Digital research tools can help today’s researchers meet ambitious goals and overcome significant challenges, such as

• Mining and analyzing a large data set
• Modelling that is too complex for desktop computing
• Identifying patterns or trends in spatial data or visual imagery
• Developing a web-based research/analysis tool

In this session, equip yourself with basic terms and concepts related to high performance (HPC), supercomputing and big data analytics, and an understanding of the computing power and expert support available to you through Compute Canada and ACENET. Learn how advanced computing is already serving researchers across the sciences, and how you can get started.

Are you interested in learning more about digital research methods, but don't know where to start? Do you have large data sets that you would like to mine and analyze in innovative ways? Do you want to look for patterns in visual imagery, reveal trends in spatial data, or perform quantitative analysis of digitized texts? Perhaps you want to build a web-based research or analytical tool and don’t know where to start. This orientation session will introduce you to the ACENET organization and the research supports and resources available through ACENET and Compute Canada that are directly applicable for humanities and social sciences researchers.

Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Humanities Commons, ORCID: where is  it worth spending your time on online platforms? This workshop will consider how to create and manage a professional online presence, with a focus on humanities and social sciences. We will talk about choosing platforms and social media based on ethics, audience, features, and, yes, the amount of work they involve. As William Shakespeare once said, “to blog, or not to blog, that is the question.”

Most of us have experience using a computer, whether for school, work, or entertainment, but how many of us have actually had an expert teach us how to use it? When one of your computing devices goes wrong, do you struggle to understand why? Perhaps you do an internet search in the hope that someone else who has had the exact same problem as you found a solution that also works for you.

It doesn't need to be (quite) this way. This talk won't teach you how to troubleshoot everything, but will give you insight to how media, programs and data are encoded and used by computers so you can make more sense of why computers behave the ways they do and solve some of your problems with greater efficiency and less frustration. We will provide an approachable overview of how a computer works, by both looking at their history and breaking one down to explain individual components, before highlighting some of the tradeoffs to consider when buying a computer. We will provide practical, simple, and actionable advice on digital security and show you a few "pro tips" on how to make the most of your workstation, phone, or whatever device you happen to use. 

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This is a hands-on introductory workshop focused on fostering best practices for data organization in spreadsheets. Participants will learn how to organize their data to prioritize clarity, reproducibility, and interoperability, such that they can seamlessly load their data later into an analysis program. The spreadsheet programs covered will be Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. The examples explored will be from the field of Social Sciences, but the principles are relevant for any discipline that collects data in spreadsheets. No previous experience with spreadsheets or programming is required.

Researchers across many disciplines use HPC to tackle analyses that would be either inefficient or impossible on a desktop.

This session offers:

• a basic description of the infrastructure and support accessible through Compute Canada and ACENET, with entry-level advice about how to begin.
• an overview of the software packages available through Compute Canada and ACENET for applications, data analysis, software development and compiling code, as well as the process of requesting specific software relevant to your work.
• insight into the potential of parallel computing to accelerate your analysis.

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This session involves practical exercises.

To access and use the ACENET and Compute Canada HPC clusters from your desktop, you will use a terminal interface called “Linux”. You will use Linux to direct the uploading, processing, and retrieval of your data.  In this session, learn how to get started with Linux and how to perform some basic tasks:

• create and navigate directories for your data
• load files
• manage your storage
• run programs on the computing clusters
• set file permissions 

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This session involves practical exercises.

This session is designed for both new and experienced shell script users. You’ll learn how to name, locate and set permissions for executable files, take input and produce output. Learn about job scripts, shell variables, and looping commands. Refine your use of shell script to exercise the power of the command line.  Save time, automate file management tasks, and use Linux more effectively.

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This session involves practical exercises.

Compute Canada’s national systems use the job scheduler called “Slurm”. This session is designed for users who have had no experience with using Slurm, are transitioning to Slurm, or are seeking to improve efficiency with Slurm. You will learn how Slurm works and how it allocates jobs, enabling you to

• minimize wait time by framing reasonable requests
• optimize use of the resources to achieve efficiency
• increase throughput
• run more jobs simultaneously
• troubleshoot and address crashes

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This workshop involves practical exercises.

Software Carpentry teaches basic computational research skills. Using software-carpentry.org materials this workshop introduces you to the fundamentals of the Unix Shell, Version Control with Git and Python.

This hands-on workshop covers the fundamentals of Python, including data types, conditional statements, loops and functions, as well as program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own projects. The goal is to teach the practical knowledge needed to start programming, debugging and using Python in everyday tasks.

Of interest to: active computational researchers and their teams; companies using computational tools for R&D; anyone considering a research project that requires computational research; and students eager to enhance their career choices by expanding their skill set.

This workshop involves practical exercises.

Software Carpentry teaches basic computational research skills. Using software-carpentry.org materials this workshop introduces you to the fundamentals of the Unix Shell, Version Control with Git and R.

This hands-on workshop covers the fundamentals of R, including data types, conditional statements, loops and functions, as well as program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own projects. The goal is to teach the practical knowledge needed to start programming, debugging and using R in everyday tasks.

Of interest to: active computational researchers and their teams; companies using computational tools for R&D; anyone considering a research project that requires computational research; and students eager to enhance their career choices by expanding their skill set.

This session involves practical exercises

This is an introductory workshop for researchers and students who are interested in programming basics for humanities and social sciences applications. No prior experience in programming is necessary. Topics covered include an introduction to Unix Shell and Linux, websites and versioning with Git, regular expressions, Python for humanities and web scraping with Python. Applications include web scraping, survey field restriction, websites and text analysis. The workshop will use software-carpentry.org materials.

This workshop will introduce you to the basic techniques for collecting information from social media sites and the web in general. We will cover Twitter, Facebook, and general web pages. We’ll spend most of our time looking at Twitter, but the basics of collecting information from Facebook will also be introduced, and we’ll talk generally about a few methods for collecting from web pages. Working examples will be shared throughout that you can take and use (almost) immediately. Prior programming experience is neither needed nor expected. The final 30 minutes will be used for open consultation about any scraping projects you are currently engaged in, planning, or just starting to think about.

This session provides an introduction to the Compute Canada cloud which is used to create and manage virtual machines. Virtual machines allow great flexibility but require knowledge and effort to configure them for your specific needs. Virtual machines can be used for diverse work flows, from processing particle physics data to running humanities and social sciences websites. Learn how to create a virtual machine and how to start using it.

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In this session, we will give an overview of what a cloud is generally, as well as the Compute Canada cloud specifically. To demonstrate what may be accomplished with a cloud, different cloud usage cases for the humanities and social sciences will be presented followed by a discussion of two common methods for website generation, a common use for the cloud. We will finish with a brief discussion of server security and the implications it has for the two methods presented for creating websites.

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This is a beginner level series. Cloud computing provides great flexibility, allowing complete control of the computing environment. In addition, the environment can be copied, backed up, created and recreated in an automated way. In these lessons, we will start you on the path towards making use of the great flexibility and power of cloud computing. We will be using the popular static website generator Jekyll. This is an in-depth workshop for those with no prior cloud experience, at the end of which you will have a virtual machine and a Jekyll website.

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This is a beginner to intermediate level session. Learn the best practices at Compute Canada for minimizing your risk for cyber attacks. Topics will include SSH security, firewalls, using logs and creating backups; all applied to running and maintaining cloud projects at Compute Canada.

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This presentation will give an introduction to the Portage Network, an initiative of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), with the goal of building research data management (RDM) capacity in Canada through a network of experts in a growing community of practice. The session will focus on the importance of data management and progress made by the Portage Network in finding solutions to practical challenges researchers and institutions face in managing their research data and meeting journal and funding-agency requirements. Specifically, we will cover the tools and services available to Atlantic Canadian researchers that can help you better manage your data, enhance the discoverability of your research, and ensure that your valuable research data are preserved for future reuse.

This workshop involves practical exercises.

This is an introductory workshop to teach core data skills for efficient, shareable, and reproducible research practices covering the early stages of the lifecycle of data-driven research and projects. Through a two-day hands-on approach, the focus is on the introductory computational skills needed for data organization and analysis. This workshop is domain-specific, focusing on examples and challenges from Humanities and Social Sciences research fields. The workshop will use data-carpentry.org materials.

This session will explore what sensitive data are, the different levels of data sensitivity, address sensitive data management, ethical handling, cybersecurity considerations, and resources for dealing with sensitive data in Atlantic Canada. We will also provide you with a customizable toolkit to help you manage and maintain your data ethically and responsibly. Discussion will be encouraged about your own experiences, considerations, frustrations and solutions.