BOSC 2016 in Disney World with Donald Docker!

First I would like to congratulate OBF that supports diversity in the community with its travel awards initiative. I was very pleased to be one of the three travel fellowship awardees. Thank you OBF! Ιt was great to attend BOSC 2016 and meet remarkable people and know their work.It was one of the most welcoming meetings I have attended and Ι liked that is was active on the social media and the conference materials and speaker presentations were available online. [Read More]

New BioJava Logo Design Competition

BioJava is organizing a design competition to come up with a new logo. Anybody can participate: The logo should look modern and be better than the current one (yellow circle) The logo should be able to be rendered as a favicon, as well as large (e.g. on a t-shirt). Designs that come in two (or multiple) sizes are ok. Logos shall not look similar in any way to the trademarked Java programming language logo. [Read More]

BOSC 2016 Panel: Growing and Sustaining Open Source Communities

Every year, BOSC includes a panel discussion that offers attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the panelists and each other. BOSC is all about community, so this year’s panel topic– Growing and Sustaining Open Source Communities–is right at the heart of what we do. Since the first BOSC in 2000, we have focused on bringing together open source bioinformatics developers and users to form and expand collaborations and grow the communities that use and improve their tools and resources. [Read More]

First three OBF travel fellowships awarded

The first round of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation travel fellowship program has granted funds to three open source bioinformatics software developers to help them attend the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) 2016 in Orlando, Florida, this July. The travel fellowship program ( announced 1 May 2016) aims to increase diverse participation at events promoting open source bioinformatics software development and open science in the biological research community. Applications for the first round in 2016 were due on April 15, with two more due dates this year on August 15 and December 15. [Read More]

BOSC CodeFest 2016

The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) is a two day meeting focused on open source bioinformatics. We aim to encourage and support a friendly, open and productive community that helps us work together to answer hard biological questions. We’ll get together this summer, July 8-9, in Orlando, Florida. Abstracts for BOSC 2016 talks and posters are due this Friday, April 1st. We want to hear about your research and encourage everyone to submit an abstract. [Read More]

BOSC 2016 Keynote Speakers

We’re delighted to announce the keynote speakers for the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, BOSC 2016: Jennifer Gardy Dr. Jennifer Gardy is both a scientist and science communicator. She holds a PhD in Bioinformatics, and is an Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and a Senior Scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). At the BCCDC, she pioneered a new way of investigating outbreaks of infectious diseases – “genomic epidemiology”, which uses a pathogen’s genome sequence as a tool for understanding how an infectious disease spreads. [Read More]

OBF Travel Fellowship Program

We are very pleased to announce our new Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Travel Fellowship program. The program is designed to enable people, whether long-standing members of our community or newcomers, to participate in eligible events for which costs would otherwise be prohibitive. This includes our annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC). Although not limited to specific groups of people, the program constitutes another major step for us in our ongoing efforts to increase the diversity in our communities in particular, and in the open source / open science bioinformatics community in general. [Read More]

BOSC 2016 Call for Abstracts

Call for Abstracts for the 17th Annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC 2016), a Special Interest Group (SIG) of ISMB 2016. Dates: July 8-9, 2016 Location: Orlando, FL Web site: /wiki/BOSC_2016 Email: bosc@open-bio.org BOSC announcements mailing list: http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/bosc-announce Twitter: @OBF_BOSC and @OBF_News Important Dates: Call for one-page abstracts opens: March 1, 2016 Abstract submission deadline: April 1, 2016 - extended to Monday 4 April 2016 Travel fellowship application deadline: April 15, 2016 Authors notified: May 6, 2016 Codefest 2016: July 6-7, 2016, Orlando, FL (confirming venue) BOSC 2016: July 8-9, 2016, Orlando, FL ISMB 2016: July 8-12, 2016, Orlando, FL The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) is run as a two-day meeting before the annual ISMB conference. [Read More]

BOSC 2015 Panel - increasing diversity

Every year, BOSC includes a panel discussion that offers all attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the panelists and each other. Two months ago we announced the theme of the BOSC 2015 panel would be " Open Source, Open Door: increasing diversity in the bioinformatics open source community". Our complete list of panellists is: Panel chair Mónica Muñoz-Torres ( @monimunozto) is the lead biocurator at Berkeley Bioinformatics Open-Source Projects (BBOP). [Read More]

Open Source, Open Door: increasing diversity in the bioinformatics open source community

The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) has always been about community. Launched in 2000, BOSC aims to provide a forum for both bioinformatics developers and users to share ideas and code and learn about the latest developments in open source bioinformatics and open science. Our goal this year is to welcome even greater participation, opening the door even wider to participants who have historically been underrepresented in the world of open source bioinformatics and, therefore, at BOSC. [Read More]