Community 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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subcommunity Spotlight: Africa

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

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.

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.

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 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).

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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

#Carpentries25 Testimonial Series: Damien Irving

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

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.

#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:

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.

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!

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?’

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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 !

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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!

2018 Community Service Award Winners

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

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

Community Service Award

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

More than Workshops

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

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

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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:

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!

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

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.

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)?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

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

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:

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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...

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...)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.)

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: 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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...

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.)

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

An Update on Cumulative Enrolment

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's been a busy few months, and the next three promise to be busier still. Somewhere in there we helped our two thousandth learner, and if everything goes well, we'll reach 2500 by mid-summer.

Many thanks to the entire team for their hard work.

Sound Software Competition

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very excited to announce the first competition for SoundSoftware.ac.uk prizes for reproducibility in audio and music research. Our goal is to promote the development and release of sustainable and reusable software and datasets alongside published research.

In a few of our recent papers and presentations we've seen that much audio and music research work is published without the accompanying software implementations. One reason is a lack of self-confidence - the fear that one's code is not good enough to share. (You can read more about this in our ICASSP 2012 paper, Towards Software Reuse in Audio and Music Research and in the Institute's post Haters Gonna Hate - why you shouldn't be ashamed of releasing your code). We believe that one way of countering this fear is to promote the idea that sharing is a worthwhile goal in itself.

Software Carpentry at SciPy 2013

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Several members of Software Carpentry's vast network will be traveling to Austin, TX in June for SciPy 2013. We are especially excited that Katy Huff and Matt Davis will be teaching a tutorial titled “Version Control and Unit Testing for Scientific Software.” The tutorial is aimed at beginners and the only prerequisite experience will be basic use of Python and the shell. Matt and Katy will cover why testing and version control are good ideas for working scientists and show how to get started with each. Here's the tutorial abstract:

An Image Analysis Success Story

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I am a alumni of the bootcamp in Paris in June 2012. I have been working on a paper on digital image analysis for experimental studies in ecology and evolution working with small-scale model organisms such as aquatic microbes, insects or fish. Besides explaining the principles of image analysis, we provide scripts in Python, R and ImageJ so people can directly use the methods. The paper has now been published, and I'd like to share our success with the Software Carpentry community.

Cumulative Enrollment

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One measure of how well we're doing is the number of people we've helped. Here's what the last 15 months have looked like:

A Bootcamp for Women in Science and Engineering

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This summer NumFOCUS and Software Carpentry are hosting a software skills bootcamp for women in science and engineering in Boston. We are seeking sponsorship from companies and others who would like to help raise the $6000 needed to make this happen. We'd appreciate your support, and would be grateful if you'd help spread the word.

More News from the UK

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Two pieces of news from the UK:

The folks at Queen Mary, University of London just ran a two-day bootcamp for students in Media and Arts Technology, and will be running another such event soon.

Mike Jackson at the Software Sustainability Institute has posted some quick alternatives to bootcamps. If you'd like help with or advice on these, please get in touch.

Second Dry-Run of DiRAC Driver's License Exam

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back in August we did an alpha test of our driver's licence for DiRAC in conjunction with The Software Sustainability Institute. In the spirit of iterative development, we revised our test in light of our experiences and two weeks ago we did a 2nd dry-run. Four researchers based at University College London kindly agreed to take part as examinees, Dr. Jeremy Yates of DiRAC made the local arrangements, and James Hetherington of UCL, a newly-appointed fellow of The Software Sustainability Institute, provided local assistance.

Partnering with the SSI

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that the Software Sustainability Institute has agreed to coordinate Software Carpentry activities in the UK. The SSI became involved in Software Carpentry in 2011 when they started developing online lectures for us on advanced shell techniques and file management in Python. In April 2012, they participated in the first general UK bootcamp at University College London; a fortnight later, in conjunction with the Digital Institute at Newcastle University and SoundSoftware, they delivered the first bootcamp to be run entirely by UK tutors. They have since delivered the majority of bootcamps run in the UK and been instrumental in helping us grow in Europe.

We Have a Facebook Page

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry finally has a Facebook page. Please drop by!

A Short Report from Utah State

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

(The first in an occasional series about other ways people are teaching computing to scientists.)

My "Advanced Programming and Database Management for Biologists" course at Utah State is based almost entirely on Software Carpentry (though the full curriculum is obviously not just what we teach in two days). It is a blended classroom: for about 2/3 of the semester the students view SWC material before class, at the beginning of class I provide 5-10 minutes of additional introduction to the material or answer questions the students had after viewing the videos, and then they spend the rest of class working on problems related to the material. They also do an independent project related to their research and the last 1/3 of the semester involves primarily me helping individual students work on their research projects (plus I present a set of more advanced or discipline relevant topics that they choose by voting on, e.g., the GPU peta cloud). It's been fairly popular for a rather nerdy graduate class and scores off the charts.

Online Office Hours

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Starting this week we're trying something new: one-on-one online help sessions from instructors for anyone who has taken a bootcamp with us.

Bootcamps are great for introducing scientists to useful technology and new ideas about how to automate tasks and organise code. Our bootcamps try as much as possible to be relevant to scientists' daily workflow, but they're only two day long events; what happens when participants go back to "real life" and start to fit what they've learned into their daily work?

Teaching Commercially

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of people have contacted us recently to ask about running Software Carpentry bootcamps for companies. Our material is all Creative Commons licensed, so anyone who wants to use it for corporate training can do so, and doesn't need our permission. What does need our permission is using our name and logo, since they're trademarked. We're happy to give that permission if we've certified the instructor [1] and have a chance to double-check the content [2]. It would be great if starving grad students could help pay their bills from this, in the way that many programmers earn part or all of their living from open source software, so if you'd like to give it a try, please get in touch.

Advice From a Newbie No More

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Adina Chuang-Howe recently wrote a great blog post titled "Advice from newbie to newbie", in which she gives some advice to her younger and not-yet-computationally-proficient self:

Commit (and stop whining)

Use the right tool for the job

Take Command

Install and use a text editor

Learn to manipulate files

Shortcuts!

Learn a programming language

Become addicted to print statements (I'd actually say "...to a debugger", but never mind)

Do something relevant

Start automating

and most importantly of all: "You can do it!" The full article is great advice to anyone who's getting into computing, scientific or otherwise, and well worth reading.

Code of Conduct

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry is dedicated to providing a harassment-free learning experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, or choice of text editor. Following the example of the Python Software Foundation, PyCon Canada, and other community members, we have therefore decided to adopt a code of conduct to make it clear what kinds of language and behavior are and are not acceptable at our events. If you'd like to know more, we couldn't possibly write anything better than this blog post by the Python Software Foundation's Jesse Noller.

Sample Data Management Plans

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Neil Chue Hong recently pointed us at DataONE's Data Management Planning page, which has two really useful things:

a link to DMPTool, which will help you build a data management plan for your project; and

five sample data management plans, all written for the NSF, which people can use as reference models.

Data management is something we deliberately left out of "Best Practices" paper—it would have increased the paper's length by half again—but what we should put together is some sample code management plans. Any volunteers?

Minutes from 2012-12-19

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our second all-hands meeting was held on Wednesday, December 19, from 12:00-13:10 Eastern time.

Actions

Dhavide Aruliah

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for Unix shell

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for basic Python

Amy Brown

Proof-read Code of Conduct

Add Code of Conduct to bootcamp "how-to"

Create graphic for "Participant" badge

Create PDF certificates for "Participant", "Instructor", and "Organizer"

Add wording to web site to clarify what does/doesn't qualify for use of "Software Carpentry" name and logo

Add wording to web site asking people to let us know if they're using our material, and requiring them to check with us if they're using our name/logo

Keep track of who's talking to what sites about bootcamps

Get explicit retroactive signoff on contributions

Neil Chue Hong

Contact OSS-Watch regarding enforcing trademarks for our material

Matt Davis

Arrange bootcamp at Cal Poly

Arrange bootcamp at San Diego State

matplotlib material

Ted Hart

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for regular expressions

Arrange bootcamp at ESA conf.

Bernhard Konrad

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for testing

Emily Jane McTavish

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for regular expressions

Create ticket to arrange bootcamp at U. Kansas

Geoff Oxberry

Create ticket to arrange bootcamp at U. Delaware

Cait Pickens

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for Git

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for basic Python

Karthik Ram

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for Git

Joon Ro

matplotlib material

Alex Viana

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for SQL

Ben Waugh

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for testing

Ethan White

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for SQL

Lynne Williams

Co-author bullet-points and cheat sheet for Unix shell

Greg Wilson

Publish Code of Conduct to web site

Retroactively issue "Participant" badges for 2012 bootcamp attendees

Issue "Instructor" and "Organizer" badges

Finish Instructor's Guide by end of Jan 2013

All

Check locally to ensure that it's OK to ask bootcamp participants to agree Code of Conduct

Claim ticket for "Arrange bootcamp at [site]"

Introduce us to one more potential bootcamp site for 2013

Volunteer to help with online office hours

Dhavide Aruliah

Erik Bray

Shreyas Cholia

Matt Davis

Ross Dickson

Steve Haddock

Mike Hansen

Geoff Oxberry

Cait Pickens

Alex Viana

Ben Waugh

Ethan White

Send Greg a picture of yourself in a Software Carpentry t-shirt

Roll Call

Three Non-trivial Use Cases for Git

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Today's guest post comes from Nicolas Limare.

Here are three problems I encountered while introducing fellow grad students and post-docs to Git. These are situations where Git seems not to provide the solution we need, either because it requires the addition of an external service provider, unusual configuration steps not adapted to beginners, or simply because the functionality is missing in Git. Or maybe did I just ignore the perfect command or option which would have answered all my wishes?

IPython Funding: Hurray!

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via email:

We are proud to announce that we've received funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that will support IPython development for the next two years. Thanks to this $1.15M grant, Brian Granger and Fernando Perez will be working roughly 3/4 of their time on IPython, Min Ragan-Kelley will be the lead project engineer, and Paul Ivanov and Thomas Kluyver will work as postdocs on the project. Furthermore, Matthew Brett and JB Poline of Nipy fame will be working part-time on the development of notebooks for applied statistics in collaboration with Jonathan Taylor from Stanford.

What To Work On In 2013

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Votes are in and tallied: here's what you'd like us to work on in 2013.

Creating a Task List

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
We're going to start using GitHub to manage our content, and as a corollary of that, we're going to use its issue tracker to manage the things we're working on. I've already put a handful of medium-to-large items in it; suggestions would be welcome, particularly if accompanied by, "...and I'll do the work." :-)

Our First Hackathon

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We'd like to invite our friends to a week-long hackathon at Mozilla's office in Toronto in June to:

create new teaching material

give each other feedback on teaching (we'll run a workshop during the week)

build new tools (like extensions for the IPython Notebook)

get to know each other

We will have a small budget to help with travel and accommodation, but unfortunately most people will have to fund themselves. On the other hand, Toronto's beautiful that time of year, and there are lots of interesting places a visiting scientist could give a talk. If you're interested, please stay tuned for dates (which we should have in January).

Six Years Later

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm giving a short talk next week at an ICERM workshop on Reproducibility in Computational and Experimental Mathematics, which has prompted me to look back at a talk I gave six years ago at SciPy'06. The slides from that talk are included below; I'm now trying to decide whether I'm pleased or depressed by how little has changed.

Sustainability

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry wouldn't exist without support from the Sloan Foundation, Mozilla, and a lot of other supporters, but that support won't last forever. Over the next two years, we need to find a way to make this project self-sustaining; to achieve that, we're currently doing the following:

Use a "host pays expenses" model so that our budget doesn't have to grow as we scale up.
Status: mostly done.

Make contribution easier, so that people who want to help can do so with little or no overhead.
Status: we should finish migrating to GitHub by the end of the year, and using IPython Notebooks for teaching will help too, but the world still (desperately) needs a version control-friendly format for general teaching materials.

Demonstrate career value to instructors, so that people can keep teaching for us even when they're crunched by other commitments.
Status: we're adding testimonials all the time, and hope to have some bigger stories by the middle of 2013.

Assess our impact in ways scientists will find credible.
Status: we're currently exploring ways to do this, and would like to hear from anyone who'd like to help.

Lobby funding agencies and journals to ask hard questions about software (or about software development processes). In the long term, we need to convert twenty percent of scientists to our way of thinking, but we can accelerate that by focusing on the right twenty percent.
Status: we haven't started this yet.

Get scientists to include training in budgets and schedules.
Status: this is the longest shot of all, because it depends on funding agencies being amenable to the idea. In practice, it may have to wait until we reach our 20% target...

If you can think of other things we can do to ensure Software Carpentry's long-term viability, we'd like to hear from you.

Who Can Run a Software Carpentry Workshop?

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of people have mailed us in the past week to ask if they can use our materials and run a workshop on their own. The short answer is "yes"; the longer answer is "yes please" :-) All of our lessons are covered by the Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 Unported licensed (often abbreviated "CC-BY"), which in brief means that you can share or remix stuff however you want, as long as you cite us as the original source (e.g., by providing a link back to this site).

Why Be an Instructor

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our instructors are all volunteers—bootcamp hosts cover their travel and accommodation costs, but they're not paid for their time. So why do they do it?

Make the world a better place. As I say in a lot of my talks, the two things we need to get through the next hundred years are more science and more courage. I don't know if we can do much about the latter, but we can sure help a lot with the former.

Make their own lives better. Most of the time, we try to have astronomers teach astronomers, ecologists teach ecologists, and so on. These are people whose tools instructors might one day want to use themselves, so by making them more clueful, instructors are helping themselves.

It's fun. How could it not be? You get to stand up and look smart in front of a bunch of smart people who actually want to be there, and you don't have to mark anything afterward.

Build a reputation. Showing up to run a really useful workshop is a great way for people to introduce themselves to places they'd eventually like to work, and a great way to make contact with potential collaborators. This is probably the most important reason from Software Carpentry's point of view, since it's what makes our model sustainable.

Get practice teaching. We're doing more every year to train instructors, and giving them chances to teach online as well—both of which are useful for people with academic careers in mind.

Help get people of diverse backgrounds into the pipeline. Computer Science is 12-15% female, and that figure has been dropping since the 1980s. From what I've seen, there's a similar gender skew among computationally-oriented people in other sciences, which if left alone will be self-perpetuating. Some of our instructors are involved in part because they want to break that cycle and be a public example of a competent, confident woman programmer.

Teaching forces you to learn new things, or learn old things in more detail than you already know. See for example "Graduate Students' Teaching Experiences Improve Their Methodological Research Skills"

The more you know, the less you have to write yourself. Putting a grant application together? Have a site review coming up? We probably have slides for that... :-)

And why do people do online office hours? For some, the primary incentive is a little bit of guilt: we can't give everyone all the help they need during a two-day workshop, and online follow-up is a way to make up for that. For others, it's a chance to pick up and practice some skills that are increasingly in demand: everyone believes that a lot of teaching is going to move online in the coming years, and this is a way to figure out how to do it.

See You at PyCon 2013

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The list of talks for PyCon 2013 has been posted, and we're very pleased to see three by members of our team:

Titus Brown: Awesome Big Data Algorithms

Matt Davis: Teaching with the IPython Notebook

Jessica McKellar: How the Internet Works

There will also be the first-ever Python Education Summit and a whole lot more—hope to see you there.

European Grid Infrastructure is Organizing a Software Carpentry Workshop

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The European Grid Infrastructure project is putting together a Software Carpentry workshop for Manchester in April-early details are in their post, and we'll post more details ourselves as they evolve.

Good News About Software Carpentry (and More)

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're pleased to announce that Mozilla and Software Carpentry will be continuing and expanding our work to empower scientists with computer science and webmaking skills. We have been working with the Sloan Foundation to teach scientists the concepts, tools and techniques they need to use computers and the web to accelerate their research. In 2013-14, the program will offer an expanded set of workshops, online tutorials, and a new peer-to-peer mentoring program.

Making a Difference at LBL

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Without any doubt, the best thing about teaching for Software Carpentry is making a difference for someone and getting to hear about it. One of our students at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, nuclear engineer Dr. Bethany Goldblum, was impressed enough by Katy Huff's presentation of git that she wanted her team to start using version control.

Bethany's description of her team's past code management practices is typical of academic projects, with many people modifying their own copy of a code until that "resulted in over 20 versions of the codes, each with bugs of its own." On their current project "a postdoc is in the process of developing the code, but now every time he makes a change, he uploads it to a different directory on our analysis machine and we just have multiple copies of almost the same code floating around. Unless one is careful, they may not know which code is the most recent version. I believe there is some fear there to undo anything that the original developer put in place."

We Apologize for the Interruption in Our Service

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our hosting service, Dreamhost, is relocating various domains to new servers. As a result, service at this site is suffering from longer-than-usual lag (90 seconds or more to load the home page, worse for pages with embedded videos). We've filed a problem report, and will try to get things back on track as quickly as possible. We will also start looking for a new hosting plan: slow-and-slower has become all too common here :-(

Who Wants To Write a Little Code?

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have always steered away from building libraries to use in teaching—we want to show people the "real" stuff, and we can't afford to maintain things. The IPython Notebook has us rethinking that: now that we can display images inline, it would be wonderful if we could leverage Mark Guzdial and Barbara Ericson's work, and teach basic Python using simple image manipulation for examples (rather than text munging). Their research found that using images led to higher retention: more students stuck around, and the ones who did, remembered and used more of what they'd learned.

This Is What We Do

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Day 1 of the workshop at the Scripps Institute: a room full of biologists learning how to do better science faster by building things the right way.

A Mostly Successful Decade

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A video of Fernando Perez's keynote at PyCon Canada, titled "Science And Python: retrospective of a (mostly) successful decade", has been posted. If you'd like to see what the IPython Notebook can do, and how it fits into a broader picture, it's well worth watching.
{% assign video_title = "Science And Python: retrospective of a (mostly) successful decade" %} {% assign video_slug = "F4rFuIb1Ie4" %} {% assign video_time = "1:00:58" %} {% include youtube %}

FOSDEM 2013

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Sylwester Arabas (one of the organizers):

A day-long session ("devroom") on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) for scientists will be held during the next FOSDEM conference, Brussels, 2-3 February 2013 (http://fosdem.org/2013). We aim at having a dozen or two short talks introducing projects, advertising brand new features of established tools, discussing issues relevant to the development of software for scientific computing, and touching on the interdependence of FLOSS and open science.

Web 4 Science

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown (a long-time supporter of, and contributor to, this project) has a series of posts on his blog about using the web for science. As he's well ahead of the curve in doing this himself, I thought readers of this blog would be interested:

opening remarks

the awesomeness we're experiencing

the challenges ahead

strategizing for the future

tech wanted

There's lots here to chew on—I'm sure he'd welcome comments from our readers.

A List of Bioinformatics Courses

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown is compiling a list of bioinformatics courses. If you know one that should be added, he'd enjoy hearing from you.

Minutes from 2012-10-29 All-Hands Meeting

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We held our first online all-hands meeting yesterday (Monday, October 29), and despite Hurricane Sandy, 28 people were able to attend. Minutes from the meeting are given below; we have a lot to do, but we're very excited to be doing it.
In attendance:

Aron Ahmadia

Carlos Anderson

Azalee Bostroem

Erik Bray

Steve Crouch

Matt Davis

Ross Dickson

Justin Ely

Julia Gustavsen

Tommy Guy

Steve Haddock

Ted Hart

Konrad Hinsen

Katy Huff

Emily Jane McTavish

Trevor King

Justin Kitzes

Ian Langmore

Ian Mitchell

Aleksandra Pawlik

Ariel Rokem

Anthony Scopatz

Chang She

Joshua Smith

Laura Tremblay-Boyer

Ben Waugh

Ethan White

Greg Wilson

Minutes

Attendance and no-shows

Attendance ranges from less than 50% to over 100% of those who register

Former case is disappointing (to instructors) and unfair (to those left on the wait list)

Options:

Have people to register in groups/teams

Worked well at UC London and elsewhere

Difficult to implement on EventBrite

Try out team signup at upcoming workshops

Try a registration charge (e.g., $20) which we keep, return after attendance, or give to charity

Institutions may start charging us for space if any money changes hands

Find out if we can charge for attendance without being charged in turn

Returning money to attendees is difficult (getting credit card number and only charging for no-show is equally fraught)

What charity would we donate to? (Software Carpentry isn't a non-profit)

Licensing

Existing content is CC-BY / MIT licensed

Do not want to have to manage content with multiple licenses

Need sign-off from contributors

Linux Submitting Patches guide and GitHub's Contributing Guidelines are both examples we can copy.

Incorporate licensing agreement into web site

Get retroactive signoff for existing material

Workshop/participant level mismatch

Most common complaints about workshops are "too fast" and "too slow"

describes our target

Telling people what we expect as background hasn't worked

People who don't know enough to absorb what we teach show up in the hopes that they'll get something, and are then lost

People who know much of what we're teaching show up in the hopes of learning something new, and are bored

Having people send us material for evaluation (e.g., code sample) doesn't scale

"I think the people in my field able to produce a code example are way ahead of the group that needs the most help."

Use a self-assessment?

People will still undershoot/overshoot and show up anyway

Pre-tests scare away some of the people we most want to help

Ask them to work through a free online course before coming to us?

MOOCs work best for people who already understand concepts and want to add information...

...which isn't our audience...

...and many people who are willing to try a two-day workshop probably won't commit to a full course (up front)

Experiment with pre-assessments for upcoming workshops

Make completion of the pre-assessment a condition for getting a ticket

Impact Assessment

We don't know what impact we're having (but funders would really like to)

Collect names/email addresses of actual workshop participants to contact later

Design lightweight post-workshop instrument for use 3 months after

Migrating the Software Carpentry repository to GitHub

Find examples of people doing collaborative course development using Git

Need to reach consensus on one-big-repo vs. lots-of-little-repos

Produce short A-or-B position statements on Git organization by Nov 7 for vote

Online Lessons

Broadcast video tutorials didn't work well

Forums hosted at Software Carpentry didn't do well in 2010

SciComp Stack Exchange isn't intended for novice questions about shell, version control, etc.

Local learning groups (once-a-week lunchtime sessions) seemed to work well

And when video tutorials did work, it was partly because participants were co-located, e.g., watching a single screen in a small group and talking amongst themselves out of band

Experiment with online office hours

Create "Software Carpentry" tag on Stack Exchange

Re-launch our own forums

Given how many workshops we're running, and how closely they're scheduled, maybe this time there would be critical mass

Targeting Specific Audiences

Our mission is not to teach Python (or Bash, or Subversion), but to teach scientists how to think like programmers:

to grow programs in a structured, repeatable way (create and combine lots of little tools)

to manage and share what they build (version control, readable code, provenance)

to be confident that it's right (defensive programming, testing, debugging)

to automate, automate, automate (build system, and the very idea of programming)

and to do this using open source tools as far as possible.

Using R instead of Python fits this mission (see Justin Kitzes' summary)

Teaching MPI doesn't

What about teaching these concepts in C or Fortran to people who already speak the language?

Try using R instead of Python

Try using C or Fortran without teaching the language itself

Workshop Sprint in 2013

Initial idea: bring Europeans over to help run a bunch of workshops in North American in late March 2013, then send North Americans over to help teach another bunch in late June

Good for publicity

A good way for people to meet each other and build ties

Are (some) people able to take 2-3 weeks to do this? Yes.

Particularly if they give academic talks at the same time as teaching workshops, which everyone should.

Does the timing work? Exams, people leaving to work at field stations, etc.

Find out who's available when for workshop sprint

Find budget for workshop sprint

Content Sprint in 2013

Independently of the workshop sprint, bring people together for a one-week sprint on content

Or possibly 2-3 sites (e.g., London, Toronto, Mountain View) connected by virtual presence

Find out who's available when for content sprint

Find budget for content sprint

Deferred

IPython Notebooks experience report

Git experience report

What to do about Windows?

Badging

Actions

Try out team signup at upcoming workshops. [pending new workshops]

Find out if we can charge for attendance without being charged in turn. [all]

Incorporate licensing agreement into web site. [GVW]

Get retroactive signoff for existing material. [GVW]

Experiment with pre-assessments for upcoming workshops. [pending design and new workshops]

Collect names/email addresses of actual workshop participants to contact later. [all]

Design lightweight post-workshop instrument for use 3 months after. [WC, MH]

Find examples of people doing collaborative course development using Git. [any?]

Produce short A-or-B position statements on Git organization by Nov 7 for vote. [KH + AA, MD, TG, TK, CS, JS]

Experiment with online office hours. [KH, others?]

Create "Software Carpentry" tag on Stack Exchange. [volunteer?]

Re-launch our own forums. [deferred]

Try using R instead of Python. [TH, JK, LTB]

Try using C or Fortran without teaching the language itself. [AA, KH]

Find out who's available when for workshop sprint. [GVW]

Find budget for workshop sprint. [GVW]

Find out who's available when for content sprint. [GVW]

Find budget for content sprint. [GVW]

Note: GVW would really appreciate a volunteer to tackle #15-18.

AA Aron Ahmadia

WC Warren Code

MD Matt Davis

TG Tommy Guy

MH Mike Hansen

TH Ted Hart

KH Konrad Hinsen

KH Katy Huff

JK Justin Kitzes

TK Trevor King

CS Chang She

JS Joshua Smith

LTB Laura Tremblay-Boyer

GVW Greg Wilson

Getting Credit

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A recurring theme in our discussion with scientists is how hard it is to get academic credit for building software, but there are some hopeful signs. As Carole Goble pointed out to me a couple of weeks ago, Nucleic Acids Researchruns two special issues every year: one devoted to web servers, and one to databases. As the introduction to the former makes clear, the journal's definition of "web servers" is pretty broad:

I Screwed Up (or, Why Automation Isn't Always a Good Thing)

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of months ago, a group of astronomers asked us to run a workshop at Caltech in conjunction with their annual get-together: they'd cover travel costs for two instructors, and seats at the workshop would be reserved for them. Which would have been fine, except when I pushed the button to create the workshop, I also created an EventBrite signup page and a Software Carpentry bootcamp page with open enrollment. As a result, I had to send email to 15 people last night to say that there isn't actually room.

UCL Researchers to Get Help with Software Development

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

University College London (UCL) has hired a team leader to start a three-person team for Research Software Development. James Hetherington will spend a lot of his time in the next few months talking to those of us working in various areas of research, so we will get to provide some input into the team's activities. However, we do know what they will be offering advice and consultation on software development best practices, including the fundamentals as well as the headline-grabbing HPC work, and hosting version control and issue tracking services.

Wanted: An Entry-Level Provenance Library

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the reason we keep teaching Subversion is that it allows us to show students a simple but useful trick. If you add the following to a text file:

$Revision: $

and then tell Subversion to set the "Revision" keyword on that file, the next time you commit it, Subversion will automatically update the text to:

$Revision: 423$

or whatever the revision number actually is. This is handy if you're mailing files around, and want people to be able to tell exactly which revision they have, but what makes it really useful is this:

How to Help at a Bootcamp

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

When we lead a bootcamp of more than, say, a dozen people, extra helpers are essential to making everything go smoothly. As our guide to running a bootcamp says:

It's ideal to have one helper for every five attendees. Recruit helpers locally, from your own and neighbouring institutions.

Helpers should have some knowledge of the material covered in the bootcamp. Ideally, a helper will already have attended a bootcamp and would like to become an instructor themselves.

Computational Thinking and Ice Floating in Bathtubs

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've been thinking about what "computational thinking" actually means ever since a workshop at Microsoft in 2007, where I found that everyone's definition seemed to boil down to, "Whatever I've been pushing for the last decade, but with a new name." My ideas keep evolving, but Lewis Epstein's wonderful book Thinking Physics remains their foundation. In it, he presents dozens of problems in freshman physics that can be solved without calculation, so long as you have a solid grasp of basic Newtonian mechanics. For example: put a large piece of ice in a bathtub, then fill the bathtub exactly to the rim. When the ice melts, will the water overflow, will the water level go down, or will it stay the same? The answer is that it will stay the same, because the ice displaced its own weight in water, so when it melts, it exactly fills the "hole" it created. But that's not the real question; the real question is, imagine you put a large cake of ice in the tub, then put a small iron weight on the ice cake, and then filled the tub to the rim. This time, when the ice melts and the iron weight sinks to the bottom of the tub, what happens to the water level?

Post-Mortem on the NGS Course

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown has posted a post-mortem on his Next Generation Sequencing course, and the independent assessment that was done of it. As with Jorge Aranda's assessment of Software Carpentry, the results were very positive—what we and other like-minded people are doing really does make a difference.

What's In Your Stack?

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As a long-delayed follow-up to a conversation with Travis Oliphant: based on our experience, researchers who are computational novices want more than numerical computing and visualization tools. They want a complete stack—an end-to-end, nachos-to-cheesecake [1] solution to their basic computing needs, including an editor, a debugger, a version control system, blogging tools, data management tools, some way to create presentations and papers, and so on. My personal stack includes:

Number Crunching with Python: DC Python Workshop

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

On November 11, 2012 I'll be giving a workshop in Washington, D.C. on number crunching with Python. The event is organized by DC Python and Data Science DC, who were kind enough to ask me to teach. The focus of the workshop will be on core scientific Python packages like NumPy, SciPy, matplotlib, IPython, and, with the help of Skipper Seabold, pandas.

The workshop filled up fast but there is a wait list you can join in case people drop out or we find a bigger venue. Details are at http://meetup.dcpython.org/events/81931062/.

Final Results of Demographic Survey

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

192 people have now responded to the demographic survey we reported two weeks ago. Results are shown below; I'll hold off posting breakdown by discipline until I find a better (standard) classification scheme. Long story short, you are grad students, age 25-35, 28% female, with no clear preference for Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows. No idea what kind of music you listen to, though, or where you stand on the crucial "cave men versus astronauts" question—we'll include those in next year's survey.

Free As In Pretty Much Whatever You Want

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A couple of different people have asked us recently whether they can use our materials in their courses. The answer is an emphatic "yes": all of our slides, essays, posts, and what-not are covered by the Creative Commons — Attribution license, and all of our code is covered by the open source MIT License, so basically, you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, without seeking special permission. (And yes, this means you can charge for your courses, even though we don't charge for ours.) The only requirement (imposed by the CC-BY license) is that you cite us as the source, and of course we'd be grateful if you'd point us at your material and/or send us any changes you make.

A Problem With Badges

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We issued the first learning badges for Software Carpentry a couple of weeks ago, and in doing so, uncovered a significant flaw in the design of existing badging systems. My intent was to give a bunch of people "Instructor" badges; by mistake, I set the pulldown to "Organizer", then clicked "Issue". As a result, two dozen people got the wrong kind of badge—and there doesn't appear to be any way for me to undo that. According to Dave Lester, who created the WPBadger plugin for WordPress that I'm using:

Linking Forward From a Bibliography?

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This web site's bibliography lists 116 papers related in some way to the practice of scientific computing. I'd like to know:

what related papers I've missed, and

when a new related paper appears.

It seems to me that I ought to be able to upload the entire bibliography into some tool, then say, "Find everything that isn't in this list that cites things that are, minus everything in this other list over here that I've already looked at and decided aren't relevant." Going a step further, I ought to be able to prime some kind of robot to do this check automatically every week or so, and mail me when there's a hit so that I can either read it or add it to the exclusion list.

Please Help the Hunter Family

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very sad to report that John Hunter, the principal author of the widely-used Python plotting package Matplotlib, is losing his battle with cancer. If you would like to help his family in this difficult time, please see Stefan van der Walt's post, or make a donation to the memorial fund set up to help with his children's education.

An Interview with Titus Brown

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The folks at Simply Statistics interviewed Prof. Titus Brown earlier this month; there's lots of good stuff in the post for people interested in doing computational science (or any kind of science) better.

Who Are You?

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We asked participants in this year's workshops to tell us a bit about themselves. So far, 121 have done so, and their responses are summarized below.

Age

<20 0.0%

20-25 18.3%

26-30 31.7%

31-35 25.0%

36-40 9.2%

41-45 4.2%

46-50 4.2%

>50 7.5%

Gender

Female 26.9%

Male 73.1%

Occupation

Undergrad 2.6%

Grad student 55.7%

Post-doc 13.9%

Faculty 9.6%

Support 13.0%

Industry 5.2%

Preferred Platforms

Linux 54.2%

Mac OS 50.0%

Windows 35.8%

Platforms sum to more than 100% because multiple responses were allowed; I was surprised by the number of Linux responses, since we only ever had a handful of Linux laptops in the room, but looking at the responses in more detail, it appears that many of the people who use Mac laptops use Linux servers for production runs.

Alpha Test of Driver's License Exam

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As we announced back in June, we're working with the Software Sustainability Institute to create a "driver's license" exam for the DiRAC supercomputing facility. Mike Jackson at the SSI alpha tested our exam on four people last week; the exam itself, and his comments, are below. We would be very grateful for feedback from the community on the scope and level of the questions.

Exam

You have been given the URL of a version control repository, along with a username and a password for it. You have one hour to complete the following tasks. If at any point you would like clarification, please do not hesitate to ask. If at any point you are unable to complete a task, you may also ask for help so that you can proceed to the next task, but doing so will be considered equivalent to not completing that task.

Interview about Software Carpentry (and Education)

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Chris Gammell and Jeff Shelton interviewed me a couple of weeks ago for their Engineering Commons podcast series. The interview turned out to mostly be about education, online and otherwise—I hope readers will find it interesting.

Software Carpentry Needs You!

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry needs you! If you found our workshops, tutorials, or online material useful, there are many ways you could help us grow:

Send us a testimonial to add to this page, or write a longer one that we can post on our blog. (We show these to potential sponsors as evidence that we're doing good things, and to people who are thinking about organizing or attending workshops to give them an idea of the benefits.)

A Supercomputing Driver's License

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Software Carpentry and the Software Sustainability Institute are working together to develop a "driver's licence" for researchers who wish to use the DiRAC integrated supercomputing facility. The aim is to assess whether a researcher has the programming skills needed to use DiRAC productively, and if not, give them feedback on what further training they need. The hour-long test, which will include writing, coding, and interactive elements, will focus on fundamental skills including version control, unit testing, writing maintainable code, using Makefiles, and code review. Trials will begin this summer, and the completed test will be presented to DiRAC in September 2012.

Fortran Format Statements and Regular Expressions

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of our learners has a large number of Fortran format statements embedded in a program he's inherited, and would like to come up with equivalent regular expressions in order to parse the program's data with tools written in other languages. If you know of a tool to translate one into the other, or a Fortran-to-regexp dictionary, we'd welcome a pointer.

Where We Are (June 2012 edition)

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Last week, a double dozen friends and colleagues gathered physically and virtually to review what we've done and where we should go next. I'll postpone discussion of the biggest "what next" items to separate posts, but here's the status report itself.

Successes

We've reached a lot of people

We have delivered 12 workshops to 376 learners in 4 countries (curriculum)

Numbers will be 18 workshops, 520 learners, and 5 countries by the end of July

Have actually lost count of the number of online tutorials we've run...

What we're doing is helping

96% of participants happy with training

Significant improvement in computational understanding

We get mail

Scientists want more

17 workshops in the pipeline

2-4 new contacts/month

We can scale

20 co-instructors

7 have gone on away missions

5 have run online tutorials

We can become self-sustaining

Have raised $25K in other funding

Shifting to "host pays costs" model for workshops

Will try to count Software Carpentry training toward NSF requirements for training in Responsible Conduct of Research

Working with the Software Sustainability Institute to create a driver's license for the DiRAC supercomputing facility

Room for Improvement

Very little new video content (because very little demand)

But some interesting experiments using video for formative assessment

No learner-led challenges

Most grad students feel their research is challenging enough

Having more mentors, from more disciplines, may help us help more people with their research problems

Badging delayed pending a software release (mid-July)

Initially badge instructors rather than learners (greater immediate value to recipient)

Never-ending installation/setup/configuration difficulties

Particularly for Windows users (20-40% of our learners)

All technical solutions have proven to be unsatisfactory in different ways

Some material is going stale and/or not as useful as we thought (e.g., Subversion, databases)

Will update/replace

Pacing continues to be a problem

20% find it too fast while 20% find it too slow

More instructors will allow us to stream people appropriately

Online tutorials have had mixed success

"Only" 10-20% of learners still participating after 3 weeks

Which is actually higher retention than many online courses

Partly because of technical difficulties and time pressures

But online instruction remains less effective than in-person instruction with today's technology

Workshop participants are predominantly male (even when drawing from disciplines that are gender-balanced)

Now in contact with WiSE/diversity groups in the US to try to arrange workshops for their members

Still don't know what to teach scientists about the web

A Busy Week (And Schwag!)

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have a busy week coming up:

Monday: Start of a two-day workshop at Johns Hopkins University

Online tutorial for participants in the London workshop

Tuesday: Online tutorial for participants in the Edmonton workshop

Wednesday: Online tutorial for participants in the Newcastle workshop

And another one for participants in the Vancouver workshop

And one more for participants in the Michigan State workshop

Thursday: Combined tutorial for participants in previous workshops

Friday: All-day strategy meeting in Toronto

In amongst all of this, we're revising a paper on recommend practices for scientific computing, summarizing our assessment of the impact our workshops have had, filling in a few more blanks in our instructors' guide, and talking to four sites about running workshops in the fall.

First Workshop on Maintainable Software Practices in e-Science

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

First Workshop on Maintainable Software Practices in e-Science

9 October 2012
Co-located with 8th IEEE International Conference on eScience, Chicago

This workshop will focus on the issues relating to the development and maintenance of software that can endure past the limited periods of defined project durations and project funding, and go beyond software engineering best practice to address aspects of cultural, organisational and policy change. By bringing together all those with an interest in ensuring the longer term development and use of software for research, including researchers, developers, research computing specialists, software engineers, infrastructure providers, facilitators, and funders, the goal of this workshop is to understand what software practices can be successfully applied and which lead to long-term improvements in the development of software for e-Science.

We Get Mail

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hi Greg and Adina!

Two days ago I filled out the Software Carpentry survey which asked me, among other things, how much time I had saved using my new Software Carpentry skills. I filled out the I had not really saved that many hours yet (but that I was approaching computational problems in a different way and began implementing version control!).

However, that number of hours changed dramatically later that evening! In preparation for a talk I will give at a conference in a few weeks I was re-doing some analyses. I came to one which was very painful to me because it required using 3 different python scripts for several different files and repeating this for a range of numbers (so we're talking running 3 scripts about 20 times). I did not find this particular analysis very useful or informative, but it really makes my supervisor happy so I thought I should at least try to be a silver (or bronze) student and give it a whirl.

What Skills Are Required to Implement Open Access?

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Late last night, local time, the Access2Research petition at whitehouse.gov got 25,000 signatures, which means that the White House is committed to responding. As someone who no longer reviews for journals that aren't OA, I obviously think that's great news, but it once again raises the question: what concepts and skills do researchers need in order to implement open access? Jon Udell has written at length about some things (most recently here), but to sharpen up the discussion:

SoundSoftware 2012: Workshop on Software and Data for Audio and Music Research

Wed, 30 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The SoundSoftware project — a UK based project aiming towards software sustainability in the Audio and Music Research community — is organising a one day workshop on "Software and Data for Audio and Music Research". The aim of this workshop is to discuss issues such as robust software development for audio and music research, reproducible research, management of research data, and open access.

Being More Systematic About Publicity

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Several people have suggested that we need to be more systematic about publicizing workshops and other events: blogging and tweeting reaches people who already know about us, but doesn't reach those who don't. If you know of mailing lists and/or news aggregators aimed at researchers who might be interested in what we do, please mail pointers to {{site.contact}}.

Maintaining Momentum

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

For a variety of reasons (which is my way of saying "I don't know why" :-), Software Carpentry has proven really popular in the UK. We have close to 200 people signed up for 40 seats at our London workshop, and over 160 for 40 seats at Newcastle, with more coming in all the time. We also now have groups from three other universities, and a couple along disciplinary lines, asking if we can run workshops for them. However, the funding that has supported this round of work will run out at the end of June, and the earliest we could receive more support from the same source is mid-October. Our challenge now is therefore to find ways of supporting them in the short term so that momentum isn't lost. Here are some ideas; we'd welcome more.

Ask the CompuScienceGeek?

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown recently blogged a question about how to organize the files used in a computational science pipeline: by project, by paper, separately, or something else. Rather than answering that, I fastened onto a throw-away comment:

I think we need an "ask the compusciencegeek" service...

My earlier idea of having a reserved area on Stack Overflow for novice questions didn't lead anywhere, but I've enjoyed the Software Sustainability Institute's "Ask Steve" column. Should we start something similar here? Or direct people at Steve, and syndicate his answers here? What questions do you have about using computers in your research that we could answer?

Where Next for the Next-Gen Course (and Software Carpentry)?

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown's next-generation sequencing course has been a great success: so great, in fact, that he's overwhelmed with applications for this year's run. That has made him think aloud (or rather, ablog) about where to take the course next. His options include:

Maintain the status quo (but the effort/reward ratio for him isn't sustainable).

Run it for pay (which would put it out of reach for most learners).

Flip the course, using videos for training and live sessions for tutorials (see below for discussion).

Franchise, i.e., train other people to deliver the course wherever they are (see below as well).

Merge with Software Carpentry.

I'm all in favor of the last option: I would really like to see Software Carpentry become a hub through which other people offer, find, and/or run "software for scientists" training (both live and online). In practice, this would mean:

Software Carpentry Meetup at PyCon

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm not able to be at PyCon this year, but if Software Carpentry fans would like to get together, Shreyas Cholia is organizing a lunchtime meetup on Friday. Please drop him a line if you'd like to connect.

Badges (Finalized)

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We have finalized our first set of Software Carpentry badges—with luck, we'll list the first set of recipients later this week.

for people who complete the core curriculum

for helping to teach (either workshops or online)

for organizing workshops

for creating (or fixing) content

Badges (Mark 1)

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of our key deliverables for the Sloan Foundation-funded work is a badging program built on top of Mozilla's Open Badges Initiative. Riffing on our new logo, Carri Han has designed three badges for us:

for people who have mastered our core content

for people who have organized and run workshops

for people who have created content

Please let us know what you think.

Watch Me: Volunteers Wanted

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Back in 2007, Jon Udell observed that screencasts facilitate accidental knowledge transfer in a way that more traditional media don't. As I said yesterday, we'd therefore like to start recording short screencasts of programmers thinking aloud as they solve small problems using their preferred tools. The aim is to show learners how to program—what order to write things in, how to debug, when and how much to test, and so on. Everything will be covered by the same Creative Commons license as our other material, and made freely available for remixing and other use.

Stack Underflow?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Circling back to an earlier post, one of the challenges free-range learners face is where to get help after their workshop or short course is over. Google isn't much help, since they don't yet know enough to know what to look for, and Q&A sites like Stack Overflow can be pretty intimidating: most novices don't want to bother people and/or don't want to look clueless in public (and getting "That's a stupid thing to ask, newbie" doesn't help).

Where To Host Q+A and Discussion?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

People have questions and want answers, or ideas and complaints they want to share. Right now, the only ways for them to do this on our site are:

Mail us.

Add a comment to a page or blog post.

Um... that's it.

We experimented with forums last year, but they never reached critical mass (and have since filled up with spam). What should we do going forward? Should we try to resurrect those forums? Set up a Q&A mailing list? Or direct everyone to the computational science area at StackExchange? The pros and cons as I see it are:

Badging

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the things we need to do in the next six months along with running workshops and updating our online content is to create some sort of badging to recognize people's skills and contributions. As we said in the proposal to the Sloan Foundation, "A badge program will provide near-term incentives for both learning and mentoring; a framework to support viral, peer-driven engagement with the program; and facilitate recognition by partner institutions and potential employers."

Sloan Foundation Grant to Software Carpentry and Mozilla

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are very pleased to announce that the Sloan Foundation has generously agreed to fund six months of work by Software Carpentry and the Mozilla Foundation. The proposal we submitted, which outlines what we're going to try to do, is included below—it's a lot of work, but we're very excited to have the opportunity to move Software Carpentry forward. Details are below the fold...

Successful Bootcamp

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our 2011 Software Carpentry bootcamp, hosted with help by The Hacker Within and Scinet, was a huge success. We hosted 25 students for two very full days of hands on introductions to Python, The Shell, Nose tests, SVN, and sqlite.

So what did we learn? We're still waiting on participant feedback, but a few things come to mind.

First, wow, how did we screw software installation up so very badly? Most of our technical problems can from inconsistencies between various Python builds. Some students installed numpy separately from python and ran into version mismatches. The demo packages were missing from some people's iPython installations (including my own!) That doesn't even mention Cygwin. We got by thanks to the help of the wonderful volunteers who were able to sort out most of the problems, but it's hard to pitch a produce that is that difficult to get up and running. Imagine if we tried to publish papers as inaccessible as our code.

Architecture of Open Source Applications Webinars Tuesday July 13 and 20

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Smart Bear Software is hosting two online panel discussions about The Architecture of Open Source Applications, at 1:00 pm EST on Wednesday, July 13, and again at the same time (with different panelists) a week later. You can sign up on their site; we look forward to seeing/hearing from lots of you.

The Hacker Within at MSU in June

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The University of Wisconsin's Hacker Within team are running a bootcamp at Michigan State University June 4-5 2011—see the announcement for details. Space is limited, so sign up now!

By The Numbers

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

So what next for Software Carpentry? One possibility is to turn the scripts for the episodes, the examples, and the diagrams in the slides into a book. Let's crunch some numbers to see how feasible that is:

Topics 24

...mostly done (say, 80%) 18

...not even started 6

Words per topic 5,000

Words to write 48,000

Words per day 1,500

Days required 32

Editing, diagrams, etc. ×2

Total days 64

Code complete July 15, 2011

That completion date assumes I start this coming Monday (April 11, 2011). The schedule assumes a 5-day rather than a 7-day week, but that's because the longer hours would actually be less productive (see Evan Robinson's "Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work" for a summary of the research). 1500 finished words per day, and the factor of two for editing and diagrams, are both based on my experience with several previous books, so there's not much give there.

On a Personal Note...

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Since money hasn't materialized for another year of full-time work on this course, I'm now looking for a job. My CV is up to date, and my interview shoes are polished, so if you know of anything meaningful and interesting in downtown Toronto [1], please give us a shout. I'd obviously prefer something related to scientific computing, Python, and/or education, but wherever I wind up, Software Carpentry will keep going. As always, if you'd like to help with that, please get in touch.

What Better Looks Like

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.
— Laurie Anderson

It's hard to make things better if you don't know what "better" looks like, so in the wake of some email responses to last week's post on how to contribute, here are some thoughts on what we'd like Software Carpentry to look like when it's finished (or as finished as something like this ever is).

Mirroring Software Carpentry

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As another followup to the recent post on how to contribute, I'd welcome pointers to places that might host or mirror Software Carpentry material. Efforts like MIT's OpenCourseware and CMU's Open Learning Initiative seem to host only the content they produce themselves; the Khan Academy seems open to contributions, though I don't see any, and then there's Academic Earth. Where else could we put our content to get it in front of more people?

Scientific Computing Podcast

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

inSCIght is a podcast that focuses on scientific computing in all of its various forms. Every week we have four panelists engage head-to-head on poignant and interesting topics. The panelists are drawn from all across the scientific computing community. From embedded systems experts to very high level language gurus, from biologists to nuclear engineers, the hosts of inSCIght use computers to solve science and engineering problems everyday. This podcast throws people, ideas, and opinions into an audio-blender hoping to educate and entice each other and the world.

How to Contribute

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Following up on yesterday's post, I have written a short guide explaining how you can help Software Carpentry improve and grow. Reporting bugs, suggesting changes, contributing content, or running the course yourself: they're all a lot easier than you think, and a great way to gain some experience with new kinds of teaching and learning that are becoming more important with every passing year.

Funding (A Plea for Contacts)

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I've been working full-time on Software Carpentry since the beginning of May 2010. As I said at the end of November, progress has been steady, but we're only at 60-70% of plan. I am therefore now looking for more funding so that I can continue developing material and delivering the course online this summer and fall. I would welcome pointers to potential backers, and introductions even more. (But please, only ones that are fairly focused: "have you tried the NSF?" or "there must be companies that need this stuff!" aren't actually very useful...)

Software Carpentry Bootcamp Jan 12-14 in Madison

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Registration is now open for a three-day Software Carpentry bootcamp Jan 12-14, 2011, at the University of Wisconsin — Madison, organized by the folks at The Hacker Within. I'll be speaking on the first morning, and hanging out the rest of the time trying to learn as much as I can. Look forward to seeing you there!

Open Research Computation

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

By now, many of you have (hopefully) seen the announcement of Open Research Computation, a new journal devoted to "...peer reviewed articles that describe the development, capacities, and uses of software designed for use by researchers in any field." The editorial board includes several friends of this course; as one of them, Titus Brown, observed in his blog:

...the problem with the online world for scientists [is] there's no real systematized incentive to any of this online stuff. And that makes it really tough. I'm going through Reappointment right now... Nowhere on there is there a place for "influential blog posts" — how would you measure that, anyway? Same with software — I listed my various software releases on the "scientific products" page of the form, and have since been asked to describe and discuss the impact of my software. Since I don't track downloads, and half or more of the software hasn't been published yet and can't easily be cited, and people don't seem to reliably cite open source software anyway, I'm not sure how to document the impact.

Building a Recommendation Engine with NumPy

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Tommy Guy's explanation of how to build a recommendation engine in NumPy, based on an example from Toby Segaran's excellent book Programming Collective Intelligence, is now online.

Presents for the Holidays

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Some of the best presents I have ever received have been recommendations: "Oh, you'd like this author," or, "You really should listen to this album." So, in the holiday spirit, please take a moment and share (in the comments) some pointers to computational resources that you think deserve to be better known. To get the ball rolling, I'm having fun playing with Ruffus, a simple Python library for constructing pipelined workflows. I'd also recommend Jonathan Weiner's Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior. It's ostensibly a biography of Seymour Benzer (who spent his entire career exploring how genes determine behavior), but it's actually the best description I've ever read of how a successful long-lived research program actually works.

Peer to Peer

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the things we think didn't work well in this term's online run of the course was peer-to-peer discussion among students. Such discussion is one sign of a vibrant open source project or educational community, but our mailing list was almost silent except for announcements we posted ourselves, and other than a few bug reports, there were very few comments from students on the lecture pages. We think students will get more out of the course if they talk more amongst themselves for several reasons:

Winter 2011 Online Course Now Full

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As of this morning, 102 people have signed up for our Winter 2011 offering—it will be the largest run of the course ever. Registration has now closed, but we will send out notices when we have dates for the next one.

ComputerWorld Canada Educator of the Year

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

ComputerWorld Canada has named Software Carpentry's Greg Wilson the 2010 IT Educator of the Year for "...recognizing the application of innovative techniques and development of new curriculum and delivery of programs that stimulate learning." Greg would like to thank Prof. Karen Reid and Prof. Marsha Chechik for the nomination; the students who have taken or worked on this course; and most especially, his mum and dad, who taught him the things that matter most.

How Did You Find Us?

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hope you don't mind another administrative meta-question, but: how did you find this site?

A peer or colleague pointed you at us?

Your boss or supervisor did so?

A Google for one of the topics we cover?

A mention by someone else you follow?

A pointer in some kind of publication (American Scientist, Nature, Computing in Science & Engineering, etc.)

We contacted you at some point?

Other (please specify)?

Please add a comment and let us know.

Ratings Revised

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We asked, you answered: here are the latest results from our survey of what topics you'd most like us to cover, with links to the ones that have been posted. A few notes:

N = 188 responses.

This is the first time data visualization has dropped out of the top 5.

It's also the first time that nerdish subjects like computational complexity and functional languages have placed anywhere near the top.

There's a noticeable mismatch between things we think people should know (like version control) and things people think they want (building desktop GUIs).

Conclusion: more data ≠ more insight.

Do You Use Software Carpentry?

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

If you use any of the Software Carpentry material in courses of your own, please add a link in the comments section below: our sponsors would like to know what our reach is (i.e., the more links we get, the more likely it is that we'll be able to continue helping you :-) ).

Tracking Utility and Impact

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Mark Guzdial recently posted some interesting (and for us, slightly depressing) statistics about MIT Open Courseware. Long story short, it looks like that flagship effort isn't as widely used as many of us had hoped or believed. I can't find equivalent stats for the Khan Academy (a scrappy "agile" alternative to MOC that has been getting a lot of attention in the geek community), but even if I could, those numbers probably wouldn't answer my real question: who is this reaching, and what impact is it having? As Guzdial points out, asking users to self-report is subject to large sampling bias, as is googling for links back to lectures. Our sponsors want to know who's using our stuff, and whether it's helping them: how do we answer those questions?

A New Site Design

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We've just made a few changes to the layout and look and feel of the Software Carpentry site.

The blog and new content is now accessible directly at http://software-carpentry.org/ Version 3.0 of the course material is still available at http://software-carpentry.org/3_0.

We've put all of the new content under the Topics menu, and shuffled a few of the other pages around to make things easier to find.

We've updated the WordPress theme to one that works better for embedded screencasts.

Let us know in the comments how you like the new configuration, and if you find any glitches.

Testing Scientific Software

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Yesterday, Michael Feathers tweeted that, "The hardest bit of TDD [test-driven development] for ppl in scientific computation is that they often don't know what their intermediate results should be." I'd go further: if the average scientist or engineer knew what the output of their program was supposed to be, they wouldn't need to run the program. And if you don't know what answer is right, what do you compare your tests' output to?

Getting the Source

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In response to several queries: if you'd like to get the source for both the Version 3 material (the old static HTML pages) and the new Version 4 stuff, they're both in our Subversion repository at http://software-carpentry.org/swc. The whole world should have read permission; please let us know if you run into any problems.

And if you're minded to contribute material, we'd welcome help: please contact us by email to talk about what you could do.

An Answer That Most Students Won't Understand

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Two days ago, I asked how to generates tests from tables of fixtures using Nose:

...does Nose already have a tool for running through a table of fixtures and expected results? My hand-rolled version is:

Tests = ( # R1 R2 Expected ( ((0, 0), (0, 0)), ((0, 0), (0, 0)), None ), ( ((0, 0), (0, 0)), ((0, 0), (1, 1)), None ), ( ((0, 0), (1, 1)), ((0, 0), (1, 1)), ((0, 0), (1, 1)) ), ( ((0, 3), (2, 5)), ((1, 0), (2, 4)), ((1, 3), (2, 4)) ) ) def test_table(): for (R1, R2, expected) in Tests: yield run_it, R1, R2, expected def run_it(R1, R2, expected): assert overlap(R1, R2) == expected

which is simple enough if students already understand generators and function application, but hell to explain if they don't—and they won't.

Stats for July

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Visitors

Page Views

Survey Update

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Here's an update on responses to the survey I posted a couple of weeks ago. 172 people have responded at this point; it's encouraging that priorities are relatively stable as numbers increase.

Education

77.3% Graduate degree

22.1% Undergraduate degree

0.6% High school

Field

41.0% Computer Science

30.1% Earth Sciences

28.9% Physics

25.4% Mathematics and Statistics

11.0% Microbiology

9.2% Biomedical Engineering

6.9% Macrobiology

5.2% Medicine and Health Care

5.2% Electrical Engineering

5.2% Astronomy

4.6% Mechanical Engineering

4.6% Aerospace Engineering

4.0% Chemical Engineering

2.9% Psychology

2.3% Economics

2.3% Business/Finance

1.2% Linguistics

1.2% Civil Engineering

0.6% Social Sciences

0.6% Arts and Humanities

Role

44.8% Academic Researcher

32.8% Software Developer

16.7% Graduate Student

16.7% Government Research Scientist

10.3% Engineer

9.8% Manager/Supervisor

8.6% System Administrator

3.4% Teacher

2.9% Industrial Research Scientist

1.1% Undergraduate student

1.1% Laboratory Technician

Priorities

2.51 Automating Repetitive Tasks

2.50 Reproducible Research

2.49 Data Visualization

2.46 Version Control

2.43 Performance Optimization

2.41 Data Structures

2.41 Coding Style

2.38 Basic Programming

2.37 Testing and Quality Assurance

2.35 Parallel Programming

2.34 Debugging with a Debugger

2.33 Using the Unix Shell

2.29 Computational Complexity

2.21 Object-Oriented Programming

2.21 Designing a Data Model

2.19 Working in Teams/on Large Projects

2.14 Refactoring

2.10 Static and Dynamic Code Analysis Tools

2.09 Matrix Algebra

2.06 Systems Programming

2.06 Integrating with C and Fortran

2.03 Design Patterns

2.01 Packaging Code for Release

1.95 Functional Languages

1.93 Handling Binary Data

1.80 Image Processing

1.77 Introduction

1.75 Build a Desktop User Interface

1.73 XML

1.64 Create a Web Service

1.39 Geographic Information Systems

Survey Results

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Here are the results of the survey that we announced a couple of days ago. I'm a bit surprised that so many computer scientists responded, and equally surprised by the popularity of "biomedical engineering" — who knew? The scores for various topics hold a few surprises as well: I would have predicted that something with the word "web" in it would have scored near the top of the list, rather than at the bottom.

Hubs, Spokes, and Gonzo Programming Skills

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

In the aftermath of his (very successful) course on next-generation sequencing, Titus Brown has posted some thoughts on how to tie that material to Software Carpentry. To make a short story even shorter, he thinks Software Carpentry requires more knowledge on entry than most biologists have, and proposes a hub-and-spoke model as a solution. He also thinks we need a "Greg gets hit by a bus" plan. Please head over to his post and add comments there: April 2011 (the end date for the current round of funding) seems a long way off, but it isn't.

Software Carpentry in Three and a Half Minutes

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I had a chance to give a quick pitch for Software Carpentry yesterday, which I've since recorded and posted to our web site. I hope it's a useful overview of what we're trying to do and why; I'd be very grateful for ideas about improving it.

Note: a newer version of the pitch, titled "Software Carpentry in Ninety Seconds", is now available.

A Word (Or Three) From Our Sponsors

Thu, 13 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Starting next week, we're going to start posting interviews with the people who are sponsoring Software Carpentry. Questions we'll ask include:

What sort of work does your organization do?

What kind of people work there? What backgrounds and skills do they typically have when they join you, and where do they need help?

What do they find most frustrating when doing computational work?

How do you hope this course will help them?

How will you tell if it actually has (i.e., how will you evaluate this course's success or failure)?

What else would you like us to ask them?

A Question About Documentation

Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

What kind of documentation do you use when you're programming? How useful do you find it? If have three minutes to fill in a very short survey on the topic (it's literally half a dozen questions), we'd be very grateful for your feedback.

T Minus One

Sun, 02 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Tomorrow (May 3, 2010) will be my first day of full-time work on Version 4 of this course (where "full-time" means "except for getting my daughter a new passport and taking her to the dentist for the first time"). I'm very pleased that Jason Montojo and Jon Pipitone will be joining me part-time for May and June — they helped organize and deliver the most recent run of the course at the University of Toronto, and with them on board, I'm confident that we'll be able to hit our first milestone.

Apologies for the Flurry of Re-Posts

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Our apologies for the flood of re-posts that some of you may have seen over the weekend: apparently, adding a category to a post, or changing its existing category, makes some blog readers believe the whole post is new. We're sorry for any confusion or inconvenience the clutter may have caused.

What's Not on the Reading List

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I mentioned yesterday that I maintain a list of books that haven't been written yet. Partly it's an exercise in sympathetic magic—if the reviews exist, maybe the books will follow—but it's also useful for organizing my thoughts about what a programmer's education should look like. Looking at the books I've matched to various topics in the Software Carpentry course outline, there are some distressing gaps:

Given that programmers spend upwards of 40% of their time debugging, there are very few books about it, and only one collection of exercises (Barr's Find the Bug).

There's a lot on higher-level programming techniques, but it's scattered across dozens of books as disparate as The Seasoned Schemer, Effective C++, and The Practice of Programming. I haven't read Perrotta's Metaprogramming Ruby yet, but it looks like it will be another rich source of ideas.

Material on systems programming—manipulating files and directories, running sub-processes, etc.—is equally scattered. The Art of Unix Programming includes all the right topics, but covers too much, in too much detail, at too low a level. Gift & Jones' Python for Unix and Linux System Administration has the same two faults (from Software Carpentry's point of view—I think both are excellent books in general), but uses a scripting language for examples, so it made the list.

Mark Guzdial and others have done excellent research showing the benefits of teaching programming using multimedia, i.e., showing students how to manipulate images, sound, and video as a way of explaining loops and conditionals. That's half of why the revised course outline includes image processing early on (the other halves being "it's fun" and "it's useful"). Once again, most of what I'm familiar with is either documentation for specific libraries, or textbooks on the theory of computer vision, but there are some promising titles in the MATLAB world that I need to explore further.

Performance. It's been 15 years since I first grumbled about this, and the situation hasn't improved. Most books on computer systems performance are really textbooks on queueing theory; of that family, Jain's Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis is still head and shoulders above the crowd. Souders' High Performance Web Sites is the closest modern equivalent I've found to Bentley's classic Writing Efficient Programs, but neither is really appropriate for scientists, who need to think about disk I/O (biologists and their databases), pipelining and caching (climatologists with their differential equations), and garbage collection (everybody using a VM-based language). I had hoped that High Performance Python would fill this gap, but it seems to have been delayed indefinitely. (And yes, I've looked at Writing Efficient Ruby Code; it has some of what our students want, but not nearly enough.)

There are lots of books about data modeling, but all the ones I know focus exclusively on either the relational approach or object-oriented design, with a smattering that talk about XML, RDF, and so on. I haven't yet found something that compares and contrasts the three approaches; pointers would be welcome.

Web programming. There are (literally) thousands of books on the subject, but that's the problem: almost all treatments are book-length, and this course only has room for one or two lectures. It is possible to build a simple web service in that time, but only by (a) using a cookbook approach, rather than teaching students how things actually work, and (b) ignoring security issues completely. I'm not comfortable with the first, and flat-out refuse to do the second: if this course shows people how to write a simple CGI script that's vulnerable to SQL injection and cross-site scripting, then it's our fault when the students' machines are hacked. This gap is as much in the available libraries as in the books, but that doesn't make it any less pressing.

Given these gaps, I may drop one or two topics (such as performance and web programming) and either swap in one of the discarded topics or spend more time on some of the core material. I'm hoping neither will be necessary; as I said above, pointers to books in any language that are at the right level, and cover the right areas, would be very welcome.

Now on Twitter

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

You can now follow our progress at 'swcarpentry' on Twitter.

Podcast with Jon Udell

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jon Udell recently interviewed me about Software Carpentry and related topics—the podcast is now on his web site.

Serendipitous and Unexpected

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Ryan Lilian:

Most research effort does not produce what is thought of as a traditionally publishable result. That doesn't mean, however, that nothing was gained by conducting the research. These results, whether they are failures or merely perplexing, can provide valuable insights into open problems and prevent other researchers from duplicating work. We started a journal that focuses on serendipitous (I have no idea why this worked) and unexpected (it seems like this technique should work on this problem but it doesn't) results. The goal of the journal is to provide a venue where ideas can flow and be debated.

Special Issue of Computing in Science and Engineering

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A special issue of Computing in Science & Engineering that Andy Lumsdaine and I edited, devoted to software engineering in computational science, is now available. We'd like to thank everyone who contributed:

Report on the Second International Workshop on Software Engineering for CSE, by Jeffrey Carver (University of Alabama)

Managing Chaos: Lessons Learned Developing Software in the Life Sciences, by Sarah Killcoyne and John Boyle (Institute for Systems Biology)

Scientific Computing's Productivity Gridlock: How Software Engineering Can Help, by Stuart Faulk (University of Oregon), Eugene Loh and Michael L. Van De Vanter (Sun Microsystems), Susan Squires (Tactics), and Lawrence G. Votta, (Brincos)

Mutation Sensitivity Testing, by Daniel Hook (Engineering Seismology Group Solutions) and Diane Kelly (Royal Military College of Canada)

Automated Software Testing for MATLAB, by Steve Eddins (The MathWorks)

The libflame Library for Dense Matrix Computations, by Field G. Van Zee, Ernie Chan, and Robert A. van de Geijn (University of Texas at Austin), and Enrique S. Quintana-Ortí and Gregorio Quintana-Ortí (Universidad Jaime I de Castellón)

Engineering the Software for Understanding Climate Change, by Steve Easterbrook (University of Toronto) and Timothy Johns (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research)

Creating New Niches

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

"Publish or perish" is the central credo of academic life: despite all the hoopla about the blogosphere and online what-not, the reality for most of us is that if our work doesn't get into a respected journal or conference, it doesn't count.

But what do you do if there isn't a home for your kind of work? People working in scientific computing have been struggling with this for at least a quarter century: while there are many places to submit the results of programs, there are very few places where you can publish a description of the program itself, even if building it took years and required one intellectual breakthrough after another. In contrast, if you design a new telescope, there are at least half a dozen places you could turn.

The Hacker Within

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I did a web search for "software carpentry" a couple of weeks ago to update my impressions of how the material was being used, and stumbled across The Hacker Within,a self-help group at the University of Wisconsin for grad students in science who want to improve their computing skills. I had a great chat with the organizers by phone on Thursday, and hope to get there in the spring to meet them in person. It's always great to meet the people the course is designed to help; I'd welcome pointers to other groups if you have them.

American Scientist Article on How Scientists Use Computers

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

American Scientist has just published a short article summarizing the results from the survey we did last year of how scientists actually use computers.

The Ice Cream Test

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Extensive experimentation has uncovered a foolproof way to tell Aussies from Brits: simply observe their reaction to ice cream.

Aussie Brit

Martin Fenner on SciBarCamp

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Nature's Martin Fenner has blogged a summary of what he heard and saw at SciBarCamp'09 in Palo Alto a couple of weeks ago. Cameron Neylon was there too—in fact, I'd be willing to bet that a healthy number of attendees posted their experiences in some form or another. Maybe the next challenge for scientific publishing is something that will aggregate and summarize disparate reports of such events?

Big Code vs. Science 2.0

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The original goal of this course was to give scientists and engineers the skills they needed to build large pieces of software without heroic effort. It's increasingly clear, though, that another goal is equally important: to help them take part in what's sometimes called "Science 2.0": the sharing of information through the Internet. Cameron Neylon's slides on capturing process are, like Jon Udell's on computational thinking, a good summary of the skills required—skills which overlap with, but are distinct from, those needed by software developers.

SECSE Workshop

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The latest in a series of workshops on "Software Engineering for Computational Science and Engineering" was held in Vancouver on May 23, just after ICSE'09. Steve Easterbrook has written a good summary of what was discussed, and Jeffrey Carver's longer summary will appear in a future issue of Computing in Science and Engineering.

How Scientists Use Computers: Survey Part 2

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Thank you once again for taking part in our Fall 2008 survey of how scientists use computers in their research. We will present a paper describing our findings at ICSE'09 in Vancouver on May 23, and will make the results public as soon after that as possible. There will also be an article in American Scientist magazine discussing what you've told us some time this summer.

Empirical Software Engineering and Scientific Computing

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The slides for my talk at the National Research Council on empirical software engineering and how scientists actually use computers are now up on SlideShare. The colors in some of the embedded images were messed up during upload, but the result should still be readable.

Open Notebook Science Badges

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I blogged last summer about creating a badging scheme for open science. Turns out it's been done: ONS Claims has badges for four flavors of open science. Two sets are available in various sizes, all variations on the themes below:

All content Selected content

Immediate release

Delayed release

Here's hoping they're widely adopted.

Legal Frameworks for Reproducible Research

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My grad students and I met Victoria Stodden for the first time yesterday, and had a great time talking about reproducible research, science 2.0, and most particularly the kind of legal/copyright frameworks needed to move science forward. She has two papers up that anyone interested in the subject should read: a short one that appeared in Computing in Science and Engineering titled The Legal Framework for Reproducible Research in the Sciences: Licensing and Copyright, anda longer one due out soon called Enabling Reproducible Research: Open Licensing For Scientific Innovation. If you have thoughts on the subject, I'm sure she'd enjoy hearing from you.

Enough Players to Hand Out Medals

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I blogged last August about the first and second Provenance Challenge, in which the creators of systems for tracking scientific data and workflows were given sample problems, then asked to have their tools answer a variety of questions. (Results from the first were reported in Concurrency and Computation, but ironically, those articles are not openly available; the third challenge will kick off soon.) Chasing down one of those references again, I came across the Open Notebook Science Challenge, which "...calls upon people with access to materials and equipment to measure the solubility of compounds (aldehydes, amines and carboxylic acids are a priority) in organic solvents and report their findings using Open Notebook Science". This isn't quite the same thing as automatically tracking data provenance; instead, it is "...the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded". There are lots of interesting research questions for computer scientists here, ranging from privacy and security issues to notification, peripheral awareness, ontological engineering, and more — for example, see Cameron Neylon's latest post synthesizing discussion about using OpenID to identify scientific researchers and their contributions.

MTEST

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Steve Eddins has posted an xUnit-style testing harness for MATLAB called MTEST on the MATLAB Central File Exchange. It's a nice piece of work, and I hope numerical programmers will make heavy use of it.

Python Textbooks for Biotech

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jan Erik Moström recently posted a request for textbook recommendations for teaching programming (using Python) to biotechnology students. He has now posted the responses [no longer online] he received — might be interesting to some readers of this blog.

Things I'd Like To Finish In the Next 489 Days

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the things I teach my students is that the real purpose of a schedule is to tell you when to start cutting corners and dropping features. The ticker on my web site tells me I have 489 days left in my contract with the university; I signed up hoping to study ways of teaching second-stage novices [1] how to be better programmers, but after four failed attempts to get NSERC funding [2], it's time to lower my sights. Here are the things I'd like to finish off before my stint at U of T is over:

A Healthy Dose of Scepticism

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Titus Brown's latest post (which opens with, "The latest hot idea for making a protein-protein interaction database leaves me lukewarm") should be read by every computer scientist who's "just trying to help":

...while tools can be helpeful, the fundamental problem is much more, well, fundamental: science is hard. Connecting the dots is hard. Thinking clearly about the problem and separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, is hard. I worry that for the majority of biologists, new tools are going to be more distracting than helpful. We need to build simpler, easier-to-use tools, not more complicated tools; we need to keep our focus on the goal (solving biological problems) and not just on intermediate stages like improving databases and building better prediction tools.

The National Academy Would Like to Hear From You

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Carl Zimmer: the US National Academy of Sciences would like you to fill in a two-minute survey about what science topics you care about most. Current results are:

SECSE'09 Call for Papers

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Second International Workshop on Software Engineering for Computational Science and Engineering

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Co-located with ICSE 2009 — Vancouver, Canada

http://www.cs.ua.edu/~SECSE09

Overview

This workshop is concerned with the development of:

Scientific software applications, where the focus is on directly solving scientific problems. These applications include, but are not limited to, large parallel models/simulations of the physical world (high performance computing systems).

Applications that support scientific endeavors. Such applications include, but are not limited to, systems for managing and/or manipulating large amounts of data.

A particular software application might fit into both categories (for example, a weather forecasting system might both run climatology models and produce visualisations of big data sets) or just one (for example, nuclear simulations fit into the first category and laboratory information management software into the second). For brevity, we refer to both categories under the umbrella title of "Computational Science and Engineering (CS&E)".

What Sciences Are There?

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Over 1900 people have already responded to our survey of how scientists use computers, and it still has two weeks left to run. Our next task will be to analyze the data we've collected, which (among other things) means coding people's free-form descriptions of their specialties so that we can talk about physicists and chemists as opposed to "this one person who's doing N-brane quantum foam approximations to multiversal steady-state thingummies".

One Good Survey Deserves Another

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

While we're running our survey of ~~how scientists use computers~~ [link no longer active], the folks at MATLAB are asking their users a few questions too. If you use any MathWorks products, and have a few minutes, they'd be grateful for your help.

1731 People

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

1731 people have completed our survey of how scientists use computers since it went online three weeks ago. That's pretty cool, but I'd like to double the number (at least). If you consider yourself a working scientist, and haven't taken the survey yet, please take a moment and do so. If you aren't a scientist, but know some, please pass on the link:
~~http://softwareresearch.ca/seg/SCS/scientific-computing-survey.html~~
[link no longer active]

Surveying Scientists' Use of Computers

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Computers are as important to modern scientists as test tubes, but we know surprisingly little about how scientists develop and use software in their research. To find out, the University of Toronto, Simula Research Laboratory, and the National Research Council of Canada have launched an online survey in conjunction with American Scientist magazine. If you have 20 minutes to take part, please go to:

~~http://softwareresearch.ca/seg/SCS/scientific-computing-survey.html~~ [link no longer active]

Science in the 21st Century

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm at the "Science in the 21st Century" conference at the Perimeter Institute today. There are 32 people in the room right now: 23 are male and 9 are female, but only one is non-Caucasian, which pretty much matches the numbers in the picture from the conference dinner last night. That's about the same M/F ratio I see in science grad courses at U of T, but definitely not the ethnic distribution—wonder why? It can't just be a "seniority effect" — this is a pretty young crowd. We see the same thing at DemoCamp: non-Caucasians are often a majority n sci/tech classes and companies in the Greater Toronto Area, but definitely a minority on Tuesday nights. Thoughts? Michael Nielsen says that SciBarCamp was 50/50...

Science 2.0: the Future of Online Tools for Scientists

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

A pub night and panel with Timo Hannay, Cameron Neylon, and Michael Nielsen, hosted by Nature Network Toronto

What does the future hold for the way we do science? Are online repositories such as GenBank and the physics preprint ArXiv, or social tools such as Nature Network, about to change science profoundly? To find out, join Nature Network Toronto for an interactive panel discussion over drinks at the pub.

Data Provenance Challenge

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

John's summary of our discussion about what to teach scientists about reproducible research if they already believe it's a good thing, and want to start doing it reminded me that I never posted about the Provenance Challenge. It has been run twice so far; each time, authors of tools to track the provenance (or lineage) of scientific data have to implemented some workflows, then answers questions about where data came from, what was done to it, and so on. The results of the first challenge are described system-by-system in these papers (sorry, but it's behind a wall — if you google for combinations of the authors' names, you can find PDF preprints). This is a very cool research area, and I hope one of my incoming grad students will want to do something with it.

Badge of Reproducibility

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Coming back to the badge meme from earlier this week, John Cook's new Reproducible Research blog pointed me at this page on the EPFL site advertising a paper called "What, Why and How of Reproducible Research in Signal Processing". Notice the "Reproducible Research" badge? The "add your evaluation" link takes you to a formlet that lets you choose between:

I have tested this code and it works

I have tested this code and it does not work (on my computer)

I have tested this code and was able to reproduce the results from the paper

I have tested this code and was unable to reproduce the results from the paper

It's a good start...

Badge of Honor?

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I met up with Shirley Wu, Michael Nielsen, and a few other ISMB attendees yesterday to talk about what's variously called Science 2.0 or Open Science. It was pretty rushed (and not helped by the bar we wound up in), but it got me thinking about creating an "open science" badge that scientists could apply to their work. Right now, people are using a variety of terms in inconsistent ways; it sometimes takes a very close reading to figure out exactly what the mean. I'd really like to see the PSB workshop (or some other meeting like it) put a peg in the ground and say, "If you do the following things, you can put this 'open science' badge on your lab's web site, and put, 'This research is certified open.' in your papers." The W3C's familiar badges and the Open Source Initiative's certification of software licenses have done a lot to clarify discussion, and have given people standards to aspire to. Nine years after the "Open Source/Open Science" workshop at Brookhaven National Laboratory, maybe it's time to borrow those ideas and put them into practice.

Programming and Scientific Education on Slashdot

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Adam Goucher, a Slashdot thread about whether programming should be part of science education. 300+ comments and counting, almost all relating personal experiences.

Interviewed by Jon Udell

Sun, 25 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Jon Udell has posted an interview he did with me last week at IT Conversations. The title is "High Performance Computing Considered Harmful", and slides from a talk of the same name that I gave in Austin are available.

Later: here's Jon's summary of the interview. Curmudgeonly? Moi? :-)

Why Don't We Do This?

Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Source Code for Biology and Medicine is a peer-reviewed journal from BioMed Central devoted to, well, source code for biology and medicine. It's been around for at least a couple of years; based on a quick scan of four of their most popular papers, they seem to cover everything from getting and installing software to its numerical properties, user interface, and typical applications. This is very cool—but why isn't there something like this for computer science? All I can think of are Software: Practice & Experience and The Journal of Systems and Software, both of which are one meta removed from SCBM.

But I Was Gone Less than 48 Hours!

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I left Toronto for Austin mid-day Wednesday, and got back at midnight last night. Lots happened in the interim, so here's a linkandthoughtdump (which I bet actually is one word in German):

Gave a talk about Beautiful Code to the Austin Python Users' Group Wednesday at Enthought's swanky offices. (They're the kind folks who provide web hosting for the Software Carpentry course.) About 27 people in attendance, and good discussion afterward; was grateful to Travis Vaught and Sergey Fomel for rides from the airport and to the hotel respectively.

Gave another talk titled "HPC Considered Harmful" at the Texas Advanced Computing Center's Second Annual Scientific Software Days. I was a bit nervous about telling people at a supercomputing center that focusing on massive parallelism and peak performance is wrongheaded, but there were a lot of nodding heads.

I made lots of notes from two other talks that I want to follow up on at some point:

Robert van de Geijn's FLAME system lets you draw matrix operations, then automatically generates the corresponding high-performance code. It's a great example of a real high-level programming tool for scientists (and yet another special case of what a real extensible programming system would support).

Eric Jones (also from Enthought) talked about a tool they're building that watches changes to variables in Python programs, and automatically generates interactive plots of their values. It sounds simpler and less impressive than it actually is; I've asked him to put together a screencast, and I think you'll be wowed—I was. (Later: Steve Eddings from The Mathworks sent me a link about data linking in MATLAB, complete with a video tutorial.)

At roughly the same time, half a world away, Diomidis Spinellis presented a study comparing the code quality of Linux, Windows, OpenSolaris, and FreeBSD. Very cool work; wish I'd been at ICSE'08 to ask questions.

Meanwhile, Dmitri Vassiliev, who is continuing his work on SlashID this summer, has discovered that generated code is next-to-impossible to debug. Not to be a one-note symphony or anything, but I said in that same article about extensible programming systems that the real challenge is not extending notation, but creating extensible debugging tools so that those notations and high-level representations can be fixed when they break. Robert van de Geijn doesn't think FLAME needs a debugger; respectfully, I disagree.

Science in the Open has a plea to scientists to make their raw data available, motivated by yet another irreproducible result.

Kosta Zabashta has posted early thoughts about integrating IRC into DrProject. (Gray on black? Kosta...your design skills rival mine...) I need to tell him that DrProject's RPC module doesn't handle tickets because Jeff Balogh is going to replace the entire ticketing system with an extensible one this summer, using his Dojo Form Editor as a front end...

Elisabeth Hendrickson has thoughts on automating tests for legacy web applications. Students, take note.

Thanks to Nick Jamil and others, we have instructions for installing DrProject on Windows. Yay!

Everything old is new again, including Ada and the Bletchley Park Colossus.

And then there's this:

SE-CSE Workshop

Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

One of the downsides of being in Texas is that I couldn't attend the First International Workshop on Software Engineering for Computational Science and Engineering, which was held at ICSE'08 in Leipzig this week. Papers are here (I'll be reading them on the flight home); they look interesting, but the biggest thing for me is the change in the workshop's name—it used to be "Software Engineering for High-Performance Computing Applications" (~~2004~~, ~~2005~~, 2006, 2007), and I'm hoping the change of name reflects a genuine broadening of focus.

Those Who Will Not Learn From History...

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

My article "Those Who Will Not Learn From History..." is in this month's Computing in Science and Engineering (and mirrored here).

SPOC

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Regarding the idea of reproducible research, I stumbled over I-SPOC while looking through Google Summer of Code stuff. From their pitch:

The overall goal of this project is to build computational and social infrastructure to support the use of a new form of scientific communication called a SPOC (Scientific Paper with Open Communication). A SPOC combines a standard academic paper with open source computational models written in any publicly accessible computer language. SPOCs will (i) link computational results with the models that produce them, allowing independent verification and validation (ii) create incentives for cleaner, more transparent code and for the sharing of code (iii) enable others to extend and improve existing computational models and to verify model robustness (iv) bring computational models to life allowing faculty, students, and other scholars to see dynamic phenomena emerge and (v) have an enormous effect on the teaching of science.

Three Studies (Maybe Four)

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We're in the thick of picking students and projects for Google Summer of Code, which has inspired some less-random-than-usual thoughts. Here are two studies I'd like to do (or see done):

What has happened to previous students? How many are still involved in open source? How many have gone on to {start a company, grad school, prison}? What do they think they learned from the program? How much of the software they wrote is still in use? Etc.

Every one of the 175 organizations blessed by Google this year is using the same web application for collecting and voting on projects. From what I can tell, they're all using it in different ways: +4 means something very different to the Python Software Foundation than it does to Eclipse or SWIG. They're also using a bewildering variety of other channels for communication: wikis, IRC, Skype chat sessions, mailing lists (the most popular), and so on. Why? Is this another reflection of Jorge Aranda's finding that every small development group evolves a different process, but all those processes "work" in some sense, or is it—actually, I don't have any competing hypotheses right now, but I'm sure there are some.

And while we're on the subject of studies, I just read Hochstein et al's paper "Experiments to Understand HPC Time to Development" (CT Watch Quarterly, 2(4A), November 2006). They watched a bunch of grad students at different universities develop some simple parallel applications using a variety of tools, and measured productivity as (relative speedup)/(relative effort), where relative speedup is (reference execution time)/(parallel execution time), and relative effort is (parallel effort)/(reference effort). The speedup measure is unproblematic, but as far as I can tell, they don't explain where their "reference effort" measure comes from. I suspect it's the effort required to build a serial solution to the problem, and that "parallel effort" is then the additional time required to parallelize; I've mailed the authors to ask, but haven't heard back yet.

The Retractions Just Keep Coming In

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Titus Brown, yet another published result retracted because of a bug in code.

Nice Quote

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

An article about computational science in a scientific publication is not the scholarship itself, it is merely advertising of the scholarship. The actual scholarship is the complete software development environment and the complete set of instructions which generated the figures.

—David L. Donoho, WaveLab and Reproducible Research, 1995, p. 5.

(via Andrew Lumsdaine)

Survey: Silent Errors in Scientific Code

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Posted on behalf of Daniel Hook and Diane Kelly:

We are members of a software research group from Queen's University who are investigating ideas and tools to assist with the development of scientific software. We are starting a project focused on finding silent or hidden errors in scientific code. (Silent errors are errors that don't result in a crash, an error message or an other obvious indicator of a problem.) To create a catalogue of common silent errors, we would like to hear debugging "war stories" from computational scientists. Using these stories we hope to provide improved code testing techniques specifically for scientists.

Scientific Groupware Revisited

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Nature would like "to hear from physicists what kind of tools would help in managing the ever-growing tide of information from, and the exciting possibilities of, the internet." (I presume scientists in lesser disciplines will be asked to chip in at a later date ;-). It will be interesting to see how much (if anything) has changed since Jon Udell wrote "Internet Groupware for Scientific Collaboration" eight years ago.

Grumpy Minds Think Alike

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Ned Gulley pointed me at this talk by fellow-Mathworkser Steve Eddins that hits a lot of the same core ideas as Software Carpentry. Time to convert SC to a wiki, I think, and start pushing it again...

SciBarCamp in Toronto March 15-16

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

SciBarCamp is weekend unconference for scientists, artists, and technologists. The goal is to create connections between science, entrepreneurs and local businesses, and arts and culture. I think this is a great idea, and wish I could attend (I already have a plane ticket for SIGCSE in Portland); it's free, but there is only space for around 100 people, so please register by sending an email to Jen Dodd.

Python Supercomputing Statistics

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I have a major grant application and (hopefully final) revisions to my next children's book due on Friday, so of course I'm reading white papers about Python-friendly supercomputing from Interactive Supercomputing, a Boston-area firm that's about three years old. IS offers several kinds of parallelism for MATLAB, Python, R, SAS, and other high-level languages; I don't know if their tools are any easier to use than anyone else's, but they have an impressive team (including Russ Barbour, ex-Apollo, and Steve Reinhardt, ex-Cray).

The Burning Man of HPC

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

It's a small world: Andy Oram, my co-editor on Beautiful Code, just interviewed Brent Gorda, co-author of the first version of the Software Carpentry course, about the cluster challenge that's running at Supercomputing'07. Don't be fooled by the purple-on-black titles: this is a very cool idea. Students teams get fixed time (and fixed electrical power) to put together a cluster and run some benchmarks. Doing this earned you a PhD twenty years ago; ten years ago, it would have been a line item in a department's budget. It's now a contest for students, and I look forward to finding a cluster in the bottom of a cereal box before I die... ;-)

Random Survey about HPC

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This was just forwarded by a friend:

The High Performance Computing (HPC) community is initiating a study to develop education and training pathways in order to enable scientists and engineers to advance the pace of discovery by taking advantage of high performance computing (HPC) and grids.

In order to inform our study, we invite you to complete a survey about your experiences. We would like you to evaluate a list of categories of expertise according to how relevant they are for your work. We also would like to collect additional information about your training experiences.

How Not to Collaborate

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I posted a note a while back about an upcoming workshop at Microsoft Research on computational education for scientists. If you read the call for papers, you'll discover that there aren't any instructions on how to submit material; nor is there any contact information, other than the generic "contact us" link the bottom corner that gives you nothing more than Microsoft's generic 1-800 number ("press 1 for Windows Vista support..."). After bouncing around for five minutes, I got a human being who told me that she couldn't give out any phone numbers, but I was welcome to fax my question to them...

Computational Education for Scientists

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Via Zachary Dodds: Microsoft is hosting a workshop on computational education for scientists in September. I'm going to try to be there—anyone else?

SciPy'07 Dates Announced

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

According to www.scipy.org, The SciPy 2007 Conference will be on August 16-17 this year; tutorials and sprints will run on the 14th, 15th, and 18th. I won't be able to attend (new baby), but I'd like to organize a half-day or one-day session to update and extend the Software Carpentry notes. Lots of modules need writing, both on Python-specific stuff and on general software engineering skills for scientists and engineers. I'd particularly like to see:

Software Carpentry Usage in December

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Visits to the Software Carpentry site were down quite a bit in December; I had expected a drop because of the holiday, but not this large. On the bright side, 47 students have signed up for the course at U of T this term; about 1/3 are from Computer Science, while the rest span Civil Engineering, Ecology, Physics, Ecology, and the life sciences.

Software Carpentry article in CiSE

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

The November 2006 issue of Computing in Science and Engineering includes an article I wrote titled "Software Carpentry: Getting Scientists to Write Better Code by making Them More Productive". It's available to subscribers only on the magazine's web site, but they have kindly given me permission to post it here. I think it's out too late to bring November's stats up above October's, but I could be surprised.

SciPy and Software Carpentry

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I'm flying down to CalTech this evening to give a talk on Software Carpentry at SciPy'06. There's been a fair bit of traffic on the web site in the last couple of weeks, and I'm looking forward to hearing how else we can help scientists and engineers become more productive programmers.

Total visits: 4354 in 15 days, from 731 distinct domains (excluding obvious robots).

Software Carpentry at the AAAS

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

I just received word that I'll be running a workshop on the aims, benefits, and curriculum of the Software Carpentry course at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St Louis on Friday, February 17. The AAAS AM is the biggest gathering of scientists in the world; I'm pretty excited.

Meanwhile, Michael Hoffman is teaching a short course on Python at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, England, based on the course notes. 24 people are now enrolled in the course at the University of Toronto, 47 are auditing locally, and 21 others are sitting in from other locations. (These number don't include the students enrolled in the course at Indiana University, or the study group at CalTech.) Oh, and 38 students have already submitted Exercise 1, even though it isn't due until 5:00 Friday ;-).

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.

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

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

AA	Aron Ahmadia
WC	Warren Code
MD	Matt Davis
TG	Tommy Guy
MH	Mike Hansen
TH	Ted Hart
KH	Konrad Hinsen
KH	Katy Huff
JK	Justin Kitzes
TK	Trevor King
CS	Chang She
JS	Joshua Smith
LTB	Laura Tremblay-Boyer
GVW	Greg Wilson

Age
<20	0.0%
20-25	18.3%
26-30	31.7%
31-35	25.0%
36-40	9.2%
41-45	4.2%
46-50	4.2%
>50	7.5%
Gender
Female	26.9%
Male	73.1%
Occupation
Undergrad	2.6%
Grad student	55.7%
Post-doc	13.9%
Faculty	9.6%
Support	13.0%
Industry	5.2%
Preferred Platforms
Linux	54.2%
Mac OS	50.0%
Windows	35.8%

Monday:	Start of a two-day workshop at Johns Hopkins University
	Online tutorial for participants in the London workshop
Tuesday:	Online tutorial for participants in the Edmonton workshop
Wednesday:	Online tutorial for participants in the Newcastle workshop
	And another one for participants in the Vancouver workshop
	And one more for participants in the Michigan State workshop
Thursday:	Combined tutorial for participants in previous workshops
Friday:	All-day strategy meeting in Toronto

	for people who complete the core curriculum
	for helping to teach (either workshops or online)
	for organizing workshops
	for creating (or fixing) content

	for people who have mastered our core content
	for people who have organized and run workshops
	for people who have created content

Topics	24
...mostly done (say, 80%)	18
...not even started	6
Words per topic	5,000
Words to write	48,000
Words per day	1,500
Days required	32
Editing, diagrams, etc.	×2
Total days	64
Code complete	July 15, 2011

Education
77.3%		Graduate degree
22.1%		Undergraduate degree
0.6%		High school
Field
41.0%		Computer Science
30.1%		Earth Sciences
28.9%		Physics
25.4%		Mathematics and Statistics
11.0%		Microbiology
9.2%		Biomedical Engineering
6.9%		Macrobiology
5.2%		Medicine and Health Care
5.2%		Electrical Engineering
5.2%		Astronomy
4.6%		Mechanical Engineering
4.6%		Aerospace Engineering
4.0%		Chemical Engineering
2.9%		Psychology
2.3%		Economics
2.3%		Business/Finance
1.2%		Linguistics
1.2%		Civil Engineering
0.6%		Social Sciences
0.6%		Arts and Humanities
Role
44.8%		Academic Researcher
32.8%		Software Developer
16.7%		Graduate Student
16.7%		Government Research Scientist
10.3%		Engineer
9.8%		Manager/Supervisor
8.6%		System Administrator
3.4%		Teacher
2.9%		Industrial Research Scientist
1.1%		Undergraduate student
1.1%		Laboratory Technician
Priorities
2.51		Automating Repetitive Tasks
2.50		Reproducible Research
2.49		Data Visualization
2.46		Version Control
2.43		Performance Optimization
2.41		Data Structures
2.41		Coding Style
2.38		Basic Programming
2.37		Testing and Quality Assurance
2.35		Parallel Programming
2.34		Debugging with a Debugger
2.33		Using the Unix Shell
2.29		Computational Complexity
2.21		Object-Oriented Programming
2.21		Designing a Data Model
2.19		Working in Teams/on Large Projects
2.14		Refactoring
2.10		Static and Dynamic Code Analysis Tools
2.09		Matrix Algebra
2.06		Systems Programming
2.06		Integrating with C and Fortran
2.03		Design Patterns
2.01		Packaging Code for Release
1.95		Functional Languages
1.93		Handling Binary Data
1.80		Image Processing
1.77		Introduction
1.75		Build a Desktop User Interface
1.73		XML
1.64		Create a Web Service
1.39		Geographic Information Systems