Workshops at PyCon in Montreal This April

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for our largest event ever: on April 14-15, 2014, in association with PyCon 2014 in Montreal, we will run three Software Carpentry workshops in parallel, along with a master class in next-generation sequencing for bioinformaticians and an introduction to R for Python programmers. (Note that these workshops are during the two days after PyCon, so you can attend both.)

The regular workshops will be our largest ever, so we're splitting them into three rooms for learners at different levels. We'll assign you to the most suitable level based on a survey we'll send out before the workshop, so you can be sure the material won't go over your head (or under your feet). Material will include our usual topics:

• the Unix shell (and how to automate repetitive tasks);
• Git and GitHub (and how to use version control to track and share work);
• Python or R (and how to grow a program in a structured, testable, reusable way); and
• databases (and the difference between structured and unstructured data).

Please register here for this workshop.

We're also running two special one-day classes at the same time. The class on April 14 will be taught by Prof. Titus Brown, and will explore next-generation sequencing (NGS) and other topics in bioinformatics using Python. The April 15 class, which will be taught by Prof. Ramnath Vaidyanathan, will be an introduction to R for Python programmers.

In addition to the tools and techniques you'll learn in these workshops, this is an opportunity to meet more than 150 other scientists who are using the same tools and facing the same challenges as you. We encourage you to sign up in pairs or groups so that you have friends to work with at the workshop, and can support one another when you're back at your desk applying what you've learned.

The workshops will take place at the spectacular Palais des Congrès in Montreal's International District, close to the Montreal business district, Chinatown, Old Montreal. The Palais is connected to the Montreal Metro's Place-d'Armes station.

For more information about the workshops and Software Carpentry, please contact us at team@carpentries.org or check out our web site. For more about Python in Montreal, have a look at the Montreal-Python website. They organize regular events like workshops and a Project Night where you'll be able to practice your Python skills; you can find out more on their mailing list.

It's been brought to our attention that PyCon's workshops conflict with Passover celebrations, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.