Hi Everyone, Thanks for the encouraging responses. The Japanese community has been welcoming but they're difficult to track down, even those able to communicate in English prefer to write in Japanese (including organising events and societies). The language barrier is as much a challenge as the different working culture.
My main contact with them has been through the @Tokyo_R_Community (they post on Twitter in Japanese) that holds meetings every month or so. Unfortunately, Dav will miss the next one (Oct 20; Nov 10) but I encourage anyone coming to Japan to check it out. This meeting includes graduate students, academics (postdocs and assistant professors), and data scientists in industry (including those transitioning to R from other tools). Beginners to R and foreigners are welcome. They can also put you in contact with groups in other parts of Japan. While they meet as R users, many use other tools (e.g., Python, C++, STAN, Git, etc) so I think they'd be a good starting point to get momentum with SWC/DC in Japan. They're mainly Data Scientists, Statisticians, and Bioinformaticians so I'm not so sure about the actual "Tech scene" in Tokyo (although there may be some overlap). I'm currently working at a national research institute (The RIKEN Centre for Integrative Medical Sciences). While I've got a very encouraging boss (who even came to see my talk at TokyoR in her own time), it's not a University and I have limited time for teaching. We have discussed running internal workshops for our postdocs, collaborators, and the students we host but this would likely include specialised tools in our field. I'm still interested in being involved in SWC but I would likely need to do this in my own time. Due to Japanese working culture, we would likely need to hold a workshop over the weekend unless we can get support of a university or institute. RIKEN does outreach events for the public but we haven't hosted a workshop of this nature before. I may also be able to round up some people from the research institutes and universities that I collaborate with. However, I mainly work with wet-lab biologists and most of the bioinformatics researchers at my institute are foreigners with limited Japanese skills. Therefore I think it's beneficial to reach out to groups such as TokyoR, if you know of any others that would be great to hear about. Nagoya and Ishikawa are quite far from Yokohama but it may be good to hear what they're planning to do there. I think the language issue is very important and it would be helpful to have a Japanese translation of the core lessons. My Japanese skills are still limited but I'm organising a team to translate the lesson materials. We're currently discussing this with those involved in the Spanish and French lessons to get their advice: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tdb042c4bc0ecf365/carpentry-lessons-material-in-multiple-spoken-languages Sorry for a lot of details but I hope that helps to hear what I'm involved with. Dav, it would be great to meet while you are here and hear from you're experiences in Japan (and elsewhere). I've taught quite a few workshops in Australia and New Zealand but I'm relatively new to Japan. I'll contact you directly to discuss a time to meet. Kind Regards, Tom Kelly On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 12:08 AM Dav Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for re-activating this thread Tom! > > In my work as a research consultant, I've been heading out to Japan > quarterly to work with an educational company there. Just this week, we > actually started talking to folks in the national government about working > on technology and methodology in education. > > *I'll be staying in Yokohama from the 25th and heading out Oct 1*. I'd > love to meet with folks about open computational science training if others > are available. Certainly, there are good opportunities for collaboration on > classroom education at scale that I can share. > > I know Yan Fan at Code Chrysalis recently created a minor tweet-storm > about making it easier for women to get involved in tech in the Tokyo area. > I'd love to hear about ways to connect with academic and non-academic folks > working on better open analytics training. > > Best, > Dav > > On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 10:15 AM Chris <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi everyone, >> >> When I first joined The Carpentries to help with Library Carpentry >> efforts, we had several threads with people in Japan about starting up The >> Carpentries in libraries. The following people were interested in hosting >> workshops and understanding how libraries can support The Carpentries. Feel >> free to reach out to them as well. >> >> Tomohisa Koyama, Executive Advisor to President, Nagoya University >> [email protected] >> >> Kazu Yamaji, National Institute of Informatics, Digital Content and Media >> Sciences Research Division Professor >> [email protected] >> >> Keita Bando, Librarian, Nagoya Gakuin University >> [email protected] >> >> >> Christopher Erdmann >> Library Carpentry Community and Development Director >> [email protected] | +1 617-817-2826 | @libcce >> <https://twitter.com/libcce> >> Library Carpentry <http://librarycarpentry.org/> | The Carpentries >> <https://carpentries.org/> >> My Pronouns: He/Him/His >> *The Carpentries <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/latest>* / discuss / >> see discussions <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss> + >> participants <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/members> + >> delivery >> options <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription> >> Permalink >> <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/T988a87bfe5537fd5-M4bd1c53310a01e4c64a80390> >> ------------------------------------------ The Carpentries: discuss Permalink: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/T988a87bfe5537fd5-M80dab318600ddf1cbd338bd8 Delivery options: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription
