>
> I was talking with someone here who went to a numerical workshop, and
> they handed out thumbdrives with full linux distros on them, so
> everyone had the same environment.  If there's money for something
> like that, it might be fun to have a full yt stack on thumb drives to
> minimize the startup cost at the workshop, if we want an interactive
> portion for new users.

This is a very good idea.  Maybe we could try it with Amazon EC2?  I
have had success building an AMI in the past, and it's very easy to
do...  although not free, and not local.  I do though like the idea of
thumb drives...  and I can't imagine it wouldn't be an interactive
workshop!

To this end, somebody at MSU (Dirk Colbry) has taken to doing precisely the same thing for people who go to Teragrid/XSEDE/whateverthehell workshops here at Michigan State.  He loves it and is very fond of doing it.  If this is something that seems interesting to people, I can ask him about the setup, and what it would take to make a yt-specific one. I get the impression it isn't that hard!