6 January - 16 January, 2016: Election Candidates, SCF Strategic Plan, New Book, Pre-Workshop Help Sessions, AMY Version 1.3, Mistakes, and Recorded Lessons

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

##Highlights: Steering Committee Election

• The 2016 Software Carpentry Foundation Steering Committee election dates are set for February 15-19. Please make sure your name is on the members list to cast your vote.
• Read more about the candidates for the 2016 elections by following the links below:
  • Belinda Weaver
  • Cam Macdonell
  • Leanne Wake
  • Kate Hertweck
  • Dhavide Aruliah
  • Jason Williams
  • Karin Lagesen
  • Rayna Harris
  • Lauren Michael
  • Raniere Silva
  • Bill Mills
  • Giacomo Peru
  • Anelda van der Walt
  • Jonathan Guyer
• The Software Carpentry Foundation strategic plan as developed by the current steering committee is available.

##New

• Mark Guzdial’s new book, Learner-Centered Design of Computing Education: Research on Computing for Everyone is highly recommended.
• The mentoring subcommittee has launched brand new two-weekly pre-workshop help sessions starting on 20 January. Sign up if you’re an instructor looking for assistance with your upcoming workshop.

##Contribute

• AMY Version 1.3 have been released. Learn about what’s planned for version 1.4 and let us know if you’d like to contribute.
• Do you have ideas for collecting empirical data on the most common mistakes made by our learners when they use git, python, shell, and R?
• Links to recorded lessons are now archived on the Lessons page of the website. If you have any recordings and would like to share, please get in touch.

##Other

• What strategies are Software Carpentry employing to change STEM education? Read the paper by Maura Borrego and Charles Henderson, and let us know what you think?
• The last year has seen a buzz of Software Carpentry activities in South Africa: six workshops, one remote instructor training session, and lots of lessons learnt.
• Welcoming and diverse open communities are created through conscious effort of its members. Sarah Sharp describes five levels of cultural change that can be attained. Where would you rate us?
• The mentoring subcommittee ran the first post-workshop instructor debriefing session for the year. Learn more about 3-day workshops and provide your suggestions for incorporating our “best practices” guidelines in the lessons.
• Titus Brown and colleagues will be running several online workshops in Q1 and Q2 from UC Davis. Get in touch with him if you’d like to present or participate.
• Our community has made great progress in terms of contributing to and re-using our lessons since SciPy 2014.
• You can now publish data-related articles in the CODATA Data Science Journal. It’s open access, online, and peer-reviewed and is edited by Sarah Callaghan.
• 12 workshops were run over the past 11 days. For more information about past workshops, please visit our website
• Upcoming Workhshops
  • January: BEACON @ MSU, Natural History Museum, University of British Columbia, NERC / University of Leeds, Natural History Museum, Wang Center - Lecture Hall 2, USDA-ARS, Centers for Disease Control, University of Illinois, University of Waterloo, CUNY Digital Research Bootcamp, University of Texas at Arlington
  • February: University of Sydney, QUT - Research Bazaar (Python), QUT - Research Bazaar (R), ResBaz 2016 R Course at the University of Sydney, Simon Fraser University, NESI - ResBaz Auckland, USGS Flagstaff Science Campus, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Illinois, University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Tulane University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Illinois
  • March: Notre Dame