Champions on The Carpentries

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.