October 27 - November 10, 2015: Maneesha Sane, Retreat Activities, Instructor Training, Code Review Revisited, and a WiSE Workshop.

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Highlights

• Meet Maneesha Sane, the Software Carpentry (and now Data Carpentry) course coordinator.
• Our instructor/helper/community retreat is planned for 14 November with participating sites around the world. Line-ups include roundtable discussions, open house sessions, Worldwide Library Hour, and more. Join us virtually or live for the whole day or only the sessions of interest.

Conversations

• Do you have any experience with code review? David Pèrez-Suárez described his experience over ten years and asks some interesting questions.

Events

• The next round of instructor training is planned for 7-8 December 2015. Applications must reach us by 18 November. Clarification on the requirements of applications is also now available in a separate post.
• Women in Science and Engineering are invited to register for the upcoming WiSE Software Carpentry workshop on 14 - 15 December at Manchester University.

Details

• Ben Marwick wrote a thought provoking piece on How computers broke science – and what we can do to fix it.
• Another great post about the impact of Software Carpentry was written by Sean Barberie. He is currently enrolled for instructor training, already attended a Data Carpentry hackathon, and has ideas about organising his first workshop.
• Instructor debriefing round 19 provides a great solution to live stream the terminal to a webpage and introduces the concept of a buddy system that was rated highly by participants.
• Useful tips from instructor debriefing round 20 includes suggestions for improving attendance when running workshops in new areas. The topic of text editors is still on the table.
• How can instructors help participants follow along during a lesson given the diverse skill levels of any given class? Peter Steinbach and Cam Macdonell summarised a rich discussion by Software Carpentry instructors. Advertisement, pre-course surveys, buddy pairing, and multiple choice questions are a few of the aids discussed in this post.
• Daniel Chen followed up on the post by Peter and Cam by pitching the experience at his most recent workshop as a case study. He provides suggestions for working with a group with very diverse skill levels. Both posts are must-reads before your next Software Carpentry workshop.
• A question for data visualisation experts: How can we visualise repository activity?
• Software Carpentry was mentioned in an article by Jon Ison et al - Tools and Data Services Registry: a Community Effort to Document Bioinformatics Resources published in Nucleic Acid Research this week.
• A book review is now out for the Software Carpentry inspired Effective Computation in Physics by Anthony Scopatz and Katy Huff.
• The R Foundation have instituted a code of conduct requirement policy for all conferences supported by them.
• The first African Data Carpentry workshop was held in Kenya in September. Matt Collins reflected on their experiences with logistics while Deb Paul described the workshop and outcomes in her post.
• The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) is advertising a full-time position for a Data Science Instructor who can teach according to the Software/Data Carpentry style. Applications close 1 December.
• 15 workshops were run over the past two weeks. For full details on previous workshops please visit our website.
• Several workshops have been confirmed for the next few months. Upcoming workshops can be viewed on our website. Newly added workshops are indicated with "*".
• November: University College London*, Northwestern University, NYU Medical Center, CoDiMa - University of Manchester, Iowa State University, Colegio Universitario Hotel Escuela de Los Andes Venezolanos*, European Institute for Theoretical Neuroscience, University of Miami, University of Toronto*, University of California San Francisco - R, University of California San Francisco - Python, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Australia, University of Helsinki, University of Edinburgh, NeSI - Lincoln Region Workshop
• December, 2015: University of Wollongong*
• January, 2016: NERC / University of Bristol, Berkeley Institute for Data Science, NERC / University of Leeds
• February, 2016: Oak Ridge National Laboratory*