Bring CarpentryCon 2020 to Your City – Call for Themes and Venues

CarpentryCon 2020 planning begins

CarpentryCon has become the community tested and community approved networking and skills-building event for The Carpentries community. Its international conference last year, and the different CarpentryConnect events across the globe aimed at connecting regional communities have offered a common in-person platform to connect with our international colleagues, develop ideas, gain new skills and experience a genuine sense of belonging.

Personally, this was only one of the several events that I have attended/organised in my career where I felt at home, and as Fotis Psomopoulos says: “this event had a special emotional element unlike any other”. To recreate the same (or even better) experience in 2020, the CarpentryCon TaskForce has already started to plan the logistics for CarpentryCon 2020.

Taking decisions as a community

This event initially started with a few people brainstorming the idea of a global Carpentry conference. They helped establish a formal TaskForce, which invited your participation by suggesting ideas at various stages of planning; this ‘ripple effect’ helped us collectively design an event, as a community.

Call for themes and venue

We want to keep the momentum going by keeping you involved in shaping the next CarpentryCon as well. We are delighted to open the calls for themes and venue bids and invite your ideas.

Theme

We highly encourage you to suggest themes for the next CarpentryCon on theme bidding form.

The conference theme is crucial for the planning of the event because it sets the stage for the specific topics to take the central role. A theme will help us estimate who our target audience will be, what interests and skill sets participants would be exchanging with each other, and what kinds of opportunities will they have for developing their ideas together. The theme for CarpentryCon should remain true to the core tenets of The Carpentries, a compression of The Carpentry story, while at the same time being dynamic enough to accommodate the present and future realities within the community.

Last year’s theme “Building Locally, Connecting Globally!” allowed The Carpentries members from around the world to come together and connect with each other, start new conversations and take them back to their local communities. Almost all of us could establish significant collaborations at this conference while creating long lasting relationships within the community.

So, what do you think the Theme for the CarpentryCon 2020 should be?

Venue

We are looking forward to receiving your bids on the potential venues for the next conference through venue bidding form.

The conference venue is as important as the conference itself. There are obvious factors that need to be considered for a location such as wifi, auditorium for keynote to hold minimum 120 people, 3-4 breakout rooms, catering and technical support. However, the most important factor to organise a diverse and inclusive event is accessibility. How accessible the infrastructure of a potential venue is, how it is connected via major transportation hubs in the city (e.g. airports or public transportation), what the travel and immigration law of the region is where the venue is situated. These aspects largely influence who in our community will be able to join us at the conference.

The Carpentries community has grown tremendously in the last years, and its members are located in almost all continents (I have to double check my schedule by converting time zones every time I plan to attend a Zoom call). It is exciting to know that we can travel to any country and find a friend who would be up for a drink and conversation about computing, teaching, learning, Carpentries and much more.

Here is a chance for you to do that for 3 amazing days, while you host the next conference and bring CarpentryCon 2020 to your city. The conference website is currently under development and a link will be shared soon.

Check out the website from the last conference to gather ideas of the conference size and format. Our current website is under development as the TaskForce is still designing the program.

Got more questions?

Have you got more questions that I didn’t address here? Join us at the themed Community Call on March 19, 2019 at 10:00 UTC (check your time) or 17:00 UTC (check your time). Sign up directly on this etherpad. You can also get in touch with the TaskForce by emailing carpentrycon@carpentries.org.

Update on the TaskForce

Our new TaskForce members have assumed their roles of area chairs. Sher! will keep working with us as The Carpentries Liaison, and we are happy to welcome Serah Njambi Kiburu, the Community Engagement Lead, as a liaison as well. Fotis and I have taken our new supporting positions as coordinators/advisors with Mark Laufersweiler. You can see the complete CarpentryCon roles on this GitHub repo and the minutes from our meetings on this etherpad.

We look forward to hearing your ideas for CarpentryCon 2020!

Thanks to the TaskForce members for providing comments and feedback on the early version of this post and preparing the bid forms to accommodate our community needs.