Codefest 2013

OpenBio Codefest 2013 will take place July 17th and 18th, 2013 (the two days before BOSC 2013) in Berlin, Germany at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. This is a great opportunity for open source bioinformatics developers to meet and work collaboratively. We hope to have developers from projects such as BioPerl, BioJava, Biopython, BioRuby, Galaxy and GenomeSpace in attendance. Everyone is welcome to attend.

This is a follow-up to Codefest 2010 in Boston, Codefest 2011 in Vienna and Codefest 2012 in Los Angeles.

Goals

OpenBio projects are typically coordinated remotely, with users from all over the world contributing and organizing themselves through mailing lists and IRC chats. Additionally, contributors work on these projects in their spare time, coordinating improving the projects with their day jobs and life outside of the computer. The objective of the Codefest is to give these talented developers a chance to be fully focused on the projects for a few days, interacting in real time. Previous Hackathons have been immensely successful at producing new high quality code and innovative project developments.

The goals for the two days are determined entirely by developers. Please add your project ideas to the shared Google document. We'll use this brainstorming discussion document to prepare directions for the two days of work in Berlin.

Location

We'll be hosted in lab rooms at the Department of Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in the historic Invalidenstraße number 42 43 (west entrance), in a wing of the Natural History Museum. The nearest metro station is the Naturkundemuseum on U6.

Here some pictures of the room to find, here a map of the buildings - follow the signs left from the small park through the maze of construction. There will be signs in the entry hall to help direct you to the Codefest venue: Mikroskopiersaal, room number 1302. In case of questions, ask for Steffen Möller or Ivo Maintz. See the mailing list for phone contact details.

We'll plan to start at roughly 9am for the two days. Some folks will be later on the first day with incoming morning flights.

• Google map of Codefest and Conference venues, hotels nearby and train stations

Accomodation

The venue is in a nice area of Berlin and everyone is wholeheartedly invited to stay nearby for the full conference. Prices vary with availability, so book soon. Public transport in Berlin is excellent, throughout the night, so do not worry too much if prices for the hotels listed below have already gone through the roof. Just take anything between our venue and the conference site. The usual internet booking services are your friend. To increase chances for us to meet by chance, check for one the following hotels, which should pop up when sorting for distance from the center:

• Hotel Aquino (55 Euros)
• Mercure Hotel Berlin City (65 Euros)
• Hotel Motel One Berlin Bellevue (59 Euros)
• Gat Point Charlie (51 Euros incl. breakfast)

The Gat Point Charlie is a bit south, but it is a truly nice walk through Berlin of 2.5km to the Codefest.

Attendees

You are very welcome to attend. Please add yourself if you are interested to this Google spreadsheet and sign up on the mailing list.

Main Organisers

• Brad Chapman
• Steffen Möller