Exploring a Possible Partnership Between KM3NeT and mybinder.org for International Masterclasses

Binder
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Dear Jupyter and mybinder community,

I am writing on behalf of the KM3NeT Collaboration Masterclass group. KM3NeT is an international scientific collaboration currently constructing a large-scale neutrino telescope in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to our research activities, we are strongly committed to education and outreach, particularly through our International Masterclass program for high school students.

As part of this initiative, students run Python-based analysis scripts to explore real neutrino data. To provide an accessible and user-friendly experience, we use Voilà to deliver a graphical interface built on top of Jupyter notebooks.

We are currently evaluating mybinder as a platform to allow students to run our exercises directly in the browser, without requiring any local installation. The two exercises can be viewed here:

Analysis Exercise
Binder link:

Calibration Exercise
Binder link:

In this moment, everything is working very well.

However, during previous tests this morning, we experienced an issue where the Binder pages would remain in a continuous loading state and never reach the Voilà interface. Since our Masterclass events are scheduled on specific dates and involve coordinated international participation, reliability on the day of the event is absolutely crucial.

For upcoming sessions, we expect approximately 70 simultaneous connections.

We would therefore like to ask if is there any possibility of establishing some form of collaboration or partnership between KM3NeT and the mybinder team to increase confidence that everything will run smoothly during scheduled Masterclass day?

We deeply value the open infrastructure that mybinder provides to the scientific and educational community. If needed, KM3NeT would be open to discussing ways to contribute to or support a sustainable solution that ensures a reliable experience for students.

Thank you very much for your work and for any guidance you can provide.

Kind regards,
Matteo
On behalf of the KM3NeT Collaboration Masterclass group

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In the past, the solution for this type of need would be to set up The Littlest JupyterHub as it easily handles this number of connections and doesn’t require Kubernetes. But I am unsure on how well it works at present? Maybe someone could comment on that?

I’ll point out that the most active discussion around MyBinder that I see is via the Zulip resource.
See https://jupyter.zulipchat.com/ about ‘Jupyterhub’ / ‘Hetzner’.

The Community Calendar of Meetings is also a good way to find appropriate meetings so that you can connect with community members. See here and here.

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