Meeting - 27 January 2025

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: Phil Reed
  • Timekeeper:
  • Notetaker: Aman Goel

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. Phil Reed (he/him) / University of Manchester
  2. Juan Herrera (he/him) / EPCC, The University of Edinburgh
  3. Dimitrios Theodorakis (he/him) / Met Office
  4. Aman Goel (he/him) / University of Manchester - SSI
  5. Andrew Walker (he/him) / University of Oxford
  6. Sarah Jaffa / she / University of Manchester
  7. Esther Turner / (she/her) / National Oceanopgraphy Centre
  8. Jannetta Steyn / Newcastle University
  9. Carol Booth / Newcastle University
  10. Colin Sauze / National Oceanography Centre
  11. Emma Hogan / (she/her) / Met Office
  12. Toan Phung / (he/him) / University of Dundee

Notes

  • Ice breaker: name a catchprase!

Review of actions

Announcements

Teaching the use of LLM Assistants in Carpentries Workshops

  • Second blog post about chatbots supporting Carpentries teaching and learning.

Switching to the Carpentries lesson template by the end of 2025

UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association Event submission (June 2025 in Glasgow)

  • Phil + Aleks + Lucia and others submitted a workshop using the RSE competencies toolkit, will hear back by 7 March if we are successful.

CW25 dates and location confirmed. Stirling 13-15 May

  • Registrations will open on 10th February
  • No news of call for applications yet

Guest speaker + Q&A Met Office Git & GitHub Migration using the Carpentries (Dimitrios Theodorakis)

  • DT has worked on Carpentries infrastructure. One of the chairs on the new training spec interest group (RSE Soc).

  • Context: Met Office doesn't use Git and GitHub now. Historically, used subversion wrapper FCM. Internal server for repository.

  • DT and Emma on science git migration project, prepare to move to G and GH. Will need training for partners too. 4 WPs.

  • Requirements gathering: Emma and DT met with parnters across science program for support and training needs. A lot of them struggle to see benefit of version control, sometimes just want to be told bare minimum basics. Others want to get the most out of GH. Science, Tech, Programs, Operations and research directorates.

  • Came to DT in his WP. For all these many different learners, come up with training that would suit everybody. Different formats, internal and external people. Knowing about Carpentries, take Git Novice

  • Adapt the lessons in incubator to adapt to the MET office's needs

  • Did a lot of trial runs - 4 before Christmas for intro course

    • Invited more external partners each time
    • As well as internal folks - which have a uniform access to computing resources
    • But for global partners, not sure what they would have access to
    • Wanted to do a limited run to check what works

  • Difficult to coordinate on remote basis, no technical support on the other end

  • Better sets of instructions now since it worked for some partners, hopefully will work for others

  • Did rapid fire redevelopment based on req doc

    • Intro course is geared towards individual, but they wanted it to be focused on groups / organisations as well
    • Thinking of SSH keys / SSO
    • Levels of visibility for opening repositories
    • Looked at factor unique to organisations

  • Added context for FCM equivalent to git in the course for scientists with diff background

    • E.g.: Staging in FCM doesn't exist
    • Helps instructors to know their focus as well

  • Trial runs required a lot of extra information, also extended the timeline more than a day

  • Setup a diff day for Git/GH training, now has ended up in 2 days total of Git/GH

    • Basic git commands on day 1 and working practices on day 2

  • 220 signups for courses until April, about 60 spaces still left

  • Intro: https://www.astropython.com/git-novice/index.html

  • https://www.astropython.com/git-working-practices/

  • https://metoffice.github.io/git-novice/instructor/extract_all_images.html#/title-slide

  • Q&A:

  • PR: Retraining people who did earlier trainings?

    • Yes, invited the people from early courses to retrain on the new courses if they like

  • PR: Are people working in parallel on both systems?

    • Most people taking the course were working on smaller code bases who could migrate before others, some were on big code bases too - who would need to do it parralel
    • Also setup weekly "surgeries" for supporting people to migrate, help with questions etc.

  • SJ: Most big orgs use their own Gitlab instance, why did MO use GH?

    • Having a look at options, GH seemed best and most popular choice, some partners use GL
    • MO also has a strong relationship with MS (Azure etc.)

  • AW: How did the audience respond to the move? Were people relieved / did they find it not helpful?

    • About 130 RSE like roles after 700
    • RSEs were pro version control, other people weren't keen

  • SJ: Were there external partners with high security requirements? Firewalls etc.

    • In the prereq, they made sure people had access to internet and bash - so avoided that scenario
    • This will be an internal use case, might have to look at a mirroring system that can also be deployed at partner sites

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Instructor Training checkout questions

Wrap-up/AOB

Select a repo