BOSC 2020

BCC2020, the first Bioinformatics Community Conference, brought together the Galaxy Community Conference (GCC) and the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) in a joint ONLINE meeting in July 2020. Participants from 62 countries joined us for sessions scheduled twice a day to accommodate both western and eastern hemispheres. Keynote speakers were Abigail Cabunoc Mayes, Lincoln Stein, and Prashanth Suravajhala. Check out the conference schedule here.

The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) has been held annually since 2000. BOSC 2019 was part of ISMB/ECCB in Basel.

Key Dates

April 21: BCC registration opens
May 8: Abstract submission deadline
July 10: Early registration ends
July 15: Late registration ends
July 16 (July 17 in eastern hemisphere): pre-BCC open house for registered attendees
July 17-18 (July 18-19 in eastern hemisphere): BCC2020 optional training sessions
July 19-21 (July 20-22 in eastern hemisphere): BOSC 2020, part of BCC2020 (online)
July 22-23 and 24-25: CoFest and CoFest Encore

Session Topics

BOSC covers all aspects of bioinformatics software and open science, including (but not limited to) these topics:

Open Science and Reproducible Research
Open Biomedical Data
Citizen/Participatory Science
Standards and Interoperability
Data Science
Workflows
Open Approaches to Translational Bioinformatics
Developer Tools and Libraries
Inclusion, Outreach and Training

Overview

BOSC is organized by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), a non-profit group dedicated to promoting the practice and philosophy of open source software development and open science within the biological research community.

Since its inception in 2000, BOSC has provided a forum for developers and users to interact and share research results and ideas in open source bioinformatics. BOSC’s broad spectrum of topics includes practical techniques for solving bioinformatics problems; software development practices; standards and ontologies; approaches that promote open science and sharing of data, results and software; and ways to grow open source communities while promoting diversity within them.

BOSC is usually preceded or followed by what we now call CollaborationFest (CoFest for short), a two-day community development session. This is an opportunity for anyone interested in open science, biology and programming to meet, talk and work collaboratively. All are welcome to attend CoFest, whether or not you attend BOSC!

More about BOSC…

Registration

Registration for BCC2020 is now open! Save by registering before July 10. Prices for the online meeting and optional training sessions are very affordable (with discounts for students and postdocs and those from developing countries). The CoFest is free, but you must register to participate.

Sponsoring BOSC

Sponsorships from private companies and organizations help to defray some of our costs. This year, BOSC will be part of BCC2020.
See the BCC Partners page for information about the BCC sponsors and how you can become one!

Organizing Committee

Chair: Nomi L. Harris (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Technology Chair: Karsten Hokamp (Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Program Chair: Chris Fields (Bioperl developer; HPCBio, University of Illinois)
Peter Cock (Biopython developer; James Hutton Institute)
Jessica Maia (BD)
Monica Munoz-Torres (Oregon State University)
Yo Yehudi (University of Cambridge)

Review Committee (affiliations listed here):

Kai Blin, Kai Blumberg, Christian Brueffer, J. Harry Caufield, Peter Cock, Arun Decano, Gianluca Della Vedova, James Eddy, Scott Edmunds, Chris Fields, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, Nomi Harris, Michael Heuer, Karsten Hokamp, Aziz Khan, Aleix Lafita-Masip, Jessica Maia, Nico Matentzoglu, Hervé Ménager, Ruchi Munshi, Tazro Ohta, Konstantin Okonechnikov, Lorena Pantano, Luis Pedro Coelho, Surya Saha, Sonika Tyagi, Deepak Unni, Nicole Vasilevsky, Jason Williams, Yo Yehudi

Previous BOSCs

BOSC has been held yearly since 2000. See information about the first 19 BOSC conferences.

BOSC 2019 was part of ISMB/ECCB 2019 in Basel, Switzerland. See the full BOSC 2019 schedule of talks, posters and Birds of a Feather meetups.

BOSC 2018 was held June 26-27, 2018 (with training days June 24-25 and a CollaborationFest June 28-29) at Reed College in Portland, Oregon as part of the GCCBOSC 2018 bioinformatics community conference co-hosted with the Galaxy Community Conference.

Code of Conduct

As part of BCC2020, BOSC 2020 will be covered by the BCC Code of Conduct.