# Meeting - 27 October 2025

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## Meeting Info

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, update the commmunity about developments, discuss issues and ideas, and encourage collaboration.

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

**Meeting schedule: meetings happen on 4th Monday each month, 16:00-17:00 UK time, BST (UTC+1) or GMT (UTC+0) depending on the time of the year**

**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 & upcoming meetings](https://hackmd.io/V3ReKkEESzqyCNxWJdulOw#Meeting-Notes)
- [Meeting notes template](https://hackmd.io/hgl1tYhOTTqDsIDwjArE5w)
- [Chairing rota](https://hackmd.io/@local-uk/rkPK1Si7F)
- [Guest speaker sign-up](https://hackmd.io/@local-uk/rkkzBTLOd)

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

## Meeting Minutes

- **Chair:** Phil Reed
- _Make sure to email <[e-mail]> after the meeting with trainee instructors who joined for the community discussion as part of the checkout_
- **Timekeeper:**
- **Notetaker:** Andrew Walker (Aman as backup + help)

### Agenda

0. Assign notetaker & timekeeper
1. Sign in & ice-breaker
1. Review of actions
2. Announcements
3. Guest speaker + Q&A
4. Instructor Training checkout questions
5. Wrap-up/AOB

### Sign-in

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

1. Andrew Walker (he/him) / University of Oxford
2. Phil Reed (he/him) / University of Manchester
3. Andrew Gait (he/him) / University of Manchester
4. Aman Goel (he/him) / SSI, University of Manchester
5. Kevin Rue-Albrecht (he/him) / University of Oxford
6. Chris Wood (he/him) / University of Edinburgh
7. Jannetta Steyn (she/her) / Newcastle University, UK
8. Samantha Finnigan (she/her) / Durham University, UK
9. Goncalo Graca (he/him) / Imperial College London, UK
...

### General Notes

- **Introductions and Ice breaker**
- Ice breaker: Today (27 Oct) is [World Day for Audiovisual Heritage](https://nationaltoday.com/world-day-for-audiovisual-heritage/), so tell us your favourite old movie, or something to do with old cinema.

### Review of actions

- [x] [Paste from last meeting]
- [x] Send email to Carpentries about Ella's check-out
- AG: Aleks might have done this already - will confirm

### Announcements

- [UKRN Conference 2026](https://www.ukrn.org/conference/) announced, 8-9 July 2026 in Manchester, with satellite day 7 July. Call for registration of interest.
- [ARMA](https://arma.ac.uk/arma-to-help-deliver-national-initiative-set-to-reshape-the-role-of-research-professionals-across-the-uk/) to help deliver national initiative set to reshape the role of research professionals across the UK
- Olexandr will teach Git in Ukrainian at "Research Software Camp: Careers and Skills in Research Software" ([[registration link](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/git-tickets-1733696796789)]), using Ukrainian translation of The Carpentries lesson on Git made by the members of the [Ukrainian Carpentries Community](https://ukrainian-carpentries.github.io/en/).
- Aman and others are delivering bitesized RSE sessions at the same Research Software Camp. Six sessions over two weeks (CI, advanced git etc...) Material in in the Carpentries incubator. https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/research-software-camp-fair-software-2157149
- Understanding the dRTP Training Landscape Workshop, London, 5th - 6th November 2025 - https://drtp-skills.ac.uk/drtp-november-workshop
- Digital Research Infrastructure & Training Hackathon Friday 7 November, University of Cambridge - https://drtp-skills.ac.uk/dri-training-hackathon
- drtp-skills.ac.uk/events
- step-up.ac.uk/events
- Building a comprehensive and coordinated training landscape for dRTPs - Thursday 27 November 2025
- Software Carpentry workshop: Introductory Shell, Git, and Python for research - Wednesday 3 December 2025 - Friday 5 December 2025
- Lots of these are via Network+

### Discussion / Talk

#### Comparing open source documentation platforms (Phil Reed)

- This is a trial run of a lightning talk for another event this week (Manchester Research Software Community).
- [Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11_WwEUGfqKyOg5zYyy4lOkxZR-XoVHEIOlcFOosHEj4/edit?slide=id.p#slide=id.p)

Notes:

- Task is to rework and expand documentation for TeSS software (training e-support service) used to manage training. 10 year old software written in Ruby on Rails. Documentation is built into the platform and so you need to run whole app to view. Want a dedicated free documentation platform that is easy to add software
- Features to consider - themes, cost, translations, markup language (Markdown, rST etc.), styling etc.
- Shortlist: read the docs, Jupyter Book, Mkdocs, Docusaurus.
- Choice is Jupyter Book.
- Q&A:
- what about quarto, did this cross your radar. No, it didn't what is it. It's from R Studio, but more language agnostic. Kevin is using it for high-level documentation. Will add to end of table in google docs. https://quarto.org/docs/websites/
- How specific to this project was the choice? This led to a conversation around keeping track of versions and how github pages and readthedocs are different in this regard.

### Instructor Training checkout questions

- [Checkout process - Get Involved](https://carpentries.github.io/instructor-training/checkout.html#attend-a-regional-call-skill-up-session-or-other-community-programming)
- The Carpentries Slack - https://slack-invite.carpentries.org
- This community is #local-uk on The Carpentries Slack
- Also on TopicBox - https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/local-uk
- Different regional communities: https://carpentries.org/community/get-connected

### Wrap-up/AOB

- Meeting scheduled on December 22nd. Should we cancel? Probably cancel - decide next month

### Action points

- [x] [For upcoming meetings and the community - **action** and **responsible person**]
- [x] Send calendar invites from January 2026 onwards - carry over
- [x] Create Hackmd meeting notes for 2026 - carry over
- [x] Get a Carpentries Zoom room for these calls - carry over