# Meeting - 23 October 2023

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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/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html).

**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:** Mario Antonioletti
- **Timekeeper:** Aleks Nenadic
- **Notetaker:**

### Agenda
0. Assign notetaker & timekeeper
1. Sign in & ice-breaker
1. Review of actions
2. Announcements
3. Round robin of updates from members
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. Juan Herrera / he / EPCC, The University of Edinburgh
2. Aleksandra Nenadic, she/her, Software Sustainability Institute
3. Mario Antonioletti, he/him, SSI/EPCC, The University of Edinburgh
4. Olexandr Konovalov, he/him, University of St Andrews
5. Andrew Walker, he/him, University of Oxford
6. Jannetta Steyn, she/her, Newcastle University
7. Colin Sauze, he/him, National Oceanography Centre
8. Jez Cope, he/him, British Library
9. Dimitrios Theodorakis, he/him, Met Office

### Announcements

Juan Herrera (EPCC, UoE): As part of the [ARCHER2 training service,](https://www.archer2.ac.uk/training/) we're looking for venues to deliver a Data Carpentry and a Software Carpentry workshops before the end of April 2024. If you are keen on hosting one of those workshops, we would be happy to handle registrations and provide instructors. If you want to reach out, please [contact me via email.](https://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/about-us/our-team/dr-juan-rodriguez-herrera)

Aleks Nenadic: The Carpentries officialy launched the [new lesson development training](https://carpentries.github.io/lesson-development-training/) on Monday 16 October 2023 - see the [related blog post](https://carpentries.org/blog/2023/10/launching-collaborative-lesson-development-training/). They also introduced the [lesson developer trainers and trainer curriculum](https://carpentries.org/blog/2023/10/cldt-curriculum-and-trainers/).

Carpentries leaving Twitter and Facebook: https://carpentries.org/blog/2023/10/announcing-the-carpentries-departure-from-x-and-facebook/

### Notes

Conversations about enagaging more rural communities who may not have access to as many opportunites as people in London, Edinburgh and other big cities. See the chat transcript below:

Looking for venues to run an ARCHER course so if you want to volunteer Newcastle
Jannetta Steyn to Everyone (16:09)
When?
[e-mail] to Everyone (16:09)
By April
he is looking for hosts
[e-mail] to Everyone (16:09)
sorry people to host
Olexandr Konovalov to Everyone (16:09)
Will there be some ARCHER - specific part?
Jannetta Steyn to Everyone (16:10)
If it is not ARCHER specific, what would it be then?
Jez Cope to Everyone (16:10)
huh, i can't edit the hackmd without logging in, and i can't log in because it repeatedly says "recaptcha verification failed"
Colin Sauze to Everyone (16:10)
I think it was just regular software and data carpentry
Go West too!
Me to Everyone (16:11)
Notes: https://hackmd.io/FwJlfDAWQFmgTTGw4FjuNg
[e-mail] to Everyone (16:11)
@Jez - catch 22
Olexandr Konovalov to Everyone (16:11)
Belfast?
[e-mail] to Everyone (16:12)
I think they have done Belfast recently
Jannetta Steyn to Everyone (16:12)
@Aleks - thenks, I was looking for that paragraph but kept missing it ... apologies
Olexandr Konovalov to Everyone (16:12)
Inverness perhaps then is lucrative
UHI has many campuses - Inverness could be the hub
Jez Cope to Everyone (16:13)
yeah, i could offer the BL as a venue but there are definitely plenty of venues in london already
Olexandr Konovalov to Everyone (16:13)
applied research, yeah
there was once a carpentry workshop in Antartica
Jannetta Steyn to Everyone (16:14)
@Juan - I don't want to promise but perhaps we can perhaps do something in Newcastle.
Jeremy Cohen to Everyone (16:14)
https://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/campuses/

Aleks mentioned the collaborative lesson development plan that the Carpentries is organising. You can get trained on this - 4 half days worth, you have a break where you develop your lesson, you do a trial run and then do another 2 half days and focus on collaborative training. The Carpentries have costed this there is a blog post.

Training the trainers - to teach the lesson development training course. There is a growing number of people that can teach this now. There are various courses going to be given in the near future.

Olexandr: The Carpetnies leaving Twitter and moving to Mastodon. Bluesky is an alternative but not ready (?) yet (https://www.zdnet.com/article/bluesky-vs-threads-vs-mastodon-if-you-leave-twitter-where-will-you-go/). Aleks: Should check what the SSI comms policy and plans are. SSI new look and feel website: https://www.software.ac.uk/

**Questions**:

- how does this mesh with the instructor trainer that encourages to develop the training or to take ownership of existing lessons?

This is more to do with development of lessons from scratch. It will be good to have existing instructors but you do not have to be. Instructors training is more on delivering rather than producing a new course (backward lesson design).

- Question as to what the impact on lesson maintainers is going to be.

This is seen as being slightly orthogonal - creators and maintainers. The Carpentries have some skill-up lessons for maintainers.

- Jannetta did some early training on this - is there now training for the people that are going to give the course?

There is an announcement that is broadly similar to the instructor trainer. If you want to become a trainer you have to talk to Toby.

Olexandr talked that we should all be leaving twitter/X and move to another platform such as mastodon/BlueSky.

Colin tried to run a standard s/w carpentry and finds it is too much for 2 days.
- Mario has been involved in a course where git and bash, etc got a day each but spread out over weeks
- Jeremy has expanded some of the topics to be 4 hours for bash, git, etc
- Jannetta does it over 3 days - start slower in the morning and go faster in the afternoon. Using a git lesson from the incubator which has a pull request. Correction: it generates a CONFLICT that has to be resolved and she added a pull request.
- Juan - have done ARCHER courses - have done half days over consequitive days. Python is covered in one day. Online gives you more flexibility to change the schedule.

Doing it over 2 days is hard. Have to justify doing it over the three days.

Jeremy - when we run Software Carpentry, people would traditionally come to the whole workshop but now some people register with no intention to do the whole thing but only to come for a specific module, e.g. git, [and then sometimes want a certificate!]. Have experimented with using separate registration options to allow learners to only register for one module (or a subset of modules). Use break out groups online and need to know how many helpers are going to be needed hence need more accurate registration numbers even for online workshops.

Juan for HPC Carpentry - bash for the first day and the second day is working with the machine - people complained that they already know bash. Now give people the option of not doing the first day.

Jannetta give a certificate of attendance but use the Carpentry if they go to all days. The problem of people of not showing up is a massive problem. Use a max of 20 but also have a min of 10 - had 19 that registerd but only 12 showed up but 3 did not come back after lunch (they wanted to learn Python apparently).

ARCHER team get people to give money to a charity if they do not show without notification.