2020-10-06 Board Meeting

Agenda

Agenda:

• Introductions and welcome to new board members.
• Approve minutes from Sept. 15, 2020 board meeting.
• September 28-29 R workshop debrief.
• On-boarding new members: Overview of board responsibilities, policies, and procedures
  • Choosing a permanent meeting time for the remainder of the semester.
  • Digital resources.
  • Board positions.
  • Planning, organizing, and running workshops.
  • Training instructors.
  • Other activities.
• 2020-2021 sponsorship.

Notes

Attendees:

• Previous board members: Vratika, Brian (chair), Elise (secretary), Eve
• New Board Members: Audrey, Max, Vijay, Narayani, Brandon, Trista
• Other non-board members: Geraldine, Alethea

Introductions and welcome to new board members.

• Brian, outgoing and new board member
• Alethea: UFII support
• Vratika: outgoing board member, graduating
• Brandon, 2nd year masters in SNRE, incoming board member
• Vijay: postdoc in museum, took teacher training incoming board member
• Narayani: asst. scientist in FL museum, took teacher training incoming board member, carpentries helper in workshops
• Audrey: 3rd year, Geography, volunteered for workshops
• Geraldine: SFRC, lecturer, previous board member, teaches quantitative data sci., focus on natural sciences, also a part of R Ladies, working on R users group as well, IFAS contact
• Max: EPI, viruses, bacteria, parasites, instructor for intro. to genomics workshop, incoming board member
• Eve: outgoing board member, graduating
• Trista: 2nd year in SNRE, advised in SWS, NASA develop project, python and R carpentries completed through them

Approve minutes from Sept. 15, 2020 board meeting.

• Vratika will upload meeting minutes soon, issue with her computer
• Minutes approved by majority of previous board

Debrief from last week’s R workshop

• Went well, a bit short staffed
• Came together, but only had 4-5 people helping
• Last workshop, registered 35 people, only 20 showed up, but this time, most people showed
• Most people followed along
• Used slack for chat, but took up screen space
  • But helpers help slack, can create thread, while zoom chat isn’t as useful
  • In terms of actually helping students, slack chat was most effective
  • If a thread starts, multiple helpers can help on a thread in slack
• Prep them in the intro presentation, how to best use their screen space, use phone for slack, etc.
  • When going over that, highlight that people can send screenshots over slack, makes it clear what people’s coding issues are
• Hao taught for whole day, all instructors did an excellent job
• Tools worked well, one-on-one breakouts with helpers and learners to troubleshoot
• Schedule well set up, with short pieces of teaching, the breaks are critical for talking and troubleshooting with people
  • Keep this structure (30min breaks) for future workshops
• Logistics for virtual workshops: helpful to pre-populate breakout rooms, assign one helper to each breakout room
• Still experimenting with virtual workshops, keep these tips in mind when organizing future workshops
• Eve can go through short workflow with everyone
• Don’t have post-workshop survey, but not an issue
• We could update the wiki page re: organizing a workshop with details about virtual workshops https://github.com/UF-Carpentry/Coordination/wiki/Organizing-a-Workshop

On-boarding new members: Overview of board responsibilities, policies, and procedures

• Keep this high-level to not overload with info
  • Can fill in details as needed along the way
• Logistics: permanent meeting time for the rest of the semester
  • Does this meeting time work for everyone?
  • 10 am on Tuesday works for all new board members, every other Tuesday - Decided
  • Board meetings are public, everyone’s welcome!
• Key digital resources
• Github, new board members can access, but cannot push anything yet: https://github.com/UF-Carpentry
  • Org. and workshop materials
  • Where workshop websites live
  • Website repo. has carpentries club main website
  • Coordination repo. is what we use the most internally for our work
    • Keep data, etc.
    • Use the issue tracker to keep track of agenda items, to-do list as a board etc.
  • The Wiki has documentation of operational procedures, setting up workshop, organizing workshops, club charter, positions, etc.
    • Details about various board positions
• Shared Google drive, everyone should already have access, if any issues, contact Elise (emorrison@ufl.edu)
• Board positions;
  • Chair and secretary are rotating roles: chair and secretary are held for two weeks, then switch
    • On the github wiki, there are details about each of the responsibilites of each position
    • https://github.com/UF-Carpentry/Coordination/wiki/(Secretary)-Taking-Board-Meeting-Minutes
  • Treasurer position is a permanent role, work closely with Alethea
    • Alethea does an amazing job keeping track of finances, Treasurer works very closely with her
      • She knows the status of Carpentries subscription, she gives check in balance to the treasurer, will tell boardmembers what the status/budget is, if we have extra for travel grants, etc.
      • Treasurer takes the lead on seeking sponsorships (although the board helps as well)
      • Treasurer helps with annual report for the Carpentries as well
      • Treasurer is the point person between Alethea and rest of the board
• Carpentries financial model:
  • Not officially on the budget anywhere at UF
  • Get our funding from sponsoring departments
    • Give us $1k - 10k annually
    • Have historically charged modest fees for workshops, largely to cover food, with small buffer for travel grants, other programs
  • Carpentries organization has different membership tiers, we have previously been “gold” members
    • Gives us the opportunity to have one in person instructor training
      • We still have to pay instructor expenses, flights, lodging, etc
    • Have run an in-person instructor training for three years in a row, number of workshop participants has been declining, not at capacity, could partially be a saturation effect
    • This year, signed up for silver membership, so we can still offer an instructor training, just not in person
      • Since we’ll have fewer expenses this year, we can start dropping our workshop fees more
      • Workshop fees are currently under discussion, our past two workshops have been virtual and free, up to new board to determine fees, and may need to determine the fee once we return to in person
        • For next workshop: need to discuss strategies to ensure people who register actually attend
        • Restrict registration for future workshops
  • Travel awards: we use extra funds from our budget to help fund conference fees, with Covid, won’t cover travel, but will cover virtual registration fees
• Organizing and running a workshop
• Virtual instructor training:
  • Focused more on teaching tools, live coding, best practices for teaching in general, crafted to carpentries workshop format, but doesn’t cover lesson material from carpentries (no R, Python, etc.)
  • Recommend new board members attend this
• Social media coordination:
  • Have a twitter, facebook account
  • Board members will be given access to these, welcome to use, there is a “code of conduct” on the wiki re: best practices for social media content
  • Use this to help promote R Ladies (Geraldine main contact), and R Users group in Gainesville
• REC board member:
  • Key part of IFAS agreement
  • Offer workshops that reach the Research and Extension Centers
  • One board member should sign up to help lead this, ideally if their department interfaces with RECs, that’s the easiest way to organize/communicate this

2020-2021 potential sponsors

• Everyone should have seen Brian’s draft email in the google Drive
• In good shape for the 2020-2021 financially
• But, don’t want to fall off the radar, stay in people’s budgets
• Email is intended to give sponors information about their participation in workshops
  • Need to fill in blanks for this email
    • can find this information in the google Drive
  • Would anyone like to email out to potential sponsors? Once the email is finalized, then will be sent out.
    • Brandon: will email WEC
    • Audrey: will email another sponsor
    • Sending out to meet end of fiscal year, but not deliberately coordinated with budget timelines, usually just every fall
• Be sure to include College of Pharmacy as well; they contacted Eve and were very interested in priority registration
  • Many Pharmacy students wanted to attend most recent workshop, but were waitlisted, so admin at Pharmacy was very interested in getting priority registration
  • Had a very diverse group of participants at this last workshop

Agenda items for next meeting

• Discuss workshop fees, how to address no-shows at workshops
• Determine which board member will be:
  • Treasurer
  • Social media coordinator
  • REC Board member
• Other items?

New positions for next meeting

• Next meeting: 10am on 10/20
• Chair: Brandon
• Secretary: Audrey (tentative, depends on Quals timing, will send out email to board to let them know by tomorrow)