About CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018
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What is The Carpentries?
The Carpentries is a non-profit organisation that teaches foundational computational, coding, and data science skills to academics, students and academic support staff worldwide. The organisation also teaches evidence-based train-the-trainer workshops and develop their own lessons published under open licenses and free to use. Carpentries workshops has been running at South African public universities and research institutions to hundreds of learners since 2014 and almost 100 instructors have been trained to teach digital and computational concepts to novices.
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What is CarpentryConnect Johannesburg2018?
The first CarpentryCon took place in Dublin in May 2018. CarpentryCon is the key community-building and networking event in The Carpentries' annual calendar of activities.
CarpentryConnect events are regional Carpentry Community meetups that take place outside of the main international CarpentryCon meetup. The first South African CarpentryConnect will be held in Johannesburg and will bring together newer and more experienced community members to share knowledge, to network, to develop new skills, and to develop strategies for building strong local communities around digital and computational literacy at universities. The theme of the event is "Building Bridges for Digital & Computational Literacy".
Participants can find an A-Z of CarpentryConnect that should answer all the questions they may have about the event. -
Who is organizing it?
CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018 is co-funded by the Rural Campuses Connection Project II (RCCPII) and the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLAR) and jointly organised by these organisations along with the Digital Humanities Organisation of Southern Africa.
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When and where will it be held?
CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018 will be held from 3 - 7 September, 2018, at Birchwood Hotel and Conference Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa.
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Who is teaching there?
Invited trainers and instructors include: Allegra Via (Italy), specialised in bioinformatics training; Sarah Brown (USA), electrical engineer with expertise in machine learning and many more...
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How can I contribute?
Register to attend. We will be looking for co-instructors for the Carpentries workshops as well as helpers. We are also seeking volunteers to support sessions, help with marshalling and registration, as well as many other tasks. Email us if you can help.
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Will I fit in?
We are working hard to ensure that everyone feels welcome at CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018. Attendees, helpers, and instructors must be prepared to abide by our Code of Conduct.
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Contact us
Please get in touch with your questions and suggestions by emailing us carpentryconnect-jhb-2018@googlegroups.com. -
Registrations are now closed as the workshops are all fully subscribed!
CarpentryConnect Johannesburg Format
Digital & Computational Literacy Workshops
CarpentryConnect Johannesburg will kick off with two days of Carpentry workshops. Three workshops will be offered in parallel including a Library Carpentry, Data Carpentry for Social Sciences, and Software Carpentry for anyone.
Check out the draft program.
Train-the-Trainer Workshop
An in-person instructor training event will run on 6 & 7 September and is open to anyone who is keen to become a Carpentry instructor and have some experience with the tools that we teach as part of the Carpentries - Shell, Python, R, Github, git, OpenRefine, Spreadsheets, and more. Please note that this workshop will help you become a better teacher, rather than teach you advanced technical skills.
Networking Events
There will be plenty of time to meet other Software, Library, and Data Carpenters from the South Afrian and international community. We encourage you to make use of the opportunity to meet others and build your own network.
Our Invited Trainers
We are excited to announce that we have several local and international trainers for the various activities that will form part of CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018.
Software Carpentry
| Instructor/Helper | About | |
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Dr. Allegra Via | Dr. Allegra Via is a physicist and scientific researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Pathology (IBPM) of the National Research Council (CNR, Rome, IT). She is involved in the design, organisation and delivery of bioinformatics training courses, in Train the Trainer activities, and collaborate with other ELIXIR’s nodes on many training-related initiatives. She has a long track record of academic teaching (Macromolecular Structures, Python programming, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Protein interactions). Allegra's main research interests include protein structural bioinformatics, protein structure and function prediction and analysis, and protein interactions. She's also strongly interested in what researchers have discovered about how people learn and how best to teach them, and how research findings in the science of learning (educational psychology) can be translated into common teaching practice. Allegra is a member of the Global Organisation of Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training (GOBLET) and a Software/Data Carpentry Instructor and Instructor trainer. |
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Ms. Samar Elsheikh | Samar is a PhD candidate in Bioinformatics at the Computational Biology Group, University of Cape Town. Her research interest is in predicting the genetic risk of brain diseases, particularly Alzheimer's disease and glioblastoma brain tumour. To achieve this, she develops data analysis pipelines, as well as model-based statistical approaches, that integrate genome-wide variation with several brain imaging features and investigate their relationships. She writes her codes in R, python, shell scripting and uses various open source bioinformatics tools. Samar is enthusiastic about teaching researchers the basics of statistics and programming skills. She joined the Carpentries team and became an instructor in 2017, and since then, she got involved in teaching and organising several Carpentries workshops, including the first Software Carpentry workshop in Sudan. |
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Mr. Shunmuga Pillay | Shun is a manager specializing in support services for computational scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand. His current deliverables relate to effective leadership of technical teams, High Performance Computing, Research Clouds, and enterprise scale Linux Systems. Shun has an active interest in Computational Astrophysics, and a reading interest in Robotics. |
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Mr. San James | San James is a bioinformatics programmer and data analyst at the Kwazulu Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform (KRISP) as well as a PhD Fellow at the University of Kwazulu Natal. He is passionate about the development of automated tools and workflows for bioinformatics analyses, 16S rRNA amplicon sequence analysis, microbial genome wide association studies, online bioinformatics databases for sequences with related metadata (clinical and epidemiological) and machine learning. I would like to learn more about in-silico gene editing as an avenue to cure genetic diseases search as cancer and sickle cell. My spare time involves teaching anything I have learned about systems, programming, web development and data analysis. Before joining the Carpentries, I founded and led the Mozilla Community in Uganda for 5 exciting and productive years. When I’m not at my computer, I spend time reading, exercising and playing the music keyboard. |
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Mr. Ziyaad Parker | Ziyaad Parker is currently the Data Manager for the Computational Biology Department under H3ABioNet. He worked in corporate as well as freelance projects for a few years as a Software Developer before joining this position. In the role he is primarily responsible for developing the H3Africa Data Archive, which is used as a repository for all submissions of data by H3Africa groups to the European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA). He qualified as an instructor for The Capentries in 2018, since then, he has been involved with setting up Software and Data Carpentry workshops. |
Data Carpentry for Social Sciences
| Instructor/Helper | About | |
|---|---|---|
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Dr. Sarah Brown | Dr. Sarah Brown is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Data Science Initiative at Brown University affiliated to the Division of Applied Mathematics. Dr. Brown received her BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University. Dr Brown builds machine learning tools that bridge from data-agnostic methods to systems that fuel data driven discovery in historically qualitative domains. Her work approaches this from two fronts: building interfaces that enable my algorithms to leverage domain scientists' qualitative expertise and developing model-based machine learning solutions through close collaboration with domain scientists. Sarah has been an instructor with The Carpentries since November 2017 serves as a member of the Lesson Infrastructure Committee. Currently she serves as treasurer and previously as a workshop organizer for Women In Machine Learning, Inc. She has served as general co-chair of the Broadening Participation in Datamining Program, a founding member of the Black in AI organizing committee and in various leadership roles in the National Society of Black Engineers. |
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Dr. Angelique van Rensburg | Angelique, PhD (Educational Psychology), is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Optentia Research Focus Area, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus. Her interests include the carpentries, sophisticated quantitative methodologies and understanding why some youth do well even though they face severe adversities (e.g. poverty, violence, abuse), also known as resilience. In doing so, she makes use of innovative quantitative methodologies (i.e. latent variable modelling, invariance testing, latent variable difference testing and moderation analysis in Mplus, SPSS and R) to investigate the complex processes embedded in resilience. |
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Dr. Katrin Tirok | Katrin Tirok is a Research Associate in the Environmental Fluid Mechanics group in the School of Engineering at University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her current work includes research on bio-physical processes in estuaries and on small scale mixing in the ocean. She spends a lot of her time analysing large data sets using tools like R, Matlab and Python and runs seminars for post-graduate students to improve their research skills. Katrin is passionate about all kinds of data and about data literacy training. She teaches and organizes Data Carpentry workshops since 2017. |
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Dr. Nikki Gentle | |
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Dr. Bianca Peterson | Bianca is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Excellence in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmacen), North-West University (NWU), Potchefstroom Campus. Her current research at Pharmacen entails kinetic analyses of extemporaneously compounded medicines. She obtained her B.Sc. degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology, followed by an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences (Molecular Biology) at the NWU. During her studies, she didn't receive any formal training in computational skills and had to seek help to analyze Next-Generation Sequencing data. She was advised to attend a Software Carpentry workshop in November 2015, which piqued her interest in data analyses. In 2016, she certified as a Carpentry instructor and organized and taught at a Genomics Data Carpentry workshop soon thereafter. Since then, she has taught at several Data Carpentry workshops, as well as 3 one-day R workshops. Additionally, she has lead several study group sessions to up-skill and support her colleagues. During these informal meetings they worked through Data Carpentry lessons on command-line, cloud computing and R to provide an environment for post-workshop learning and support. In 2017, she was invited to be a tutor at the CODATA-RDA Summer School, Trieste, Italy, where they teach foundational skills to researchers across various domains. She is part of the CODATA-RDA Task Force and recently also acted as one of the mentors for The Carpentries. She mostly uses cloud computing and R for data analyses, and is very passionate about teaching these tools to others. |
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Mr. Tadiwanshe Simpson Gutsa | I am currently doing my MSc in hydrological modelling at the Centre for Research in Environmental, Coastal and Hydrological Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal. My research is focused on the use of radar and geostatistical interpolation methods for spatial estimation of rainfall in small catchments. I use Python as a tool for statistical analysis, computing mathematical functions and mapping environmental variables. |
Library Carpentry & Digital Humanities
| Instructor/Helper | About | |
|---|---|---|
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Mr. Juan Steyn | Juan is the project manager at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) hosted at the NWU. SADiLaR is a new research infrastructure that forms part of the South African Research Infrastructure Roadmap. Apart from playing his part to deliver on the mandate for SADiLaR his own research interests lie in what possibilities minimal computing may hold for the Humanities and Social Sciences research. Building capacity energizes him and he believes we all need to play our part to make the world a better place. As a Software and Data Carpentry instructor and community member, he can do exactly that. |
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Ms. Kayleigh Lino | Kayleigh Lino is an Account Manager at figshare, where she oversees the implementation of the software at institutions across the globe. She previously worked as a Digital Curation Officer at UCT Libraries, where she was involved in the development of Research Data Services at UCT. Kayleigh has been a part of the Carpentry community since 2016, and is currently a member of the Library Carpentry Governance Committee, as well as the African Carpentry Task Force. Having spent most of her professional career working with digital collections, Kayleigh is passionate about curation in the context of open access repositories, and is currently completing a Master’s dissertation that focuses on the role of digital curation in academic libraries. |
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Ms. Zine Sapula | |
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Mr. Zak van Heerden | I am currently working for the North-West University, as the team lead for the IT Service Desk. Although I never though of myself as a teacher, I have found myself enjoying teaching in the various Carpentries, and what began as a means to close the gap between what researchers need and what the support IT brings to the table, has grown into a full-on passion to teach people, to better equip those who do not even know yet of what is available to them as streamlined methods and tools. In 2018 I was fortunate enough to be part of the world-first Carpentry Con in Dublin and have since taught in a few carpentries, as well as assisting where I can. Ironically the tools we teach researchers are so applicable to situations outside of research that I was able to adapt it to my current working environment and a lot of people, even outside of my professional circle, was able to adapt these tools similarly. I am thrilled and honored to be part of the Carpentries family! |
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Dr. Gabriel Salubi | Oghenere Gabriel Salubi is an information research professional and presently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Fort Hare where he also guides students in the areas of Information retrieval, computerised cataloguing and Information management. |
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Dr. Miriam Peña-Pimentel | Dr Peña completed her doctorate in Hispanic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, where she also participated in the projects of The CulturePlex Lab. Dr. Peña has worked on Digital Scholarship and Digital Academic Edition projects. Currently she works at the Institute of Bibliographic Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she develops enriched publication protocols for the creation of digital objects from research and the collection of the National Library of Mexico. She is a participant in the Digital Heritage Program where she teaches training sessions to the academic staff of the Institute, the Library and the National Newspaper Library in technical processes for the production of digital content. She also participates in the Digital Humanities training courses at the UNAM, teaches the subject of Digital Libraries and Archives, and participates in the Digital Scholarship project, eLaboraHD. Dr. Peña has been part of the Executive Committee of the RedHD (Digital Humanities Network) since 2013 and was part of the Local Organizing Committee for the DH2018 conference. |
Carpentry Instructor Training
| Trainer/Helper | About | |
|---|---|---|
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Dr. Allegra Via | Dr. Allegra Via is a physicist and scientific researcher at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Pathology (IBPM) of the National Research Council (CNR, Rome, IT). She is involved in the design, organisation and delivery of bioinformatics training courses, in Train the Trainer activities, and collaborate with other ELIXIR’s nodes on many training-related initiatives. She has a long track record of academic teaching (Macromolecular Structures, Python programming, Bioinformatics, Biochemistry, Protein interactions). Allegra's main research interests include protein structural bioinformatics, protein structure and function prediction and analysis, and protein interactions. She's also strongly interested in what researchers have discovered about how people learn and how best to teach them, and how research findings in the science of learning (educational psychology) can be translated into common teaching practice. Allegra is a member of the Global Organisation of Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training (GOBLET) and a Software/Data Carpentry Instructor and Instructor trainer. |
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Dr. Caroline F. Ajilogba | Caroline F Ajilogba has a PhD in Biology with focus on Microbial Biotechnology. Her works involves analyzing big microbial data for biocontrol and biofertilization using R. She became involved with Data Carpentry in 2016 where she was trained to become an instructor. She is presently a certified instructor and Trainer and Trainer co-coordinator with The Carpentries. She is a member of the The Carpentries Africa TaskForce. She has helped to build a community of R users at the North-West University Mafikeng campus where she started the NWU R study group. She is a teacher and researcher who loves to impact her generation. |
Our Sponsors
We would like to acknowledge the very generous support of the following initiatives, who are helping to make CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018 possible.
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The Rural Campuses Connection Project is funded by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). The project is managed by Universities South Africa (USAF) and implemented by the Tertiary and Education Research Network (TENET). | |
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The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) is a national centre supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). |
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The Digital Humanities Association of Southern Africa (DHASA) aims to promote understanding and practice of digital approaches to humanities scholarship; is working toward a “methodological commons;” and provides guidance in the development of standards and expertise to promote best practices in DH teaching and practice.. |
CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018 Program
Our program - follow links for session abstracts
Monday - Wednesday, 3 - 5 September
| Day | Time | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday | 8:15-9:00 am | Registration & Coffee | Workshop rooms |
| Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday | 9:00 - 10:30 am | Carpentry Workshop 1 DH/Library Carpentry Juan Steyn |
Room: Heathrow (Own Laptops) |
| Carpentry Workshop 2 Data Carpentry: Social Sciences Sarah Brown |
Room: Lanseria (Own Laptops) | ||
| Carpentry Workshop 3 Software Carpentry Allegra Via |
Room: Barcelona (Own laptops) | ||
| Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday | 10:30 - 11:00 am | Coffee break | Foyer |
| Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday | 11:00 - 12:30 pm | Carpentry Workshop 1 DH/Library Carpentry Juan Steyn |
Heathrow (Own Laptops) |
| Carpentry Workshop 2 Data Carpentry: Social Sciences Sarah Brown |
Lanseria (Own Laptops) | ||
| Carpentry Workshop 3 Software Carpentry Allegra Via |
Barcelona (Own laptops) | ||
| Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday | 12:30 - 13:30 pm | Lunch break | Foyer |
| Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday | 13:30 - 15:00 pm | Carpentry Workshop 1 DH/Library Carpentry Juan Steyn |
Heathrow (Own Laptops) |
| Carpentry Workshop 2 Data Carpentry: Social Sciences Sarah Brown |
Lanseria (Own Laptops) | ||
| Carpentry Workshop 3 Software Carpentry Allegra Via |
Barcelona (Own laptops) | ||
| Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday | 15:00 - 15:30 pm | Coffee Break | Foyer |
| Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday | 15:30 - 16:30 pm | Carpentry Workshop 1 DH/Library Carpentry Juan Steyn |
Heathrow (Own Laptops) |
| Carpentry Workshop 2 Data Carpentry: Social Sciences Sarah Brown |
Lanseria (Own Laptops) | ||
| Carpentry Workshop 3 Software Carpentry Allegra Via |
Barcelona (Own laptops) |
Thursday & Friday, 6 & 7 September
| Day | Time | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday/Friday | 8:30-9:00 am | Coffee and networking | Foyer |
| Thursday/Friday | 9:00 - 10:30 am | Train-the-Trainer: Carpentries Instructor Training Allegra Via |
Heathrow |
| Thursday/Friday | 10:30 - 11:00 am | Coffee and networking | Foyer |
| Thursday/Friday | 11:00 - 12:30 pm | Train-the-Trainer: Carpentries Instructor Training Allegra Via |
Heathrow |
| Thursday/Friday | 12:30 - 13:30 pm | Lunch | Foyer |
| Thursday/Friday | 13:30 - 15:00 am | Train-the-Trainer: Carpentries Instructor Training Allegra Via |
Heathrow |
| Thursday/Friday | 15:00 - 15:30 pm | Coffee and networking | Foyer |
| Thursday/Friday | 15:30 - 16:30 pm | Train-the-Trainer: Carpentries Instructor Training Allegra Via |
Heathrow |
Conference Registration
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE EVENT IS NOW FULLY SUBSCRIBED. PLEASE CONTACT the event organisers SHOULD YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO THE WAITLIST
There are a range of registration types. If you have received an email from the organisers and has been nominated by your institution to participate, please contact us directly on carpentryconnect-jhb-2018@googlegroups.com with proof of nomination and support from your institution. Alternatively please register through the links below.
| Type | What's included | Closing date | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Library Carpentry & Digital Humanities Workshop (3-5 September) | Full registration
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20 August, 2018 | Free (Responsible for own travel and accommodation costs & No-show fee applies) |
| Software Carpentry Workshop (3 - 5 September) | 20 August, 2018 | Free (Responsible for own travel and accommodation costs & No-show fee applies) | |
| Social Sciences Data Carpentry Workshop (3 - 5 September) | 20 August, 2018 | Free (Responsible for own travel and accommodation costs & No-show fee applies) | |
| Carpentry Instructor Training (6&7 September) | Full registration
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20 August, 2018 | Free (Responsible for own travel and accommodation costs & No-show fee applies) |
Accommodation Options for CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018
Accommodation has been arranged at a special rate at Birchwood Conference and Hotel. Please contact us to assist with your booking.
Birchwood Hotel and Conference Centre
The Birchwood Hotel and OR Tambo Conference Centre is located only minutes from OR Tambo International Airport, within walking distance to a variety of shopping precincts and is close to restaurants and recreational facilities..
Birchwood Hotel and OR Tambo Conference Centre
14 View Point Rd, Bardene, Boksburg, 1456
Contact Us
CarpentryConnect Johannesburg 2018 Contacts
The following people are representatives of the funders
- Juan Steyn : SADiLaR
- Anelda van der Walt : RCCPII