Meeting - 23 September 2024

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.

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 and The Carpentries community calendar.

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

Meeting Minutes

  • Chair:
  • Timekeeper:
  • Notetaker: Andrew (with helpers)

Agenda

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

Sign-in

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

  1. Neil Shephard, University of Sheffield
  2. Mario Antonioletti, EPCC, University of Edinburgh
  3. Colin Sauze, National Oceanography Centre
  4. Andrew Walker, he/him, University of Oxford
  5. Laurisa Sastoque, University of Southampton (checkout)
  6. Dimitrios Theodorakis, Met Office
  7. Phil Reed, University of Manchester
  8. Declan Valters, EPCC
  9. Emma Hogan, she/her, Met Office :)
  10. Jannetta Steyn, Newcastle University
  11. Sarah Jaffa, she, University of Manchester
  12. Juan Herrera, EPCC, The University of Edinburgh

Notes

Introductions & icebreaker

What was the oldest computer you have used?

Review of actions

  • If you want to suggest a lesson for us to look at in the CarpentryConnect event (converting to new format), let Phil and Aleks know. There is a tool
  • Should we cancel the December meeting? (Scheduled for 23rd)

Announcements

  • There is discussion at HPC Carpentries - should we move the workbench to quarto to avoid having maintain sandpaper, varnish etc. Lots to explore. Still moving to the workbench at the moment. Better for translations. Contact d.theodorakis@metoffice.gov.uk for info. Has live plugin that allows embedding R and Python code chunks in documents rendered to HTML quarto live (also r-wasm/quarto-drop which gives dropdown console in RevealJS slides rendered from Quarto).
  • Development of Fortran lesson discussed at RSEcon. First co-working meeting to work on this will take place on 7 October at 2 pm
  • SSI fellowship applications close 6 October (we think)

RSEcon

  • Teaching SIG discussed linked closely to Carpentries. Likly to be created as sub-group.
  • Session on Carpentries. Discussion of lesson infrastructure. What is done well, what could be improved. How to link lessons, lesson metadata. Link to code refinery. Any discussion of "learning pathways"? Some consideration via addition of lesson metadata.
  • Interesting discussions around RSE competancy toolkit. Aimed career development for RSEs. Links to learning pathways - identify skill levels in various areas and link to learning opportunities. This builds the pathway. Potentially good to link this to above. Channel in RSE slack for this #rse-competencies-toolkit.
  • R hackathon. Help people contribte to R core.
  • Pytesting and optimsation.
  • Training BOF session. Lots of discussion comparing training by RSEs v's training for RSEs. What fits well with compiencies and what falls within teaching SIG. Two groups will be seperate but will communicate (follow up call when working on terms of reference - from Dimitrios an email to get access to terms of reference).
  • Large number of non-technical skills needed for RSEs. This training seen as potentially missing. Photo from Toby: Technical v Non-Technical skills from RSE Competencies details here
  • Project managment - we should think about this more. SIG about this discussed. Links to non-technical skills.

Wrap up and AOB

Action

Select a repo