I will address only the last of Marianna's comment (included below): I think that the issue of 'branding' boils down to one of 'do the components of the workshop meet the criteria for both knowledge transmission and method of presentation'. Part of the issue I had with the branding discussion is that the lessons being referred to as the standards are never fully taught, so I find it very hard to identify which aspect of the lessons really conveys the heart and soul of SWC and thus conveys 'the brand'? I am not sure that there would be full consensus on which components really are the vital ones.
For example, I take it as a matter of definition that creating rerunnable scripts, using DRY, and reproducibility are core components of both SWC and DC. So, I experienced a strong sense of disconnect when I was told that creating a runnable shell script was optional for the shell lesson, and it was covered in only one of the two shell workshops I attended. My personal opinion is that if creating a shell script that does more the 'echo Hello' is not covered, it should not be an SWC shell lesson, no matter the source. That's in disagreement with the people who thought it optional, and is likely to be in disagreement with others. Discussing that kind of disagreement seems vital to the issue to me, if we are not to be talking past each other instead of to each other. Similarly, I also think that a python or R lesson must contain at least one example of running a program from the command line. That seems to me to be the major justification for including the shell lesson in the first place; the command line is useful because you run programs there, both shell and others. If the programming language lesson(s) is completely disconnected from creating a program that can be run from the command line, then a large chunk of the original coherence of the whole of the SWC program is lost. If R and Git are both run from the GUI, then what was the point of including the shell lesson? I ask a similar question/draw a similar conclusion if one uses Spyder, or for all that only the iPython interactive interface, and never shows people how to run the scripts they have written from the command line. That is why I think that the issue of 'core concepts and competencies' is central to the issue of branding. If 'creating programs that are runnable from the command line in support of reproducible research' is not one of the necessary and central components of all the lessons of an SWC workshop, then I would like to know that so I do not falsely advertise. That is the aspect of SWC that drew me in the first place. Thanks for bringing that up Marianna, and for your other comments! Sorry for chiming back in, but I thought it worth clarifying the connection between branding and content here, in full view. -- bennet On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 10:30 PM, Marianna Foos <[email protected]> wrote: > Obviously full lesson overhaul is a massive undertaking, but basically, I > agree with Bennet's sentiment that paring down lessons by establishing a > even-corier-core would be beneficial, both for consistency and time use, > and possibly for increasing hands-on time. However, I am conflicted on > whether I think this is the same discussion as the "Meeting criteria for > brand use" one that was kicked off in the last few days and carried onto > github. > >
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