17 December,2015 - 5 January, 2016:Steering Committee Election, New Website, Updated Assessment Forms, Mentoring Meetings, Instructor Training, and First Lab Meeting For 2016

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

####Highlights

• 15 January: Deadline for standing for the 2016 Steering Committee elections
• New pre- and post workshop assessments have been developed to better understand our impact amongst other things. Please take a moment to see what is assessed and let us know if you have other suggestions.
• The new look website has been launched. Updated procedures for blog contribution and creation of workshop sites are available at https://github.com/swcarpentry/website.

####Upcoming events

• The mentoring subcommittee is already hard at work with their first meeting and debriefing sessions. Please join them if you’ve recently taught or would like to learn more about their plans for the year.
• 12 January: First lab meeting for 2016

####Instructor Training

• New procedures have been developed to qualify as Software and Data Carpentry instructor.
• Feedback from the three varieties of instructor training that were put to the test in 2015 is now available.
• Billy Charlton from Puget Sound Regional Council, used the online Software Carpentry materials to prepare for teaching his first Software Carpentry lesson this past December. If you’ve been on the instructor training waiting list for long, his blog gives good pointers to get going.

####Contribute

• Want to help trainnee instructors get their instructor badge? Let us know if you have taught two or more workshops and have two hours to spare.

####Other

• The University of Washington have been running an undergraduate programming course focussed on real-world data analysis since 2012. There’s a lot to learn from their experience.
• Can comparing our lessons with peer-reviewed lab protocols help to improve usability?
• Do you want to help find a good word to describe the “practice of hardening software”? See some suggestions or give your own as comment to the blog post.
• Upcoming Workhshops
  • January: University of Nebraska - Lincoln, NERC / University of Bristol, University of Washington - Seattle, Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Western University, National Bureau of Economic Research, The University of Huddersfield, University of Dundee, The University of Lausanne, Boston College Libraries, National Networks of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region, UW-Madison, Berkeley Institute for Data Science, University of British Columbia The University of Queensland NERC / University of Leeds Wang Center - Lecture Hall 2 USDA-ARS Centers for Disease Control University of Illinois University of Auckland
  • February: USGS Flagstaff Science Campus University of Illinois University of British Columbia Okanagan, University of Illinois