Welcome to The Carpentries!

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We are happy that you are here! This document is intended to help you get started in The Carpentries community by highlighting some key links and activities. If you have questions, please get in touch with our Director of Community, Alycia Crall, by email or schedule a meeting. We are here for you as you begin your journey with our organisation. Welcome!

Where Do I Get Started?

Glad you asked! The Carpentries is an organisation that relies on volunteer contributions to support the community of practice whose members share our core values. We are dedicated to providing a welcoming and supportive environment for all people. By participating in this community, participants accept to abide by our Code of Conduct. Whether you have a little or a lot of time, there are many ways to contribute and engage with us.

Receive Communications

The Carpentries supports communications from our Core Team and across our community members in several ways. Worried about too many communications? Don’t be! Only subscribe to the communications you want, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

  • Mailing Lists: Browse the various options and sign up to receive relevant regional and global communications. We recommend the “Discuss” mailing list, which is used for general discussion, but you can find information on other available mailing lists.
  • Newsletter: Carpentries Clippings is published every two weeks and includes community news and relevant job postings.
  • Carpentries Philanthropy: Receive communications about the philanthropic work of our organisation.
  • Social media: Follow our organisation’s activities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Chat with Other Community Members

The Carpentries Slack (you can create an account by following this link) is where our community members connect with each other, and where we share resources and opportunities to participate. If Slack is new to you, our Slack Quickstart Guide will help you to set up your profile and workspace, and give you an overview of how we use the platform on a day-to-day basis. All new members to Slack are automatically added to the following Slack channels:

  • #general: main channel to discuss all things Carpentries, excluding recruitment of workshop volunteers. Everyone can post here.
  • #welcome: where new members post short bios about themselves. You’re encouraged to say hello to others here!
  • #jobs: where you can find job opportunities relevant to our community members.
    We also have over 100 optional channels, ranging from local and regional communities (e.g., #local-japan) to channels supporting specific volunteer roles (e.g., #instructors). Not sure which channels to follow? You can find additional information about our Slack Channels in our Handbook.

Join a Community Event

You can find a full list of The Carpentries activities on our community calendar to add our calendar to yours.

  • Community Discussions: Topics range anywhere from teaching workshops and developing curricula to building local communities and assessing the impact of our workshops globally. Community Discussions are added to our community calendar and are also listed in our Etherpad.
  • Regional Community Calls: Join a call with others from your region. Call in details.

Memberships

A Member Organisation is an organisation which has made a commitment to the growth and spread of The Carpentries. Members receive priority access to Instructor Training and Centrally-Organised Workshops and guidance with capacity building at their organisation.

Become an Instructor

Carpentries Instructors are the core of our community, organising and teaching workshops to spread data literacy and computational skills around the world. Becoming an Instructor is a great step to add inspiring people to your network and helps you to both develop and demonstrate your ability to teach effectively.

Network, Collaborate and Co-Create

There are multiple ways to network with other members who share our mission to teach foundational computational and data science skills to researchers as well as collaborate and co-create resources with them.

Additional Resources

The Carpentries has an extensive collection of resources available to our community members. In fact, for new members, the number and diversity of resources can be overwhelming. Not to worry! Below are links to the ones you need to get you started.

  • Our Website: The official website of The Carpentries organisation.
  • Our Handbook: This is your go-to resource for all things Carpentries. Not sure where to find the information you are looking for? Just type a keyword into the search box to find the information you need.
  • Our Blog: Collection of blog posts from Core Team and community members
  • Our Community Glossary: Glossary that defines common terms used in The Carpentries community
  • Should you have any:
    • general requests, please email team@carpentries.org
    • workshop requests, please email workshops@carpentries.org
    • community requests, please email community@carpentries.org
    • membership requests, please email membership@carpentries.org

Citing and reusing this tipsheet

This tipsheet was adapted from an original by the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (CSCCE) under a CC-BY 4.0 license doi: 10.5281/zenodo.4161782.

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