Step by step: how to organize INBO coding club

Workflow

> 2 months before coding club

• Set up date and location (room with beamer and chairs + tables)
• Add information to agenda for intranet and create a new title/section in this document (see template).

4 weeks before coding club

• Define a topic (e.g. “data wrangling“,…) and the level (introductory, intermediate or advanced). Provide this information to the session info in this sheet.
• Create a new column in the subscription table and provide subscription/waiting list as function of the room space availability
• Sent out an invitation mail to dg_user@inbo.be AND all email addresses listed on the external_invites sheet of the subscription sheets. Introduce the topic, the complexity level and add a link to the subscription table. Add the coding club logo to the mail.

Within 1 week before coding club

• Add calendar item in google calendar with an invite to the subscribed people as a reminder of the coding session.
• Create new presentation in the coding club > docs > sessions folder. Make a COPY of the template presentation, call the copy yyyymmdd_topicname.html and adapt to the requirements/needs of the session (don’t take the template to rigid ;-). Slides are created in remark and can be written as a markdown file. Note the extension is html to properly render in the web page (more info here):
  • To create the topic badge in green, we used first Inkscape. The source file is here. After, we switched to Google Slides. The source file is here.
  • Make sure to keep the sticky note concept slide as people may join for the first time!
  • Create a new hackmd with https://hackmd.io/new, and update link to the new hackmd in the presentation. You can use the template to add to the hackmd.
  • When creating the slideshow, serving the website live is possible with setting up a local server in the terminal from ./docs: bundle exec jekyll serve --baseurl "" (make sure to have Ruby (with Devkit, version <= 2.7), with the gems jekyll, jekyll-theme-minimal and github-pages installed ). Info on the theme used is available here.
• Set up 3 challenges (we experienced that 3 is mostly enough for a 2 hour session) with an increasing complexity:
  • Explain the challenges in the slideshow
  • Provide a draft working script in a file yyyymmdd_challenges.R and add it to the src folder
  • Provide example solutions in a file yyyymmdd_solutions.R for yourself
  • If the challenge uses new datasets, add them to the data folder. Use consistent naming, e.g. yyyymmdd_topic_with_underscores_lower_case.csv
  • If useful, provide a script to get started and add it to the src folder.
• Update the session overview page overview table with the date, topic name, slideshow link, hackmd link and location (room).
• If a cheat sheet exists about the topic, download it and add it to the cheatsheet folder. Use consistent naming, yyyymmdd_cheat_sheet_topicname.pdf.
• (Make sure all subscribers do have internet access, otherwise provide them with internet access: for the Hermann Teirlinck building see https://bezoekers.vonet.be/)

Remark, when creating links to other files, make sure to use the jekyll link system by combining the base url reference with the relative link.

Day of the coding club

• Collect sufficient postits (> 3x subscibers)
• If a cheat sheet exists about the topic, provide prints for each subscriber
• Make sure you have internet access and a computer compatible with the Barco clickshare (in general, windows and MAC pc’s are ok)
• Make sure there are enough power cables, otherwise bring additional
• Make sure you remove any fancy features from Rstudio (no dark backgrounds,…) and increase the font size of the editor (Tool –> Global Options –> Appearance –> Then you can adjust the font size at the right panel).

During the coding club

• Be positive, be helpful and be welcoming!
• Beware for too technical or too complex discussions…
• Actively engage people to help each other (cfr. number of sticky notes) and to provide snippets to the hackmd. Ask them to add code to the hackmd!
• Discuss the provided snippets or interesting solutions by LIVE CODING:
  • Code live and say what you’re typing (copy paste to the minimal, except when adding code to the hackmd ;-)
  • Be happy with mistakes, explain the error messages to the audience!
• Make sure you have time enough for short feedback

After coding club

• Upload the YYYYMMDD_challenges_solutions.R file to the src folder.
• Edit the video recording of the coding club session
• Publish video to INBO Vimeo channel in the dedicated folder called “INBO Coding Club”. (Title and settings in template below)

Templates

Invitation email example

change links to proper links

If your unaware of the coding club existence, make sure to check the coding club introduction page on intranet. In short, the coding club is open to anyone who want to develop R skills in a pleasant and supportive environment to do research more effectively.

The next coding club will take place on Tuesday 26 February, room 01.70 - Ferdinand Peeters at Herman Teirlinck (Tour & Taxis Brussels), 10-12h. The topic of this coding club is geospatial data handling in R and more specific working with simple features (sf), also known as vector data (cfr. stored in shapefiles or geojson files). Hence we will try to read in files, transform data, combine the spatial data with non-spatial data, etc. (Notice, making maps will be the topic of a follow-up coding club.)

The concept of the coding club remains the same: everyone works together and learns from each other. We will provide some challenges and appropriate test cases. As always, presence at previous edition is not required to join in this time, you can just jump in this edition as well.

To subscribe, fill in your name on this gsheet. The limitation of subscriptions is defined by the number of spaces in the room.

See you all theRe in good shape,

Raïsa, Emma, Dirk, Hans, Damiano

Hackmd template

We created an hackmd template you can start from.

Here below a practical example as well:

# INBO CODING CLUB
26 April, 2018

Welcome!

## Share your code snippet

If you want to share your code snippet, copy paste your snippet within a section of three backticks (```):

As an **example**:
```r
library(tidyverse)

...
```
(*you can copy paste this example and add your code further down, but do not fill in your code in this section*)

## Yellow sticky notes

No yellow sticky notes online. Put your name + " | " and add a "*" each time you solve a challenge (see below).

## Participants

Name | Challenges
--- | ---
Damiano Oldoni | 


Your snippets:

### ADD A TITLE OF YOUR SNIPPET

```r
# ADD YOUR CODE HERE
```

###...

Vimeo webinar settings template

We provide an old school Movie Maker template to start editing the video, where logo at the beginning and at the end are already uploaded. Still, feel free to use any other (less obsolete) video editor program.

Title: “yyyy-mm-dd - topic - INBO coding club”. Example: “2020-06-30 - functional programming in R with purrr - INBO coding club”

Description: short description of the topic, typically a copy paste from the invitation email. Add link to slides and hackmd and level (beginners, intermediate, …) at the end. Example:

The topic of this INBO coding club edition is functional programming in R, alias loops on steroids. We will be using the package purrr, part of the tidyverse universe, which provides a complete and consistent set of tools to work with functions and vectors. If you have never heard about it, this INBO coding club session is the perfect occasion to learn it in a friendly and informal environment. For who already knows purrr, e.g. its map() functions, this session will offer the opportunity to increase the knowledge of this very powerful package.
Slides: https://inbo.github.io/coding-club/sessions/20200630_functional_programming.html#1
Hackmd: https://hackmd.io/ZDc7gTTHRm-ZcjYq_2f2Fg?view
Level: intermediate/advanced

Privacy: “Anyone can see this video”

Folder: INBO Coding Club

Language (in Distribution tab, Discovery section): English

Tags (in Distribution tab, Discovery section): programming, INBO coding club, R, other session related tags

Example:

programming, INBO coding club, R, functional programming, purrr, tidyverse

Credits & collaborators (in Distribution tab, Discovery section): an author (main author of the slides and typically the moderator of the coding club session) and any other contributor.

Example: Damiano Oldoni (role: author), Hans Van Calster (role: contributor)

Categories: Educational

Creative Common license (in Distribution tab, Discovery section): Attribution

Enable video review page: YES

Content rating: All audiences

Use topic badge as thumbnail.