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CarpentryCon 2018, Dublin, 30 May - 1 June 2018

CarpentryCon 2018, Dublin, 30 May - 1 June 2018

Live notes, so an incomplete, partial record of what actually happened.

Tags: carpentrycon2018

My asides in {}


Day 1

Keynote Session-1: 09:00-10:25 am at George Moore Auditorium. Session Chair: Belinda Weaver.

First #CarpentryCon2018 keynote. Let's talk about diversity and allies. pic.twitter.com/UzThY6ayge

— Raniere Silva (@rgaiacs) May 30, 2018

.@frameshiftllc Ally: A member of a social group that enjoys some privilege that is working to end oppression and understand their own privilege - these are actions! #BeingAnAlly #CarpentryCon2018

— CarpentryCon (@CarpentryCon) May 30, 2018

You can passively be a target, but allyship requires action - Valerie Aurora, opening keynote at #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/Xe484LkVE9

— Sarah Brown (@BrownSarahM) May 30, 2018

Problem of changing the target not the ally. Reasons why the former more common: targets more self-motivated, gain more direct benefits, lower status, avoid confronting privileged people (and making them feel guilty) .. why is this a problem? Targets are overworked, stressed and underpaid. Targets are targeted when they speak out. Literature on this:

Hekman, David R., Stefanie K. Johnson, Maw-Der Foo, and Wei Yang. “Does Diversity-Valuing Behavior Result in Diminished Performance Ratings for Non-White and Female Leaders?” Academy of Management Journal 60, no. 2 (April 2017): 771–97. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2014.0538.

*Ugh* #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/NXa6IhNlpm

— James Baker (@j_w_baker) May 30, 2018

So we should focus on allies: they have time, money, less stress, seen as kind when being an ally et cetera .. listen, call out those who break CoC, focus on action that supports targets, save energy, spend money, use your social capital, sacrifice personal gain (who else is on this group/panel?) .. "nothing about us without us"

Practical things:

  • Better meetings. Default unmoderated caucus advantages privileged people.

Rules of unmoderated meetings:
1. Anyone can speak at any time.
2. By being the first person to speak during a pause.
3. Or by interrupting someone who is currently speaking.
4. And keep speaking until they stop or are interrupted.
😠#BetterMeetings #AllySkills #CarpentryCon2018

— CarpentryCon (@CarpentryCon) May 30, 2018

Hey #AfricanCarpentryTaskForce, we should implement this system for our #AfricanCarpentryInstructor meetups so that everyone's voice can be heard. Thanks @frameshiftllc for sharing! #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/RKkYtBaD6e

— Anelda van der Walt (@aneldavdw) May 30, 2018

#CarpentryCon2018 kicks off with @vaurorapub keynote: focus on allies - diversity and inclusion in technology @frameshiftllc https://t.co/FDTXbNYQcD https://t.co/rnlixb7wZP pic.twitter.com/TMfuQxBadv

— Daniel Bangert (@enigmaticocean) May 30, 2018

Thanks to everyone who came to the Focus on Allies talk at #CarpentryCon2018 ! Here are the slides: https://t.co/BanvQMNXTW

— FrameShiftConsulting (@frameshiftllc) May 30, 2018

Skill-up Session: 11:30-12:30 am (various rooms).

Don't: try to be perfect, apologise, don't read slides (but you can have words), practice in the mirror, go on tangents!

Tell people what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them that you've told them .. if the speaker is nervous, find a way as an audience member to show appreciation, support .. build your talk around a set of keywords .. don't ask open questions of an audience, as things like "do you have any questions for me?" and focus in on types of questions you are looking for and/or types of people you are looking for questions from.

Keynote Session-2: 01:30-02:35 pm at George Moore Auditorium. Session Chair: Fotis Psomopoulos.

  • 01:30-02:35 pm: Keynote by Greg Wilson: Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Ike Quebec

“The future of @thecarpentries belongs to you!”@gvwilson #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/mZkJ4oVv3o

— Abby Cabunoc Mayes (@abbycabs) May 30, 2018

10 rules for ending things:

  1. Be sure you mean it.
  2. Do it when others think it's mine. Take advice from friends and colleagues. They are probably right.
  3. Tell people what, when, why. Don't make people guess.
  4. Don't pick your own sucessor.
  5. Train people before you go. Go on holiday for a week, leave people temporarily in charge.
  6. When you leave, leave.
  7. Have some fun before you go. Do something you are going to remember.
  8. Take some time to think about what you done. Write it down. Good and bad.
  9. Remember the good things, the good times. Don't fixate on the mistakes.
  10. Do something next. Recognise that you are not comfortable with idleness.

Don't internalise the idea that novelty is better than usefulness.

.@gvwilson Teaching by demonstrating is not new. Cats have been teaching their kittens to pounce forever.#CarpentryCon2018 #Keynote

— CarpentryCon (@CarpentryCon) May 30, 2018

Main impact of the Carpentries is that we've taught people how to teach, not just the software skills we've taught. It will be our ability to collaborate on curricula. We know how to teach enough in a few days to make a difference.

~"There's no point writing software if you can't write the software you want to write. There is no point having open access if you can't say what you want to say"

.@gvwilson on freedom: “What’s the point of open access if there are things that are not safe to say?”

— Jez Cope (@jezcope) May 30, 2018

#carpentryCon2018 recommended reading by @gvwilson pic.twitter.com/8QnBRPArbt

— CIRCA St Andrews (@CIRCA_StAndrews) May 30, 2018

Change one thing ever time to keep it interesting for you to teach. And if it is still getting tired, plan for what comes next.

Peer instruction scales.

Breakout Session-1: 02:35-03:35 pm (various rooms).

Lex: Olso .. computing is being integrated into many first semester courses (eg BioSciences) .. carpentries style .. anchor it in the subject (eg Biology) .. byod .. cloud system to access everything (no software installs) .. every table has a big screen .. can't do live coding in a 200 student context (too many stickies!), but can with 60 .. need TAs for the latter.

Elizabeth: library science context .. live coding with everything .. homework was a bloodbath: reported too many hours solving problems, long reports on how stupid they felt .. context in which to reach out for help broken when you extend Carpentry to long form .. without boundaries the scope of work can be explosive, particularly when people expect a horrible experience when they come into learning, say, Python .. if they think it is going to suck, and it suck, their expectations are met and they don't reach out for help .. Carpentries does not address how to get help after the fact .. define "2 hour rule" for emailing when problem not solved: at this point students HAVE to email their code to you as instructor .. don't just invite, explicitly give permission to email you and when and how (eg, a screenshot alone is fine)

Value of anonymous feedback platforms (etherpad, sticky notes) .. value of having oversight of what students know (curriculum design) given that students will have dual-cognitive load.

Afternoon Break and networking: 03:35-04:05 pm at Foyer

Lightning Talk Session: 04:05-04:30 pm (various rooms).

Kayleigh Lino: adapting LC in South Afica to research data management training .. eg: used structure of Intro to Librarians, but not content (except jargon busting!)

Great talk by @CuratorKay about the work she and @erikamias did around bringing @thecarpentries teaching methodologies and lesson material 2 #RDM community at their university library community. Credit to @cjmacdonell for his inspiration at the first @LibCarpentry workshop in SA pic.twitter.com/0hgclfLYT1

— Anelda van der Walt (@aneldavdw) May 30, 2018

Sarah Brown: Load Magic in Jupyter Notebooks .. Jupyter notebooks' load magic pulls a code excerpt from a file into a cell for editing .. shortened URLs directed to zip files on Github for downloadable content: instructor can use Github without leaners needing that overhead.

Danielle Quinn: learners rotated between coding and marine biology (diving!) .. blanked out code with step by step human readable steps reduced cognitive load

Berenice Batut: demand for informatics training in biology .. most people learn from colleagues or self-teaching .. using Galaxy as open data science platform .. promote FAIR.

Breakout Session-2: 04:30-05:30 pm (various rooms).

Membership benefits: connecting to a global network (62 in 10 countries), capacity building, instructor training, roles in the org, reflect that back into the org, representing the org at other orgs.

Fill out the join us now https://carpentries.org/membership/ as a way of seeing the contract.

"Go into your institution.."

Renewals tend not to be a problem. Usually determined by need for more instructors given that there are rarely enough internal instructors to run a workshop at an institution.

Poster Reception: 6:00-8:00 pm

  • Opening of the session including The State of the Carpentries Address by Tracy Teal, Executive Director, The Carpentries at George Moore Auditorium

Excited to hear @tracykteal State-of-the- @thecarpentries address! #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/3vDeyEunpJ

— Jason Williams (@JasonWilliamsNY) May 30, 2018

.@tracykteal" There's nothing like teaching GitHub for two days to learn GitHub..."#Relatable#CarpentryCon2018

— CarpentryCon (@CarpentryCon) May 30, 2018

Learn Where are we now? .. new Carpentries Handbook, newsletter, discussion list, website, financial infrastructure, logo .. released two DC lessons, LC becoming a lesson org .. big jump in workshops 2014 to 2015 (139 to 274). Now at 337. Plus this is underreported! .. Over 7k learners a year .. ES translation of SWC lessons .. self-reporting pre- and post- workshop is positive, and long term data backs that up ..

.@thecarpentries is teaching more than 7000 learners annually with more than 300 workshops (nearly 1 every day). Workshops on every continent; global impact in improving research practices in data management and computation #CarpentryCon2018 #sciencetwitter #DataScience pic.twitter.com/fZspe9Uhzk

— Jason Williams (@JasonWilliamsNY) May 30, 2018

.. assessment repository for data on this.

Growth What is next? .. grant from Sloan Foundation for curriculum development .. build on equity and inclusion .. more capacity building, networking in and across institutions .. big thing next 6 months is mission and vision .. lots of places to practice coding are not friendly, but this community is friendly.

So now I know why we got a duck in our conference bag #CarpentryCon2018 You are supposed to talk to it when your code is not functioning properly. pic.twitter.com/P6iLXArUgI

— davidfkane (@davidfkane) May 30, 2018

Virtual listening tour via #carpentrieslistens (website)


Day 2

Second keynote at #CarpentryCon2018 was the one and only Greg Wilson (@gvwilson). He made us cry and laugh with '10 simple rules to leave', many sharp thoughts, and a great quote from his brother Jeff Wilson: "Remember, you still got a lot of good times in front of you". pic.twitter.com/eybMgFkP71

— Nicolas Palopoli (@NPalopoli) May 31, 2018

Keynote Session-1: 09:15-10:20 am at George Moore Auditorium. Session Chair: Malvika Sharan.

  • 09:15-:10:20 am: Keynote by Desmond Higgins: The Clustal Package Since the Late 1980s: Carpentry with Duct Tape and Six Inch Nails

#CarpentryCon2018 keynote speaker Prof. Des Higgins’ opening message, from 30 years of developing #Clustal is “reuse software where you can and make the code you write available to others” #experiencesfrombioinformatics

— Neil P Chue Hong (@npch) May 31, 2018

#CarpentryCon2018 I'd never considered - until @HigginsDes mentioned it right now - that scientists (here biologists) made use of early word processors to structure data in ways that enabled them to *see* similarities and disparities in data (here sequence alignment).

— James Baker (@j_w_baker) May 31, 2018

.@HigginsDes 1988 IBM PC had 640kb memory 😢#FloppyDisk #Fortran #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/r5t7i61Fdk

— CarpentryCon (@CarpentryCon) May 31, 2018

Imagine distributing software by mailing floppy disks back and forth 📬
Thankful for the Internet ✨@HigginsDes #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/0tJ7DOLYOE

— Abby Cabunoc Mayes (@abbycabs) May 31, 2018

.@HigginsDes Some of my heroes were those that made used friendly packages - I wanted to do that!#CarpentryCon2018 #Sharing #Clustal

— CarpentryCon (@CarpentryCon) May 31, 2018

Morning Break and networking: 10:20-10:50 am at Foyer

Skill-up Session: 11:00-12:00 am (various rooms).

  • Skill-Up 6: Shell Tips and Tricks led by Mark Laufersweiler at Room 3 (Classroom)

  • Use Git to hold setups https://github.com/laufers/setups

  • Bigger histories, append across multiple shells

  • ls -F to give a list where it is clear what is a directory and what is a file.

  • ls -alR | grep docx find docx files in sub-directories

  • find . -iname '*'"$*"'*' -print ; list out files and directory structure

  • history | cut -c 8- | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -${1:-20} print the most common 20 commands I've used in history

  • ripgrep so recursive grep searches that with regex

Keynote Session-2: 01:30-02:35 pm at George Moore Auditorium. Session Chair: SherAaron Hurt.

How are The Carpentries changing peoples lives?

@thecarpentries" is a revolutionary initiative" @aneldavdw #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/a4uAabcrlb

— Erin Becker (@ErinSBecker) May 31, 2018

Who could you recognise at the group photo of the first ever @swcarpentry workshop in Africa? #spoiler @jduckles Martin #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/cRNocX1bJi

— Raniere Silva (@rgaiacs) May 31, 2018

.@aneldavdw being Anelda. Sharing her keynote spot with everyone who joined her in her great work in South Africa and around in teaching Programming workshops. #CarpentryCon2018 @CarpentryCon

— Malvika Sharan (@MalvikaSharan) May 31, 2018

.@mesfindiro talking about the 13 workshops he participated in Ethiopia. Mentioned @RLadiesGlobal and @PythonEthiopia as part of community development! -- His cool graphs are evidence of his interests in data visualization :) #CarpentryCon2018

— Malvika Sharan (@MalvikaSharan) May 31, 2018

Ethiopia building Carpentries training in with work to construct a national research repository.

"We are forming an #RLadies group, on each @thecarpentries workshop" #Carpentrycon2018 @RLadiesGlobal https://t.co/63mtLZCL0b Carpentries in Ethiopia 🇪🇹

— Paula Andrea (@orchid00) May 31, 2018

Being able to process data fast saves lives. Data Carpentry gives researchers those skills.

You might think you only know basic skills, but what you know might be expertise to someone else. Lactatia Motsuku on why YOU should teach with @thecarpentries #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/ym4jKJffPs

— Erin Becker (@ErinSBecker) May 31, 2018

Supporting instructors in Africa to run workshops and keep up to date with developments

.@katrintirok talks about the diversity that she likes in her workshops in South Africa where participants come from different countries. One thing that makes the workshop on Programming Languages work - is that 'English as their second language'. #CarpentryCon2018

— Malvika Sharan (@MalvikaSharan) May 31, 2018

Customised workshops explained by @aneldavdw #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/BFBN0A4MQC

— CIRCA St Andrews (@CIRCA_StAndrews) May 31, 2018

"I'm not a programmer myself." Kayleigh Lino on the fear of teaching outside your specialty. If I had a euro for every time someone has told me this at #CarpentryCon2018 . . . pic.twitter.com/TrGZ1euqK4

— Erin Becker (@ErinSBecker) May 31, 2018

A Programme for the Development of Computational and Digital Research Capacity in South Africa and Africa - phase 1 #CarpentryCon2018 https://t.co/3TqszTbAgy via @figshare

— CIRCA St Andrews (@CIRCA_StAndrews) May 31, 2018

.@JuanSteyn talking about how they have managed to find funding in South Africa - "If you ask, you actually receive - funding!". They reused what was they got, summarized all the key point and development to be able to mention in the grant application. #CarpentryCon2018

— Malvika Sharan (@MalvikaSharan) May 31, 2018

#CarpentryCon2018 .@aneldavdw mentions this tweet now https://t.co/Zd0DStO3MM

— CIRCA St Andrews (@CIRCA_StAndrews) May 31, 2018

Great to hear from @aneldavdw and the African Carpentries Task Force on capacity building, curricula and @thecarpentries community in Africa, inc. Lactatia Motsuku, @erikamias, @mesfindiro, Katrin Tirok, Caroline Ajilogba, @JuanSteyn, @CuratorKay #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/iB6UFz5gD4

— Daniel Bangert (@enigmaticocean) May 31, 2018

The #AfricanTaskforce at the #CarpentryCon2018 pic.twitter.com/JSXjhHzvMD

— DVD (@DVDGC13) May 31, 2018

Some admin...

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