Register your Carpentries Subcommunity

The Community Development Program was launched in 2022 to support The Carpentries subcommunities. A subcommunity is a subset of the larger Carpentries community and can be local (e.g., University Carpentries Club), regional (e.g., Carpentries in Africa), domain-specific (e.g., HPC Carpentry), or a group of community members sharing a common language (e.g., Carpentries-es) or interests (e.g., Carpentries Offline). Communities of practice built around formal Carpentries roles (e.g., Instructors, Maintainers) are not included in this definition and are not considered subcommunities. The Community Development Program has been slowly taking action on addressing fourteen recommendations that emerged from conversations with a number of leaders of Carpentries subcommunities throughout 2021 and 2022.

Launching our Subcommunity Registry

One of the community recommendations was to “develop an official subcommunity registry that will be available online,” and another stated that this registry should “request information on ongoing activities, websites, and communication channels.” We are excited to announce that a form is now available for you to register your subcommunity. Information provided in the form will be made available on the new Carpentries website that will be launched later this year.

The primary goals of the registry will be:

To raise awareness of subcommunities and their activities
For community members to find subcommunities of interest and opportunities to engage
For subcommunities to recruit new community members
For the Community Development Team to provide better support to our subcommunities by understanding specific needs

If you have questions about the registry or whether you should register your subcommunity, please send an email to the Community Development Team.

Additional Updates from the Community Development Program

We are also excited to share some additional updates on our progress with several of the other recommendations provided last year.

The Community Development Program began hosting quarterly community calls at the start of 2022. The dates and times for the calls in 2023 were recently announced. We invite you to join us for the first call of 2023 on 28 March at 14:00 UTC and 23:00 UTC. Anyone interested in community building or community management is encouraged to attend.

Recommendation 5: Develop a glossary of relevant terms with an accompanying visual that shows how community roles align and intersect

A community glossary is now available. Visuals to describe our community are currently being developed as part of the website redesign, but we also invite you to watch and share our short community overview video that includes captions in four languages.

Recommendation 8: Conduct audit of existing communication channels

An audit of our Slack channels began in 2022 and is an ongoing effort. This and an audit of our mailing lists on TopicBox will be a priority for the new Communications Coordinator who we are currently in the process of hiring.

Recommendation 9: Develop an official event registration

If you would like to make the community aware of an event you are hosting, you can post to our #events channel on Slack or send an email to have your event added to our newsletter. If the event needs to be added to The Carpentries Community Calendar, please email the Community Development Team. We will continue to identify opportunities to improve and automate this process over time as new tools become available.

The Community Development Program currently has a repository that holds ideas and resources to support community-building. The repository links to all the resources mentioned previously and also includes a link to a Zotero library with curated resources in support of community development within The Carpentries.

Recommendation 12: Initiate a “Subcommunity Highlights” communication series to increase awareness

As part of the subcommunity registration process, individuals are asked if they would like to have their subcommunity featured in an upcoming Subcommunity Highlight Series on our blog. This series will start following the release of the new website.

Stay in Touch!

If you are interested in receiving updates about the Community Development Program and being engaged in its development, we invite you to join the conversation on Slack (#community) or join our TopicBox mailing list. We also welcome your ideas and feedback by emailing the Community Development Team.