Data Carpentry Steering Committee Meeting Report

October 13, 2016
1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern

Attendance

Steering committee members:
Present: Karen Cranston, Hilmar Lapp, Aleksandra Pawlik, Ethan White
Absent: Karthik Ram

Others present:
Exec. Director: Tracy Teal

Proceedings

Report on workshops
Workshops since Jan 1, 2016: 65
Workshops since last meeting: 9

Discussion of Library Carpentry
Library Carpentry and Software and Data Carpentry have been discussing their future development and relationship with Software and Data Carpentry, and Tracy has been involved in these discussions. The Steering Committee voted to approve Library Carpentry coming aboard with Data Carpentry if they are interested. Tracy will talk with the Library Carpentry community about how that could work. Library Carpentry wouldn’t need to go through the Lesson Roadmap application process as they’ve already done that work, but it would still be useful to go through the process to get feedback on how the process works.

Discussion of Collaborative Agreements
The Steering Committee is supportive of collaborative agreements, and Tracy will work with the finance subcommittee on language and NumFOCUS on any issues around contracting.

Planning of in-person Steering Committee meeting
The dates for the meeting will be Jan 31 - Feb 1 at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Discussion of a maintainers developers committee
Kate Hertweck proposed forming a ‘maintainers developers’ committee that will oversee lesson infrastructure development like lesson templates and instructor note formats. Notes from lesson maintainers meeting. The Steering Committee is supportive of this initiative. Tracy will be on this committee.

Updating the Data Carpentry lesson template to use the Software Carpentry template
Tracy and Erin have evaluated the new SWC template for ease of use, both for creating new lessons and updating existing ones. Documentation and ease of use are both good. The Steering Committee supports the switch.

Discussion of alignment of the Carpentries
Data and Software Carpentry staff started a document looking at the areas of focus and responsibilities within the organizations. When discussed by the Software Carpentry Steering Committee, work will continue on the document.

Meeting adjourned at 5pm Eastern
Next meeting: November 17th, 2016