Letter from The Carpentries Executive Director, July 2020

Dear Carpentries Community,

On 12 June our Core Team participated in the first Reading and Reflection Day. On that day I spent time reading resources on building and sustaining non-profit projects. I learned many things in the time I spent reading, but what leapt from the pages were strategies to move beyond survival and into thriving.

Now, do not get me wrong. The Carpentries is not only surviving - we are thriving! Your feedback and continued engagement has allowed us to establish processes for piloting our workshops online, and in 2019, we increased our number of trained instructors and workshops by 29% and 20%, respectively. That combined with support from CZI and the Moore Foundation and Mozilla’s Open Source Support (MOSS) program, the road ahead includes scaling instructor training, curriculum development, community development, and our equity, inclusion, and accessibility (EIA) efforts. We have lots to do - and I am here for all of it!

For the Carpentries to thrive we must continue to identify multiple pathways for involvement and engagement, whether for an individual looking to contribute content and/or teach, or a potential supporting organisation looking to provide financial resources. We indeed Value All Contributions, but as my father always urges, “if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.” My vision for The Carpentries is to support global capacity for building inclusive computational communities of leaders who embody The Carpentries values. To build global capacity we must start with a plan.

If you know me, you know I live by the following mantra: Plan. Pilot. Pursue. So, what does that mean for the Carpentries, and how can we get ready?

I invite you to hear more during CarpentryCon @ Home next week. I will be delivering the opening keynote on Monday, 13 July 2020 at 14h00 UTC and 24h00 UTC. During my keynote I will share thoughts on global capacity building and our get ready plan. I have a few surprises too!

Thank you in advance to our dynamic CarpentryCon Task Force for organising such an incredible schedule of events over the next two months, and to each session presenter! See you next week.

Get ready,
Kari