Another Year of Unidata Software Training Workshops

2014 Training Workshop (click to enlarge)

Every year, the Unidata Program Center hosts a Software Training Workshop in Boulder, Colorado to provide training and guidance on the use of Unidata software packages. While the workshop is designed primarily to benefit the academic community, representatives from government agencies and commercial entities are also invited to participate. This year's workshop ran from October 21 - November 6, and saw strong attendance from all three groups.

Workshop sessions provide training on a wide range of software packages created or supported by Unidata. Sessions covering the THREDDS Data Server (TDS) and Local Data Manager (LDM) got workshop attendees up and running with Unidata data management offerings, and sessions covering the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) and GEMPK/AWIPS II introduced students to state-of-the art data visualization options.

This year's workshop saw an expansion of efforts to integrate Unidata technologies into a scientific workflow based around the Python language. The Python workshop session ran for two days, and helped attendees get up to speed with integrating the iPython notebooks — which allow users to interact with the Python interpreter to do analysis and create imagery within a web browser — with Unidata technologies. Attendance for this year's Python workshop strained the limits of Unidata's training room, and was very well received.

Materials used in the workshop sessions are available online:

• Using Unidata Technologies with Python
• THREDDS Data Server (TDS)
• GEMPAK with an Introduction to AWIPS-II
• LDM
• IDV with RAMADDA

The 2014 Training Workshop attracted 48 participants over the three-week series of sessions. Twelve universities across the United States were represented, along with five commercial organizations, and ten government agencies or their affiliates. For more information on Unidata software training, please visit the Software Training page.