Back in January I had the privilege to attend an in-person Software Carpentry instructor training in Davis, CA, hosted by Titus Brown. Software Carpentry is a non-profit volunteer organization that puts on “bootcamps” at institutions all over the world teaching best practices for building software to do science efficiently. The three-day training helped to improve my own awareness of how people learn the technical skills we teach, and I learned plenty about my own teaching habits (good and bad). I also met many great people doing awesome work in the open science community. It was well-worth the couch crashing and braving the cold (Arizona weather makes you a wuss).

On Monday, I gave a five-minute lightning lesson as an introduction to Python to Greg Wilson, completing the final requirement for becoming an instructor. I’m looking forward to teaching bootcamps here at ASU this year and next, and hopefully getting out a bit to teach some elsewhere in the country. I also hope to contribute to the efforts of Data Carpentry with material specific to working with molecular dynamics data. I’d be keen to discuss this topic with anyone else who’s interested. There’s a lot that could be done on this front.

— david