We're still working on the last bits of logistics around the 2012 XNAT Workshop, but the basics are fairly well set. The workshop sessions will be held at the Farrell Learning and Training Center on the Washington University School of Medicine campus. Most of the sessions will be held in the Connor Auditorium, with some break-out and technical sessions taking place in common areas outside the auditorium. In addition, there will be off-site after-hours events at restaurants in the near-by Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis (details for these are pending and will be provided before the start of the workshop; most likely there will be a dinner on Monday and happy-hour on Tuesday after the end of the workshop sessions).

There are three separate tracks available at the workshop:

  • The PI track, held on Monday, is intended to give a big-picture overview of XNAT and its capabilities. This will include discussions of projects that use XNAT, XNAT's capabilities including a new feature review of XNAT 1.6, and discussion of XNAT's roadmap for future development efforts.
  • The administrative track, which will run Monday through Wednesday, is intended to provide a practical, somewhat technical perspective on the practical implementation and use of an XNAT installation. This will include managing the data structures in your installation–i.e. creating and managing projects, subjects, and users, access management, anonymization and de-identification–as well as extending and customizing XNAT, with the addition of standard and custom data-type extensions, REST API extensions, scripting, interface modifications, and so on.
  • The developer track closes out the week on Thursday and Friday. This will be very free-form and consist of groups of developers cooperating on various projects, including requirements for specific XNAT installations, custom data-type or interface development, and packaging of share-able data types for inclusion on the XNAT Marketplace. The XNAT development team will participate in all of these groups and be available for discussions of coding issues as well as the technical details of existing features and new features in XNAT 1.6.

Based on the incoming registrations, it looks like we'll have a pretty large overlap between the administrative and developer tracks, so that's pretty nice. We'll have some real experts out in the field once the dust has cleared!

There will also be some optional lunch-time sessions each day of the administrative track:

  • Monday, we're planning on having workshop participants do "blitz sessions": short presentations on the work you're doing, how you're using or planning to use XNAT, and the various challenges and requirements you either anticipate or have overcome in the process.
  • Tuesday, we'll have a presentation from NRG's in-house IT team on best practices for standing up and maintaining large-scale XNAT installations, from stem to stern.
  • Wednesday, we'll be discussing the XNAT development roadmap, from 1.6 to 1.7 to 2.0 and beyond.

Watch out for posts later today or early tomorrow about:

  • The virtual machine we'll be providing for workshop participants and how to take greatest advantage of it.
  • Participating in our lunch-time blitz sessions: how to let us know you'd like to present, the format and restrictions for your presentation, and so on.