Who Belongs at CarpentryCon 2018? You Do!

CarpentryCon 2018 will be the key community building event in The Carpentries’ annual calendar. To be held in Dublin from 30 May - 1 June, 2018, CarpentryCon will be three action-packed days of skill ups, breakout sessions, talks, social events (there will be a conference dinner), and workshops.

Who do we want to see there?

YOU!

Grad student? Tick.

Post-doc? Tick.

Working in industry? Tick.

Project or lab leader? Tick.

Research Software Engineer? Tick.

Librarian supporting researchers? Tick.

The list could go on, but what it boils down to is there’ll be something for everyone.

Maybe you are very new to The Carpentries community. Maybe you have attended a workshop, helped at a workshop, or just heard that The Carpentries do amazing things to help researchers.

Come to CarpentryCon and find out more about what we do, how you can get involved, and how being part of this great community can change your skill levels, your career trajectory, and maybe even your life. Lots of people have changed careers after attending our workshops, after finding that the coding and data skills they thought were unattainable were actually well within their grasp. So do not let being new to our community be a barrier - we have all kinds of plans to help even the newest members of our community feel that they belong with us.

Maybe you are based somewhere that has no Carpentries community. If so, then joining our community - our global community - is one way to end that isolation. Find people working in the same discipline, or with the same tools, and make connections to help you feel less alone once you go back home again. Who knows? Maybe you will be inspired to kick start your own community. If so, we have lots of ways we can help.

Perhaps you’re already a Carpentries Instructor, Trainer, or Lesson Maintainer? (Did you hear that rhyme?) CarpentryCon will provide lots of opportunities for those groups both to network and cross-network.

Older hands - people who have been in the community for a while - we want you at CarpentryCon to show new people the ropes and help them develop the skills to drive their careers forward. From sessions on leading projects or research labs to breakouts on mentoring and diversity, our community has so much to offer new people just starting out.

We plan to offer professional development sessions that will augment your Master’s or PhD qualifications so that your career can really go places. (Have a look at what skills volunteering as an Instructor, Trainer, or Lesson Maintainer in The Carpentries can add to your CV.)

And did I mention that the contacts you will make at CarpentryCon will be invaluable?

We also have some fantastic keynote speakers. Valerie Aurora, a diversity and inclusion consultant who co-founded the Ada Initiative, will not only speak, but will run her fantastic Ally Skills Workshop on the final day. Anelda van der Walt - and who better? - will talk about community building throughout Africa. Desmond Higgins, who developed Clustal, will keynote about that groundbreaking work. And Software Carpentry co-founder Greg Wilson will speak about how we all got here in the first place.

We will have plenty of Library Carpentry content - not least an onboarding workshop for existing Instructors who want to teach the material. We will have Next Steps in R and a session on using Carpentry methods in university courses. We have also slotted in some Open Mic ‘unconference’-style sessions so good ideas on the day can have a chance to be voted on to the program.

And it’s Dublin in May! Where else would you rather be? Check out the program, submit an abstract for a poster or lightning talk, but most of all … GET YOUR TICKET TODAY!