Organizing Events FAQ

When running a self-organized workshop, who are the presenters?

We encourage organizers to recruit a team to teach different presentations at an NWB workshop. While we provide the training materials and example videos on our Training Materials page, it is helpful if presenters have some experience with NWB. If you are organizing a workshop and need additional presenters, we encourage you to reach out on the NWB Slack / help desk and we can connect you with individuals who have taught successful workshops or are NWB experts in your area.

How do workshops translate between an in-person and virtual format?

Virtual workshops offer the advantage of being more broadly accessible to individuals at many research institutions, however there are some important considerations to keep in mind when running an NWB event virtually.

• Event times: Consider your audience may be tuning in from multiple locations and make timezone information clearly labelled on the agenda. Calendar invites can be helpful to allow attendees to know event time(s) in their time zone.
• Engagement and networking: Consider including a dedicated social / networking break on the agenda to encourage engagement, allow attendees to meet each other, and allow attendees to talk with the organization team more informally.
• Logistics: Several of our workshops have dedicated time for hacking and projects, but it requires some logistical coordinating to collaborate or get help in a virtual meeting setting. To address this, we have used conferencing platforms such as Gather in the past to allow virtual mingling. Other options include breakout rooms and a slack channel for attendees to reach out to instructors for questions.

Does my workshop need to follow the timeline in the agenda template?

We encourage you to structure your workshop in whatever manner best suits your institution or audience’s needs. We have run workshops ranging from a couple of hours (for an introduction to NWB workshop) to up to 5 days long (for data reuse workshops and hackathons). The agenda templates provide a rough guideline to how our events have been structured historically, but feel free to experiment with timelines depending on the needs of your group.