2013 07 08 Training Material for CI for Use by Biologists

Owned by Tina Lee
Last updated: Jul 10, 2013Version comment
2 min read

Organizers

Beacon

Date

July 8-9, 2013

Location

SESYNC, Baltimore, MD

iPlant reps

Nirav Merchant, Sheldon McKay

Other attendees

20 people total from EBI, Software Carpentry, Mozilla Science Lab, Beacon, NSF

Meeting Notes

Hi Folks,
Just a quick update, Sheldon and I had a very productive meeting (July 8-9) at SESYNC (Baltimore) for the BEACON led NSF "training material for CI use by biologists" workshop, ~20 attendees from US, UK.

1. We made some great connections with head of EBI education effort and she is very willing to collaborate and share material http://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/people/cath-brooksbank I will be setting up a follow up call with her in early August as they want to learn more about iPlant and how they can use pieces of it for training.

2. Greg Wilson one of the pioneers and principals for Software Carpentry gave us some great insights into what works and more importantly what does not. He is VERY willing to work with iPlant to coordinate training and even organize software carpentry training around iPlant events. http://software-carpentry.org/about/team.html
I will organize a talk by Greg as there is a lot to learn from his methods, if possible it would be good to have him engaged in some advisory capacity for iPlant EOT

3. Katlin Theany from Mozilla Science Lab is also on board to help iPlant push the envelope for EOT activities http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/14/mozilla-launches-sciencelab-to-help-researchers-use-the-open-web-to-shape-sciences-future/

4. Titus Brown (our SAB member) was very complementary on use of iPlant for training etc and he recently hired a programmer who was at ASU and a fan of iPlant DE and data store ..he has convinced Titus that this is the way to distribute software tools and training (based on his experience)!

5. The group from UK is very willing to join force on developing joint material and training for NGS, they have a ongoing effort http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Sequencing_(NGS) and would like to have iPlant resources added in online book form

It has been a long time since I attended such a productive workshop, I will be happy to provide more details and chat with any of you. It was VERY refreshing to see what people are doing and how well iPlant is positioned.

Regards,
Nirav