Organizing NWB Events

Organizing an NWB event is a great way to contribute to the neurophysiology community and help researchers learn about the NWB format, data conversion, and analysis tools. This page provides guidelines and resources for planning and executing successful NWB events.

Types of NWB events

There are two types of NWB events:

  1. NWB team hosted events: This is an event where an institution or conference hosts the NWB team to lead a workshop. The NWB team will set up registration, arrange instructors, present the materials, and provide one-on-one support. We rely on the institution or conference to advertise the event locally and to reserve the workshop space. These events are free for attendees. In some cases, institutions choose to pay for lodging and travel expenses for instructors.
  2. Self-organized events: This is an event where the registration, organization, and instruction is handled by the host institution and organizers. We provide the training materials and guides for how to host these events and are available for questions about organizing the event, but do not provide one-on-one support during the event.

Types of workshop curriculums

There are several different types of NWB workshops. The contents of the materials overlap among these events, but the key differences are in the overall objective for what attendees will learn and get out of the event.

  1. Data conversion workshop: the goal is for users to bring custom data from their lab and learn all the tools needed to convert their data to NWB and publish it on the DANDI Archive.
  2. Data reuse workshop: the goal is for users to learn about working with data on DANDI and to conduct a data reuse project to analyze existing data in NWB
  3. NWB + DANDI overview workshop: the goal is for users to learn an overview of the NWB software ecosystem, from data conversion to publication and other software tools available for neural data analysis.
  4. Community hackathon: the goal is for users to work as individuals or teams to conduct small development projects on NWB-related software.

Note that these events can be held in person or virtually.

Getting started with a self-organized event

To get started organizing an event at your institution, take a look at the Self-organized Event Planning Checklist.

Training Resources

For a complete overview of all available training materials including descriptions, videos, and slides, visit our Training Materials page.

We provide the following resources to assist you as you organize your event:

If you have any questions when considering self-organizing an event, please contact us using the NWB helpdesk or on Slack.