In the week of 18-22 February 2008, CGI hosted an IDL programming course for 18 of its PhDs and staff. IDL (and also ENVI) is an increasingly popular software for data analysis and visualization in remote sensing and other domains.
Instead of sending PhDs and staff all around the world to learn IDL at distant locations, CGI was able to convince the alter ego of Coyote - namely David Fanning - to trade in beautiful Colorado for a week lecturing in the flatlands. David Fanning maintains a very popular site (
http://www.dfanning.com/) on IDL programming with probably the most useful tricks on IDL.
The course turned out to be a great success for all, participants and teacher. Also, David's approach "I've been learning by noodling around in IDL for nearly 20 years" was taken seriously by all participants.