This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Hi, I’m standing up for election to the Software Carpentry Steering Committee 2017.

Me & Carpentries

My background is life science. I currently work at the Netherlands eScience Center in Amsterdam. Apart from being a developer on various research software projects, I’m involved in Center’s training activities and software development best practices.

I got sucked into in Software Carpentry world through Elixir Data Carpentry Pilot organised by Aleksandra Pawlik. During hackathon in Helsinki, together with Francois Michonneau and few other people we kickstarted ggplot2 part in R-ecology-lesson. From day one I learned a lot about the mechanics of SC, lesson development and logistics of the workshops.

Instructor

At the end of 2015, I attended instructor training in Manchester and became certified instructor shortly after. Since then I instructed at 7 SC and DC workshops around Europe and few more eScience Center workshops based on Software or Data Carpentry materials. Currently, I’m learning towards becoming an instructor trainer.

Mentoring

Recently I started joining instructor discussions as an observer and I’m planning on becoming host next year. I also joined recently announced mentorship program.

Library Carpentry

With small group of people in Amsterdam we hosted site for Mozilla Science Global Sprint and joined groups around the world in the effort to migrate Data Carpentry lessons to Library Carpentry. I have been contributing to LC materials since then.

Netherlands and Europe

I see how powerful Carpentries training model is and how important it is to establish Carpentries communities in the Netherlands and Europe. I have been relentlessly promoting SC, from local Research Software Engineers meetings (DTL programmers meetings) to conferences (BioSB). I helped establish eScience Center and Software Carpentry Partnership and work together with SURF (the collaborative ICT organisation for Dutch education and Research) on wider partnerships within the Netherlands.

ELIXIR is very close to finalising the partnership with SC/DC and next year multiple SC and DC workshops will be organised for life science researchers in ELIXIR nodes. It has become apparent that there is a need for bioinformatics lesson. Together with other people from other ELIXIR nodes, we are planning to test drive and contribute to Data Carpentry Genomics Workshop through series of hackathons in the Netherlands, Portugal and UK.

Plans for Steering Committee

I think it’s very important that there is someone on the committee to give the European perspective. The culture differs here from North America. The scale is different too, it easier to connect / partner with other countries and European Union projects. I plan to help establishing the partnership with SURF in the Netherlands and multiple smaller partnerships around the Netherlands. I will also continue connecting various European projects with Carpentries initiative. One example is establishing SC workshops as part of H2020 European Training Programs (ETPs). eScience Center is currently contributing to two of those. I know how important it is to build sustainable local instructor community and realise how low is the instructor certification rate. I hope to contribute to improving it through mentorship program but also local study groups.