# Meeting 26 April 2021

## About

This is the UK Carpentry Community space:
- for the UK Carpentry instructors, helpers and workshop coordinators (or anyone involved in training tech to researchers in general and outside of the UK) to get to know each other better and encourage collaboration
- to get the community's questions answered and provide help with technical aspects of creating Carpentry workshop websites, registering workshops with the Carpentries, Carpentry institutional membership or anything else
- to help the community in the UK with organising workshops and finding instructors/helpers
- to provide a welcoming and inclusive environment for the community to share their experience, explore topics of interest, find collaborators for training related projects and network.

During these meetings, we will be conforming to [The Carpentries Code of Conduct](https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html).

**Regular calls: 4th Monday of the month, 16:00-17:00 UK time**

**Meeting details are shared via [local-uk mailing list](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/local-uk) and [The Carpentries community calendar](https://carpentries.org/community/#community-events).**

**Community's HackMD workspace: https://hackmd.io/team/local-uk?nav=overview**
**Previous meetings: https://hackmd.io/V3ReKkEESzqyCNxWJdulOw#Meetings**

## Useful Links and Resources
- Carpentries UK Community mailing list [local-uk](https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/local-uk)
- Carpentries UK Community [slack channel](https://swcarpentry.slack.com/archives/CLE8WUGMA) within [The Carpentries Slack Workspace](https://swc-slack-invite.herokuapp.com/)
- [Carpentries Code of Conduct](https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html)
- Connect with the [general Carpentries community](https://carpentries.org/connect/) - twitter, mailing lists, blog, slack, community calendar
- [Carpentries Handbook](https://docs.carpentries.org/index.html) - a comprehensive resource for all things Carpentries
- [Carpentries workshop FAQ](https://carpentries.org/workshop_faq/)
- [Carpentries Blog](https://carpentries.org/blog/)

## Meeting Minutes
**Time:** 16:00 - 17:00 BST (UTC + 1), [check time and date](https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=UK+Carpentry+Community+Call&iso=20210426T15&p1=%3A&ah=1)

**Location:** Zoom URL: https://zoom.us/j/95360073649

**Chair & timekeeper:** Aleks Nenadic

**Notetaker:** Giacomo Peru

### Agenda
0. Assign notetaker & timekeeper - 1 min
1. Sign in - 1 min
2. Announcements & guest speaker sign-up - 5 min
- Carpentry workshop recordings at [the Software Sustainability Institute's YouTube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/SoftwareSaved/playlists)
- SSI will run The Carpentries Instructor Training between 15-18 June - to be officially announced
- Get in touch with Aleks Nenadic ([e-mail]) if you are interested - priority will be given to people who do not belong to member institutions so cannot get to Instructor Training otherwise but want to organise local communities at their institutions
4. Guest speaker: [Jeremy Cohen, RSLondon & Imperial College London](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/jeremy.cohen), talking about what they are doing in terms of regional training for the RSLondon regional RSE community - 15 min + 10 min Q&A. [Jeremy's slides available via Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sIfwcpkz341c75Adi-7Sbr4mAPEnOabQ/view).
5. Regional software carpentry workshops
6. Breakout room discussions - 25 min
- Instructors (report from past workshops, prep for future workshops, etc. - host Alexander Konovalov)
- Workshop organisers & hosts (help/advice/discussion around workshop organising, etc. - host Aleks Nenadic)
- General (anything else - host Giacomo Peru)
7. Wrap-up/report back/AOB - 5 min

### Guest speaker sign-up
Name/institution/contact email address/ optional topic

- 24 May 2021 - Toby Hodges, The Carpentries / Curriculum development
- 28 June 2021
- 26 July 2021 - Nilani Ganeshwaran, University of Manchester / Library carpentry
- 23 August 2021
- 27 September - Giacomo Peru, University of Edinburgh / Ed-DaSH
- 25 October 2021
- 22 November 2021
- 27 December 2021 - this meeting will most likely not go ahead, we carry on in 2022 :-)

### Sign-in

Name/pronoun if you like/ institution
1. Giacomo Peru / he, his / The Software Sustainability Institute
1. Aleks Nenadic / she, her / The Software Sustainability Institute
1. Colin Sauze / he, him / Aberystwyth University
1. Phil Reed / he,him / University of Manchester
1. Shashank S. Harivyasi / he,him / University of Leeds
1. Jeremy Cohen / he, him / Imperial College London
1. Ed Bennett / Swansea University
1. Simon Waldman (he) / Uni of Hull
1. Lucia Michielin / she, her/ CDCS (Edinburgh Uni)
1. Graham Blyth /he, him / University of Leeds
1. Alexander Konovalov /he, him/ University of St Andrews
1. Jez Cope / he, him / The British Library
1. Juan Herrera / he, him / EPCC, The University of Edinburgh
1. Nilani Ganeshwaran / she, her / University of Manchester
1. David Pérez-Suárez / he-him-his / RSE at UCL and SSI Fellow / 🐙🐱@dpshelio 🐦@dvdgc13 🐘@[e-mail] /
2. Jannetta Steyn / she, her / Newcastle University / :octopus:jsteyn :bird:@jannettas
1. Jonathan Pelham / Cranfield University / 🐦@jonititan :octopus: jonititan
1. Katerina Michalickova / Imperial College / :octopus: kmichali
1. Callum Rollo / he, him / UEA / 🐘@[e-mail]
1. Evgenij Belikov / he,his / EPCC, University of Edinburgh

### Notes

#### Guest speaker: Jeremy Cohen, RS London/Imperial College London

##### Jeremy's slides: [Available via Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sIfwcpkz341c75Adi-7Sbr4mAPEnOabQ/view)

* Regional SWC workshops
* Local workshops can be tricky: hard to find instructors/helpers, disproportionate time commitment, limited comms channels
* Instead run between multiple institutions: share time & financial costs; support smaller institutions & more frequent workshops
* Benefits: useful feedback & experience; network building; better, broader attendance online
* Challenges: limited engagement for online workshops; harder to manage helpers online
* 2 upcoming workshops planned
* 2 container-related lessons in Carpentries Incubator (Docker & Singularity)
* Q & A
* Was it easier to find instructor/helpers for online workshops?
* Yes and no - they already had institutions that already people whon wanted to get involved and help out. Travel was mainly across London for in person workshops, so not a bit issues.
* Who is doing the coordination mainly?
* It is Jeremy as he is leading the RSLondon group but hoping to have a bigger group of people to help out in the future- many keen people already - a team of 7-8 who volunteered to be on the core organising team
* Going to try a different approach for exercises next time
* Had problems trying to reproduce the usual face-to-face method: tends to result in a confusing rush of people all asking for help at the same time
* Instead will try grouping the exercises into 10-15 minute sessions, and using breakout rooms with a helper assigned to each group of 3-5 people
* [name=Lucia M] suggests making helpers all co-hosts so that they can move between breakout rooms
* [name=Colin S] get each group to answer a question as you review the exercise. Takes more time but helps to ensure they all completed and understood the exercise.
* What insitutions are involved?
* Initially all from London but quite an open to communities from South East - open to Oxford, Cambridge, Southmapton - more grassroots level
* UCL, Imperial, Queen Mary, School of Topical Medicine London, so far etc.
* Hard to say how many people are involved, several 100 people reached via the mainiling list and a few 100 when the messages are syndicated to other groups too
* What is the average number of participants?
* 40-50 registartions allowed but expect 30 people to show up
* Drop off rate ~ 30%, how to fix this?
* Ask for donations from no shows, charge a refundable or nonrefundable fee
* Problem is where to keep the money from registrations and how to handle it
* Reminders and ask people if they cannot attend