The road to CarpentryCon 2018

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Imagine a global community event where Carpentries members and aficionados come together for a short period to exchange experiences, discuss lessons and debate teaching practices. Visualize a space where keynote speeches are closely complemented by community-driven lightning talks, and round-table panels are supported with ad-hoc informal meetings to share stories about challenges and successes. Finally, to complete the picture, consider a number of satellite events, such as social gatherings, carpentry workshops and new lesson developments. Well, this is our vision for CarpentryCon 2018!

During the last meeting of the CarpentryCon task force (2017-06-04), we made several concrete steps towards making this a reality. First and foremost, we started working on a draft agenda for the CarpentryCon event, as well as on a bid guide for potential sites to host the event. Primary considerations in both cases were to incorporate the best experiences in conferences so far, as well as attempting to cultivate an informal but informative environment. Finally, we selected new officers for this task force: Mateusz Kuzak and Rayna Harris, after their tireless efforts so far, stepped down and passed on their responsibilities to Fotis Psomopoulos and Malvika Sharan (as chair and secretary respectively).

Our next steps will focus primarily on finalizing the draft agenda and start sending out the bid forms to potential sites. We envision CarpentryCon as an event by the community and for the community. This is why we want to involve you in the process and decisions. We also want the event to be inclusive and attract a very diverse group of people, our learners, instructors, trainers and lesson contributors. Bid guide and agenda documents are open for comments and will be circulated to the community for feedback within the month. We will also host the Community Call in August in order to bring in more people into the discussion and planning. So stay tuned!