Online Office Hours

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

Starting this week we're trying something new: one-on-one online help sessions from instructors for anyone who has taken a bootcamp with us.

Bootcamps are great for introducing scientists to useful technology and new ideas about how to automate tasks and organise code. Our bootcamps try as much as possible to be relevant to scientists' daily workflow, but they're only two day long events; what happens when participants go back to "real life" and start to fit what they've learned into their daily work?

Online office hours are a way we can directly help participants as they tackle their day-to-day computing tasks. We see these as open-ended sessions where scientists can come to ask the "stupid" questions they face as they setup version control for the first time, or write unit tests, or use regular expressions, or... well, anything goes.

We'll do this using Skype/Google+ Hangouts/online chat/screen sharing or whatever else works to get people the help they need. Our next online office hours session is this Thursday, January 24, from 4-6pm EST. You can register in advance in order to get a reminder email, or just show up. If you are an instructor and would like to help out, please send us mail. For more info, and to see when future office hours will be, visit the office hours page. Depending on the demand, and supply of instructor hours, we'll try to hold office hours at least once a week.