The Carpentries Executive Council Annual Retreat 2023

The Carpentries Executive Council (EC) retreat was held on April 20-22 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Once again, its hybrid modality and well-structured agenda allowed the EC to work on strategic issues to support the organisation. The EC retreat followed two additional convenings where Carpentries community members were present: CZI’s Accelerating Open Science in Latin America and csv,conf,v7.

The hybrid agenda included team-building activities for the Council as a whole, Standing Committee meetings, and discussions with members of the Core Team.

Goals, achievements, and highlights

The EC participated in a robust discussion about the strategic plan for 2020-2025 and what potential revisions, new goals and objectives, or updates to metrics are needed. The discussion included a deep dive into the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for growth and change supporting the 3-5 year strategic plan. The Core Team updated the EC about their activities and how their work, in collaboration with our community, supports our strategic objectives. There were opportunities for questions, comments, interactions with each Team Lead, and acknowledgement of their efforts towards our strategic goals.

Additionally, a succession plan for The Carpentries’ Executive Director was approved to ensure processes are identified for maintaining this leadership role.

Lastly, the Program Committee reviewed the High-Performance Computing (HPC) Carpentry application for lesson program incubation. This application will be discussed at the EC’s quarter two meeting in May.

The Executive Council at the 2023 hybrid retreat

Growth and strength of our governance

Continuing with our work on serving a global community, we held a collaborative training session with Walk Together about multicultural teams. This allowed EC members on a personal level to reflect on how we best support The Carpentries as a multicultural organisation by expanding our thinking and discussing power and privilege.

Once again, this time of working together allowed us to strengthen ties and get to know each other beyond our role as members of the EC. For example, team-building activities, including virtual scavenger hunts and mindfulness journaling, and the meeting dynamics allowed all participants to engage in the activities. Family-style meals supported our team building and ability to get to know one another.

Executive Council members participating in the hybrid retreat using a Meeting Owl, a technology tool available to support hybrid events

One EC member reflects, “I appreciate learning so much about The Carpentries overall management culture and how we as an EC do and can support. I am always learning new things about our processes, policies, and the members of our community that drive our mission.”

Join an upcoming Community Discussion

Join us for a discussion of our quarter one and two meetings at the upcoming Community Discussion on (UTC) Wednesday, 14 June 2023, at 20:00 PM. Sign up to attend on the community-discussions etherpad, and read the minutes from our recent meetings on the executive-council-info repository.