Making the Case for CarpentryCon
This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
Getting a PhD is, was or will be a major career milestone for many in our community.
Yet getting a PhD, momentous as that achievement is, is really just the first step on the career ladder. Employers increasingly want other skills as well.
In all kinds of surveys, the same key skills keep popping up:
Communication skills. Teamwork. Problem solving. Ethical and intercultural understanding. Leadership. Critical thinking.
The wording in job ads may vary but what it boils down to is this: employers want people who can lead, and they want people who can collaborate.
Yet few academic conferences focus on building those kinds of skills, concentrating instead on advances within a discipline. Attending conferences may help people develop skills in, say, speaking and presenting, but that is generally a by-product.
What CarpentryCon will offer
CarpentryCon will be different. Its main aim is to help people develop professional skills to drive their careers forward.
We want to teach the next generation of research leaders not just technical skills – though these are becoming increasingly important – but skills such as promoting diversity and inclusion, project and lab leadership, working ‘open’, and speaking effectively, as our program demonstrates.
And don’t forget teaching!
CarpentryCon will have a strong focus on teaching.
Whether you eventually work in academia or industry, teaching experience is a very desirable attribute.
CarpentryCon will provide opportunities for Instructors and Trainers, both current and aspiring, to discuss and learn more about teaching practices, and to connect with people interested in improving the way computational and data wrangling skills are taught.
Many universities claim to turn out graduates with a desirable set of attributes, yet few offer concrete opportunities for students to acquire those skills.
CarpentryCon will.
Find out if your university is really serious about equipping you for your future career.
Ask them to send you to CarpentryCon.
Can we help you get to CarpentryCon?
For those whose pleas fall on unsympathetic ears, we hope to be able to offer some level of travel subsidy. However, we have not yet finalised the budget for that. If you buy a ticket and then find you are unable to afford to come, you can get a refund. If you buy a ticket now, that will not disqualify you from later applying for travel assistance once we open applications for subsidies. We will post more information on all this once we finalise our arrangements.