The Carpentries’ 2020 Strategic Focus and Path Forward

On January 30, 2020 The Carpentries released its strategic plan for 2020-2025. This plan outlines six strategic goals for the next five years. The full strategic plan is published on The Carpentries website.

Carpentries Core Team members contributed to the discussion of which Strategic Plan objectives to prioritise in 2020. Priorities were based on the significant progress that had already been made toward some of the strategic objectives, personnel time, and grant obligations. We are delighted to share the goals and priorities for the first year of our strategic plan with the community.

As we were faced with a global pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, progress toward our strategic plan begins with Q2 2020 (April - June) and onward.

For transparency, The Carpentries year one strategic plan is available for review via a GitHub project. Deliverables have been shared via GitHub issues with labels identifying which team is leading the work, which strategic goal the work addresses, and in which quarter(s) the work is intended to take place. A summary of the work to be completed is provided below by quarter.

Q2 2020 (April - June)

In true ‘plan, pilot, and pursue’ fashion, the work in Q2 2020 includes planning and development of our business operations, documenting strategic collaborations, and developing/refining several community resources including our Maintainer Onboarding curriculum and the CarpentryConnect Kit. Additionally, we will continue to pilot a strategy to engage Carpentries community members regionally in Southern Africa.

Q3 2020 (July - September)

In Q3 2020 we will make progress on several compliance and operations goals, including implementing best practices in privacy management and developing onboarding for internal supervision and operations. Additionally, we will make progress toward the Carpentries Incubator and Carpentries Lab programs, develop a Membership Onboarding program, launch a ‘help wanted’ page for lesson contributions, and release our first continuing education module for Instructor Training.

Q4 2020 (October - December)

Q4 2020 will include several pilot initiatives, including the Community Facilitators Program, CarpentryConnect Kit, and the Carpentries volunteer agreement. Additionally, the Community Development team will launch phase one of a three-phase content redesign project for accessibility on https://carpentries.org, and we will establish recurring cycles for Maintainer recruitment and retirement.

Q1 2021 (January - March)

We will kick off Q1 2021 with improvements to our workflow for selecting Instructors for workshops. Additionally, we will develop a plan to strategically engage libraries and computational centers, develop an accessibility roadmap for lesson contributions, and continue to make progress toward our Carpentries Incubator and Carpentries Lab programs.

Get In Touch

We welcome all of our community members to get in touch or comment directly in the GitHub issues to share your thoughts on our path forward together!