Meeting 24 January 2022

About

During these meetings, we will be conforming to The Carpentries Code of Conduct.

Regular calls: 4th Monday of the month, 16:00-17:00 UK time (BST or GMT)

Meeting details are shared via local-uk mailing list and The Carpentries community calendar.

Community's HackMD workspace: https://hackmd.io/team/local-uk?nav=overview

Previous meetings: https://hackmd.io/V3ReKkEESzqyCNxWJdulOw#Meetings

Chairing rota: https://hackmd.io/@local-uk/rkPK1Si7F

Guest speaker sign up: https://hackmd.io/@local-uk/rkkzBTLOd

Meeting Minutes

Time: 16:00 GMT

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

Chair: Aleks Nenadic

Timekeeper:

Notetaker: Phil Reed

Agenda

0. Assign notetaker & timekeeper
1. Sign in
2. Review of actions
3. Announcements
   • For lesson developers or if you have a lesson in the Carpentries Incubator: monthly Lesson Development Coworking Sessions for The Carpentries lesson developer community to ensure regular progress is made on a lesson - lead by Toby Hodges, Director of Curriculum at The Carpentries.
     • The first session is at 14:00-16:00 & 22:00-23:59 UTC on Thursday, 27th January 2022
     • Notes and details on the follow up sessions: https://codimd.carpentries.org/lessondev-coworking (also added to the Community calendar)
   • Collaborations Workshop 2022 (CW22) will take place online from Monday 4 April - Thursday 7 April 2022 and registration is open!
4. Guest speaker + Q&A
   • Selina Aragon, SSI Communications Lead
   • Topic: Research Software Camps
   • Slides: https://bit.ly/3GYZHP9
5. General discussion (if there is time, some suggested topics below)
   • What questions do the community have?
   • Upcoming events/workshops
   • Return to in-person teaching/workshops
   • Feelings about attenging in-person events in general
   • Feelings about/experiences of hybrid events
6. Wrap-up/AOB

Sign-in

Name/pronoun if you like/ institution / optionally put "(checkout)" if you are here for the Instructor Training checkout:

1. Phil Reed (he/him), University of Manchester, UK
2. Sarah Gibson / she/her / 2i2c
3. Colin Sauze / he/him / Aberystwyth University + Supercomputing Wales
4. Andrew Walker / he/him / University of Oxford
5. Eilis Hannon / she/her / University of Exeter
6. Jonathan Stoneman /he/him /freelance trainer
7. Ed Bennett / Swansea University - [e-mail]
8. Jannetta Steyn, she/her, Newcastle University
9. Juan Herrera (he/him) / EPCC, The University of Edinburgh
10. Sarah Jaffa (she) / UCL, London
11. Selina Aragon, she/her, SSI (EPCC, University of Edinburgh)
12. Matthew Bluteau, he/him, UKAEA
13. Lucia Michielin, she/her, CDCS UoE
14. Mario Antonolietti, he/him, EPCC/SSI UoE
15. Aleks Nenadic, she/her, Software Sustainability Institute, Uni of Manchester
16. Bryan Wee, he/him, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh
17. Evgenij Belikov, he/him, EPCC, The University of Edinburgh, [e-mail] (please get in touch if you would like to participate in an upcoming instructor training (3-4.3.22, virtual, 9-p CET))
18. Dave Young, Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast

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Notes

1 Sign-in

Introductions from everyone.

2 Review of actions

• Mario and Lucia: OWL camera experience for hybrid teaching (ongoing) - issues with various input/outputs. Not encouraged by results. Mario/Lucia were in the same room but socially distanced due to Covid.

• Sarah: font trying to illustrate how it feels to be dyslexic and font designed to combat dyslexia

3 Announcements

See agenda above for details. (Line 34 at time of writing.)

4 Guest speaker + Q&A

Selina Aragon, SSI Communications Lead, [e-mail]. Topic: Research Software Camps

Slides: https://bit.ly/3GYZHP9

Q1 (Matthew). Attempting to sign up as a code reviewer last autumn, didn't hear back. Was there an issue here? (For the code review clinic)

A1. We didn't have many people come forward with their code but we had a lot of reviewers offered. Could be about advertisement or lack of confidence of people to share their code.

Matthew is involved in a group doing code review, together with another SSI Fellow Thibault Lestang.

5 Instructor Training checkout questions

6 General discussion (if there is time, some suggested topics below)

• What questions do the community have?
• Return to in-person teaching/workshops
• Feelings about attenging in-person events in general
• Feelings about/experiences of hybrid events

Q2 Dave: Putting on training for PhD and postdocs, very basic software development/programming (intro to Shell, setting up an IDE, basic version control with Git/Github). Need a good, fundamental course before getting into research. Could I harvest some courses/material, get some advice, suggest building blocks?

A2 Ed: This is the Software Carpentry workshop! Designed for 2 days face-to-face, takes 2.5 days online.

A2 Lucia: GitHub Learning course has an interactive element. Also, look at Programming Historian especially the Shell lesson, also Python and R, written for humanists. "Not sure if it is a shared problem on your neck of the woods but for humanities a very big issue is make them aware of what these tools are for…If you just organise training they will not show up. Need to prove them why they are useful"

A2 Aleks: Look also at Data Carpentry and Library Carpentry for consideration of specific domains. You could mix and match some of these, eg manipulating and managing data in spreadsheets. Also data cleaning. Some domain-specific groups start with Carpentries materials and build/extend them. Also look in the Carpentries Incubator. You will need instructors who can deliver these courses, of course. Look at the UK mailing list too. "SSI is Working with Tracy Teal to develop a Carpentries-style curriculum to teach non-technical skills to more senior leaders of research / research software teams. Train the PI."

A2 Sarah Gibson: https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/ and https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/rse-course/ also for data science https://alan-turing-institute.github.io/rds-course/

A2 Matthew Bluteau: Another link to add to the pile for course resources: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/acrc/research-software-engineering/training/

Q3 Colin Sauze: How prevalent is it for Carpentries-style courses to be a formal part of PhD programmes?

A3 Matthew Bluteau: This exists for the Scottish University Physics Alliance (SUPA). Software Carpentry workshop is part of the optional syllabus. Not mandatory training, but PhD students need to have certain amount of non-domain-specific training, and the Carpentries is there.

A3 Jannetta Steyn: PhDs at Newcastle have to take a certain number of workshops, and she is putting on the Carpentries workshops as part of this.

7 Wrap-up/AOB

Phil Reed thanked Mario and Eirini from this group who helped with Library Carpentry survey data analysis (raised at the last meeting of this group).