A review of CarpentryConnect 2024
13 December 2024
Giacomo Peru gives an insider's view of this event, which brought members of the Carpentry community together in Heidelberg in November.
CarpentryConnect 2024 was hosted at EMBL Heidelberg from 12-14 November 2024. This event was part of the EU-funded project BioNT, which focuses on digital skills in the biotechnology industry and biomedical sector. CarpentryConnects are community convenings, and they bring together community members of The Carpentries for knowledge exchange, collaboration, and networking.
Mindful of the success of CarpentryConnect Manchester 2019, which was sponsored by the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) and led by Aleksandra Nenadic, the BioNT team chose to host this edition at their project headquarters. The organising team, led by Silvia Di Giorgio, worked for a year to stage what proved to be a highly successful event, situated in the wooded hills outside the historic university town of Heidelberg in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
Keynote presentations
The event featured three keynote presentations that explored the intersection of community, education, and career development in technical training.
Malvika Sharan (The Alan Turing Institute) discussed effective community management and sustainable involvement in volunteer communities. Radhika S. Khetani (AstraZeneca) shared insights on building educational communities across academia and industry, drawing from her recent sector transition. And Yanina Bellini Saibene (rOpenSci) completed the picture by addressing how community involvement and training experience can be leveraged for career development, emphasising the importance of measuring impact and making strategic choices about community commitments.
"Coding and Data Science Skills Training for Industry"
A highlight of the event was the industry panel discussion "Coding and Data Science Skills Training for Industry", which was structured as two complementary sessions exploring skills transferability from academia to industry and training formats for the biotech sector.
The panels brought together diverse perspectives from leaders in both large companies and SMEs: Tom Schwarzl (former Bio-IT trainer), Toni Wagner (vAudience), Heidi Seibold (Digital Research Academy), Ming "Tommy" Tang (AstraZeneca), and Radhika Khetani (pharma sector).
Key insights emerged around the need for focused, time-efficient training approaches in industry settings, where standardised procedures and immediate productivity needs shape learning environments. Panelists emphasised that academic trainers bring not only technical expertise but also valuable communication and collaboration skills that are highly valued in industry settings.
The three-day programme balanced keynotes with hands-on activities and community discussions. The first day featured parallel workshops on training material reusability, HPC workshop delivery, and research data management, alongside breakout discussions on lesson development and cloud-based training environments, concluding with lightning talks and poster presentations.
Day two offered sessions on Glosario contributions, training material development tools, and knowledge graphs, while the final day was dedicated to seven parallel mini-hackathons covering topics from lesson format conversion to new curricula development for Julia programming and outbreak analytics.
Throughout the programme, ample time was allocated for networking and informal discussions during breaks and meals, recognising the importance of community building and collaborative exchanges. This structure allowed participants to engage deeply with topics of interest while maintaining flexibility to connect with colleagues across different sessions.
Commitment to collaborative learning
At a time of organisational changes in The Carpentries, CarpentryConnect Heidelberg 2024 demonstrated the community's commitment to collaborative learning. The positive, and somewhat enthusiastic, atmosphere enabled good discussions about digital skills training across research and industry. Initial feedback from attendees underlined the value of in-person community events, and plans are underway for the next CarpentryConnect in 2026.
The Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) supported the event as a sponsor. SSI's Giacomo Peru served on the organising committee and Aleksandra Nenadic co-lead a session on 'Developing and Delivering Training Material at the Intermediate Level', a session on "Lesson Development Training for Existing Lesson Projects" and a hackathon on"Converting Carpentry-Style Lessons from Jekyll to the Workbench Lesson Format". Several SSI fellows were present and contributed to the event.
