Slots are still available at Unidata's 2016 Software Training Workshop. The workshop features an exploration of Python in the context of Unidata technologies, courses on Unidata's display and analysis packages IDV and AWIPS-II (with GEMPAK), as well as courses on data access and management tools including the Local Data Manager (LDM) and the THREDDS Data Server (TDS).

The workshop will be held October 17 – November 1, 2016. Individual courses last from one to three days. Registration is open until September 19, 2016.

The American Geophysical Union will be holding online elections between August 29 and September 27, 2016. Individuals elected will serve in leadership positions on the AGU Board of Directors as well as various councils, sections, and focus groups.

All AGU members will receive ballots for the Board (four positions, eight candidates) and student and early-career positions (two positions, four candidates). Members will also receive a ballot for every section and focus group to which they belong. Members of the Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) focus group will notice that the Unidata Program Center's Jeff Weber is a candidate to serve as the ESSI president during the coming term.

The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is an open networked community that brings together science, data and information technology practitioners around Earth science issues.

ESIP is currently accepting applications for the 2017 ESIP Student Fellows. ESIP Student Fellows are graduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in bridging the gap between informatics and Earth science. This fellowship provides students a chance to work closely with professionals in an interdisciplinary, cross-sector group on current Earth Science problems. The students become engaged in the group as rapporteurs, documenting the work of the group on the monthly telecons and at the semi-annual meetings (Summer/Winter). Student Fellows will receive a stipend of $2000 plus travel expenses to two ESIP meetings.

Applications are due October 7, 2016. For the full details see the ESIP Student Fellowship announcement.

The Open Commons Consortium (OCC) NOAA Data Alliance Working Group is seeking feedback to help prioritize which datasets will provide maximum impact for the scientific community. They are collecting suggestions in an “Environmental Data Wish List” via a short online survey.

You can read more about their request for input on the OCC Blog, or head directly over to the survey.

Version 4.6.1 of the netCDF Operators (NCO) has been released. NCO is an Open Source package that consists of a dozen standalone, command-line programs that take netCDF files as input, then operate (e.g., derive new data, average, print, hyperslab, manipulate metadata) and output the results to screen or files in text, binary, or netCDF formats.