image: customized JupyterLab workspace?

[consideRatio]

Using JupyterLab, we have the option to customize the startup for the users. We can make the startup workspace be whatever we want, which means we can ask JupyterLab to startup with various panels etc open directly.

@arokem as an example, you could add a README markdown or notebook to the nh2020-curriculum repo that we automatically open or similarly, instead of starting with a blank slate.

As an example of a customized workspace, see what's done in this repository's binderhub / repo2docker configuration that we can mimic: https://github.com/gvanrossum/patma/tree/master/binder

[arokem]

Aha! Very nice. I think that the best would be to render README.

That way, we can explain what this is, and put in a table of contents that links into the "index" file for each tutorial.

[arokem]

On further thought, maybe a notebook called "Welcome.ipynb"? See neurohackademy/nh2020-curriculum#1

[consideRatio]

I think the JupyterLab tour extension was excellent! I failed to restart it after I had completed it though, but it was a great first experience at least. It is not installed and running.

I explored using a custom JupyterLab workspace, but I think it is a luxury feature that could take a while to fix in a way that's good. The fact that we override the ~/ directory by mounting persistent storage is causing some complications which made this not so easy to fix without adding quite a bit of complexity.

A clarification of the goal is to let the user re-use the latest used workspace in general, but on first startup get a workspace that opens a Welcome / Readme file or similar. One could also make the goal to always start with a given workspace, which is more intrusive as you typically can return to your workspace.

I'd vote for us to not auto-start such file, but it doesn't make having such file in the curriculum repo pointless.