Australasia on The Carpentries

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!

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:

#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.

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.

#Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: Damien Irving

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

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.

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.

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:

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.