By Aleksandra Pawlik, Training Lead.

Last week the Institute helped to run Data Carpentry hackathon and workshop at the University of Utrecht in Netherlands. Both events were a part of ELIXIR Pilot Project aiming to develop Data and Software Carpentry training across the ELIXIR Nodes. The project is coordinated by ELIXIR UK and a number of other Nodes are partnering up, including ELIXIR Netherlands, ELIXIR Finland and ELIXIR Switzerland.

The hackathon consisted of two days during which the participants, representing ten ELIXIR Nodes, worked on Data Carpentry training materials. Day one started with the introduction to Data and Software Carpentry teaching model. This was then followed by a review and discussion on the existing materials. The participants made suggestions about the possible improvements for the existing materials and new topics to be developed. The overall theme of the hackathon was genomics and hence the participants could base their work on the existing contents for teaching genomics in Data Carpentry. Eventually three groups were formed:

• Group 1 which worked on creating training materials on using ELIXIR Cloud resources.
• Group 2 which worked on a decision tree for using cloud computing.
• Group 3 which worked on different aspects of understanding how to use one's data for genomics. In particular the group worked on describing the file formats, file manipulation, pipelines integration, post-assembly - de novo RNA Transcriptome Analysis, handling blast annotation output and verifying data.

The hackathon was facilitated by Karthik Ram (University of Berkeley, rOpenSci, Data Carpentry) and Aleksandra Pawlik (the Institute's Training Lead). After the hackathon Karthik and Aleksandra then taught a two-day Data Carpentry workshop. It was the first Data Carpentry workshop in Netherlands. Thirty students registered to attend it. All of them were from life science research area. The workshop covered the standard Data Carpentry curriculum. At the end of the second day, a module was added on using ELIXIR Cloud resources, which was the first time that materials created during the hackathon were used for actual teaching.

The whole event received positive feedback and on the overall this Pilot Project appears to have a great reception within ELIXIR. The Slovenian and Belgian Node are running workshops this year and it is likely that other will follow soon.