week before the start of the election). This post:

must be around 500 words long,

can be written in any format (e.g. question and answer, paragraph text), and

must be titled, "2015 Election: Your Name"

You can submit your post as a pull request to this website's repository or by email. It should explain:

what your background is,

what your previous involvement with Software Carpentry has been, and most importantly

what you will do as a member of the Steering Committee to contribute to the growth and success of Software Carpentry.

The last point is the most important. If you have experience managing money, we need a Treasurer; if your passion is helping new instructors or figuring out how well we're doing, we need people to lead mentorship and assessment, while if you come from a part of the world that hasn't seen much Software Carpentry activity yet, you might want to take the lead in getting us going there.

(Actually, the point that's really most important is that everyone will still be very welcome to volunteer in other ways, and that doing so will be as valuable as ever. We will still need topic maintainers, help with the website, and many other things, and I hope that having more people coordinating things will actually make it easier for you all to lend a hand.)

If seven or fewer nominations are received, those people who nominated will be automatically appointed to the Steering Committee and no formal election will be held. Vacancies on the Steering Committee can be filled at any time at the Committee's discretion. The regular positions on the Steering Committee (Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and then any others the Committee feels it needs) will be decided by a vote at the Committee's first meeting.

Guidelines for Extracting History

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As discussed previously, we are currently extracting individual lessons from the bc repository to make them more modular, which will ease use, contribution, and maintenance. This post presents some guidelines for extracting individual lessons and how to contribute to lessons in the meantime.

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.

Who Are We?

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

For the last three years, I've been storing information about instructors, workshops, and other things in a small SQLite database so that I can look things up and generate statistics when I need to. I can't publish it, since it contains personal identifying information, but since I had to write a script to migrate the data to the tool we're building to manage workshops, it only took another few minutes to create a partly-redacted version of the data. ("Partly" because someone who was really keen could work backward workshop URLs to instructors' names, cross-reference, and recover the names of some fraction of our instructors. Since that information is all public anyway, though, I don't think I've introduced any new risks.)

The SQL source for the database is here; with it, you can regenerate the database using:

Feedback from the MSc Clinical Bioninformatics Workshop

Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Early in November we put on Software Carpentry for the students of the MSc course in Clinical Bioinformatics run by the University of Manchester, UK and the British National Health Service (NHS). The course combines academic curriculum with work-based programme. The students (who already are qualified professionals) are based at various clinical units in the UK and meet only a few times to attend short intense training sessions. The instructors at the Software Carpentry workshop were Aleksandra Nenadic, who taught for the first time, and myself; we were helped by Mike Cornell and Andy Brass.

Feedback from WiSE in Krakow

Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A week ago Krakow in Poland hosted the Software Carpentry workshop for Women in Science and Engineering. The registration filled up within 72 hours which clearly shows the need for such events.

Results of Software Sustainability Institute Survey

Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Sustainability Institute's recent survey of researchers at top UK universities is out. Headlines figure are:

92% of academics use research software

69% say that their research would not be practical without it

56% develop their own software (worryingly, 21% have no training in software development)

70% of male researchers develop their own software, and only 30% of female researchers do

For the full story, see this post on their blog.

UC Berkeley Postdoctoral Position in Nuclear Engineering

Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley is searching for one, possibly two high-caliber researchers to work with Prof. Rachel Slaybaugh's group in the area of computational neutronics. Fields of highest relevance are Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, and Nuclear Engineering.

Prof. Slaybaugh's group researches methods and algorithms for solving the Boltzmann transport equation more effectively. These methods are often inspired by the physics of the problem at hand, developments in computer hardware, or both. Ongoing work involves deterministic solution methods, Monte Carlo methods, and hybrid methods in which deterministic solutions are used to accelerate Monte Carlo solutions. Potential Projects include Angle-informed Hybrid Methods, Deterministic "Plug-and-Play" Research Environment Creation, Improving Multigroup Cross Sections for Hybrid Methods and Monte Carlo on Graphical Processing Units

We seek a candidate who can start this position as early as January 2015 but the appointment start date is flexible. The initial appointment is 100% time for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year, dependent upon job performance and funding. Starting salaries are in the range of $50,000 to $60,000 per year and commensurate with qualifications and experience.

For more information, please see the full description

UCL Research Software Dashboard Developer

Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The University College London Research Software Development Initiative is seeking a full-stack web developer to work on its Research Software Dashboard project from January 2015 to July 2015.

This is a new project, starting from scratch, to develop software to curate, promote, and manage the University's wide portfolio of cutting-edge scientific and scholarly software.

The project will provide an overview of the research software output of the college for scientists, managers, funders, investors and clients, including both open-source software and software being commercialised through the university's business and consulting arms. It will integrate with the University's code management infrastructure, based on GitHub Enterprise, software testing infrastructure based on Jenkins, and commercial software sales platform e-Lucid.

Software is an increasingly important scholarly output for research alongside publications, and this project will help retain UCL's leadership in this important aspect of twenty-first century research.

Those interested in being involved in this important project on a freelance or contractor basis should get in touch with James Hetherington (j.hetherington@ucl.ac.uk) for more information. For more information, please see the full description.

Templates: We Live, We Learn

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have partially converted four of our core lessons to the new lesson template, and are making a few tweaks as a result. The most important of these is to move the source files for a lesson's web pages out of a pages sub-directory and into the root directory, so that (for example) the first topic in a lesson will be ./01-intro.md rather than ./pages/01-intro.md.

Doing this means that the Markdown source files will be in the same directory as the HTML pages compiled from them. That's generally considered a bad thing, since (a) it makes it harder for people to tell source files from generated files and (b) the chances of accidentally deleting source files when you just meant to delete generated files goes up significantly. We think it's the right choice in this case because:

Software Carpentry Returns to Edinburgh

Mon, 08 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week, EPCC's ARCHER training team ran another Software Carpentry workshop here in Edinburgh, on 3rd and 4th of December. The workshop provided attendees with an introduction to version control and Git, building programs with Python, automating tasks with Make, and how (and how much) to test programs. These were set within the context of best practices for scientific computing.

Announcing the Lesson Validator

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thanks to the work of Andy Boughton and Raniere Silva, we now have a validator that determines whether lessons fit the new lesson template. This post explains what it does, where there is room for improvement, and how you can help.

Google to Support WiSE Poland

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are happy to announce that Google will support the Software Carpentry workshop for Women in Science and Engineering which will take place this weekend in Krakow! We are grateful for their support, and look forward to the event; to which registration filled up within 72 hours!

New Accessibility Guidelines

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry values the participation of every member of the scientific community and want all attendees to have an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. Thanks to Pauline Barmby, we now have an accessibility checklist for instructors and workshop hosts. Please have a look and send us fixes and suggestions for improvements.

An Advanced Short Course in Leeds

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Helped by Aaron O'Leary, Peter Willetts, Marlene Mengoni and Jo Leng, Martin Callaghan, Devasena Inupakutika and I recently delivered a modified Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Leeds. Aimed at environmental scientists from across the UK and funded by NERC, the course included an extra day where small groups got to develop tools for environmental data analysis.

Cape Town South Africa Workshop

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

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

International Workshop on Software Engineering for High Performance Computing in Science

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The 2015 International Workshop on Software Engineering for High Performance Computing in Science is being held in conjunction with the International Conference on Software Engineering in Florence, Italy in May 2015. Topics to be covered include:

Our First Election

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Foundation's bylaws state that the Steering Committee must be elected annually. With a new year upon us, the interim committee has decided that the first such election will take place in the week of Jan 26-30, 2015. Here are a few key points:

Every qualified instructor who has taught at least twice in the past two calendar years is automatically a member of the SCF, as is anyone who has done 30 days or more work for the SCF in the past calendar year, and anyone who has, in the opinion of the Steering Committee, made a significant contribution in the past year.

All SCF members may both stand for election and vote in it. We'll explain how to do both after the next interim committee meeting on December 16.

As discussed in an earlier post, members of the Steering Committee are expected to volunteer at least 2-3 hours a week to help mentor our instructors, conduct assessment, oversee major changes to the curriculum, manage our finances, and so on.

Plans for 2015: Instructor Training

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Instructor training has been going well: it looks like more than 50% of people who participated this summer and fall will complete and start teaching for us, which is a new record. What's even better is that we have 136 people signed up for the next online course. Even if only half of them complete, it will enlarge the pool of instructors by more than a third, and broaden our coverage both geographically and across disciplines.

The question now is when that course should start. Teaching a group that size will take two full days a week, and in the short term, I need to focus on building partnerships, getting grant applications out the door, and overseeing election of our Steering Committee.

Plans for 2015: Lessons

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The previous three posts in this set looked at instructor training, workshop organization, and the twin challenges of mentorship and assessment. In this final one, I'll summarize the state of the changes we're making to our curriculum.

We described the new template for lessons back in October, and since then, a handful of people have been working to improve it and to extract our existing lessons from the 'bc' repository and convert them to the new format. The first step has taken longer than planned: we want to be sure we get the entire history of each lesson, so that people receive credit for the work they've done, and thats proving to be a slog.

The good news is, you can now see what the result will look like. Our novice lesson on SQL now lives in this repository, and you can view its rendered form in this GitHub pages site. There's still a lot to do—the learning objectives need to be cleaned up, the challenges all need meaningful names, and there's clearly lots of scope for improving the lesson's appearance—but the pieces are there.

Plans for 2015: Mentorship and Assessment

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The previous posts in this set looked at instructor training and workshop organization. In this one, I'd like to look at mentorship and assessment, which are two of the biggest challenges we need need to address in the coming year, and are good examples of the kinds of tasks that Steering Committee members will be asked to take on.

Azalee Bostroem did a great job summarizing why we need to mentor our new instructors (and keep those who've been with us a while up to date with changes to our lessons and procedures). The question is, how? Or more precisely, where will the hours come from? I said in September that I would organize a weekly meeting for instructors from recent and upcoming workshops. Only one took place, and saying "we just need to try harder" won't make the necessary hours appear.

The same is true of assessment. Jory Schossau has done valuable service analyzing survey data and interviewing bootcamp participants, and Daniel Chen and others are working hard to revise the instructors' post-workshop questionnaire, but despite several attempts, we haven't found anyone willing to fund a systematic look at what we're actually doing and what impact it's having. Once again, we can either say "we need to try harder" or come up with an alternative plan.

Plans for 2015: Workshop Organization

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As I write this, 228 people have been certified to teach Software Carpentry workshops, of whom 136 have taught in the past twelve months. That's amazing, but as I said in a previous post, growth in one part of a pipeline inevitably turns another into a bottleneck. In our case, that bottleneck is organizational: Arliss Collins and Giacomo Peru are stretched to the limit handling requests and lining up instructors, and we're still not keeping up with demand.

This kind of work can't be done by a volunteers in bits and pieces: the startup overheads are significant, as is the context required to manage each conversation, and there are time when mail really needs to be answered right now, not when it's convenient. We are therefore asking our Partners to organize workshops in their region, and hope that others will shoulder some of the burden as well.

We're also trying once again to build a tool to simplify workshop management. I have started a simple Django application called Amy to keep track of who wants a workshop, who can teach what, who our learners have been, and so on. The data model is mostly done, and I've included a dump of our existing database with personal information redacted to aid further development and testing.

All Amy can do now is display information. What we want to do is add and edit new data. If you'd like to help, please fork the project and send us pull requests—we'd be grateful for your help.

Software Carpentry Foundation: Governance

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am pleased to announce that our interim Steering Committee has adopted bylaws for the Software Carpentry Foundation, which is the final step in us becoming an independent organization. The authoritative version is stored in this public GitHub repository, along with other key documents that will be outlined in the next couple of blog posts. In brief, the SCF has four parts:

the Membership, which includes active instructors and others contributing directly to the project;

the Steering Committee, which is elected by and from the membership and is the SCF's primary decision-making body;

the Advisory Council, which includes representatives from our major partners, and

the Executive Director, who is an employee of the SCF responsible for overseeing its daily operations. The Executive Director answers to the Steering Committee, but is not a member of it.

I have accepted the position of interim Executive Director, and the first elections for the Steering Committee will be held early in 2015. These bylaws, and the agreement with NumFOCUS that enables us to operate as a 501(c)3 non-profit, are the structure we need to run a successful independent foundation.

The next priority is fundraising: I've been without a salary since my contract with Mozilla ended in October, which clearly isn't sustainable. The next post in this series describes the different ways in which organizations can support us; we're close to signing deals with several groups, so I'm confident we'll start the new year with our finances in order.

Software Carpentry Foundation: Organizational Membership

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we said in the previous post in this series, our interim Steering Committee has adopted bylaws for the Software Carpentry Foundation. They have also agreed on four tiers of membership so that universities, companies, government labs, and other entities can help support and guide our work. The authoritative version is stored in this public GitHub repository, but in brief, the tiers are:

Partners, who make a significant long-term contribution to organizing and delivering workshops;

Affiliates, who are organizing workshops and helping with admin, but not at the same level;

Sponsors, who underwrite the cost of particular workshops that would otherwise not have backers; and

Donors, who simply wish to make cash or in-kind contributions to help with general operations.

Each membership tier is described below. The Steering Committee and Advisory Council will revisit them in a year's time to ensure they're meeting everyone's needs, and we will always be willing to discuss other arrangements. Please mail {{site.board_inquiries}} if you would like more information, or would like to start a discussion about how you could help. And of course, individual donations to the cause will always be welcome.

Software Carpentry Foundation: Workshops

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we said in the previous posts in this series, our interim Steering Committee has adopted bylaws for the Software Carpentry Foundation and a plan for organizational membership. Those memberships won't cover all of our central costs (such as instructor training), so we are going to start charging a fee for each workshop we help organize rather than just asking people to make a donation. In exchange, we will match hosts with instructors, handle registration, manage assessment, follow up to make sure people's travel expenses have been paid, and all the other running around that needs to happen behind the scenes.

One thing that won't change is that anyone who wants to organize and run a workshop on their own will always be free to do so without charge provided they satisfy a few simple conditions. In fact, we strongly encourage groups to get to the point where they can do this regularly, and to share their experiences with the community so that we can all help teach good lab practices for scientific computing.

Summarizing the News

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We made several big announcements this morning, so here's a short summary to guide you through them all:

The bylaws for the Software Carpentry Foundation.

Our organizational membership scheme.

New rules for organizing and running workshops (including fees).

Plans for instructor training (which also explains why we're delaying the start of the next online course by a month).

Why we need more admin support and the tool we have started building to support that.

Plans for mentorship and assessment, which are two of the things that elected members of our Steering Committee will be asked to take on...

An update on our new lesson format (and links to some examples).

The date of our first election.

We'll talk about all of this at the Dec 4 lab meeting (which takes place at 10:00 and again at 19:00, both times Eastern — see this Etherpad for connection details). Hope to see you there...

What About MOOCs?

Tue, 02 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We frequently get asked whether Software Carpentry would work as a MOOC. The answer is that I think it can work well if it's what Siemens and Downes actually had in mind when they coined the term. They didn't people watching videos and then doing robo-graded exercises; instead, their connectivist model of learning assumed that participants would use the internet to collaborate in exploring ideas, rather than as a faster form of television.

I'm definitely excited about the Siemens and Downes kind of MOOC. In particular, I believe that instructors who don't have time to teach a full workshop might give us an hour a week to help people via one-to-one or one-to-few sessions via Skype and screen sharing. There was a lot of enthusiasm among the instructors for this when we tried it in the spring of 2012; that experiment wound down because we lacked critical mass, but we're five times larger now, and I think it would be worth trying again.

The most interesting question for me is where this fits. Should we start people off this way? Should people do the first day in person (so that we can get them through software setup and configuration issues), then do the rest online? Should this be used as the "day 3" follow-on that everyone keeps asking for? We'd like to try all of this and more; if you'd like to help, please let us know.

Goalposts for the Digital Humanities

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As a follow-on to last month's post about courses at the British Library, I asked some people who are teaching digital humanists where their goalposts are, i.e., what they think the minimum someone in the humanities should know about working with computers and digital data. The brief responses were interesting:

Reminder: Lab Meeting on Thursday

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Just a reminder that our last online lab meeting for 2014 will be held at 10:00 am Eastern time on Thursday, December 4, and will be repeated at 7:00 pm Eastern on the same day. We will be making several big announcements, so if you're planning to attend, please add yourself to the Etherpad at https://etherpad.mozilla.org/swc-labmeeting-2014-11 so that we have an idea of numbers. We look forward to seeing you Thursday.

How to Manage Confidential Data

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of days ago, a member of our community wrote:

I am very interested in working on improving research analytics in government using the principles developed by Software Carpentry. A key stumbling block I run into with my peers is their skepticism about these principles being able to protect data that is confidential or restricted use.

Translating Software Carpentry into Korean

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This is pretty amazing: a group has translated the core Software Carpentry lessons into Korean:

Introduction: http://statkclee.github.io/xwmooc-sc/intro.html

The Unix Shell: http://statkclee.github.io/xwmooc-sc/novice/shell/

Version Control with Git: http://statkclee.github.io/xwmooc-sc/novice/git/

Programming with Python: http://statkclee.github.io/xwmooc-sc/novice/python/

Programming with R: http://statkclee.github.io/xwmooc-sc/novice/r/

Using Databases and SQL: http://statkclee.github.io/xwmooc-sc/novice/sql/

Extras: http://statkclee.github.io/xwmooc-sc/novice/extras/

It's a remarkable and encouraging achievement—congratulations and thanks to the team that did the work:

Victor KC Lee (이광춘): Translation Lead

Jungsu Han (한정수): Translator

Chungyeong Moon (문춘경): Illustrator

Ri Jeong Kim (김이정): Graphic Designer

Hwan Beom Kang (강환범): Support

We still need to figure out how to manage this: Gabriel Devenyi's post outlined our options, but someone will need to take the lead to set something up so that versions in various languages can stay in sync.

Congratulations to Data Carpentry

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In case you missed the announcement last week, our sibling organization Data Carpentry has received funding from the Moore Foundation to support its activities and growth, and Dr. Tracy Teal (a long-time contributor to Software Carpentry, and one of the founders of Data Carpentry) has accepted a position as Data Carpentry's project lead. We're very excited by both developments, and are looking forward to continuing to work with them.

Announcing WiSE Krakow!

Sun, 23 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After running several Software Carpentry workshops for women in science and engineering in North America, we are moving east: on 6th and 7th December we will run a WiSE workshop in Krakow, Poland.

Like previous WiSE workshops, this one is open to women at all stages of their research careers, from graduate students, post-docs, and faculty to staff scientists at hospitals and in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. The instructors at the workshop will be Paulina Lach of Krakow's University of Science and Technology AGH and Aleksandra Pawlik, the Software Sustainability Institute's Training Leader. The helpers are Agnieszka Celińska (Pedagogical University of Krakow), Iwona Grelowska (University of Science and Technology AGH), Patrycja Radaczyńska (Creativestyle), and Anna Ślimak (Lunar Logic).

Instructor Training Stats

Sat, 22 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Carpentry Foundation's board asked me for some stats on instructor training, and I thought other people would find them interesting as well:

Adding a Projects Page

Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's long overdue, but we've finally started a page to showcase the projects that our instructors are involved in. If you'd like to add one, please send us a pull request or mail us for instructions.

(Turns out, we do pretty cool stuff...)

The New Instructor Post-Assessment Questionnaire

Wed, 19 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As mentioned two weeks ago, a group led by Daniel Chen have been revising the post-workshop survey for instructors so that we can get a better idea of who's actually teaching what, how long it's taking, and how it's going. The latest draft can be viewed here, and is included below. We'd be grateful for one last round of feedback—in particular, we're concerned about (a) the overall length and (b) how closely the headings are tied to our current curriculum. Please let us know what you think in comments on this post.

Close Enough for Scientific Work

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The discussion around last month's post "Why We Don't Teach Testing (Even Though We'd Like To)" has been one of the most interesting in Software Carpentry's history. Inspired by that, and by discussion at WSSSPE 2.0, we are launching a collaborative book project called Close Enough for Scientific Work in which scientists will show one another how they test their software.

Contributions should be aimed at sophomores in science and engineering, and each should be sized to fit a one-hour lecture. While the format of each entry will vary according to its content, we expect most will follow this template:

Interim Board Meeting: Nov 18, 2014

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Foundation Interim Board Meeting: Nov 18, 2014

Lessons, the Repository Split, and Translations

Sat, 15 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Keeping on the roll of the posts about the repo split, templates, and metadata, Software Carpentry now needs to consider how to handle translated lessons. The core Software Carpentry lessons have be translated by bilingual instructors into Korean produced by Victor KC Lee (and friends) and Spanish by Francisco Navarro (and friends). With the upcoming repo split, I think its a good time to examine the various options of how we might handle translations generally.

Announcing November 2014 Lab Meeting

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our last online lab meeting for 2014 will be held at 10:00 am Eastern time on Thursday, December 4, and will be repeated at 7:00 pm Eastern on the same day. (We had originally planned to have it on November 27, but that would conflict with American Thanksgiving.) If you're planning to attend, please add yourself to the Etherpad at https://etherpad.mozilla.org/swc-labmeeting-2014-11 so that we have an idea of numbers. We look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.

And yes, we're calling it the November lab meeting even though it's in December, because it just wouldn't be programming without an off-by-one error...

Workshop Summary: Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week we ran a Python-based SWC workshop at the University of Toronto's Gerstein Science Information Centre. The advertised audience was graduate students, post-docs and other researchers in science, engineering and medicine at the University of Toronto.

The workshop had about 20 learners. Most were grad students or postdocs in life sciences. The pre-workshop assessment said that about three-quarters of learners had some programming experience with about half of those having some Python; maybe half of the total had some familiarity with the command line. Almost none had experience with version control or SQL. The instructors were Pauline Barmby, Greg Wilson, and Thomas Guignard; helpers were Sahar Rahmani, Luke Johnston, Daiva Nielsen, Tom Wright, and Fei Xu. Our host was Erica Lenton.

Replacing the Teaching Blog

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We've been using a WordPress blog to manage instructor training for the past two and a half years, and while it's served us well, it's clear that we've outgrown it. It's also clear (to me at least) that we should get instructors started on GitHub earlier, so replacing WordPress with a GitHub-backed blog seems like it would serve a dual purpose.

Our requirements are:

Why It Matters

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Sometimes I forget that it isn't obvious why scientists ought to learn to program—or why anyone else ought to. Being more productive, getting a better job... Those are all good reasons, but as Bret Victor points out, if we focus on those, we risk losing sight of what matters most.

To explain that, I have to quote Matthew Crawford's thought-provoking (and sometimes infuriating) Shop Class as Soulcraft:

Workshop at GeoSim (Potsdam)

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I had never taught a Software Carpentry workshop before (though I have taught an Advanced Scientific Programming in Python many times), so when the hosts for this one asked if I would be willing to do a full-week workshop, I said they were crazy ;) They convinced me to do it, but I said in that case I could only do that if I can recycle the materials I use for our summer school. They agreed, and I managed to convince a buddy in Berlin to help me with tutoring.

Workshop at the University of Virginia

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We pulled off our day-long data analysis bootcamp with hardly a hiccup yesterday. The schedule looked something like this:

AM pt 1: intro to AWS & intro to Unix Shell

AM pt 2: data analysis in Unix: alignment, quantitation of RNA-seq data

PM pt 1: intro to R

PM pt 2: data analysis in R: QC, differential expression, etc.

Ongoing Learning with User Groups

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

For the past two years I've run the UC Davis R User's Group (D-RUG). In this post, I'll (1) outline the structure of D-RUG, (2) summarize some lessons learned, and (3) discuss how such users' groups could act to support and complement SWC's workshops.

Amdahl's Law and Software Carpentry

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Amdahl's Law says that the speedup you can get by parallelizing a computation is limited by how much of the computational can't be sped up. For example, if 10% of a program's run time is inherently sequential, then even if you have an infinite number of processors, you can't speed it up more than 10 times.

The same rule applies to organizations like Software Carpentry. We now have almost 200 certified instructors; even working in pairs, and each teaching only once a year, that's enough to run two workshops a week, and we're training more all the time. But someone has to train them, and match them with workshops, and design new templates for lessons, and talk to potential sponsors, and those central activities are now limiting what we can accomplish.

Instructor Training at TGAC

Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hayley London has written a great summary of the instructor training at TGAC in Norwich in October. Aleksandra Pawlik, Bill Mills, and I enjoyed meeting everyone, and I look forward to returning soon.

Why Institutional Partnerships Make So Much Sense

Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When I first got involved in Software Carpentry, I liked nothing more than to lament the fact that universities don't teach their undergraduates (or early post-graduates) fundamental programming skills. It was one of the main reasons I felt so compelled to help out. By running our two-day workshops, I felt that we were basically picking up the slack until such time that universities woke up to themselves and started teaching this stuff. At this point, I felt that (like many non-profit organisations striving to make the world a better place) Software Carpentry would have achieved its mission by essentially making itself redundant.

Fast forward a couple of years and I'm now part of a new University of Melbourne department tasked with the job of teaching programming fundamentals to post-graduates. To my surprise, I've found that in this progressive new world we actually need Software Carpentry more than ever. The interim board of the Software Carpentry Foundation is seeking to form partnerships with organisations like my own, so I thought this was an opportune time to share our experiences.

You Should Read Juha Sorva's Thesis

Thu, 06 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you really want to dig deeper into educational research and how it applies to teaching programming, you should grab a copy of Juha Sorva's PhD thesis. The UUhistle system he built is interesting, and the research he did with it is thought-provoking, but what's really great is the summary of educational research in the first third of the thesis. I've extracted that part with his permission, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

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.

A 'Joel Test' for Grassroots Programming Groups

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back during the first dot-com bubble, Joel Spolsky wrote an article titled "The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code" that listed 12 questions you can ask to estimate the maturity of a software development team:

An R Workshop at the University of Sydney

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week we ran an R-based SWC bootcamp at University of Sydney. The primary target audience encompassed grad students from the Department of Psychology who had little to no experience in programming. While some had previous limited experience with programming languages (e.g. MATLAB or R), most of them had been exposed only to statistical software such as SPSS.

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!

Interim Board Meeting: Nov 4, 2014

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Foundation Interim Board Meeting: Nov 4, 2014

Software Carpentry Foundation: FAQ

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we announced two weeks ago, we are setting up an independent foundation to manage Software Carpentry's continued growth. This week, we passed an important milestone when we signed a fiscal sponsorship agreement with NumFOCUS. There are still lots of details to sort out, but here are brief answers to some of the questions we've received so far:

Revamping the Instructor Survey

Sun, 02 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In September, Greg Wilson wrote a blog post on "building better teachers" that was inspired in part by an issue brought up by John Blischak on reporting time spent on lessons. In order for us capture this information, we decided to revamp our post-workshop instructor survey.

Particle Physicists Pulling Themselves From The Swamp

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What does it mean to work on a modern particle physics experiment like ATLAS (wikipedia, public) or CMS (wikipedia, public) at the Large Hadron Collider in the 21st century? It's fun, it's collaborating with great and interesting people, it's challenging, it's making you enjoy finding things out, it's what I always wanted to do. Also: it is painful, discouraging, and tends to suck the life out of a young mind. Confused? Let's rewind...

Why We Don't Teach Testing (Even Though We'd Like To)

Thu, 30 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you haven't been following Lorena Barba's course on numerical methods in Python, you should. It's a great example of how to use emerging tools to teach more effectively, and if we ever run Software Carpentry online again, we'll do it her way. Yesterday, though, when she posted this notebook, I tweeted, "Beautiful... but where are the unit tests?" In the wake of the discussion that followed, I'd like to explain why we no longer require people to teach testing as part of the Software Carpentry core, and then ask you all a favor.

Pandoc and Building Pages

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Long-time readers of this blog and our discussion list will know that I'm unhappy with the choices we have for formatting our lessons. Thanks to a tweet from Karl Broman, I may have an answer. It's outlined below, and I'd be grateful for comments on usability and feasibility.

Why Software Matters

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Why does software matter to scientists? It may seem obvious to people who read this blog, but that's like saying that the answer to, "Why opera?" is obvious to the sort of person who pays a month's rent to get a decent seat at Covent Garden. Why does software matter? And why does it matter whether it's written well?

British Library Courses

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I had a chance to catch up with James Baker at the British Library on Friday, and discovered that they're running an amazing series of short classes on digital skills for librarians. With his permission, I've posted their outline below, along with a few excerpts from their FAQ. Some of it is site-specific, but I think a lot would be relevant elsewhere. (Programming in Libraries was developed alongside writing these lessons for the Programming Historian and tweaked for the library audience; interested readers should also check out the practical elements of Managing Personal Digital Research Information work through this public wiki.) If you'd like more information, please mail digitalresearch@bl.uk.

Lost in Space

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

You probably haven't seen the 1998 movie Lost in Space, or if you have, you've suppressed the memory—it was awful. But I do know one guy who enjoyed it. His name was Joe, and he had worked on the software used to create its special effects. Ten minutes into the film he took out his Walkman (a primitive form of iPod), put on his headphones, and spent the next two hours head-bobbing to a mix of Bob Marley and Smashing Pumpkins.

A New Lesson Template, Version 2

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Update: this post now includes feedback from participants in the instructor training session run at TGAC on Oct 22-23, 2014. Please see the bottom of this page for their comments.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback on the first draft of our new template for lessons. The major suggestions were:

Presenting the Novice R Materials and Future Plans for the SWC R Community

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Approximately seven months after our initial meeting, the SWC R community has developed the first set of R lessons for use both in workshops and for self-directed learning from the SWC website. These novice R lessons are a translation of the current novice Python lessons.

Num Wrongs Plus Plus

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I was teaching Git to a room of roughly 25 students on day 2 of a Software Carpentry workshop and we ran into a problem that feels like a case study on the reason it's hard to move science to safer practices.

Welcome More New Instructors

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to welcome another new batch of instructors to our team:

A Research Software Petition

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

"We must accept that software is fundamental to research, or we will lose our ability to make groundbreaking discoveries." If you agree—and I hope you do—then please take a moment to add your name to this petition posted by the Software Sustainability Institute, and then help to spread the word by blogging, tweeting, and telling your friends.

A New Template for Lessons

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Note: this post has been superseded by this one. Please post comments and feedback there.

We blogged two weeks ago about a new template for workshop websites. It's now time to start thinking about what lessons will look like: as we said at the last lab meeting, we're going to break the current lesson repository into smaller and more manageable pieces, but we need to decide what those pieces will look like first. The post below is our current thoughts; comments and/or follow-on posts about alternatives like those already written by Gabriel Devenyi and Raniere Silva would be very welcome.

A Self-Recorded Workshop

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Among the many great lessons contained in Greg Wilson's recent post on building better teachers, perhaps one of the most important was that in order to improve our collective teaching standards, we really need to see each other in action:

Interim Board Meeting: Oct 14, 2014

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Foundation Interim Board Meeting: Oct 14, 2014

Of Templates and Metadata

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As an appendix to the splitting the repository post, Greg recently posted a straw man template for how lessons might be structured after the repo split. He followed up after with more details. There a lot of good ideas there on how we can encourage good structure for lessons and help learners and instructors alike going forward.

Yet Another Template for Lessons

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After the splitting the repository post, Gabriel Devenyi and Greg Wilson wrote some suggestions for how the new lessons repositories should look like (see Gabriel's post about metadata and Greg's post about overall file structure). From my experience at the Mozilla Science Lab sprint I don't like Gabriel's preq metadata because I don't believe it helps very much. I also don't like Greg's proposal to duplicate some files in every Git repository, so here are some changes that I suggest.

Announcing the Creation of the Software Carpentry Foundation

Wed, 08 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In order to foster Software Carpentry's continued growth, we are pleased to announce that we are creating an independent Software Carpentry Foundation (SCF). Like other non-profit open source foundations, it will decide Software Carpentry's overall scope and direction, manage its finances, and hold its intellectual property.

In order to work through the details have assembled an interim board drawn from a wide cross-section of our community:

Jenny Bryan (University of British Columbia)

Neil Chue Hong (University of Edinburgh / Software Sustainability Institute)

Carole Goble (University of Manchester / ELIXIR UK)

Josh Greenberg (Sloan Foundation (non-voting))

Katy Huff (University of California Berkeley)

Damien Irving (University of Melbourne / Research Platforms)

Adam Stone (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Tracy Teal (Michigan State University / Data Carpentry)

Kaitlin Thaney (Mozilla Science Lab)

Greg Wilson (Software Carpentry)

This group's mandate is to draft the SCF's initial bylaws and get the foundation legal standing, then arrange the transition to the first permanent board some time early in 2015. Until then, we will continue to do what we have always done: teach scientists and engineers how to use computers to do more research in less time and with less pain.

ARCHER Software Carpentry workshop at The University of Edinburgh

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

ARCHER, the UK's national supercomputing service, offers training in software development and high-performance computing to scientists and researchers across the UK. As part of our training service we are running a 2 day Software Carpentry workshop at EPCC, The University of Edinburgh, UK, on 3-4 December.

Ideas to Improve Instructor Training

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Have you ever learned something new and then had it appear in other areas of your life? After a summer at SWC thinking about how to train better instructors (and how to be a better teacher myself) I get to try discussion-based teaching this quarter at UC Davis.

A New Template for Workshop Websites

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The first step in reorganizing the bc repository is making it easier (much easier) for people to create websites for workshops. The current instructions are almost 3000 words long, and even experienced GitHub users find the process daunting, so we're going to simplify things as much as we can, even if that means not doing things the "right" way.

A Reproducible Science Hackathon

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

NESCent is organizing a "Reproducible Science Hackathon" where participants will develop material and tools for teaching and facilitating a broad adoption of reproducible science. The deadline for application is next Friday (Oct 10th); see the full announcement for details.

Browsercast

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we mentioned back in April, Gabriel Ivanica spent the summer working on a Google Summer of Code project called Browsercast. His goal was to build a web-native alternative to screencasts; if you'd like to see the result, head over to the demo page, click on the eye icon in the upper left, and press the "play" button. I hope to use it, or something descended from it, to build searchable, accessible narrations of our lessons that will play well on everything from desktops through tablets to mobile phones. If you'd like to help, please fork the project on GitHub and dive in.

Congratulations to the Moore Investigators

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has just announced $21 million in grants to fourteen investigators in the emerging field of data-driven discovery. Among the recipients are Titus Brown and Ethan White, who have both been key contributors to Software Carpentry. Congratulations to them and to the other award winners—we look forward to working with them in the years to come.

Studying Impact

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, and am using my fellowship to work on making software training better. My main interest is in teaching computational chemistry software and making it accessible to a wide range of scientists. Like Software Carpentry, the courses I teach are one-off teaching events: basically, we have a maximum of two days to help your professional development.

Together with Greg Wilson, I am conducting research to analyse what impact Software Carpentry workshop have had on participants with respect to their professional skills. In particular, I would like to interview past participants in Software Carpentry workshops to analyse the impact those workshops have had on them. We cannot reimburse you for your time, but if you are willing to take part in an interview, your experience will help us make Software Carpentry better. The interviews can be done via telephone or Skype and can be arranged at a convenient time; we have ethics approval for this study, and every participant will be informed what exactly we do with their data.

Please contact me by email if you wish to take part, and pass on this request to other workshop alumni.

Thanks in advance,
Alexandra Simperler

Welcome Our New Instructors

Fri, 03 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to welcome a new batch of instructors to our team:

Interim Board Meeting: Sep 30, 2014

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Foundation Interim Board Meeting: Sep 30, 2014

Splitting the Repository

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

United Airlines messed up my travel again last weekend, so I finally had a chance to think some more about how Software Carpentry works and how we can make it work better. Having topic maintainers is one improvement; another, which was discussed at this month's lab meeting, is to break the bc repository that holds our lessons and workshop home pages into smaller and more manageable pieces.

UCOSP as a Model

Sun, 28 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry's two-day workshops are just one of many ways to teach people practical skills. Term-long group projects are another model that I'm very fond of, and earlier this year, the four people who've been running the UCOSP program in Canada wrote a paper about what they've learned. Some of the lessons rhyme with what we've learned from Software Carpentry, but other insights are new. If you know of papers describing lessons learned from other innovative teaching projects, pointers in the comments section would be very welcome.

September 2014 Lab Meeting Report

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After a two-month break for a sprint and some holidays, we held another monthly lab meeting this week. About 50 people showed up to talk about issues large and small; the key points are below.

Feedback from Imperial College London

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 16-17 September, EPCC's ARCHER headed down to Imperial College London to run a Software Carpentry bootcamp. My colleague Arno Proeme made his instructor debut, covering version control and Git and good programming practice, while I covered shell hints and tips, automation and Make, and testing.

Learning Goals

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A few weeks ago, Greg Wilson asked me how to better express the learning objectives listed in the Software Carpentry lessons. My main concerns with the existing goals are that they focus too much on specific skills, rather than attitude changes, and is that they are generally stated as lesson descriptions (more like instructor goals or a lesson outline) rather than as learning goals for participants.

A Proposal for Topic Maintainers

Thu, 18 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I can lift ten pounds. I can even still lift a hundred pounds, though my back won't thank me, but I can't lift a thousand pounds. Similarly, while I was able to review changes to our lessons when only half a dozen people were contributing, there are now almost sixty pull requests queued up, some of which have been waiting for attention for several months.

The solution we'd like to try, which is borrowed from other open source projects, is to give specific people authority to maintain specific parts of our core material. These maintainers will not be responsible for developing lessons themselves, though they may of course do so. Instead, their job will be to keep issues and pull requests moving by reviewing, managing discussion, merging into the master branch, and so on.

How to Prepare for the Data Incubator

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At The Data Incubator, we receive thousands of applications to join our data science fellowship. Our admissions bar is very high and we are often asked, "What can I do to prepare for the fellowship application process?"

Here are five important skills to develop and some resources on how to help you develop them. While we don't expect our applicants to possess all of these skills, most applicants already have a strong background in many of them.

Interim Board Meeting: Sep 16, 2014

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry Foundation Interim Board Meeting: Sep 16, 2014

September 2014 Lab Meeting

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After taking a break in July for our sprint, and in August because people were on holiday, doing fieldwork, or both, we will resume our monthly online lab meetings this month. As always, we'll hold the meeting twice to accommodate time zones, childcare commitments, and the like; the first round will be 18:30-19:30 Eastern time on Thursday, Sept 25, and the second will be 11:00-12:00 Eastern time on Friday, Sept 26. We'll post connection details and the agenda closer to the time; if you have anything you'd like included, please send us mail.

Videos from Stanford

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Stanford University has posted videos from the Software Carpentry workshop held there in August featuring Azalee Bostroem, Chris Lonnen, Dani Traphagen, and Chris Beitel. These are a great place to start if you'd like to do a little informal jugyokenkyu.

August 14, 2014

August 15, 2014

Our thanks to Amy Hodge and Stanford University for making these available.

Further Thoughts on Building Better Teachers

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On Greg's recommendation, I just finished reading Building a Better Teacher - it was an interesting book, and a well-written story. It turns out that I completely agree with Greg's assessment of the book's lessons and the challenges facing Software Carpentry, but I very much disagree with his proposed solutions!

More Thoughts on Better Teachers

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the last few weeks I read Greg's blog post on Building Better Teachers and watched his Scipy keynote and I've been thinking a lot about how can instructors share their knowledge.

Software Carpentry Workshop at Universidade of São Paulo

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week Alex Viana and I taught two Software Carpentry workshops at the Universidade São Paulo, the biggest public university in Brazil. In both workshops we took them through Bash, Git and Python over the course of two days.

An Update on Upcoming Bootcamps

Sat, 06 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

So it turns out we have more events coming up than I realized:

Building Better Teachers

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Some books are intrinsically great. (I've read Going Postal half a dozen times, and enjoyed it just as much at each encounter.) Other books feel great because they hit you at the right time. Elizabeth Green's Building a Better Teacher is one of those: in a little over 300 pages, she takes a bunch of things I've been worrying about for the last two years and assembles them into a coherent whole. The end result is a road map of sorts for making our teaching more effective; the problem is, I don't know if it's a path we can actually follow.

Instructor Training at UC Davis in January 2015

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thanks to support from Prof. Titus Brown, I will be running an intensive in-person version of our instructor training course at UC Davis on January 6-7, 2015. This will be followed on January 8 by a third day of activities focusing on teaching computation and biology; for details, please see Titus's post and keep an eye on this blog for more information as well.

Nature Interview with Kaitlin Thaney

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Nature has just published a short interview about Software Carpentry with Kaitlin Thaney, the director of the Mozilla Science Lab, and two bootcamp attendees (Harvard's Rebecca Perry and USNIDA's Brian Sadacca). As always, version control seems to have been one of their big take-aways, but as Kaitlin says, two days isn't enough for people to become proficient: our bootcamps really are just the first step.

Open Source Comes to Campus

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Open Source Comes to Campus helps the next generation of open source contributors get started by teaching one-day workshops aimed at undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines. This workshop introduces students to the tools and culture of open source development. We familiarize students with tools such as IRC, issue trackers and version control; talk plainly about aspects of open source that might be confusing or intimidating; introduce them to open source professionals who can talk about career and educational opportunities; and help them make their first contributions to open source projects.

OSCTC will be hosting events this fall at over a dozen schools, including the City College of San Francisco, Bucknell University, the University of Victoria, Hartnell College, the University of Washington, and the University of Connecticut. We're always looking for volunteers to mentor at our events, and if you want to bring an event to your school, please get in touch.

Fall 2014 Bootcamps (So Far)

Sat, 30 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our calendar for the fall is filling up pretty quickly : we've added the following bootcamps in the last couple of weeks, and have more on the way. If you'd like us to run one where you are, please fill in this form and we'll get the ball rolling.

Software Carpentry workshop at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Sat, 30 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At the end of this week Alex Viana and I taught a Software Carpentry workshop at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. We had around 30 learners of very different experience (from high school students to seniors professors of the university) and took them through Bash, Git and Python over the course of two days.

Software Carpentry at Cambridge University

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At the beginning of this week Thomas Kluyver and I taught a Software Carpentry bootcamp at the University of Cambridge. We had around 35 learners of very different experience and took them through Bash, Git and Python over the course of two days.

The New MATLAB Teaching Materials

Fri, 29 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When Software Carpentry started running bootcamps back in 2012, Python was used exclusively for the programming lessons. While these lessons were as language agnostic as possible (i.e. the materials focused on transferrable programming concepts as opposed to specifics of the Python language), people soon expressed an interest in running bootcamps using other languages. R very quickly established itself as a regular alternative to Python, but it wasn't until early 2014 that the first ever Matlab bootcamp was held (see here and here for blog posts about the event; the official event page is here).

Software Carpentry at Brazilian Open Science Conference

Sat, 23 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week, Raniere Silva and Alex Viana attended at Brazilian Open Science Conference where they ran a Git course for Software Carpentry and Alex gave a talk about Software Carpentry (like the one that Damien Irving gave at PyCon Australia). Our workshop was a great time and from the feedbacks every student like it. One of the students said:
Very didactic, the instructors showed much care, dedication and attention with the students.
and another one
Very good, from the basic to complex in a easy way.

The Fifth ANGUS Course

Thu, 21 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown recently blogged a summary of the fifth run of the Analyzing Next Generation Sequencing (ANGUS) course at Michigan State. It includes some interesting observations on what's working and what needs to be improved, and some thoughts on assessment—he'd welcome feedback.

Conversations About Teaching

Mon, 18 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the last few days, there have been four related discussion threads on the Software Carpentry mailing lists about what we use, what we teach, and how we teach it. Together, they highlight what we're doing well and where we need to do better.

A MOOC on Practical Numerical Methods with Python

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As announced at SciPy'14 last month Prof. Lorena Barba will be teaching a MOOC titled Practical Numerical Methods with Python this fall, and the course site is now open for registration. Having worked through her excellent 12 Steps to Navier Stokes notebooks, I think this will be a great course, and I urge everyone interested in the subject to check it out.

News from Australia

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Damien Irving summed up Software Carpentry activities in Australia in a short talk at PyCon Australia last week, and talked a bit as well about lessons learned. Next stops: Perth and Darwin!

Three Bootcamps for Librarians

Wed, 13 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over the past month and a half I have been fortunate to (co-)lead three bootcamps targeted at librarians, a relatively new audience for software carpentry. These bootcamps have been located in Edmonton, Toronto, and New York, and in the same way that the term "librarian" is very broad encompassing many different disciplines and skill sets, the three bootcamps had their share of similarities and important differences. I'll start with similarities and then discuss each bootcamp's differences.

Inessential Weirdness in Software Carpentry

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Sumana Harihareswara, of the Wikimedia Foundation, has started compiling a list of inessential weirdness in open source. (It was inspired by this article, which made me blush: I was a howler more than once in my youth.) My question is, what inessential weirdnesses are we guilty of that aren't already in Sumana's list?

UCL Research Software Development is Hiring

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The University College London Research Software Development team is hiring.

The Research Software Engineer AGM and Hackday

Fri, 08 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Research Software Engineers community was founded to support the people who develop the software used in research. If you want be a part of the community, come to our AGM and hackday which takes place on 15-16 September at King's College London. It's a free event thanks to our sponsor Maudsley Digital.

Sustainability

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I took part in a meeting about sustainable scientific software at last month's SciPy conference. Much of it was taken up with discussion of getting scientists recognition for building software, but there was also some interesting debate about what "sustainability" actually means. After talking to a few people in the software engineering research community, I'd like to propose that:

The Real Purpose of Sprints

Mon, 04 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

"The real purpose of sprints isn't the code, it's getting to know people..." This is what Greg Wilson told me after the first-ever Mozilla Science Lab global sprint. Indeed, over the course of two days, dozens of people all over the world met virtually and in person to develop and improve Software Carpentry teaching materials, infrastructure and a number of MSL-related projects.

Summer Sprint Summary

Tue, 29 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week, the Mozilla Science Lab hosted its first-ever global sprint. Dozens of people joined in from 18 cities (and a few from home) to work for two days on a wide variety of projects, ranging from new lessons to tools for mining the scientific literature. The MSL blog has all the details, and will have a series of posts about what was done over the next couple of weeks, but here are a few Software Carpentry-specific highlights:

Feedback from Cranfield

Mon, 28 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 21-23 July, EPCC's ARCHER training team visited a sun-drenched Cranfield University to run a Software Carpentry bootcamp and Introduction to Scientific Programming in Python. The 3 days combined a traditional bootcamp with a new day course providing an Introduction to Scientific Programming in Python.

GSoC Projects at Summer Sprint

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As you may know, the Mozilla Science Lab's first-ever two-day sprint is in the next few days and all GSoC projects related with Mozilla Science Lab will be part of it. For more information about the plans for the GSoC projects continue reading this post.

SciPy 2014 Talks and Lessons

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Talks from SciPy 2014 are now online, and include several from people associated with Software Carpentry. I particularly enjoyed Lorena Barba's keynote, in which she discussed how she's using the IPython Notebook in a flipped classroom. (I gave a talk too, but if you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll have heard most of it already.)

Summer Sprint FAQ

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Mozilla Science Lab's first-ever two-day sprint is less than three weeks away, so here's a short FAQ to tell you who can take part and how.

Using a Package Manager for Lessons and Papers

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've been musing for a couple of years now about ways in which we could re-purpose off-the-shelf software engineering tools and techniques to serve the needs of teachers. One theme, which I touched on in my SciPy 2014 talk, is to get people to patch shared learning materials in the way they patch Wikipedia articles and open source code. Another is to use package managers like RPM, Homebrew, and Conda to track dependencies between lessons, so that I could say something like conda install suffragette_movement and get a lesson on the struggle for women's voting rights, along with the other lessons and materials it depends on (or updates and links to those other lessons if I already have some of them installed).

Bootcamps in Cyprus and Jordan

Thu, 17 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last month, we held two bootcamps in Cyrpus and Jordan organised by the LinkSCEEM project. Both camps were part of larger workshops, with the final two days of the workshop in Cyprus focussed on the OpenMP and OpenACC APIs for shared-memory multi-processing and accelerators. It was held June 10-13 with 35 participants coming from 6 different countries (Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt) with all the non-local participants being funded by the project.

ARCHER Software Carpentry Bootcamp at Imperial College London

Fri, 11 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

ARCHER, the UK's new national supercomputing service, offers training in software development and high-performance computing to scientists and researchers across the UK. As part of our training service we are running a 2 day Software Carpentry bootcamp at Imperial College London, UK, on 16-17 September.

Translating Software Carpentry into Portuguese

Tue, 08 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that we will run a half day workshop/advertising session at Open Science, Open Issues, an open science conference at Rio de Janeiro, and for that we will translate our Git lesson into Portuguese. If you If you would like to help, please head over to this GitHub repository, which has instructions and contact information.

Our First High School Workshop at Rockefeller University

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Camille Avestruz, Ivan Gonzalez, Timothy Cerino, and Daniel Chen all had the great opportunity to teach Software Carpentry's first zero-entry workshop to high school students. We were able to teach at Rockefeller thanks to the scientific foresight of Jeanne Garbarino and the rest of the Rockefeller team along with Arliss Collins, Greg Wilson and the SWC team. Lastly, thanks to Gabriel Perez-Giz for volunteering his time to help during the workshop.

The main goal of this workshop was to expose tomorrow's scientists to scientific computing as early as possible. For example, as genomics data for biology continues to grow, we are beginning to see a shift of biologists from the pipetter to the data scientist. Our goal was not to teach everyone all the skills needed so they can dive into retrieving, cleaning, and analyzing genomics or astronomy data the next day, but rather show them what is possible with computers, and expose them for the first time that the GUI may not always be the best tool for the job; and give some foundation of knowledge and concepts for perpetual self learning.

We followed the traditional SWC workshop materials, adapting the pace as needed. Bash, Python, and Git were covered.

Scientific Groupware Revisited

Sat, 05 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

16 years ago, Jon Udell wrote a white paper titled "Internet Groupware for Scientific Collaboration" that profoundly changed how I thought about the web. In many ways, it seems as futuristic today as it did then: despite all the technological advances of the last decade and a half, a two-way web built on top of a universal canvas is still mostly a dream.

Udell and others are now working on Thali, an attempt to create a truly distributed web. It, and projects like Ward Cunningham's Smallest Federated Wiki, are a more truly open model for science than the de facto centralization typified by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and GitHub, but it's not clear we'll choose the long-term robustness of the former over the short-term convenience of the latter.

I asked Jon if I could re-post IGSC here. He said yes, but on reflection, I realized that doing so would run counter to the spirit of what he's been trying to tell us. Instead, I urge you to click on this link and marvel at the everyday miracle that follows.

Feedback from the bootcamp at Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Pisa

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At the beginning of June (3-6) Software Carpentry supported the leaning tower of Pisa. Well, no really. We actually supported the students at Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare at the University of Pisa in becomming more effective using their computational skills. The instructors were Rémi Emonet and Aleksandra Pawlik. The main organisers and hosts were Chiara Roda and Luca Baldini. Needless to say, running a bootcamp early June in Tuscany does have its perks. The memories of gelati and focaccine di ceci are still very vivid. How can you not love being a Software Carpentry instructor?

Our IUSE Proposal Was Rejected

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We got word a few days ago that our proposal to the NSF's Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program had been rejected. The panel summary agreed that software training is a good idea, but were not convinced about our plans to shift from training grad students to undergrads. In particular, they were not convinced that Unix-based workshops would be best for undergrads, and felt that not being embedded in the regular curriculum was a weakness. These are fair criticisms:

Most undergraduates only use GUIs and cannot navigate the terminal to save their lives. The perception that Software Carpentry is Unix-specific therefore hurt the proposal, and showed that we didn't clearly explain our focus on underlying concepts.

The fact that we wouldn't be part of the regular curriculum is more difficult to address. The fact is, it really is hard to get undergrads to do things that interfere with earning grades, just as it's often hard to get grad students to do anything that doesn't immediately lead to a publication. Some of their concern about impact also seemed to be due to us concentrating on REU students, a self-selected bunch that already are motivated.

At the same time, though, the panel did not connect the results from years of Software Carpentry workshops and the expected impact of this effort. This indicates that the proposal did not effectively communicate how well our experience to date has laid the groundwork for efforts like this.

We're obviously disappointed by this rejection, but we've some useful lessons, and we hope that they will inspire others to put forward proposals of their own.

Summary of June 2014 Lab Meeting

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

At our monthly lab meeting yesterday (June 26), we discussed a wide range of topics (though only about half as much as was on the agenda). Details notes and votes are below; the key points are:

We would like to do what we can to help the careers of people who volunteer for Software Carpentry. In particular, we'd like to find a way to highlight people who have taught lots of bootcamps, contributed lots of material, or both, without discouraging people who haven't, or getting into a situation in which bootcamp hosts ask, "Why aren't you sending your most experienced people to us?" We've opened a GitHub issue for people who'd like to discuss this topic, and we'd be grateful if you could share experiences with other systems and suggestions about what we could do.

We will have a meeting on Thursday, July 3 to discuss plans for the July 22-23 sprint. The time and connection details will be posted here on July 2.

People were either neutral or in favor of switching to Python 3. There was concern about compatibility, but it seems that most scientific packages are now Py3-compatible (and that there are some that only work with Py3, and not with Py2). In practice, this will mean:

changing what people have on their machine when they leave the bootcamp, and

minor modifications to our lessons (e.g., print as a function).

By default, Mercurial launches a GUI diff/merge tool when there's a conflict rather than displaying a textual diff. Novices seem to find side-by-side merge easier to work with, which raises the question: should we use a graphical tool for diff and merge when teaching Git as well? Again, most people were either neutral or in favor, subject to ease of installation. We'll try this at a couple of workshops in the coming months and report back.

Should we install Matt Davis's ipythonblocks module by default? Nobody was opposed, but it turned out that only a handful of people actually use it in teaching. We'll poll our instructors to find out more about usage before making a final decision.

In order to make it easy for people who want to teach regular expressions to do so, we'll integrate the software that runs regexpal.com (which ironically is down at the time of this writing) into the bc repo so that instructors can create a page in their bootcamp site where learners can play around.

Jonah Duckles has created a pull request that would change the way installation instructions are managed. Instead of editing _includes/setup.html, instructors would add a list of topics to the header of index.html that Jekyll's templating logic would use to control what is and isn't displayed. Most people were in favor, so we'll merge this once the PR is finished.

Many people are still not happy with the way our lesson materials are organized, or with what pre-requisite knowledge we actually expect. We will organize a meeting for next Thursday (July 3) to talk about options, then open a discussion issue on GitHub if we can come up with concrete alternatives.

Raniere Silva has been working over the last few weeks to generate EPUB and PDF from our materials. The goal is to allow anyone who wants to produce book-form notes to do so for use in a regular class, to give to learners after a bootcamp, or for self-study. He's been making good progress, but there are still lots of small problems (particularly with the PDF). We'll be hacking on this at the sprint.

Reminder: Lab Meeting Tomorrow

Wed, 25 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our monthly online lab meetings will take place tomorrow (Thursday, June 26) at 10:00 am and 7:00 pm Eastern time. Please have a look at this Etherpad to see what we'll be discussing and voting on. We look forward to seeing you there.

Translating Software Carpentry into Spanish

Sun, 22 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that a group of volunteers have begun translating our lessons into Spanish. If you would like to help, please head over to this GitHub repository, which has instructions and contact information. Our thanks to Fran Navarro, David Perez-Suarez, Javier J. Gutiérrez, Iván González, Daniel Domene y Zuri Bauer, and Jorge Bernabé for organizing this, and to everyone else for lending a hand.

Help Us Build an Admin Tool for Bootcamps

Fri, 20 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It takes a lot of work behind the scenes to match instructors to bootcamps, keep track of who taught (or learned) where, and manage our mailing lists. Our current cobbled-together tools are at their breaking point, so Atul Varma, a developer at Mozilla, put together a simple browser-on-the-desktop app to help administrators find instructors based on geography and skills. We'd like many other features—in particular, bulk upload of attendance lists from bootcamps—so if you would like to help us out, please clone this repository and send us fixes and additions.

Many thanks to Atul for getting us started—we're looking forward to not grepping for instructors any more :-).

Reflections on Claremont

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Claremont Colleges bootcamp just wrapped a couple of hours ago, and judging from my pile of happy sticky note responses, I think we nailed it pretty good. Things were a bit fast on the first day of intro shell and Python, but I think we hit something pitch perfect for day two on intermediate Python and Git. As this Python-heavy workshop progressed, some questions started coming into focus from student responses, discussions with instructors and organizers, and examinations of just how to teach this ascendent skill in scientific computing. To be clear: I have never taught our Python material, and I consider myself a fairly casual Pythonista. This is a debate that the masters need to consider, but I'm hoping here to use my agnostic outsider's perspective to help set the conversation up.

Engineering-Focused Bootcamp

Wed, 18 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Summary: In advance of a bootcamp to be held for a Midwestern university's mechanical engineering department this fall, I've started reworking the traditional Software Carpentry (SWC) curriculum, and will be creating new teaching materials to accompany the workshop. Content changes are being made to accommodate the instructional needs of engineering students at the sponsoring university, while remaining consistent with the basic tenets and goals of the SWC movement. Comments and suggestions from the community on this matter are welcomed and encouraged, particularly in the area of PowerShell scripting (at which I'm currently a novice.) I'm also looking for instructors that might be willing to help teach such a bootcamp in the Detroit area this fall.

Teaching Support IT Job at UCL Physics and Astronomy

Wed, 18 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're looking for someone with IT skills, and interests in teaching and physics, to work with us at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCL (University College London).

This is a system manager job with an emphasis on supporting our teaching, and will involve a wide range of responsibilities, including managing a Linux cluster and interfacing PCs to lab equipment as well as providing first-line support for the university Windows environment.

Other responsibilities may include maintaining and developing an IPython notebook server for teaching, and working with teaching staff to apply other innovative tools.

The application deadline is midnight on Sunday 6th July. Applicants must already have the right to work in the UK.

Reminder: June 2014 Lab Meeting

Tue, 17 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The next Software Carpentry lab meeting will take place next week at 10:00 am and 7:00 pm Eastern time on Thursday, June 26. (My apologies to people in Australia: I promised we'd hold the evening meeting first this time around, but unfortunately that slot conflicts with instructor training.) Our agenda is up on this Etherpad; we'll be discussing plans for the July sprint and voting on several pull requests and proposals. If you'd like to cast a few votes, please take a few minutes before the meeting to look through the items that are on the agenda.

A Double Handful of Bootcamps

Sun, 15 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The next couple of days are going to be busy, with bootcamps in Amman and Toronto, and at Duke, UC Davis, and Claremont Colleges. The week after will be just a crowded: we'll be at the universities of Reading and Notre Dame, the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society, Rockefeller University in New York, and an event for women in science and engineering in Philadelphia. As always, we're grateful to our hosts and instructors for making all of this possible.

A Success Story from KAUST

Sun, 15 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our ACM student chapter at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is active in supporting the diverse research community at our university. We decided to offer Python tutorials to our community by the end of 2013. Due to no information on the background and interests of KAUST community, we crafted a short survey to help us in tailoring our tutorials. The following image shows the summary of the responses we got:

An Update on Our Sprint Plans

Sun, 15 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Plans for our two-day sprint in July are coming together: full details are being compiled on our Etherpad, but we hope the summary below will give you a taste of what we're hoping to do.

Fixing 14 Repositories

Sun, 15 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We cloned our workshop repository at the beginning of the workshop at Spelman to give everyone an identical directory tree and contents to explore, and to distribute the sample data files. On the first day of our workshop, about a third of the learners (all running Windows) could not clone the workshop repository: git clone was failing for them with the error:

Announcing June 2014 Lab Meeting

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The next of our monthly online lab meetings will take place on Thursday, June 26, at 10:00 am and 7:00 pm Eastern time. (As always, we'll hold it twice to accommodate people's work schedules and time zones.) We will update this Etherpad with agenda items as the date approaches.

ARCHER Software Carpentry Bootcamp and Introduction to Scientific Programming in Python

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

ARCHER, the UK's new national supercomputing service, offers training in software development and high-performance computing to scientists and researchers across the UK. As part of our training service we are running a 3 day Software Carpentry bootcamp and Introduction to Scientific Programming in Python at Cranfield University, UK, on 21-23 July.

Planning Our Summer Sprint

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As a warm-up for our lab meeting on June 26, we have some more information to share about our two-day sprint in July. Please see our Etherpad for details, including more about sites and projects.

Registration Open for Instructor Training in Norwich in October

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we announced last week, we are running a two-day version of our instructor training course at The Genome Analysis Centre in Norwich, UK, on October 22-23, 2014. Registration is now open, and we look hope to see you there.

Collected Links

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A lot of people have been writing about Software Carpentry on other blogs of late. Here, in no particular order, are a few of their posts:

Damien Irving: A vision for data analysis in the weather and climate sciences

Deb Paul: Tales from A Data Carpentry Workshop: In Demand

Tracy Teal: Inaugural Data Carpentry Workshop

Oxana Sachenkova: Software Carpentry at SciLifeLab, Sweden

Rob Davey: From the workshop to the workstation: Software Carpentry training from a bioinformatics perspective

Stephen Turner: Collaborative lesson development with GitHub

Karin Lagesen: The one where I went to Sweden

Damien Irving (again): Software Carpentry for Biomedical Imaging

Instructor Training in Norwich, October 2014

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that we will be running a two-day version of our instructor training course at The Genome Analysis Centre in Norwich, UK, on October 22-23, 2014. Registration details will be available shortly, but if you are interested in taking part, please mark your calendar and keep an eye on this blog, or the announcement page, for details.

Our thanks to the good folks at TGAC for making this possible—we look forward to an engaging couple of days.

Introducing Scientists to Testing and Code Review

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As part of our two-day sprint in July, the khmer project will be offering a mentored open source contributathon. This will provide an opportunity for people interested in trying out the "GitHub flow" model, in which contributions are submitted for review using a pull request. Since the project has lots of unit tests and fairly high code coverage, people can also see how testing and code coverage interact with software development in practice. For more information, please see Titus Brown's blog post.

Keeping the Bootcamp Fun Alive!

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the later part of 2013, I started the process of co-hosting a Bootcamp with Peter August and Judith Swift both from the University of Rhode Island (URI). During our discussions it became quite clear that as fantastic as the bootcamps are, it would be even better if we could extend the opportunities for learning. We tossed around several ideas but eventually decided we would try a special topics course at URI. Thus, Scientific Computing and Programming for Coastal Resource Managment was born. We opened the course up to any of the bootcamp participants who had an interest; official enrollment in the course was not required. In the end we had about 10 participants who attendend regularly, including a few students who enrolled for credit. Pete August (URI), Adam Smith (URI), and myself co-taught the course.

Research Computing Facilitator Jobs in Wisconsin

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Advanced Computing Infrastructure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison seeks to hire two Research Computing Facilitators (RCFs). The ideal RCF will apply a background of academic research and the use of computation to assist campus researchers in enhancing their research endeavors through the use of on- and off-campus compute resources. Additionally, RCFs should possess the interpersonal skills to interface with researchers (faculty, graduate students, etc.) and campus technical staff from a variety of organizations and compute-related services, including the campus's large-scale computing center. Primary activities include consultations with researchers and the production of education/outreach materials distributed on the web and in person. Experience teaching research computing topics, such as those in Software Carpentry bootcamps, will be a plus. Please see the full description for more details. All activities will be bolstered by participation in the NSF ACI-REF program, where a primary goal is to build an inter-campus network of facilitators and technical staff.

Learning to Teach Never Ends

Wed, 28 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A month ago I took part in the first face-to-face Software Carpentry Instructors Training run by Greg Wilson from Software Carpentry and Warren Code from University of British Columbia. Unlike most of 40 participants, I had already completed the instructors course which Greg regularly runs online. My primary aim to attend the face-to-face training was to observe and learn how to run it because the plan is that the Software Sustainability Institute (which I work for) will support running such training in the future. So I attended the training in Toronto as a certified instructor and also as a Software Carpentry co-admin in the UK. Wearing different hats allowed me to look at the event from different perspectives and this is probably why it took me so long to write this post.

Teaching Librarians in Montreal

Wed, 28 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Preston Holmes, Jessica Hamrick, Luke Lee, and I helped deliver a Software Carpentry bootcamp during the PyCon sprints in Montreal in April 2014. The audience consisted of roughly 35 librarians coming mostly from the Montreal area.

Announcing Two More WiSE Bootcamps

Mon, 26 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thanks to generous support from Waterfront International and Stevens Capital Management, we are pleased to announce that we are running two bootcamps for women in science and engineering this summer: one in Philadelphia on June 24-25, and the other in Toronto on July 8-9. Both bootcamps are open to female graduate students, post-docs, and faculty in science, engineering, and medicine, particularly those interested in analyzing large data, and build on previous WiSE bootcamps in Boston in 2013 and Berkeley earlier this year.

Data Science Study Invitation

Sat, 24 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Katie Kuksenok, a graduate student at the University of Washington, is interviewing academic researchers who do data science to explore the barriers and challenges they face. If you would be willing to take 20-30 minutes to be interviewed, please get in touch: among other things, her findings will be used to help improve curriculum for projects like Software Carpentry.

Summary of May 2014 Lab Meeting

Sat, 24 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our monthly online lab meeting took place this past Thursday (May 22), and for the first time it included voting on pull requests and other issues. All the notes from the Etherpad are included below, but the high points are:

The Mozilla Science Lab is hiring a developer and a community manager.

People and projects that would like to take part in our global sprint on July 22-23 are invited to sign up on this Etherpad. We won't just work on Software Carpentry curriculum and tooling: related projects are welcome to use this opportunity to bring their communities together as well.

Arliss Collins and others will try to simplify the workflow for creating and managing bootcamps. (Right now, we rely on five different online systems, and most of the administrators we work with at host institutions can't make heads or tails of them.) If you would like to help, please let us know.

We will add people who want to be helpers at bootcamps to our instructors mailing list rather than creating yet another list for reaching them.

We voted on the following pull requests:

Extra lessons will go under existing directories (e.g., novice/git/) rather than in a top-level extras directory.

We won't try to standardize usage of "parameter" and "argument", since most instructors use them idiosyncratically and/or interchangeably.

We will incorporate the new lessons on Mercurial as soon as they're done.

We will merge the lessons on scikit-learn, Python string formatting, common Python error messages, and setting up SSH keys for GitHub.

We won't include the lesson on tmux—people felt it was too specialized—and will ask that the lesson on text data mining in the shell be re-worked.

We also voted on the following proposals for new lessons:

Using Excel properly, using Make to manage data pipelines, and regular expressions were all approved.

The draft lesson on creating and syndicating data on the web was deferred (only a few people had looked at it).

People liked the idea of lessons on statistics with Pandas and managing geospatial data, but we will need volunteers to take the lead.

Our next lab meeting, on June 26, will primarily be devoted to planning for our July 22-23 sprint. We look forward to seeing lots of you at both.

Lab Meeting Reminder

Wed, 21 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our monthly lab meeting will take place on Thursday, May 22 at 10:00 am and again at 7:00 pm, Eastern time. There's a lot to discuss, so please take a moment beforehand to go through the lab meeting Etherpad and see if there are any pull requests or enhancement proposals that you are particularly interested in.

We look forward to seeing you online.

A Lot of Bootcamps in the Works

Tue, 20 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week, we ran our first bootcamp in Brazil—many thanks to Raniere Silva for this writeup about what worked and what didn't. We'll visit several other new countries over the next three months, as well as running a bunch of other events—we'll post again as registration opens up for these:

Behind the Scenes

Tue, 20 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A lot of people work behind the scenes to organize bootcamps, keep our website going (and readable), and generally make it possble for the rest of us to do what we do. I'd therefore like to offer some long-overdue thanks to Amy Brown, Arliss Collins, Abby Cabunoc, Ivan Gonzalez, Jon Pipitone, David Rio, and Raniere Silva for all their hard work: we wouldn't have come this far without them, and we're very grateful for everything they've done.

Job Openings at the Mozilla Science Lab

Wed, 14 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Mozilla Science Lab is looking for a community manager to build and scale existing community outreach efforts, and for a developer to lead technical prototyping efforts and engage with our community about technical projects. Possible office locations for these positions include Brooklyn, Toronto, London, Vancouver, and San Francisco, but we will consider remote working opportunities for the right candidate. For more information, or to apply, please see these postings.

Our First Data Carpentry Workshop

Wed, 14 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Update: for more information on Data Carpentry, please see their web site.

On May 8 and 9, 2014, 4 instructors, 4 assistants, and 27 learners filed into the largest meeting space at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) for the inaugural Data Carpentry bootcamp. Data Carpentry is modeled on Software Carpentry, but focuses on tools and practices for more productively managing and manipulating data. The inaugural group of learners for this bootcamp was very diverse. They included graduate students, postdocs, faculty and staff, from three of the largest local research universities (Duke University, University of North Carolina, and North Carolina State University). Over 55% of the attendees were women and research areas ranged from evolutionary biology and ecology to microbial ecology, fungal phylogenomics, marine biology, and environmental engineering. One participant was even a library scientist from Duke Library.

Technical Training Officer (LVT Training Officer) position at TGAC

Wed, 14 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) based at Norwich, UK is looking for a Linux and Virtualisation Technical Training Officer who will join the Training and Outreach Team.

Agenda for This Month's Lab Meeting

Tue, 13 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The next Software Carpentry lab meeting will be held at 10:00 Eastern on Thursday, May 22, and repeated at 19:00 Eastern on the same day. (You can use this site to translate those times into your time zone.) We will be voting on several small additions to the lesson material—please see the Etherpad for the list—and discussing plans for future additions, and the multi-site sprint in July. Conference call details will be on the Etherpad on Thursday morning; please add other agenda items to the pad, and we look forward to seeing you all then.

A Training Veteran Weighs In

Thu, 08 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm not sure if I qualify as a "instructional training veteran", but having participated in both the online Software Carpentry (SWC) instructor training, and two versions of the Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) (on which the latest "live" SWC training was modeled) at the University of British Columbia, I'd like to share a few comments comparing my experience with both and what I've valued from each. Feel free to add your own impressions of the SWC or other instructional training in the comments at the end.

Assessment Results: First Batch

Thu, 08 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As many of our instructors and participants know Software Carpentry has been giving surveys for a number of months at every possible workshop. This takes a surprising amount of coordination and attention, much of which we owe to our wonderful two administrators: Amy Brown and Arliss Collins. The surveys are being administered before and after each workshop in an effort to gather difference data which could answer questions such as "How useful was this workshop to participants?", "Who benefits most from these workshops?", or "What ways could we improve the workshop?" We can also use this information to ask about the professional demographics such as "What fields are most represented by our participants?" and "What's the typical amount of programming experience?" both of which could help inform a tailored workshop experience to better suit the audience.

Knocking on the Future's Door

Thu, 08 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Once again I feel like I'm knocking on the future's door but nobody's answering. The task we set ourselves seemed simple: produce a nicely-formatted PDF of the Version 5 lessons to give learners as a reference (and to print as a book to give instructors when they finish their training). Fifty years after the creation of the first computer typesetting systems, you'd think this would be easy. It's not, and the reasons why highlight yet again why so many scientists would rather keep playing the kazoo than learn to play the violin.

A Multi-Site Sprint in July

Mon, 05 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We'll be holding our first-ever global sprint on July 22-23, 2014. This event will be modeled on Random Hacks of Kindness: people will work with friends and colleagues at sites around the globe, then hand off to participants west of them as their days end and others' begin. We will set up video conferencing between the various locations and a show-and-tell at the end (and yes, there will be stickers and t-shirts).

We have booked space for the sprint at the Mozilla offices in Paris, London, Toronto, Vancouver, and San Francisco. If you aren't in one of those cities, but are willing to help organize in your area, please add yourself to this Etherpad. We'll hash out the what and how at the next lab meeting—it's a community event, so we'd like the community to choose what to sprint on—but please get the date in your calendar: it just wouldn't be a party without you.

Playing the Kazoo

Mon, 05 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Yesterday, Matt Davis quoted Peter Wang as saying, "A violin is to a kazoo as Python is to Excel." To which I replied, "Exactly: anyone who wants to make music can play a kazoo right away without days of training." The difference between these two points of view lies at the heart of Software Carpentry. As I said in a post two years ago:

How to Improve Instructor Training

Fri, 02 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We ran a three-day intensive version of our instructor training course in Toronto earlier this week. The 40 attendees seemed to find it useful, and I'm very grateful to UBC's Warren Code for co-teaching, and to the University of Toronto's Jennifer Campbell for her presentation on MOOCs and flipped classrooms, but there are a few things we'll do differently next time around. They're listed below in no particular order; comments from attendees (and everyone else, particularly people who've been through the online instructor training) would be very welcome.

Wise as Athena...

Thu, 01 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Katy Huff has written an article for the Berkeley Science Review about our recent bootcamp for women in science and engineering in California. It's a good summary of what Software Carpentry is all about as well—please check it out.

PyCon 2014 Videos

Sun, 27 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A double handful of people associated with Software Carpentry gave talks at PyCon 2014 in Montreal two weeks ago. Thanks to Sheila Miguez and Will Kahn-Greene (who run the excellent PyVideo site), you can now view their presentations:

April 2014 Lab Meeting

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held another online lab meeting yesterday, which covered a fairly wide range of topics. The notes are below; comments about what we missed, and suggestions for the next lab meeting, are very welcome.

Position: Systems Integration Developer at UW-Madison

Thu, 24 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison provides compute resources and services to campus researchers at UW-Madison, and also develops the HTCondor computational scheduling software, which is used all over the world. We are seeking to hire a Systems Integration Developer, who will help us to accelerate the work of researchers through computational middleware scripting and the design of workflow tools. Please see the online posting at http://www.ohr.wisc.edu/WebListing/Unclassified/PVLSummary.aspx?pvl_num=78987 for details.

Import Lesson

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Lorena Barba has done it again. Having created a wonderful 12-step introduction to the Navier-Stokes equations using the IPython Notebook, she has now published AeroPython, which teaches the use of potential flow for aerodynamic analysis via the panel method. You don't have to know what that is to appreciate the beauty of what she has built—I certainly don't, at least not yet—but I'd like to explore something that isn't in those notebooks. Before doing that, though, I need to introduce an acronym that never caught on.

Math Authoring Gap and MathUI

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In a previous post Greg Wilson wrote about the writing gap
between people who value the "I can see what I'm doing" of Microsoft Word and those who care more about the "I can tell what I did" of version control.
For STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) folks there is also the gap related to math expressions (you can use LaTeX to deal with math expressions but for beginners who spent around 20 years using Microsoft Word moving to LaTeX can be challenging).

Do you know that some people are working to solve the gap with math expressions?

Mr. Biczo Was Right

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I didn't have nearly enough time to enjoy everything that was going on at PyCon 2014 last week. One event I particularly regret missing was a sprint organized in part by the folks at Scrapinghub. They got a bunch of people to write little scrapers to go through old conference websites, pull out speakers' names, and run them through a gender identification library in order to plot changes in gender balance per conference over time. The code is all available on GitHub, and Gayane Petrosyan (currently at the Hacker School in New York City) has started plotting some of the results.

GSoC Projects for 2014

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're very pleased to announce that two students will be working on Google Summer of Code projects we put forward, and that one of our regular contributors has received a GSoC as well. The projects are:

Office Hours for Code as a Research Object

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Looking to learn more about how to get a DOI for your code? Interested in the underlying technology used to hook up GitHub (a code hosting service) and figshare (an open data repository)? Join us for our online office hours on Thursday, April 24. We'll be shedding light on the technical build done as part of our "code as a research object" project.

We'll be holding two sessions, one at 11 am ET for those in North America, Europe, and Africa, and another at 4 pm ET for our Australasian colleagues. These sessions are open to all, and are your chance to ask your implementation questions, gain a better understanding of how the prototype works, and peek under the hood at the codebase.

Have a question? Add it to the etherpad, where you can also find useful background on the project as well as dial-in information. We hope you'll join us.

Software Carpentry bootcamp at GARNet

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The second week of April the University of Warwick in the UK hosted its first Software Carpentry bootcamp. The bootcamp was organised by GARNet which is a UK-based research network for the UK Arabidopsis and wider plant research community. GARNet facilitates collaboration and interaction between different researchers and supports skills development.

Workshops at SESYNC

Sat, 19 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Applications are now open for the 2014 Computational Summer Institute at the National Socio-Environment Synthesis Center (SESYNC). Small teams of researchers are invited to apply for spaces at the one-week institute which will be held July 7-11 in Annapolis, Maryland. The workshop will offer participants hands-on training in managing the lifecycle of their data and code with a focus on using open source tools, including R. Topics will include

Changing the Channel

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A lot of open source projects use an antiquated-but-reliable chat system called IRC for long-running conversations. We've had an IRC channel for Software Carpentry for a while, but it's never had very much traffic. It also hasn't done anything to help people get involved in the open science community at large. We are therefore retiring it, and encouraging people—all kinds of people, not just instructors and bootcamp alumni—to join us on the Mozilla Science Lab IRC channel instead. We hope this will become a place where people can swap tips on teaching programming to scientists, discuss new forms of publication, seek help on specific research problems, and everything in between.

Workshop at University of Southern Denmark, Odense

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The workshop at University of Southern Denmark, Odense was my first workshop for Software Carpentry, the same is true for Luis as well. We had taught before, Luis more than me, but it was still exciting for me to see how this workshop would go given that we never taught together before. While I taught bash, regular expressions and Git, Luis taught Python, unit testing and SQL. Initially, make was also on that list, but due to time constraints was kicked out to make room for a second Git lecture.

Do Not Be Worried

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Sage advice for our instructors and learners from an eight-year-old:

Summarizing Our Instructors' Skills

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We've been asking bootcamp participants to tell us about themselves for a while now, so it seems only fair to share some information about our instructors. First, of the 82 instructors who responded to our survey two weeks ago, how many are comfortable teaching which topic to novices, to intermediates, or not at all?

Bridging the Writing Gap

Sun, 06 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A few months ago, we had an interesting discussion about what Software Carpentry should teach about writing and publishing in the 21st Century. One thing that came through loud and clear was the gulf between people who value the "I can see what I'm doing" of Microsoft Word and those who care more about the "I can tell what I did" of version control¹.

Sites like Authorea, writeLaTeX, and ShareLaTeX are trying to bridge that gulf by giving people a WYSIWYG authoring tool in the browser that uses LaTeX as a storage format. This is pretty exciting: since it (potentially) allows collaborators to interact in whichever mode they prefer, it allows people to transition from one to the other instead of requiring them to make a great leap sideways.

Both sites currently allow people to save work on site or in Dropbox. It would be very cool if they also allowed people to save work in online version control repositories such as GitHub. Someone who isn't comfortable with version control could simply select "Save..." to push their changes, while someone who's already mastered pull requests and merging could interact that way, so that once again, the system could help people transition gradually from one mode to the other.

Does Continuous Publication Require Continuous Attention?

Sat, 05 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I read this post by Martin Fenner a couple of weeks ago. His thesis is that scientific publication is still very much a manual process, which makes publications relatively infrequent (and fairly painful) events. Instead, we ought to strive for continuous delivery: production of the "paper" (including release of associated code and data) should be fully automated so that authors can ship whenever they want with relatively little effort.

Continuous delivery is popular among software developers, who frequently argue it's more efficient using diagrams like this:

Summary of March 2014 Meeting to Discuss Novice R Material

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week we had our first meeting to discuss the development of the novice R material. Our goal was to determine our plan for collaboratively creating the lessons.

Uniting the Narrative

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Victoria workshop that just wrapped a few hours ago was my first stab at teaching SWC live, and I have to say - few things feel better in teaching than the tiny victory of having material that is right on pitch. I've had the lurking notion for years that the hilariously overshot lectures ('I need to cover the syllabus in half time so I can go on sabbatical'), conference talks ('One slide per 30 seconds for a solid hour seems reasonable') and lab presentations ('A 5 by 5 grid of histograms on one slide will communicate ALL the science!') were the tragic offspring of time constraints and one-upmanship, and in desperate need of a pan-academia slide deck disarmament treaty. I always pushed my students to strip it down, just hit the highlights and leave the details for the paper, because I always suspected that that little bit of entertainer's savvy was how we could really reach people: not by fact-bombing the audience into a glassy torpor, but by electrifying their curiosity just enough that the energy that propelled them forward was their own.

Announcing NBDiff

Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am very pleased to announce the first release of NBDiff, a tool for diffing and merging IPython Notebooks that is now available on GitHub and PyPI. NBDiff was created by a team of students at Concordia University in Montréal; our thanks and congratulations to Shurouq Abusalah, Tavish Armstrong, Marwa Malti, Lina Nouh, Boris Pipev, Selena Sachdeva, and Richard Tang. For more information, see the NBDiff web site.

Updating Our Checklists

Sat, 29 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have updated our checklists for bootcamp administrators, hosts, instructors (and lead instructors), and helpers. Further improvements are welcome, and we'd appreciate comments on this post suggesting items we could put in a checklist for learners.

Announcing Our Next Lab Meeting

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our next online lab meeting will be held on Thursday, April 24, 2014. As always, we'll run it twice to accommodate different time zones; please keep an eye on this blog, our Twitter account, and the mailing lists for connection details.

Building a Minimal Online Presence

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown and Ethan White led a half-hour discussion today of the minimal online presence people in academia ought to have. Notes from the call are below; to make a point-form story even pointier, please make yourself findable and shareable.

Changing Our Core Curriculum

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We currently say that people must teach task automation, structured programming, version control, and unit testing in order to use the Software Carpentry name. However, many bootcamps either don't teach unit testing at all, or only cover it briefly, while many of us teach data management using SQL, which also seems like a core lab skill for scientific computing. We asked instructors this week whether we should formalize the change, and they responded as follows:

One of Our Inspirations

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week's post about our original logo reminded me that I'd never blogged about one of the books that inspired Software Carpentry in the first place: Rubin Landau and Paul Fink's A Scientist's and Engineer's Guide to Workstations and Supercomputers: Coping with Unix, RISC, Vectors, and Programming. You'd have add a few zeroes to the speeds, bandwidths, and data sizes they discuss to bring it up to date, but other than that, it's held up surprisingly (or depressingly) well.

Not on the Shelves

Sun, 23 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Every few years, I indulge in a bit of sympathetic magic by writing reviews of books that don't actually exist in the hope that it will inspire someone to write them. Previous versions written in 1997, 2003, and 2009 led to Beautiful Code, Making Software, The Architecture of Open Source Applications, and a few others books as well. I'd welcome comments on what isn't in this list that you really wish you could read.

What Tools Do You Use to Get Your Job Done?

Sun, 23 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Some of you may have heard of usesthis.com. In this site people are interviewed about the tools they use to get their job done. The format is very straight forward, participants have to answer these questions:

Empirical Software Engineering Papers

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When I teach scientists programming, I frequently cite empirical studies in software engineering to back up my claims about various tools and practices making people more productive. No good, short survey of those papers exists—writing one has been on my to-do list for several years—but I hope the pointers below will be a useful substitute.

Data Science Workshops in Seattle

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Sumana Harihareswara: the Community Data Science Workshops are a series of project-based workshops being held at the University of Washington for anyone interested in learning how to use programming and data science tools to ask and answer questions about online communities like Wikipedia, Twitter, free and open source software, and civic media.

The workshops are for people with no previous programming experience. The goal is to bring together both researchers and academics as well as participants and leaders in online communities. The workshops will all be free of charge. Participants from outside UW are encouraged to apply.

There will be three workshops held from 9am-4pm on three Saturdays in April and May. Each session will involve a period for lecture and technical demonstrations in the morning. This will be followed by a lunch graciously provided by the eSciences Institute at UW. The rest of the day will be followed by group work on programming and data science projects supported by more experienced mentors.

For more information, see the full announcement.

Our Original Logo

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

How old is Software Carpentry? So old that the only surviving copy of our original logo is an unanimated GIF:

PyCon is Just a Month Away

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

With PyCon just under a month away, there are a few things we want to make sure everyone knows about:

A Letter from John von Neumann

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Plans to standardize and publish codes of various groups have been made in the past, and they have not been very successful so far. The difficulty is that most people who have been active in this field seem to believe that it is easier to write a new code than to understand an old one. This is probably exaggerated, but it is certainly true that the process of understanding a code practically involves redoing it de novo. The situation is not very unlike the one which existed in formal logics over a long initial period, where every new author invented a new symbolism. It took several decades until a few of these found wider acceptance, at least within limited groups. In the case of computing machine codes, the situation is even more difficult, since all logics refer, at least ideally, to the same substratum, whereas the machine codes frequently refer to physically different machines.

I think, nevertheless, that if a competent mathematician...is interested in working on this problem, he ought to be encouraged. The task may turn out to be a thankless one, but it is always possible that a competent and energetic man will in the end come up with something useful. My personal doubts are limited to the near future, and even if it will take a non-trivial number of years to produce something, there is no harm in starting early.

— John von Neumann, in a letter to Marston Morse, April 23, 1952

Collaborative Lesson Development - Why Not?

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A few weeks ago, Greg Wilson asked me:

Why is there so little open, collaborative development of lesson plans and curricula? Is there something that makes teaching different from coding (e.g., open source software) and from writing (e.g., Wikipedia)?

A dozen emails later, I can't claim that we're much closer to a definitive answer, but we have come up with a working hypothesis. We'd be very interested in feedback.

Everything Old is New Again

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Yesterday, the New York Times R&D Lab announced streamtools, a web-based graphical tool for working with streams of data. It lets users create dataflow systems to re-mix and process the streams they believe most data will consist of in the near future.

Streamtools looks nice, but I do have some questions:

Software Carpentry at TGAC

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In February The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) in Norwich hosted their first Software Carpentry bootcamp. TGAC is keen to intensively develop their training programme and facilities and Vicky Schneider who leads the Scientific Training, Education & Learning Programme strongly supports Software Carpentry, we are looking forward to more bootcamps in Norwich, UK.

You and Jimi Hendrix

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I had a discussion a couple of weeks ago about software development tools and processes with some undergraduate students I'm mentoring. They asked why I'm so finicky about putting things under version control, writing unit tests, and creating tickets to keep track of what still needs to be done. The short answer is, because that's what Jimi Hendrix would have done.

John Hunter Technology Fellowship 2014

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The John Hunter Technology Fellowship aims to bridge the gap between academia and real-world, open-source scientific computing projects by providing a capstone experience for individuals coming from a scientific educational background. The program consists of a 6 month project-based training program for postdoctoral scientists or senior graduate students. Fellows work on scientific computing open source projects under the guidance of mentors who are leading scientists and software engineers. The aim of the Fellowship is to enable Fellows to develop the skills needed to contribute to cutting-edge open source software projects while at the same time advancing or supporting the research program they and their mentor are involved in.

The Fellow receives an award of $33,000, which is meant to support the Fellow for 6 months of full-time work; The Fellowship can be started in the July 2014 - Jan 2015 time frame, and applications are due May 15, 2014. For more information, and to apply, please see the full announcement

Anatole France, Updated

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Anatole France (1844-1924)

Then

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Now

The Internet, in its majestic equality, allows every scientist to analyze massive data sets using web services and cloud computing.

Reproducibility Workshop at XSEDE

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The reproducibility@XSEDE workshop is a full-day event scheduled for Monday, July 14, 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia. The workshop will take place in conjunction with XSEDE14, the annual conference of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, and will feature an interactive, open-ended, discussion-oriented agenda focused on reproducibility in large-scale computational science. We hope to help promote a culture of reproducibility within the broad community of stakeholders connected to computation-enabled research, and expect our work to lead to recommendations address to this community.

This event will build on the 2009 Yale Data and Code Sharing Roundtable, which culminated in a declaration "demanding a resolution to the credibility crisis from the lack of reproducible research in computational science". To find out more, please see the workshop website, or send questions to reproducibility@xsede.org.

A Workshop for Librarians at PyCon

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that we will be running a two-day workshop on programming skills for librarians during the PyCon sprints in Montreal on April 14 and 15, 2014. The workshop will introduce participants to core skills for managing and manipulating data, including task automation, version control, modular programming, and databases. The event is open to everyone, not just to PyCon attendees; please see this page for more information, register here, mail us if you have any questions, and help spread the word to your friends and colleagues.

Learn How to Teach People to Program

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that we will be running two one-day workshops on how to teach programming during the PyCon sprints in Montreal on April 14 and 15, 2014. The workshops will be led by Greg Wilson, who will show participants how to use basic concepts from educational psychology and instructional design when teaching beginners how to code. The event is open to everyone, not just to PyCon attendees; please register here, or mail us if you have any questions.

SSI Collaborations Workshop and Hackday

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Sustainability Institute is running the annual Collaborations Workshop (CW14) on 26-28 March in Oxford. The event brings together researchers, software developers, managers and funders to explore important ideas in software and research and to plant the seed of interdisciplinary collaborations. The theme this year is "Software in your reproducible research" and we also have a hackday!

Summary of Feb 2014 Lab Meeting

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held a lab meeting last week. 48 people attended in two sessions (to accommodate different time zones); the main points are summarized below.

Software Carpentry on the CBC

Sat, 01 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Greg Wilson was recently interviewed by CBC Radio's "Spark" program: you can listen to the interview online, or catch it live this Sunday at 1:00 pm.

The Open Scoop Challenge

Tue, 25 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Sooner or later, in every discussion of open science, someone will say there's a risk of being scooped if you share your code or data with your peers. I think this is pure FUD: in all the years I've worked with scientists, I have never met anyone this has actually happened to.

But absence of proof is not proof of absence, so I'd like to issue a challenge. If someone has ever published a result you were going to by taking advantage of software or data that you made publicly available, I'll send you a Software Carpentry t-shirt. You'll need to provide specifics, but I won't share those details with anyone without your permission. Please mail me if you'd like to chat.

Software Carpentry: the University Course

Mon, 24 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I recently submitted my final assignment for the Specialist Certificate in Teaching for Graduate Researchers. For this final task, we were asked to design a curriculum document for a university subject that we would like to see taught in the future. The first thing that came to mind was Software Carpentry, so here's my take on what a bootcamp would look like, if it were to become an actual university course.

Lab Meeting (Feb 2014)

Sun, 23 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're having our first lab meeting of 2014 this week. As usual, we'll hold it twice to accommodate different time zones: once at 20:00 Eastern on Wednesday, February 26, and again at 11:00 Eastern on Thursday, February 27. Connection details will be posted on the meeting's Etherpad, and everyone is welcome both to attend and to add agenda items to the 'pad beforehand.

From Training to Engagement

Fri, 21 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I was interviewed about Software Carpentry earlier this week, and the interviewer's second question was, "Don't scientists all learn how to program these days as part of their education?" The answer, even today, is "no": the average scientist might know more about calculus and statistics than someone who did a degree in marketing or graphic design, but she probably doesn't know any more about how to build software and share data on the web.

Brent Gorda and I started Software Carpentry in 1998 to fix that. Our goal was to teach our colleagues the equivalent of basic lab skills for scientific computing so that they could get more done in less time and with less pain. As the project grew, I realized that this problem wasn't specific to scientists: almost everyone who uses the web spends hours or days doing things that a few simple programs could do for them faster and more reliably.

Lessons Learned Has Been Published

Wed, 19 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm pleased to announce that "Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned" has been published on F1000Research. A paper like this is necessarily incomplete, and so is any acknowledgments list, but I'd like to thank the following for their feedback:

Our Biggest Event Ever

Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you have friends or colleagues in or near Montreal, please let them know that we're running our largest bootcamp ever on April 14-15 in conjunction with PyCon 2014. Material will include our usual topics:

the Unix shell (and how to automate repetitive tasks);

Git and GitHub (and how to use version control to track and share work);

Python or R (and how to grow a program in a structured, testable, reusable way); and

databases (and the difference between structured and unstructured data).

but we'll split people between several rooms based on how much they already know so that each group can move at its own pace.

Register now!

rOpenSci Hackathon

Wed, 12 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The rOpenSci team has been cranking out a large number of software tools over the past several months. As regular blog readers are aware, our software packages provide programmatic access to a diverse and extensive trove of scientific data. More recently we've expanded our efforts to build more general purpose and cross-domain tools. These include tools for reading, writing, integrating and publishing data, a unit testing platform for data, and a mapping engine that can visualize various kinds of spatial data. Many of our projects are inspired by ad hoc discussions with other scientists and software developers both online (often on Twitter and GitHub) and offline. Several of these folks are now regular contributors to the project. To foster more such collaborations and drive new software innovations, we are excited to announce our first developer meeting next month at GitHub's headquarters in San Francisco. This meeting is made possible by support from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation and GitHub.

An Online Peer Instruction Tool

Sun, 09 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Peer instruction is a teaching technique originally developed by Eric Mazur and colleagues in the early 1990s. Study after study has shown that peer instructions works better than conventional lecturing, but to the best of my knowledge, no online learning platform directly supports peer instruction. I'd like to fix that, and I hope some of our readers would like to help.

Wrapping Up Round 7 (and a Reminder About Instructor Training)

Sun, 09 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We had the wrap-up meetings for Round 7 of instructor training this past Thursday. The full summary is on the training blog, but the key points are:

We need to include a lesson early in the course on the structure of the materials in our repository, and how to configure things for a workshop. We'll do a trial run on Thursday, February 20, in the usual time slots (10:00, 14:00, and 19:00 Eastern); please have a look at the Etherpad for connection details on the day.

People want a chance to watch more experienced teachers in action. One possibility would be to set up something like SmarterCookie or Edthena, where teachers upload videos of themselves in action so that other people can comment on what they do and how they do it. We will think about ways and means and see what we can set up in the next couple of weeks.

Our thanks once again to everyone who stayed with us through what turned out to be a longer-than-usual run of the course: I look forward to teaching with you all some day soon.

Finally, there are still seats available for the live three-day version of the instructor training course, which will run in Toronto on April 28-30, 2014. If you'd like to learn more about teaching in general, and teaching programming in specific, please sign up.

Keeping Track of Problems

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

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Setup and configuration is often the biggest challenge bootcamp participants face, particularly on Windows. Our installation instructions are pretty good, but to make them better, Justin Kitzes has started building a wiki page on GitHub to keep track of what's gone wrong and what fixes have worked. Many thanks to Justin for getting the ball rolling—contributions would be very welcome.

Workshops at the Data Science Centers

Thu, 30 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that we will be running workshops simultaneously at the data science centers at UC Berkeley, New York University, and the University of Washington on March 17-18, 2014. These workshops will introduce participants to the skills they should master before they tackle anything with "cloud" or "peta" in its name, including task automation, version control, modular programming, and structured data management. Novice and intermediate learners alike are welcome; for more information on topics and other details, please mail us or check out the registration pages for the three sites:

Teaching Online (Sort Of) in 2014

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have tried several times to teach Software Carpentry online, but the results have always been disappointing. We are therefore going to try something different this spring. Instead of running a purely online course for several hours a week, we are going to run regular two-day workshops in four selected cities with a mix of in-person and remote instructors.

Workshop for Women in Science and Engineering: April 14-15 at LBL

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're very pleased to announce that registration is now open for our second workshop for Women In Science and Engineering, which will be held at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on April 14-15, 2014. We have a stellar roster of instructors and room for over 100 learners, so please sign up early and pass the word on to your friends and colleagues.

Workshops at PyCon in Montreal This April

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for our largest event ever: on April 14-15, 2014, in association with PyCon 2014 in Montreal, we will run three Software Carpentry workshops in parallel, along with a master class in next-generation sequencing for bioinformaticians and an introduction to R for Python programmers. (Note that these workshops are during the two days after PyCon, so you can attend both.)

Research Transparency Job at UC Berkeley

Sun, 26 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Interested in improving the standards of rigor in empirical social science research? Eager to collaborate with leading economists, political scientists and psychologists to promote research transparency? Wishing to stay abreast of new advances in empirical research methods and transparency software development? The Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) is looking for a Program Associate to support the initiative's evaluation and outreach efforts. The candidate is expected to engage actively with social science researchers to raise awareness of new and emerging tools for research transparency. If this sounds like fun, apply now.

Feedback from the First MATLAB Bootcamp

Fri, 24 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jan 28: Michael Croucher has also written a good post about what worked and what didn't at this bootcamp.

Last week Software Carpentry paired up with MATLAB to run a bootcamp at the University of Manchester. Apart from shell and version control, the remaining core topics (verification and testing, modular programming with algorithm design) were taught using MATLAB.

Why Not a MOOC?

Sun, 19 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We got mail yesterday asking us whether we were going to run Software Carpentry as a MOOC. The short answer is, "No." The full answer has several parts:

Feedback from the First Cambridge R Bootcamp

Sat, 18 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The first R Software Carpentry bootcamp in Cambridge took place on January 7 and 8, 2014. Hosted by the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, the bootcamp was organised by two SSI Fellows, Stephen Eglen and Laurent Gatto. There were 24 participants and a long waiting list of those who wanted to learn R, version control and make.

Wrapping Up in Narrangasett

Sat, 18 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've just came back from the Software Carpentry bootcamp at Narrangasett, RI, held at the Coastal Institute of the University of Rhode Island and the US Enviromental Protection Agency. I taught with Patrick Fuller and Jeff Hollister, who was also the organizer. The local helpers were Betty Kreakie and Bryan Milstead.

The bootcamp was R-based and lasted two and a half days. The people at the Coastal Institute are using this bootcamp as the starting point for a class on "Computing for Natural Resources" during the next semester, so the extra half-day was used to talk about this coming class and to add a lesson on data visualization using R. Besides the standard syllabus, we extended a bit the lessons on R, added a short lesson on databases, and made a longer than usual session on testing.

Introducing the Image Novice Module

Thu, 16 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The image novice module provides a simple image manipulation interface for beginners that allows for easy loading, manipulating, and saving of image files. It has been developed collaboratively with Greg Wilson, Tony Yu, and Stephan van der Walt. Below, I show how to use the module for some basic image manipulation.

From 0 to 1 to 10

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Andromeda Yelton has written a great blog post about her experiences teaching a bootcamp for librarians in Toronto earlier this week. It includes this insightful observation:

Publishing on the Web

Wed, 15 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back in December, I asked a question on the Software Carpentry issue track: What should we teach about writing/publishing papers in a webby world? It led to a lively discussion about how the web is changing scientific publishing, the tools people can use to take advantage of those changes, and the gap between what's possible and what publishers (and senior academics) will actually accept. Many commenters dove immediately into the details of specific tools, but Justin Kitzes nailed it when he said:

Code Review, Round 2

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Short version: we will launch a second pilot study of code review for scientific software in February 2014, in which experienced mentors will teach small groups of scientists how and when to do reviews. We are currently looking for both mentors and groups to take part.

It's Not Just the Tools that Differ Between the Two Cultures

Fri, 10 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the conversation that followed Philip Guo's blog post on the two cultures of computing, most on focused comparing the tools used by those two cultures, as discussed by Philip to create a contract. Some even wondered if Software Carpentry instructors should perhaps become more versed in MS Excel to meet potential students where they are. In so doing, we lost the fact that even with the same tools, the two cultures would likely use them differently. It's not about the tools, but about the users.

Job Opportunity at University College London

Thu, 09 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The University College London Research Software Development Team is recruiting a research software developer. Their ideal candidate will have experience creating and maintaining research software in one or more fields, and will "design, extend, refactor and maintain scientific software accross all subject areas". Sound like you? Have a look at James Hetherington's post about the position. Good luck!

'Best Practices' Has Been Published

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm very pleased to announce that our paper Best Practices for Scientific Computing has been published in PLOS Biology. It presents 24 specific things scientists can do to get more done in less time with less pain:

Mental Models and Vicious Circles

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A few days ago, Konrad Hinsen asked this on our discussion list:

Is anyone aware of teaching methods that aim at either developing or verifying the students' mental model of some non-trivial procedure? If so, have they been used for teaching the use of computers?

Test-Driven Development in Scientific Computing

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Aziz Nanthaamornphong and Dr. Jeffrey Carver at the University of Alabama are conducting a survey of software development practices among computational scientists. This survey seeks to understand test-driven development in computational science and engineering domains, and should take approximately 15 minutes to complete. The survey can be found at:

http://goo.gl/9T2BIq

This survey study has been approved by the University of Alabama Institutional Review Board (IRB); for questions contact Jeffrey Carver.

We Need More of These

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Michael Nygard's Release It! is one of my favorite books about the practical side of computing—I gave it five stars when it first came out, and while it's too advanced for most of the scientists we want to teach, there's something from it that I'd like to share: the diagram titled "Interaction of Patterns and Antipatterns" from page 43:

Introducing Arliss Collins

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The incredible expansion of Software Carpentry over the last few months has been exciting and a little overwhelming, so we're pleased to introduce the newest member of the Mozilla Science Lab team, Arliss Collins. Arliss's background is in engineering and project management, and she'll be working with me, Kaitlin and Greg on bootcamp management, infrastructure development and maintenance, and communications.

Our Store Is Open

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Show your Software Carpentry pride with a shirt, sticker, button, or coffee mug from our CafePress store. And Happy Hogmanay: may 2014 be kind to you and yours.

Tools, Conversations, and Cultures

Tue, 31 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Philip Guo is best known these days for The Ph.D. Grind, but I first met him through his Online Python Tutor. He helped teach a bootcamp for librarians last August, and recently wrote a blog post about the two cultures of computing that he encountered there. On one side he sees users who treat software as a tool for getting things done; on the other, he sees programmers who hold conversations with their software. The former use stand-alone GUIs backed by binary file formats (like Word and Excel), while the latter use command-line interfaces and text (like the shell, LaTeX, and Python). He writes:

Catch and Hold

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm a big fan of Mark Guzdial's work on computing education. Last week, he tweeted this:

Google is made of people who succeed in current CS teaching model. Hard for them to realize that it's wrong for most people. #GoogleCSFirst

Oxford, One Year On

Wed, 25 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Philip Fowler recently posted a nice study of the impact last year's Software Carpentry bootcamp at Oxford had on its participants. The key finding for me is that 10 of the 13 respondents to his survey agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, "A year on, the workshop really encouraged me to change how I do my research." If you'd like to help us gather similar information from participants at other bootcamps, please get in touch.

Andromeda's Advice

Thu, 19 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're very pleased to announce that Andromeda Yelton will be coming to Toronto in mid-January to help teach a bootcamp for librarians. Her advice on how to do this is online, along with her reflections on what she's learned herself. There's lots of good stuff in both, and we're looking forward to lots of new ideas.

So How Is Instructor Training Going?

Thu, 19 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We recently wrapped up the latest round of instructor training, which makes this a good time to look at how well the program is doing. Here are stats on the first six rounds:

Code as a Research Object

Wed, 11 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Mozilla Science Lab's newest project extends our existing work around code as a research object, exploring how we can better integrate code and scientific software into the scholarly workflow. The project will build and test a bridge to allow users to push code from their GitHub repository to figshare, providing a Digital Object Identifier for the code. We will also be working on a best practice standard (like MIAME for code) so that each research object has sufficient documentation to make it possible to meaningfully use.

For more information, please see the full post on the MSL website. And please join us for our December 12 community call, where we'll be talking with Ed Lazowska about the newly-announced data science centers, and with Arfon Smith and Mark Hahnel about this project.

Release 2013.11

Tue, 10 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce the release of v2013.11 of our lesson materials. This release represents nearly 2 years of collaborative lesson development from 54 contributors, and features lessons for using the Unix shell to automate repetitive tasks, modular programming in Python and R, personal and collaborative version control with Git, unit testing, and working with databases. Contributors include:

There Ought to Be a Badge

Tue, 10 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I feel like there should be a Software Carpentry badge for drawing one of these for someone for the first time.
— Amy Brown on Twitter

Mozilla Science Lab Community Call for December 2013

Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The last community call of the season for the Mozilla Science Lab will take place this Thursday, December 12. The call is open to the public and will start at 11 am ET. Call in details can be found on the call etherpad and on the wiki.

News from the SSI

Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Two announcements from the Software Sustainability Institute caught our eye this week:

Their next Collaborations Workshop will be held on March 26-27, 2014, in Oxford. This annual gathering brings together researchers, software developers, managers, funders and more to explore important ideas in software and research and to plant the seeds of interdisciplinary collaborations.

Sixteen new SSI Fellows have been selected: congratulations to them all!

Advanced Python for Biologists

Thu, 05 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When I was writing Python for Biologists (see my previous guest post) I was extremely ruthless about leaving material out. I wanted the book to cover pretty much the same set of language features that I teach in my instructor-led introductory programming courses, which meant I had to limit the scope of the book to what an average, motivated beginner could take in in a full-time week of study. This restriction meant that, while I think the overall balance of material in Python for Biologists is still the most useful set for novice programmers, there are big topics that didn't make the cut. There's no mention of object-oriented or functional programming, nothing about Python's extremely elegant comprehension syntax, and nothing on recursion. As I was writing, I made a list of all these omissions, with the promise to myself that I would write about them some day.

Feedback from Edinburgh

Thu, 05 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On the 3rd of December, Software Carpentry returned to Edinburgh with EPCC hosting a bootcamp as part of its involvement in both the PRACE Advanced Training Centre and The Software Sustainability Institute.

Two to the Fifth New Instructors

Thu, 05 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to welcome 32 new instructors from six different countries to the Software Carpentry team: we look forward to working with them all in 2014 and beyond.

Joshua Ainsley

Camille Avestruz

Philipp Bayer

Nichole Bennett

Cliburn Chan

Emily Davenport

Neal Davis

Gabriel A. Devenyi

Jonah Duckles

Jordan Fish

Julian Garcia

Molly Gibson

Ivan Gonzalez

Joshua Herr

James Hetherington

Chris Holdgraf

Damien Irving

Ted Kirkpatrick

Christina Koch

Igor Kozlov

Luke Lee

Matthew Lightman

Yuxi Luo

David Perez-Suarez

Bill Rowell

Martin Schilling

Raniere Silva

Rachel Slaybaugh

Shoaib Sufi

Gayathri Swaminathan

Amanda Whitlock

April Wright

Software and Research Session at AGU 2013

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A Town Hall Session on "Software and Research" proposed by four Software Sustainability Institute Fellows will be held at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco. If you are around, come and join the session on Thursday, 12 December 2013, at 12:30 PM in Moscone West Room 2004.

WiSE Bootcamp at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Fri, 29 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that our second bootcamp for women in science and engineering will be held at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on April 14-15, 2014. This event is a sequel to our first WiSE bootcamp in Boston this past June, and we hope to once again fill three rooms with over 120 learners. If you are interested, please mark the dates in your calendar—registration will open in January.

DiRAC Driving Test Comes to Edinburgh

Thu, 28 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My colleague Mike Jackson recently posted about the DiRAC driving test. DiRAC is the UK's integrated supercomputing facility for theoretical modelling and HPC-based research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology and is used by numerous researchers with diverse backgrounds. Whilst much of their work is very different, one commonality is that it often requires in-depth technical and software engineering techniques. The idea of the driving test was therefore to ensure that all users have the required knowledge for effective use of the consortium's machines.

Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Scientific Computing

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When I set out on my path into neuroscience, the idea of scientific computing was not even something that came up in passing. However, with little warning, I started spending my days at the computer writing code to analyse brain data.

Cleaning neuroimaging data is a multi-step process and I wanted to bring out the most from the data. To do that, I thought, would require using the best bits from a slew of neuroimaging preprocessing tools. Some were better at removing extraneous noise, while others were better at image morphing. But entering the commands one by one was tedious and error-prone and the formats for the different functions were not always compatible. There had to be a better way. So, writing some kind of code became my only option.

Registration Now Open for Instructor Training Course

Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As announced last week, we are offering a live version of our instructor training course on April 28-30, 2014, at the Mozilla office in Toronto. Registration is now open, and costs only $80 (though participants must cover their own travel and accommodation). Over the course of three days, 36 participants will be introduced to ideas from educational psychology and instructional design, and shown how to use them to teach programming to scientists (and everyone else). It will be the ninth offering of the course, but the first done live, and we hope to see many of you there.

Centre for Doctoral Training at Southampton

Sun, 24 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of three new data science centers in the US comes this: £350 million for PhD training centers in the United Kingdom. One of them, at the University of Southampton, will focus on next-generational computational modelling, and we're looking forward to working with Hans Fangohr, Ian Hawke, Seth Bullock, and everyone else involved. Congratulations!

The Art of Cold Calling (Updated)

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This is an update to an earlier post about how to approach potential bootcamp hosts.

Newly-trained instructors have asked how we go about approaching potential workshop hosts. The short answer is, however we can. The longer answer is, we collect names from journal articles, our Twitter followers, people we bump into at conference, or (increasingly) people who've been through bootcamps, then send emails like the one below. But there's an art to it:

How Software Carpentry Helped Me Write a Paper

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A paper I wrote titled Increasing the Efficiency of a Thermionic Engine Using a Negative Electron Affinity Collector was recently published in the Journal of Applied Physics. I found that applying some of the best practices advocated by the Software Carpentry project eliminated much of the drudgery and tedium which leads to manually induced error in developing the software and composing the manuscript. As a result, I was able to focus more on the scientific problems instead of on tedious bookkeeping-type issues.

What to Say at a Bootcamp, After It's All Said and Done

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm going to be teaching my first ever bootcamp in the coming days. My biggest fear (and there are many!) is that the participants will walk out of the room on the final afternoon and go straight back to their old habits, never taking the time to incorporate what they've learned into their daily workflow. In an attempt to avoid this eventuality, I've planned a rousing concluding address to explain why the content taught at a Software Carpentry bootcamp is so important. It goes something like this...

Moving Forward with Assessment: Interviews

Sun, 17 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We would like to quantify realistic impact after the dust settles from a bootcamp. In particular, we'd like to know how (or whether) Software Carpentry has improved scientists' workflow three months or more after the bootcamp, on the theory that if people are still using things then, they must have found them useful. Our most recent steps toward this goal include obtaining Internal Review Board for Human Subjects Research (IRB) approval through Michigan State University and beginning to recruit volunteers for interviewing at the three month mark.

Thanks from Woods Hole

Sun, 17 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We ran a bootcamp last week at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. It seems to have gone well:

I just want to say that Will and Ross are rock stars. They may have started something big here in Woods Hole, a sort of revolution. They have taught us how to step back from our machines, think about what we are doing, and join forces with our neighbors, We will return to our respective projects on Monday morning in a more efficient and collaborative way. Thank you Software Carpentry.
— James Manning

Citing Us In Your CV

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

People volunteer to teach Software Carpentry bootcamps for many reasons. We're always grateful that they do, and would like them to get all the credit they deserve. Here are some of the ways instructors currently mention us in their CVs:

Creating a Forum

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Every few months, someone asks why we don't have some kind of forum or bulletin board for Software Carpentry. The answer is that we've tried setting one up, but there's never been enough traffic to keep it going.

We're a lot larger now than we used to be, though, so we decided at this week's lab meeting to try again starting in January. Half a dozen people have volunteered to be stewards, and we've opened an issue on GitHub to discuss the features people want, experiences with other forums, and so on. Please add comments to that issue to let us know what you think.

Instructor Training in Three Days

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Update: see this post for information on registration.

We are pleased to announce that we will be running a live version of our online instructor training course on April 28-30, 2014, at the Mozilla office in Toronto. Over those three days, 30 participants will be introduced to ideas from educational psychology and instructional design, and shown how to use them to teach programming to scientists (and others). The course will be free, though we will require a deposit to discourage no-shows and attendees will need to cover their own travel and accommodation costs. Registration will start in January—please keep an eye on this blog for news.

Workshop at SIGCSE 2014

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that Fernando Pérez, Peter Norvig, and Greg Wilson will be running a three-hour workshop on teaching with the IPython Notebook at SIGCSE 2014 in Atlanta on March 5, 2014. We'll assemble notes in this GitHub repository, and we look forward to lots of stimulating discussion.

Data Science Centers at UCB, UW, and NYU

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Yesterday, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (who are Software Carpentry's main backer) announced $37.8M to support new data science centers at UC Berkeley, the University of Washington, and New York University. As UCB's Fernando Perez says in his blog post, it's taken a lot of work to get this off the ground, but the impact will be enormous.

We hope to help. Drew Conway's Venn Diagram shows "Hacking Skills" as one of the three principal components of data science:

Women in Tech Workshop at PyData NYC

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry has always focused on scientists at the graduate level and above, but getting people into the pipeline is even more important as getting them through it. Last week, thanks to backing from NumFOCUS and others, a group of volunteers helped do just that by running Python workshops for high school girls in conjunction with PyData NYC. Judging from Julia Evans' writeup, it was a great success. We look forward to seeing some of their alumni in our classes some day...

Report on the PLOS/Mozilla Code Review Pilot

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Marian Petre and I have written a report on the pilot study of scientific code review done jointly by PLOS and Mozilla; you can read this summary on the Mozilla Science Lab blog, or grab the full report from arXiv. Our thanks to everyone who participated; we hope to be able to do a longer and more in-depth pilot early in 2014.

Our First Bootcamp in Adelaide

Fri, 08 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We ran our first bootcamp at the University of Adelaide from the 24th to the 26th of September 2013. Teachers and helpers came from all over the place: Ben Morris from the University of North Carolina acted as Principal Instructor, along with Jerico Revote from Monash University, Diego Barneche from Macquarie University, Philipp Bayer from the University of Queensland, Nicholas Crouch from Flinders University, and Nathan Watson-Haigh from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), who also acted as the main organizer (thanks for that!).

November 2013 Lab Meeting

Sat, 02 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The first Mozilla Science Lab meeting is happening at 11:00 am Eastern time on Thursday, November 14; its agenda and connection details are on this Etherpad, and you're all invited.

Our monthly lab meeting will start immediately after the MSL meeting (hopefully around noon Eastern time, but it depends how long the MSL meeting runs). As always, we'll run our meeting again at 7:00 pm on the same day to accommodate different time zones, and our agenda is on this Etherpad. We look forward to seeing you then!

Reorganizing

Sat, 02 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

TL;DR: We're going to:

split our lesson materials for absolute beginners and people with some previous experience;

build some tools to manage those materials;

update and clarify the guidelines for instructor training, Software Carpentry's scope, making contributions, and use of our name and logo; and

use GitHub issues and blog posts to manage discussion of details rather than our mailing list.

Software Carpentry's Scope

Sat, 02 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

To help people figure out what's in and what out as we're reorganizing our material, I've drafted an explicit description of our scope inspired in part by AstroPy's idea of an "affiliated" package, which is, "...an astronomy-related Python package that is not part of the astropy core package, but has requested to be included as part of the Astropy project's community."

Domain-specific tools for machine learning and computational fluid dynamics aren't built into LAPACK or NumPy: they're stored in separate repositories and released in their own packages. Similarly, domain-specific lessons don't belong in Software Carpentry. Instead, they should build on our lessons, just as computer vision libraries build on matrix and image libraries. Our examples should be drawn from biology, physics, economics, and similar disciplines in order to appeal to our audience, but everything we include must be accessible to anyone who's done freshman science.

The State of Open Science

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As part of the biannual Mozilla Summit a couple of weeks ago, John Jensen presented a report on the health of the open web. The details were fascinating, and are summed up in a graphic showing how the various layers of openness that we all depend on are doing. I've reproduced it on the left, and summarized my view of how open science is doing by those same measures on the right:

Open Web

User Choice
& Control Social
Activity Economic
Activity Trust

Diversity of Services

Innovation

Content Freedom

Interoperability

Access

Open Science

User Choice
& Control Social
Activity Economic
Activity Trust

Diversity of Services

Innovation

Content Freedom

Interoperability

Access

You Keep Using That Word

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The first Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE) is going to be held in conjunction with Supercomputing 2013 on Sunday, November 17. After reading the papers on the workshop site, my reaction was:

Curriculum Design

Mon, 14 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I spoke with three different people about curriculum design last week, so this seems like a good time to summarize what I know about doing that properly, how we've actually been doing it for Software Carpentry, why the two are different, and what we hope to do in future. To set the stage, I need to talk about the medical program at McMaster University in Ontario.

Python for Biologists

Mon, 14 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Programmers, at least as found in scientific research institutions, generally fall into two groups. There are people with a computer science background, for whom programming is a way of Thinking About The World, and people with a scientific background, for whom programming is a way of Getting Things Done.

Enrolment Figures (Fall 2013)

Wed, 09 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our total enrolment (or enrollment, if you're American) continues to grow steadily: if we stay on the curve below, we'll have our four thousandth learner by the end of this year.

A new UK administrator for Software Carpentry

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to welcome Luke Tweddle of EPCC, The University of Edinburgh, to Software Carpentry. Luke is taking over as UK administrator from Mike Jackson on behalf of The Software Sustainability Institute. In his role, Luke will help UK researchers organise bootcamps for their research groups, institutions and communities; help the local organisers of bootcamps create and customize content; attract instructors and helpers; manage registration; advise on publicity; and provide support in all aspects of organising a bootcamp. If you'd like help organising a bootcamp, or if you're interested in becoming an instructor or helper, please get in touch.

October 2013 Lab Meeting

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

25 people attended our monthly (ish) online lab meeting yesterday, during which we announced and discussed a wide variety of topics. The detailed summary is below the fold, but the key action items are:

Please take a moment to read Kaitlin Thaney's post about what's going on with the Mozilla Science Lab. We hope to announce some new projects at MozFest in London in a couple of weeks, and more shortly after that.

There's been a flurry of pull requests and comments on lesson material in the past couple of weeks, which is great news for our sustainability. To keep the momentum going, please either send at least one pull request on the teaching materials, or make at least one comment on someone else's pull request, by Monday Oct 14.

In aid of this, please get in touch if you're willing to spend a bit of time in the next couple of weeks helping instructors-in-training learn a bit more about GitHub and pull requests.

Finally, please each introduce us to one new potential bootcamp host: we have a bunch of new instructors, so we're now able to take on more load.

Our Biggest Bootcamp Ever at PyCon 2014

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thanks to the generous support of the Python Software Foundation, we will be running our biggest bootcamp ever in conjunction with PyCon 2014 in Montreal on April 14-15, 2014. We will have two rooms with seating for 50 people and two more with seating for 80, so our plan is to run three regular bootcamps for people of varying skill levels, and one more "master class" for scientists who are ready to learn more advanced topics.

Steven Koenig: What I've Learned

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have been a PhD student at Technische Universität München, Germany since May 2012. My research interest is biopolymers: how to produce them, and what to do with them. Where computers come into play? Literally everywhere. And what I need Software Carpentry for? Literally everything.

Bootcamp Student Composition by Domain

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Recently I was challenged to show that computational science is important to biologists, and, more importantly, that biologists care about learning how to develop quality software. I am not a biologist. While I find the subject fascinating I cannot make any broad claims on the topic or hope to speak for all biologists. So I turned to Software Carpentry.

My experience teaching Software Carpentry and related bootcamps has been that biologists are always a significant portion of the student population. In order to demonstrate this I asked to have access to anonymized answers to part of the pre-assessment survey. Specifically, I was interested in the "Which of the following most closely aligns with your primary discipline?" question. With a big assist from Amy Brown I obtained the data I was looking for.

The Future: Today

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Two papers appeared on my radar this week that give a taste of the kind of science we want everyone to be able to do in five years' time. The first, by Aide et al, is "Real-time bioacoustics monitoring and automated species identification"; the second, by Omberg et al, is "Enabling transparent and collaborative computational analysis of 12 tumor types within The Cancer Genome Atlas". They're both excellent pieces of 21st Century science, and they caught my eye because:

They're open access: I was able to read them on the off chance that they'd be interesting.

They show how a few scientists with serious software skills can accelerate the research of hundreds of others, provided those others have a few skills themselves.

Code and Data for the Social Sciences

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro have written an excellent guide "Code and Data in the Social Sciences". It's short (only 38 pages), very readable, and full of practical advice for scientists of all stripes:

Michael Hansen: What I've Learned

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My first exposure to Software Carpentry was during a bootcamp at Indiana University in March of 2012. I volunteered to be a helper, and found myself really enjoying helping motivated students learn how to incorporate the material into their own research. I've since volunteered as an instructor at a handful of other bootcamps (including one at IU again this past summer). In this post, I'll briefly discuss some "lessons learned" from Software Carpentry.

How Much Testing Is Enough?

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When we teach testing, we are sometimes asked, "How much is enough?" The short answer is, "It depends." To help construct a longer answer, we'd like to find out how much testing scientists do in other contexts. For example, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) are two of the instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope. During Cycle 21 (which starts this month, and runs for about a year), they will spend roughly 25% and 67% of their time respectively on calibration:

SSI Fellowship Programme 2014

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Sustainability Institute is offering Fellowships with £3000 funding for travel, collaboration and running events, including Software Carpentry bootcamps. The Fellowship Programme 2014 recognises outstanding UK-based researchers who use and develop software. Online applications are open until September 27th, 2013 at 5:00 PM BST.

Lex Nederbragt: What I've Learned

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am a biologist with no formal training in Computational Science. A couple of years ago, the increasing size of my data forced me to stop using Excel, and switch to the Unix command line and scripting for my analyses. In the process, I learned what I needed by mostly by just doing it, but also from books, websites, and of course google.

Almost exactly one year ago, I attended a Software Carpentry bootcamp. I had heard about Software Carpentry and its bootcamps through twitter, started following their blog and became convinced that this was something I wanted to attend. At some point, I fired off an email to Software Carpentry asking what it would take to have a bootcamp at our university, the University of Oslo in Norway. The answer came down to 'get us a room and advertise the event, and we'll provide teachers'. This, in fact, was what happened, and as teachers, we got Mr Software Carpentry himself, Greg Wilson, who taught together with a local teacher (Hans Petter Langtangen).

Sarah Supp: What I've Learned

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have to admit, that when I first decided I was going to learn programming skills, it was for academic survival. I was decidedly not excited about taking a course. As a graduate student, I was lucky that Utah State University had a Programming for Biologists class, taught by Ethan White. Most universities still lack the infrastructure to teach these skills to scientists, outside of signing up for courses in the computer science department. Within the first week, I learned that programming is really like playing a series of logic games, and that it could actually be quite fun. Aside from practical skills, the most important thing I learned was not to be intimidated by computational problems.

Software Skills and Hummingbird Diversity

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am an ecologist. Traditionally, many ecologists spend part of the year outdoors, in the field, to collect data, and then spend the rest of the year analyzing that data and writing papers. With new sensors that passively collect audio, weather, or geolocation data, even a single field season can yield massive amounts of data. Add to that the pressing need for more long-term data (aggregating multiple years) and the problem of managing and analyzing the data becomes increasingly difficult for scientists without basic computational skill sets or strong computational collaborators.

Scientific Computing at AIMS

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Close on the heels of another bootcamp in Madison, WI, for the past two weeks I had the pleasure of teaching a 30 hour scientific computing course at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Cape Town, South Africa. The course was an expansion and refactor of Software Carpentry material to fit the AIMS need. You can find the repository of source material here.

I could gush about how I fell in love with Cape Town, the unexpected preponderance of vegan cafes in Muizenberg, the sea, the sand, the mountains, and la dolce vita I am otherwise used to from Santa Barbara. I will not. AIMS is about the students. Let's examine them after a brief tour of AIMS itself.

Konrad Hinsen: What I've Learned

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

All of my research has been based on computation, starting with my Master's thesis (1989) on the dynamics of colloidal suspensions. Back then, computational physics concentrated on simple systems, and scientists usually wrote their own simple software from scratch. When I started to work on biomolecular simulations five years later, I discovered the sad state of non-trivial scientific software, written by generations of PhD students and postdocs who learned Fortran "on the job" and had the prime goal of getting their research project done with a minimum of programming effort.

Diego Barneche: What I've Learned

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have been a PhD student @ Macquarie University since late 2011. I'm broadly interested in global patterns of biological diversity, macroevolution, statistical and mathematical modelling as well as programming for science (mostly R based but hoping to get into Python very soon). At present I'm focused on quantitative niche-based approaches that can better bridge macroecology and macroevolution, mainly through theoretical approaches such as the Metabolic Theory of Ecology and stochastic population dynamics. I've recently become an instructor for the Software Carpentry group which taught me how to combine teaching, which is an old passion, and improving my programming skills and writing better scientific code, which is something newer.

Introducing Citation Files

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Robin Wilson, of the University of Southampton, recently posted a note on the Software Sustainability Institute's blog about CITATION files. In brief, he (and we) would like to encourage scientific programmers to put a plain text file called CITATION in the root directory of each project, and to use it to tell readers how best to cite that software. The example Robin gives is:

Our Plan for the Science Lab

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Kaitlin Thaney, the recently-appointed Director of the Mozilla Science Lab, recently posted some thoughts about the lab's mission and plans. Long story short, its focus is to improve communication and interoperability in open science—paraphrasing William Gibson, the future is already here, but the pieces don't play nicely with each other yet, so the lab is going to help make and strengthen social and technical connections. If you have thoughts on how to accelerate this, we'd like to hear from you.

Share Your Code With the Molecular Ecologist Blog

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Almost everyone has written or needed code to accomplish a task. Whether it is to automate a process or create the perfect figure, these scripts are useful, yet do not always merit publication. However, sharing these more widely would save the rest of the community from repeating the effort.

To help get all this code into the public sphere, the Molecular Ecologist blog is starting a new series of posts: anyone can send in a piece describing their code, and we'll put it up on the blog. The code itself will be placed on our GitHub page for easier access.

Submissions can be sent to molecularecologist@gmail.com and viewed at https://github.com/TheMolecularEcologist. Or if you are already on GitHub, join our organization to submit and maintain your code in that manner. More detailed information can be found on the blog itself.

Teaching Librarians at Harvard

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last weekend, we ran a bootcamp at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy aimed primarily at librarians. It was a bit of a new venture for us, and there were some hiccups (some things were taught too fast, some instructors used too much jargon), but overall it seems to have gone well, and we hope to do more like this soon.

Gerry Walden: Bootcamp...for Librarians!

Philip Guo: Teaching Librarians Programming

Matthew Rutley: Teaching Python at Harvard with Software Carpentry

Jonathan Dursi Joins Compute Canada

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jonathan Dursi, a long-time supporter of Software Carpentry and one of our first instructors, has been named Interim Chief Technology Officer for Compute Canada. Congratulations!

Open Access Button Hackathon is Sept 7-8

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Millions of people a day are denied access to the research they both need and paid for because of paywalls. It doesn't have to be like this, but we need your help to change it. We're making a tool to help change the system called the Open Access Button. The button is a browser-based tool which tracks every time someone is denied access to a paper. We then display this, along with the person's location, profession, and story on a real time, worldwide, interactive map of the problem.

It gets better though. While creating pressure to open up scholarly and scientific research, we help people work within the current broken system by helping them get access to the paper they need. We started building a prototype at the BMJ Hack Weekend, and came third place. But we're not finished yet and our launch is coming up fast! To help build it we're hosting a hackathon on September 7-8 of September in London. If you're a developer, have an eye for design or both we'd love to see you.

If you're not in the UK, you can join in from anywhere in the world—just sign up. And if you want any more information about the project, email us at oabutton@gmail.com or read more about the project.

August 2013 Lab Meeting

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held another of our semi-regular online lab meetings yesterday, complete with a theme song. We ran the meeting twice to accommodate different time zones; those present were:

Instructor Training Statistics

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We started running an online training course for Software Carpentry instructors last fall. It's been going pretty well:

72 people signed up for the four rounds we ran between September 2012 and March 2013; 41 of them completed.

39 enrolled in the fifth round that started in May 2013; we expect one third to complete it over the next couple of weeks.

23 enrolled in the sixth round that started this month.

An average completion rate of 40% is pretty low compared to most university courses, but it compares favorably with the 5-10% completion rates of most MOOCs, and 9 of the 29 who dropped out of the first four rounds re-enrolled in a later round. Almost everyone who tells us why they dropped out blames real life getting in the way, but there's undoubtedly sampling bias in that: some people just disappear and stop responding to email.

The curriculum is now pretty stable (though we'll continue to tweak it based on feedback from learners and lab meetings), and feedback from people who've gone through it has mostly been positive. If you'd like to take part in a future round, please get in touch.

Two Cheers for GitHub

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

There's been a micro-flurry of excitement in the scientific world about GitHub's recent announcement that they will now render tabular text files (i.e., CSV and TSV) on their site. Coming on the heels of their support for GeoJSON, this is still more evidence that they're serious about becoming a platform for working with data.

So why only two cheers? Because they're going about it in the wrong way, and as a consequence, they'll deliver a lot less value than they could, a lot later than they could.

What Makes Good Code Good at INTECOL13

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 21st August, I attended INTECOL13 in London's Docklands. The 11th International Congress of Ecology, hosted by the British Ecological Society and INTECOL, is one of the world's premier conference for ecologists.

At the invitation of Matthew Smith from the BES Computational Ecology Specialist Interest Group and Microsoft Research, and Greg Wilson from Software Carpentry, I ran the latest instalment of The Software Sustainability Institute's "what makes good code good" discussions...

Video Interviews from SESYNC Workshop

Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The folks at SESYNC interviewed Titus Brown, Kaitlin Thaney, and Greg Wilson while they were in town for a workshop a few weeks ago, and the video is now up on their web site. It's a nice, short summary of the problem we're trying to solve and the approaches we're taking.

Creating Assessments and What to do With the Data

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our new assessment questionnaires are up for your review, so I thought I'd talk a little bit about the work behind the scenes, and some lessons learned. Over the past couple months I've had the opportunity to interview bootcamp participants who attended the Michigan State University Software Carpentry Bootcamp a little over one year ago, May of 2012. The goal for interviews were two-fold: develop assessment questionnaires, and gather data.

August 2013 Lab Meeting

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We will have an online lab meeting on Thursday, August 22, 2013 to discuss changes to the website, plans for the coming few months, and common questions that really ought to be answered in the FAQ or somewhere else. Everyone is welcome to join in; to do so, head over to this Etherpad at either 11:00 or 19:00 Toronto time, and hop on the conference call described there as well. (We're holding the same meeting twice to accommodate different time zones; please try to sign in a few minutes before the top of the hour so that we can start more or less on time. Please also check the World Clock Meeting Planner to see when the times listed are for you.)

Bootcamp Questionnaires

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thanks to some hard work by Jory Schossau and others, we have developed three standard questionnaires for bootcamp participants:

Pre-assessment for Learners

Post-assessment for Learners

Post-assessment for Instructors

We hope to deploy these questionnaires starting in September, so we would be very grateful for feedback. Do you understand what we're asking? Do the responses provided include the answer you would give? As an instructor, would you find it useful to know these things about your learners before a bootcamp started? And what have we missed entirely?

Our New Operations Guide

Sun, 18 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Amy Brown, our indefatigable administrator, has put together some checklists for people involved in organizing and running bootcamps:

Summary of Host Survey

Wed, 14 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Earlier this summer, we asked people who had hosted Software Carpentry bootcamps to give us some retrospective feedback. Their answers are summarized below, and we'll be adjusting our operations in response.

How much time did you put into organizing your bootcamp?

Answers were split evenly between "a day or two" and "several days".

What was the total cost?

With the exception of our Australian double-header (where travel costs were clearly an outlier), the answers were in the $700-3000 range.

Would you like to host another one?

22 said "yes", 3 said "no", and 6 can't decide yet.

How do you feel about asking bootcamps to contribute $1500 toward central overheads?

I support this approach 12

I support this approach, but not at this price 5

I am neutral 7

I am opposed to this approach 3

What level and format would you prefer?

Complete beginners / 2 days 7

Complete beginners / 3 days 5

Intermediates / 2 days 13

Intermediates / 3 days 2

Other 3

What We Cover in Instructor Training

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The sixth round of our online training class for Software Carpentry instructors is kicking off this week with 28 participants. Our main text is How Learning Works, an up-to-date summary of research results in educational psychology and instructional design, along with the chapter Mark Guzdial wrote for Making Software explaining why teaching programming is hard. Over the next 14 weeks, participants will work through both, and do the following:

Report on the Indiana Bootcamp

Fri, 26 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Mike Hansen, Jeff Shelton, and Aleksandra Pawlik posted a summary of their recent bootcamp at Indiana University on the Software Sustainability Institute blog, which we've reposted below. It includes some reflections on what works and what doesn't when using IPython Notebooks for teaching, and similarly with virtual machines.

Miscellaneous Videos

Sat, 20 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

People have been talking about Software Carpentry in a bunch of different venues recently. Katy Huff and Matt Davis did a tutorial at SciPy'13 that was captured in these three videos; Damien Irving gave a talk at PyCon Australia; Luis Figueira talked about learning how to learn; and Ariel Rokem and Shreyas Cholia talked about their experiences teaching in New Zealand in a recent Mozilla community call. (You need to enter a name—any will do—on the launch page for the recording, and then scroll ahead manually to 00:04:54 to hear them because the Flash player won't let me hyperlink directly to a particular time mark. The irony of both hasn't escaped us...)

The Fourteenth Anniversary

Fri, 19 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Fourteen years ago this October, I had the good fortune to attend a one-day workshop titled Open Source/Open Science at Brookhaven National Laboratory. A lot of the tools we work with have changed since then, but the central message remains the same: when it comes to science, the opposite of "open" isn't "closed" — it's "broken".

Welcome Our New Instructors

Fri, 19 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're very pleased to welcome a dozen new instructors to the Software Carpentry team:

Diego Barneche

John Blischak

Daniel Falster

Rich FitzJohn

Steven Koenig

Ben Morris

Randy Olson

Karthik Ram

Jory Schossau

Will Trimble

Bogdan Vera

Jens von der Linden

Data Science Workflows

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Half a dozen of us got together yesterday morning to chat about The Bad Data Handbook, what the curriculum for a Software Carpentry-style bootcamp for data scientists ought to be, and a bunch of other things. The Etherpad is unfortunately down right now, so you can't read David Flanders' excellent notes, but as an outcome, I'd like to ask you all to do a bit of homework.

DiRAC Driving Test Ready to Roll

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Since June 2012, The Software Sustainability Institute and Software Carpentry have been working with the DiRAC consortium to develop a "driving test" or basic software skills aptitude test. The test is now ready to be rolled out across DiRAC.

Feedback from Bath

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This week saw Software Carpentry head to Bath in England's South-West. The bootcamp was organised by Alex Chartier, as part of his role as a fellow of The Software Sustainability Institute. Chris Woods from the University of Bristol, joined me as co-instructor, making his bootcamp instructing debut.

Biological Computing User Stories

Wed, 17 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Three years ago, when we rebooted Software Carpentry, we wrote some brief descriptions of our intended audience and how we thought we could help them. One of the exercises we at the SESYNC meeting last week (described briefly here) was to write some similar before-and-after stories for biologists who do computing. The descriptions we got are listed below; some of my takeaways are:

Pretty much everyone's starting point is Excel...

The data hand-off problem is as important as the data processing problem.

The stories themselves are listed below—we'd like to hear what resonates and what's missing.

Computational Competence for Biologists

Tue, 16 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On July 8 and 9, I had the pleasure of taking part in a two-day workshop at SESYNC to discuss what we ought to teach biologists about computing. It was a relatively small meeting, but the participants spanned the range from computer scientists and systems engineers to bioinformaticians, field biologists, and a few odd ducks like me.

eResearch New Zealand 2013 Bootcamp Roundup

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

New Zealand is an amazing place - incredibly beautiful, with a very friendly vibe. We (Ariel Rokem and Shreyas Cholia) had the privilege of traveling all the way from California, to run a bootcamp down in Christchurch, as part of the eResearch NZ 2013 conference.

The Oslo Bootcamp

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Karin Lagesen writes:

The bootcamp took place at the University Library at the main campus of the University of Oslo. We had set a limit at 40 people, and we had a total of 32 attendees signing up. Sign-up was in the beginning quite slow, and we were actually at one time wondering whether we would have to cancel the event. But, as we got into June sign-ups picked up. We had decided to ask people to pay $20 to sign up (which was subsequently converted into coffee) and this might have caused people to not sign up until they were sure they could join. We ended up with 27 actual attendees the first day and 25 on the second day. The attendees were for the most part related to biology in some way—not strange considering we had advertised it in connection with the Galaxy 2013 community conference and on several bioinformatics related email lists. Also, most of them were either doing their PhDs or working on a post-doc. Both Lex and I feared lots of issues with installation, but even though the pre-bootcamp survey showed that almost half of the attendees were bringing Windows laptops things went surprisingly smoothly.

Workshop for e-Infrastructure Trainers

Sat, 06 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Simon Hettrick, of the Software Sustainability Institute, recently posted this:

If you have an interest in training researchers how to use computing, software or data, you should attend the workshop for e-Infrastructure trainers on 14 August 2013 at the newly opened Hartree Centre.

For more information, please see the full announcement.

Sloan Foundation Proposal Round 2

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

From our "better late than never" department: we submitted a proposal to the Sloan Foundation last August to create what we're now calling the Mozilla Science Lab. As regular readers already know, it was accepted; we're now more than six months into the project, so in keeping with our own earlier practice, and with the examples of ImpactStory, rOpenSci, NISO, and Dr. Holly Blik, I'm posting the proposal here. I hope it's useful to other people seeking funding for ventures like ours, and I'd be happy to answer questions.

WiSE Bootcamp Roundup

Fri, 05 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been over a week since our first bootcamp for women in science and engineering wrapped up in Boston, and feedback has been coming in pretty steadily. In no particular order:

After WISE

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our first bootcamp for women in science and engineering is just wrapping up in Boston. It's gone very well—we'll be posting a summary soon, but in the meanwhile, here are a few things attendees can do as follow-up:

Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

With contributions from:

Azalee Bostroem (Space Telescope Science Institute)

Chris Cannam (Queen Mary, University of London)

Stephen Crouch (Software Sustainability Institute)

Matt Davis (Space Telescope Science Institute)

Luis Figueira (Queen Mary, University of London)

Richard "Tommy" Guy (Wave Accounting)

Edmund Hart (University of British Columbia)

Neil Chue Hong (Software Sustainability Institute)

Katy Huff (University of Wisconsin)

Michael Jackson (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre)

W. Trevor King (Drexel University)

Justin Kitzes (University of California, Berkeley)

Stephen McGough (University of Newcastle)

Lex Nederbragt (University of Oslo)

Tracy Teal (Michigan State University)

Ben Waugh (University College London)

Lynne J. Williams (Rotman Research Institute)

Ethan White (Utah State University)

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, Software Carpentry has evolved from a week-long training course at the US national laboratories into a worldwide volunteer effort to raise standards in scientific computing. This article explains what we have learned along the way the challenges we now face, and our plans for the future.

The Twelve Bar Blues of Open Science

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Most musicians can play along with a twelve-bar blues once they know what the key and tempo are. Many kinds of scientific work are equally well structured: the results aren't predictable—it wouldn't be research if they were—but the equipment setup, sample preparation, note-taking, statistics, and write-up are (mostly) structured in ways that other scientists are familiar with. This lets them pick up each other's projects more quickly; it also gives scientists more time to do what's unique about a particular project because they don't have to spend time thinking about the things that aren't.

UMass Amherst Bootcamp: Perspective from a Helper

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Background

A few weeks ago, I helped out with the Software Carpentry bootcamp at UMass Amherst. It was my first time being a helper. Previously, my exposure to Software Carpentry was the MOOC style online Spring 2011 class, which I took during physics graduate school. I was among the 5-10% of students to finish the course. The low completion rate was one of the reasons Software Carpentry switched to doing live, on-site bootcamps.

A couple years later, I got in touch with Greg Wilson and he mentioned that there was a bootcamp coming up in my area. He invited me to join as a helper, I agreed, and I suddenly found myself on several mailing lists. I had no idea what to expect, but the bootcamp turned out to be quite fun and I met many interesting people—including a core Python developer.

Post bootcamp, I had many thoughts about the logistics and teaching. The staff invited me to write these up in a blog post.

Salk Institute Feedback

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Preston Holmes recently posted a detailed analysis of his experiences helping out at our Salk Institute bootcamp. It contains a lot of insights, and is well worth reading.

Bootcamp in Bristol, September 12-13, 2013

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our bootcamp at the University of Bristol on September 12-13, 2013, is now open for registration. Please register here if you would like to take part.

Announcing the Mozilla Science Lab

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're very excited to announce the launch of the Mozilla Science Lab, a new initiative that will help researchers around the world use the open web to shape science's future. The Science Lab will foster dialog between the open web community and scientific researchers. Together they'll share ideas, tools, and best practices for using next-generation web solutions to solve real problems in science, and explore ways to make research more agile and collaborative.

June 2013 Lab Meeting

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Earlier this week, Software Carpentry had its first online lab meeting since October 2012. In attendance were:

North Carolina Bootcamps

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last month, we held two Software Carpentry workshops back-to-back in Durham, North Carolina, one at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and a second organized by Cliburn Chan for the biostats group at Duke just three days later. These workshops were taught by Jenny Bryan, Elliott Hauser, and myself with Karen Cranston teaching as well at NESCent. The workshops were both somewhat atypical: NESCent was a smaller workshop (only 11 participants) who work together and share an interest in evolutionary biology, and at both NESCent and Duke we presented in R rather than Python. Overall, both workshops were very successful, and I learned a lot, both about R and teaching a Software Carpentry workshop.

Running Bootcamps

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been eighteen months since we started running two-day bootcamps. We've grown rapidly:

Thoughts on an Advanced Bootcamp at Boulder

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Alex Viana and myself recently wrapped up a bootcamp at the National Center for Atmosphere Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. It was a lesson in the advantages of being light on your feet when it comes to teaching for Software Carpentry. Our normal audience tends to be scientists with varying degrees of familiarity with the tools that we teach. This time we taught about 20 people all of whom were experience software engineers, some of whom had probably been programming longer than Alex or I had been alive. We had planned on starting the morning with some shell and then moving into Git. A quick survey of the room found that everyone was well versed in the shell so we abandoned that lesson all together and went straight to teaching Git.

Amsterdam Bootcamp

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What started out as an unexpected proposal from Greg became very much alive on May 2nd, as 40 physicists poured into the classroom at VU University Amsterdam and started up their laptops. After introducing the teachers (Stefano Cozzini and Justin Ely) and the helpers, we were off: the very first Software Carpentry bootcamp in the Netherlands!

In the months leading up to the bootcamp, I had been surprised at the sense of timeliness the bootcamp generated. People here clearly see the need for computational training, most importantly young scientists themselves—available tickets were mostly gone within a week.

Feedback and Experiences from Southampton

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have recently organised a bootcamp at the University of Southampton, as part of my Software Sustainability Institute fellowship. I hadn't actually attended a bootcamp before (I was meant to, but unfortunately had to cancel) so it was a little nerve-wracking doing all of the organising - it all worked out well in the end though.

From a Helper to an Instructor

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This blog post is actually a bit overdue as the first time I instructed at a Software Carpentry bootcamp was over a month ago in Manchester. However, as now I had an opportunity to teach twice (recently in Krakow), this gives me more credit to share my experience of taking a step up from being a helper to being an instructor.

Software Carpentry at INTECOL13

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On 21st August 2013, we'll be attending INTECOL13 in London's Docklands. The 11th International Congress of Ecology, hosted by the British Ecological Society and INTECOL, is one of the world's premier conference for ecologists. At the invitation of Matthew Smith of the BES Computational Ecology Specialist Interest Group and Microsoft Research, Software Carpentry and The Software Sustainability Institute have a talk and a session.

Krakow Bootcamp Experience

Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On the weekend of 18th and 19th May Krakow saw the first Software Carpentry bootcamp. The main organiser was Damian Marchewka from the PhD students' association at the Jagiellonian University. Karin Lagesen came from Oslo to co-teach with me, and four local helpers: Eryk Ciepiela, Maciej Czuchry, Klemens Noga from ACC Cyfronet and Leszek Tarkowski from Infotraining provided great support throughout the whole bootcamp. There were 28 attendees - most of them postgraduate students and several faculty members. They represented a range of disciplines from mathematics and theoretical physics to biology, genetics and medicine.

The Great Licenceathon

Thu, 30 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The Software Sustainability Institute's Simon Hettrick writes:

Intellectual Property (IP) is a thorny issue in academia, generally because people don't know who owns what. There's a lot of hearsay, rumour and—frankly—misunderstanding about IP ownership, so we've decided to run an experiment. And we're going to need some guinea pigs…
…
To get a better understanding of how academia deals with IP ownership, we're running The Great Licenceathon. This will see people at different organisations working out who owns their IP. They'll then blog about their experiences and we'll pick through those blogs to see whether there's some common lessons we can learn.
…
If you want to know who owns your IP, and you have time to ask a few questions at your organisation, then please get in touch.

What Does Done Look Like?

Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

After recent posts about where we are, our infrastructure, and our plans for the summer break, it seems like a good time to raise our sights and ask how we want Software Carpentry to run once it's all grown up, and what the practice of science will look like when every grad student in the world goes through our training. (Pause for maniacal supervillain laugh.)

What Does Victory Look Like?

Sun, 26 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A lot of changes are happening to science as I write this. Crowdsourcing, open reviews, citeable data, new ways to measure contributions, automatically tracking the provenance of every calculation—each has emerged from its chrysalis and is just waiting for its wings to dry so that it can take flight.

Our job is to give scientists the skills they need to nurture these ideas. For the last post in this series, I'd therefore like to talk about what victory will look like—i.e., how scientists' lives will be different if and when the things we teach become as routine as doing statistics. My vision is simple:

Our Infrastructure

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As described in these posts from May, and October 2012 (which build on this one from April 2012), we use a complicated collection of tools to manage our work:

Browsercast

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

David Wolever (a freelance developer here in Toronto) has released the first version of BrowserCast, an IPython Notebook plugin that allows you to synchronize a voice-over soundtrack with a step-by-step reveal of a notebook, thereby creating a screencast-style presentation in the browser. He has created two traditional (video) screencasts showing why BrowserCast is cool and how to create a presentation with BrowserCast, but if you really want to get a feel for it, you can use the bookmarklet that lets you give it a try with your own notebooks, or grab the plugin from GitHub and take it for a test drive.

Feedback from the Oxford DTCs

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Having helped at two previous bootcamps (Oxford last year and UCL last month), a couple of weeks ago I had my first attempt at organising one at the University of Oxford, primarily aimed at students from the Doctoral Training Centres. Mario Antonioletti and Shoaib Sufi from the Software Sustainability Institute kindly did most of the instructing (I only ran two sessions), and Mario has already written a blog post with his perspective. Here I want to report the feedback we received from attendees and give some of my thoughts on the experience.

Planning for the Break

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We've had a busy nine months: 55 bootcamps since we restarted bootcamps last September, with 19 more in the next two months. We're taking a break then to catch our breath: we only have one event scheduled between mid-July and the end of August, which will give us time to reorganize our online materials and figure out what we're going to do in 2013-14. The list below outlines things that I'd like to see done during that break. I'm sure you have others; I'd be grateful if you'd add them as comments, along with your thoughts on things we shouldn't do, or should do differently.

Where We Are (More or Less)

Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In January 2012, John Cook posted this to his widely-read blog:

In a review of linear programming solvers from 1987 to 2002, Bob Bixby says that solvers benefited as much from algorithm improvements as from Moore's law: "Three orders of magnitude in machine speed and three orders of magnitude in algorithmic speed add up to six orders of magnitude in solving power. A model that might have taken a year to solve 10 years ago can now solve in less than 30 seconds."

Experiences with the Oxford DTCs

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Mario Antonioletti has posted his experiences on being a first-time instructor at our bootcamp for the Oxford doctoral training centres, our second in Oxford, last week.

Wrapping Up at UC Davis

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jenna Lang has posted a great wrap-up on the bootcamp at UC Davis — with Python cookies!

Announcing Hack4ac

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hack4ac is a one-day hackathon in London, England, on July 6. Its goals are:

Demonstrate the value of the CC-BY licence within academia. We are interested in supporting innovations around and on top of the literature.

Reach out to academics who are keen to learn or improve their programming skills to better their research. We're especially interested in academics who have never coded before.

It looks like fun—if you're in the area and interested in getting involved, they'd be happy to have you there.

Stanford Bootcamp Recap

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On May 6th-7th, we hosted a bootcamp at Stanford University. Participants were students, post-docs and staff affiliated with the Center for Neurobiological and Cognitive Imaging and the Neuroscience Graduate Program and both units provided support for the workshop. Bob Dougherty, the research director at the CNI, helped raise a substantial portion of the funds to support the bootcamp (coffee!) and Prof. Miriam Goodman, from the Department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, helped to get the neuroscience program on board and to secure additional funding from that program. Prof. Goodman was a participant in a SWC bootcamp at Berkeley last year and was eager to get SWC to Stanford. Instructors were Paul Ivanov, Bernhard Konrad and myself.

A Mention in Science Careers

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Vijee Venkatraman has written a good article for Science Careers titled "When All Science Becomes Data Science", which mentions Software Carpentry.

Git vs. Subversion and Feedback in General

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry's mission is to help scientists teach other scientists how to be better programmers. If we want to do that successfully, we need to be scientists ourselves. In particular, we need to base what we teach on evidence, not anecdotes or personal preferences.

For example: we taught Git at the Toronto bootcamp last week, and once again I think our learners would have absorbed more if we'd taught Subversion. Why? Well, take a look at this diagram by Oliver Steele (which I found on this page written by Nick Quaranto):

Feature	In-person	Online
networking	excellent	poor to very good
Etherpad use	poor	excellent
displayed on screen	the web? slides?	the instructor webcast view of other learners
time commitment	prep + class time + travel + paperwork	prep + class time
private communication	in-person	Slack & email
technical difficulties	medium	high

	Reading Lesson(s)	Writing Exercise	Discussion Session	Lesson Demo	Total
	1.0	0.5	2.0	0.5	4.0
	5.0	1.0	2.0	1.0	9.0
	5.0	3.0	2.0	3.5	13.5
	2.0	0.5	1.0	1.0	4.5
	10.0	3.0	1.0	5.0	19.0
	5.0	2.0	1.0	3.0	11.0
	1.0	2.5	1.0	10.0	14.5
	16.0	4.0	4.0	8.0	32.0
	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.5	4.5
	2.0	1.0	2.0	2.0	7.0
	1.0	0.5	1.5	0.5	3.5
	5.0	2.0	2.0	1.0	10.0
	7.0	2.0	2.0	1.0	12.0
	3.0	0.5	2.0	1.5	7.0
	3.5	1.0	1.0	2.5	8.0
	1.0	1.0	2.0	3.5	7.5
	6.0	1.0	2.0	3.0	12.0
	2.5	1.0	1.0	2.0	6.5
	5.5	1.0	2.5	3.0	12.0
	2.0	2.0	1.5	2.0	7.5
	10.0	2.5	3.0	1.5	17.0
	5.0	1.0	4.0	1.5	11.5
	5.0	3.0	2.0	0.5	10.5
	6.0	2.0	1.5	1.0	10.5
	2.5	3.5	2.0	5.0	13.0
	1.5	0.5	0.8	2.5	5.3
Min	1.0	0.5	0.8	0.5	3.5
Ave	4.4	1.7	1.8	2.6	10.5
Median	4.3	1.0	2.0	2.0	10.3
Max	16.0	4.0	4.0	10.0	32.0

Student	Project	Mentors
Bhargav Srinivasa	Dynamic Topic Models for Gensim	Lev Konstantinovskiy, Radim Rehurek and Devasena Inupakutika
Chris Medrela	Manage workflow for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry instructor training	Greg Wilson and Piotr Banaszkiewicz
Akash Goel	Upgrade to datapackage.json standard for EcoData Retriever	Henry Senyondo and Ethan White
Patrick Kofod Mogensen	Improving the state of Optim.jl for JuliaOpt	Miles Lubin
Prerit Garg	Result-aggregation server for the installation-test scripts for Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry	Piotr Banaszkiewicz and Raniere Silva
Ramchandran Muthukumar	Presolve Routines for LP and SDP within Convex.jl for JuliaOpt	Madeleine Udell
Hannah Aizenman	Categorical Axis for matplotlib	Michael Droettboom and Thomas Caswell

Highlights:	Do you want to help shape the future of Software Carpentry? The Software Carpentry Foundation is now calling for volunteers to serve on various standing committees.
	NumFOCUS has been selected as a Google Summer of Code mentoring organisation. Students can apply between 16 and 27 March 2015.
	A Contributor Covenant was added to our lessons and other repositories to promote a harassment-free environment for contribution to Software Carpentry.
Resources:	An early release version of Bioinformatics Data Skills is available via O'Reilly. Vince Buffalo's book is highly recommended for both novice and experienced bioinformaticians.
Opportunities:	Scientific Software Engineer positions are available at the UK Met Office
Changes:	Daisie Huang will be taking over from Jess Hamrick to maintain our Git lessons with Ivan Gonzalez. Our thanks to Jess for all her help.

Conversations:	How do you fund your SWC workshops? Please join the conversation.
	Should we remove old material when adding new in order to keep the lessons manageable? Should people have to teach the standard material a couple of times before introducing their own? Please contribute your ideas.
Resources:	Remember to sign up for Software Carpentry's mailing lists. They are rich resources for scientific computing.
	Great R cheat sheets available at RStudio include sheets for dplyr, tidyr, Shiny, and R Markdown.
	A preview release of RStudio v0.99.315 is now available for testing and feedback. New features include for example the removal of the 1K row limit in Data Viewer.
	IPython 3.0 has been released - congratulations to the whole team.
	So you think you can data? The rOpenSci Hackathon is going to host a friendly data challenge between Hadley Wickham and Wes McKinney - please follow this GitHub issue for news.

Quotable:	"This is @swcarpentry: try to teach enough in two days that things people find on the internet make a little more sense." @jiffyclub

Highlights:	We're looking for mentors and projects for Google Summer of Code: please get in touch if you have questions or suggestions.
	Research Bazaar was again a highlight on Twitter this week, and Damien Irving summarised plans for Software Carpentry in Australia and New Zealand.
Conversations:	An interesting conversation about "Library Carpentry" started by James Baker took place on Twitter.
New resources:	A new Browsercast tutorial "Creating a workshop website" was published. Please let us know if you have any comments.
	An early release of "Effective Computation in Physics" has been made available. The book is relevant to scientists of all kinds
Opportunities:	SciPy call for participation is open. Please submit your proposal for tutorials, talks, or posters.
	Call for Data Science Fellow applications through the Berkley Institute for Data Science is now open.

Day 1 AM:	Automating tasks with the Unix shell (instructor: Thomas Guignard)
Day 1 PM:	Building programs with Python (instructor: Jeramia Ory)
Day 2 AM:	Version Control with Git (Jeramia)
Day 2 PM:	Managing data with SQL (Thomas)

Highlights:	NeSI (New Zealand) became a SWF affiliate.
	SWC instructor training at the Research Bazaar in Australia created a lot of activity on Twitter this week - 50 trainees attended the workshop.
Conversations:	Daniel Chen made his "Project Cookie Cutter" bash script available and triggered a conversation about this. Please get in touch with us via GitHub or email us if you use cookie cutter project templates or have comments.
Vacancies:	The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is looking for a Science Educator/Evaluator in Boulder, Colorado.

Highlights:	SWF gets 2 new affiliates (iPlant and Lab for Data Intensive Biology at UC Davis) and a new partner (University of Washington).
Conversations:	"...what matters most in teaching is the act itself - the verb": some observations on teaching and a book recommendation.
	Scientific coding and software engineering: what's the difference? A post by Daisie Huang: please add your comments.
	Rewarding Software Sharing by Mapping Scientific Software A post by Chris Bogart: please share your ideas.
Events:	SWC instructor training and Intro to Web Programming at Lawrence Berkeley Lab: March 2015
	rOpenSci Unconference: March 2015
	Software Sustainability Institute's Collaborations Workshop: March 2015
Other News:	Eight new instructors

Highlights:	New steering committee selected
	We have now taught ten thousand people
Conversations:	Keeping momentum going after workshops
	Factors and formulae in R lessons
Other News:	First new instructors of 2015
	Our first workshop in South Korea

AM pt 1:	intro to AWS & intro to Unix Shell
AM pt 2:	data analysis in Unix: alignment, quantitation of RNA-seq data
PM pt 1:	intro to R
PM pt 2:	data analysis in R: QC, differential expression, etc.

I support this approach	12
I support this approach, but not at this price	5
I am neutral	7
I am opposed to this approach	3

Complete beginners / 2 days	7
Complete beginners / 3 days	5
Intermediates / 2 days	13
Intermediates / 3 days	2
Other	3