Catering at BOSC CodeFest 2014

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Peter

Bioinformatics Open Source Codefest, July 9 and 10th in Boston, now with sponsored food and drinks!

The OBF will be holding the fifth annual BOSC Codefest, an informal two day “hackathon” or “coding festival” preceding the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC 2014) in Boston (USA).

This year, the BOSC Codefest 2014 is being hosted by hack/reduce (a wonderful hackerspace in Cambridge, Boston) and has also been kindly sponsored by Curoverse (the team behind the open source platform Arvados) and Harbinger Partners, Inc.

Thanks to this sponsorship, this year the organisers will able to include catering for the participants – I’m expecting at least coffee and pizza, plus what ever caffeine rich drinks or local pastries are in fashion with the Boston programmers? I checked on wikipedia and Jolt Cola doesn’t exist in the USA any more… so I’m waiting to see what our local organisers Brad Chapman & Michael Heuer have planned.

If you are wondering what happens exactly at a CodeFest, I suggest Brad’s blog post from the BOSC Codefest 2013, or Möller et al (2013). Basically these meeting are a chance for developers of open source bioinformatics (not just the OBF’s Bio* projects) to get together and work on common interests. Things work best with some pre-meeting planning on the usual project development mailing lists or IRC, but are also a great way to meet other scientists and developers in person with more time to chat than during a conference coffee break.

Please note that while there is no registration fee for the BOSC Codefest 2014, please do fill in the registration form to help with the planning/catering.

We’re hoping all the Codefest participants will stay for the BOSC meeting itself, which requires formal paid registration as one of the big ISCB 2014 conference’s SIG satellite meetings. Note that we’re offering a BOSC fee waiver for student speakers, this year. If you are going to BOSC, please remember to submit your BOSC abstracts this week!

Peter

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