Hi Kevin Some materials:
Mozilla runs Study Groups (where you can register your group too), they have very good materials on running these: https://science.mozilla.org/programs/studygroups/run Amanda Miotto (also on this list?) has a handbook for running Hacky Hours, these are similar in scope to what you're trying to do: https://github.com/amandamiotto/HackyHourHandbook I run the Hacky Hour here at UWA in Perth, some points: - be careful of language, try not to be offputting/lecturing, be welcoming and understanding - Greg's book Teaching Tech Together summarises many good points: http://teachtogether.tech/en/ see especially this chapter http://teachtogether.tech/en/motivation/ - be inclusive, try to not make it a 'boys' club nerd event' - it's much harder to sustain a regular event if it's always the same 5 guys, they won't be around forever. Different people will give you different viewpoints - I'm always so happy when archaelogists come along to our meetings! They got amazing problems I didn't know existed - talk to your library, to your graduate school, your local HPC team, they're happy to promote you, maybe to send people along too. There are newsletters run by these organisations which are happy to include you. - We have a state-wide Carpentries Facebook group which is useful to spread information about upcoming events/meetups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1798197997093258/ - take your time - we've been running the Hacky Hour here for more than a year and we still get a week here or there where nobody comes because of time pressures. That's part of it, too. - maybe make a Twitter account? it's a good chance to show off pictures and your members, so that potential members can see what the audience is like (Nick Hamilton at https://twitter.com/hackyhourstluc?lang=en does this VERY well). It's also a good place to summarise what you're looking at in your regular meetings hope this helps! there's also a hacky hour mailing list for hacky hour coordinators, not sure whether that'll help: hacky-hour--coordinat...@googlegroups.com Cheers Philipp On 10/19/18 11:49 AM, kevin.stachelek via discuss wrote: > Hello! > > I'm part of a small student group at my university attempting to grow > coding and data science capacity among students in the life sciences. > I am interested in getting guidance on how to organize and sustain > this kind of organization. I have experience and interests in > bioinformatics, shell, R, and python. > > I have limited experience with the carpentries directly, but was > guided here via a mentoring request. We hold somewhat weekly meetings > at which a relatively experienced member presents on a given topic. We > are alternating each semester focusing on python and then on R with > some shell skills thrown in. > > I'm looking for suggestions to make our group more welcoming to > newcomers and interesting for typical life sciences coding needs. > > Thanks! > *The Carpentries <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/latest>* / discuss > / see discussions <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss> + > participants <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/members> > + delivery options > <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription> > Permalink > <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/T13172c02cf73a5be-M82e4f5e3c41aaeac2f548e99> > ------------------------------------------ The Carpentries: discuss Permalink: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/T13172c02cf73a5be-Md047bec063e95e73e689b6bb Delivery options: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription
