02-initiation.Rmd

# Getting started

Community champions in our community get their starts in many ways. Maybe
they're looking to develop their own data-driven research skills, or maybe
you're looking for a way to support the overwhelming number of researchers
looking for help. Maybe they're part of a lab or research institute - or even a
student group in a discipline - who feel frustrated and held back by what they
don't know. Anywhere there is a need for more digital skills capability in
research applications is a valid starting point for becoming a Carpentry
Champion.

Whatever the case may be, we want to help those who choose to work intentionally
to build one or more communities of practice around computational skills.

The work of community building is not always easy, it can be challenging to
reach critical mass where things feel like they come together and work on their
own. As with building any community, there is work to be done to help people
understand the possibilities that working together can bring. To do this, we
have listed various strategies throughout this guide and we welcome your
contributions of  what has and hasn't worked for you.

There are tried and tested ways to run events such as workshops, un-conferences
and knowledge bazaars that bring people together and nudge them to talk to each
other about tools, workflows, opportunities, and challenges. The overarching
principle of all of these events is to bring willing participants together to
learn from each other supported by quality resources and materials.

In almost every discipline today, cutting edge research questions require some
level of computational skill. From astronomers collectively looking at the
gravitational wiggles of thousands of distant stars to digital humanists
training document classifiers to "read" with a critical eye, eventually we're
all going to run into some kind of technical challenge in our digital research.

How can we support one another and develop rich and inviting communities that
serve all participants? A group of novices with little skill coming together can
be deeply frustrating, feeling a little at times like the blind leading the
blind. At the same time, experts at your institution can be overwhelmed with
requests for their time or insights.

How can we build communities of practice that are beneficial at both ends of
this spectrum and start to raise up everyone's skills and abilities?

Read on ...