A year in The Carpentries' Executive Council

Last year I became part of The Carpentries' Executive Council (EC) after being voted in by the community.

I realized that I didn’t take the time to reflect on what we did. So let’s do it.

A very short and incomplete summary

We had two meetings for our onboarding in February, and then we decided which committees we would be part of. I chose the governance and communication committees. We have committees’ monthly meetings and full EC quarterly meetings.

The Governance Committee developed new procedures and documentation, such as the EC members' conflict of interest declaration and the EC’s parliamentary procedures.

We also worked hard on our bylaws. We debated and decided on the content, modified some important sections, and updated our documentation, focusing on transitioning from a fiscally sponsored project to an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

We also did all the communication for the call for applications to become part of the Executive Council in four different languages: English, German, Spanish and Japanese.

Revising

At the end of the year, my general feeling (with myself) was one of dissatisfaction because I felt that it had taken long for me to understand the workings of a system that had already been running, and this held me back from contributing as much as I would have loved to.

I expressed this concern during our EC retreat, and the core team, together with the EC, created a new onboarding process. We are using it this year, and we hope that this will help reduce the time needed to learn the workings of the EC. Additionally, there will be training and orientation to enable us work better in an international and intercultural team.

This year I will be chair of the program committee and will continue to be part of the governance committee. We are already using some of the tools we developed last year.

Reviewing the facts, the decisions made, and the actions taken, I’m more satisfied.

Although there are a couple of things that need improvement, we must also recognize the achievements and the work done.

Thanks Tracy Kadessa for your help editing this post. <3