By Steve Crouch.

Last week I was involved in teaching a Software Carpentry boot camp held at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Organised by the Software Sustainability Institute and Stephen Turner from the University's School of Medicine, the event saw researchers from a wide variety of fields, including chemistry, biology, systems engineering, environmental sciences, psychology and psychiatry.

Despite some poorly timed snowfall on the day before the boot camp, which led to a number of facility closures and blackouts throughout Charlottesville, 33 researchers braved the elements and participated in a very engaging and productive event.

Carlos Anderson from Michigan State University, Ben Morris from the University of North Carolina and myself instructed at the boot camp, with Carlos kicking off the technical material with a great, well-paced introduction to the Bash scripting language. I was also impressed with Ben's Databases and SQL topic, a veritable tour-de-force of the true power of SQL, covering a lot of technical ground whilst keeping the material accessible for the participants.

As instructors, we were spoilt rotten by the state-of-the-art teaching equipment. "We haven't got wireless power yet," joked Andrew Sallans who ably provided my technical indoctrination. This included not one but three hi-tech, hi-definition configurable projection displays ensuring no participant could escape a clear view of the taught material. Not that they'd want to, of course!

At the end of the two days, we received many positive comments on the workshop, with the databases, Git and Make topics receiving particular praise, whilst the overall structure and scope of the material was also applauded. We received some really helpful comments on how to improve the course in the future, one of which was to have a more advanced and separate course for Python - and such a course on NumPy at the University is already being discussed.

For more news on our involvement in Software Carpentry, or if you would like to get involved as a helper, instructor or organiser, check out our Software Carpentry web page or contact us.