University of Chicago in January

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

This last Saturday and Sunday, Katy Huff and I had the pleasure of organizing a Software Carpentry workshop at the University of Chicago. We had 77 people attend in total and by the end of the day on Sunday we remained 45+ strong. (Frankly, who doesn't want to listen to me rant about documentation at 4 pm on a Sunday afternoon?!) This weekend was unique in that we had a host of first time instructors:

• John Blischak
• Radhika Khetani
• Patrick Fuller
• Jed Brown
• Will Trimble
• Sri Hari Krishna Narayanan

Of note, John Blischak was an attendee of the April 2012 bootcamp at the University of Chicago. Cait Pickens also came up from Michigan State University and did some extensive surveying of the students prior- and post-bootcamp. So be on the watch for her analysis when it becomes available.

Support & Thanks

One thing that made running this bootcamp significantly different and easier than all prior workshops I have been involved in was the generous institutional support from the Graduate Student Affairs office and Kalee Ludeks. In addition to providing free lunches catered by Z&H on both days, Kalee also helped us reserve a room, contact departments and graduate students, create a flier, and all of the other minutia that goes into organizing one of these events. I can safely say that without their help, this bootcamp would not have happened! So if you get an opportunity, please take the time to thank them. And, as always, thanks again to Greg Wilson and the Software Carpentry crowd for enabling this kind of activity.

Pictures

For the visually inclined, here are some pictures taken by Cait of the workshop in progress.