The hacks are back

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We ran the first geoscience hackathon over 7 years ago in Houston. Since then we’ve hosted another 26 subsurface hackathons — that’s 175 projects, and over 900 hackers. Last year, 10 of the 11 hackathons that Agile* facilitated were in-house.

This is exciting. It means that grass-roots, creative, high-speed collaboration and technology development is possible inside large corporations. But it came at the cost of reducing our public events… and we want to bring the hackathon experience to everyone!

So this year, as well as helping execute a dozen or so in-house hackathons, we’ll be running and supporting more public hackathons too. So if you’ve been waiting for a chance to learn to code or try a social coding event, or just hang out with a lot of nerdy geoscientists and engineers — here’s your chance!

May: Geothermal Hackathon

The first event of the year is a new one for us. We’ll be at the World Geothermal Congress in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the last week of April. The second weekend, 2 and 3 May, we’ll be running a hackathon on machine learning for geothermal subsurface applications. Iceland is only a short flight from the rest of Europe and many places in North America, so if you fancy something completely different, this is for you! Find out more and sign up.

[An earlier version of this post had the event on the previous weekend.]

June: Subsurface Hackathon (USA)

We’re back in Houston in June! The AAPG ACE is there — clashing with EAGE unfortunately — and we’ll be holding a (completely unrelated) hackathon on the weekend before: 5 to 7 June. Enthought is hosting the event in their beautiful new Houston digs, and Dell EMC is there too as a major sponsor. The theme is Tools… It’s going to be a big one! Find out more and sign up.

We are running two public Python classes before this event. Check them out.

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June: Amstel Hack (Europe)

The brilliant Filippo Broggini (ETHZ) is running a European hackathon again this year, again right before EAGE — and therefore the same weekend as the Houston event: 6 and 7 June. The event is being hosted at Shell’s Technology Centre in Amsterdam, and is guaranteed to be awesome. If you’re going to EAGE, it’s a no-brainer. Find out more and sign up.

We are also running a public Python class before this event. Check it out.

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That’s it for now… I hope you can come to one of these events. If you’re just starting out on your technology journey, have no fear — these events are friendly and welcoming. If you can’t make any of them, don’t worry: there will be more in the autumn, so stay tuned. Or, if you want help making one happen at your company, get in touch.

Learn to code in 2020

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Happy New Year! I hope 2020 is going well so far and that you have audacious plans for the new decade.

Perhaps among your plans is learning to code — or improving your skills, if you’re already on the way. As I wrote in 2011, programming is more than just writing code: it’s about learning a new way to think, not just about data but about problems. It’s also a great way to quickly raise your digital literacy — something most employers value more each year. And it’s fun.

We have three public courses planned for 2020. We’re also planning some public hackathons, which I’ll write about in the next week or three. Meanwhile, here’s the lowdown on the courses:

Lausanne in March

Rob Leckenby will be teaming up with Valentin Metraux of Geo2X to teach this 3-day class in Lausanne, Switzerland. We call it Intro to Geocomputing and it’s 100% suitable for beginners and people with less than a year or so of experience in Python. By the end, you’ll be able to read and write Python, write functions, read files, and run Jupyter Notebooks. More info here.

Amsterdam in June

If you can’t make it to Lausanne, we’ll be repeating the Intro to Geocomputing class in Amsterdam, right before the Software Underground’s Amstel Hack hackathon event (and then the EAGE meeting the following week). Check out the Software Underground Slack — look for the #amstel-hack-2020 channel — to find out more about the hackathon. More info here.

Houston in June

There’s also a chance to take the class in the US. The week before AAPG (which clashes with EAGE this year, which is very weird), we’ll be teaching not one but two classes: Intro to Geocomputing, and Intro to Machine Learning. You can take either one, or both — but be aware that the machine learning class assumes you know the basics of Python and NumPy. More info here.

In-house options

We still teach in-house courses (last year we taught 37 of them!). If you have more than about 5 people to train, then in-house is probably the way to go; we’d be delighted to work with you to figure out the best curriculum for your team.

Most of our classes fall into one of the following categories:

  • Beginner classes like the ones described above, usually 3 days.

  • Machine learning classes, like the Houston class above, usually 2 or 3 days.

  • Other more advanced classes built around engineering skills (object-oriented programming, testing, packaging, and so on), usually 3 days.

  • High-level digital literacy classes for middle to upper management, usually 1 day.

We also run hackathons and design sprints for teams that are trying to solve tricky problems in the digital subsurface, but those are another story…

Get in touch if you want more info about any of these.

Whatever you want to learn in 2020, give it everything you have. Schedule time for it. The discipline will pay off. If we can help or support you somehow, please let us know — above all, we want you to succeed.