CarpentryConnect on The Carpentries

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.

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:

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:

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).