“My first Software Carpentry workshop”. Sounds a bit like a first-grader’s essay. But in all honesty, it was a brand new experience for me. Sure, I have been teaching University lectures and seminars for quite some time, but doing a live-coding session was an experience of its own.

SWC Workshop @ Thessaloniki
SWC Workshop @ Thessaloniki

All things considered, the workshop was a success (evident also in the group photo here); participants were engaged throughout the two-day workshop, there was continuous feedback and discussions on tough points in the lesson, so everyone left quite happy and (hopefully) more knowledgeable than before.

For me, two things have become even more clear:

  1. Better organization of the workshop in terms of the participants’ level of experience. Sure, very few actually complained for the pace, but I have the impression that we could do a better job if we had focused only on beginner level (for example) or intermediate.
  2. Two days may be convenient in terms of time allocated for any person (given the rather busy schedule of most people now), but it’s a very short time to cover R, Shell and Git. So maybe next time (because there will definitely be a next time) we will aim for three days.

Oh, and a final piece of advice: if you intend to have food or catering at a SWC workshop, ordering pizza may be the best solution…. 🙂