BOSC 2007

The 8th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC 2007) will take place in Vienna, Austria, as one of several Special Interest Group (SIG) meetings occurring in conjunction with the 15th International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology.

This year is shaping up to be very exciting. We have changed our format to add room for more development oriented talks and discussions, in an effort to fully utilize the conference to stimulate new development efforts in all areas of Open Source Bioinformatics Software development. The primary focus of the conference revolves around the delineation of areas of IT or Bioinformatics which are not well serviced by existing toolkits. The Keynote session will be headed up by Carol Goble, of Manchester University. Speakers in this session will be invited to present detailed descriptions of an 'Intractible Problem In Bioinformatics'. The last session of the conference has been setup for speakers to present ideas for solving any of the problems presented in the keynote session. Other sessions will be set up to allow presentations on new Software Design Patterns, Software Engineering ideas, and more traditional BOSC talks (see below for details and deadlines). There will be a session of talks by developers in the major Bio* projects giving overviews of recent developments in their projects. Finally, the Birds of a Feather sessions will be enhanced with wifi to create 'Wifi Workshops'. All in all, this should be a great conference.

Important Dates

May 14th Abstract/Use Case Submission Deadline
May 28th Notification of Accepted Talks
June 1 Early Registration Discount Cutoff Date
July 19,20 BOSC 2007

BOSC Eventful Group : This site provides an ICAL feed which will include all deadlines associated with BOSC 2007
BOSC Announcement Blog : This Blog will contain all Important BOSC announcements. You can include it in any RSS Reader.

Keynote Speakers

Carol Goble Will be speaking about the "Seven Deadly Bio-Sins".

Fees

SIG Rate (registering for ISMB as well):

Corporate	TBA
Academic	TBA
Student	TBA

Sig-only Rate (not registering for ISMB):

Corporate	TBA
Academic	TBA
Student	TBA

Agenda

Notes on Submissions

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation, which is the sole sponsor of BOSC, is dedicated to promoting the practice and philosophy of Open Source Software Development within the Biological Research Community. For this reason, any talk submitted to be presented at BOSC which concerns a specific software system to be used by the research community must be licensed with a recognized Open Source License, and available for download according to the dictates of that license, in order to be considered for acceptance.

See the following websites for further details:

• Recognized Open Source Licenses
• Definition of the Open Source Philosophy

All submissions should be emailed to the BOSC mailing list at bosc@open-bio.org.

Call for Speakers and Abstracts

This year BOSC is requesting submissions for a variety of different venues. All submissions should be recieved by Monday, May 14th to be considered for inclusion:

1. Currently Intractable Problems In Bioinformatics: This session will follow the Keynote, and will be devoted to the delineation of areas of Bioinformatics or Information Technology which are currently not solved or serviced by the current suite of Bioinformatics Software in existence. Speakers are invited to submit a detailed use case which currently cannot be satisfied with readily available toolkits and a summary of the problem sufficient to engage developers into discussions on how to solve the problem. The last venue of day two will be devoted to allow attendees to present ideas for solving these problems. Talks for both venues will be 5 minutes long, with a few minutes for questions from the audience. All problems, and ideas for solution will be published on the BOSC web site.
2. New Informatics Technologies in Bioinformatics: This venue is devoted to developments of Open Source Software which enables others to deploy newer Information Technology systems, such as Peer-to-Peer, zeroconf, and WebServices (SOAP or REST), Folksonomies/Tagging, RSS, Social Networking, and other design patterns collectively described as web 2.0 , or which makes heavy use of these systems. Talks will be 10 minutes long, with a few minutes for questions from the audience. All abstracts will be published on the BOSC website.
3. Open Source Software Presentations: This venue will allow speakers to present talks on their use, development, or philosophy of open source software in bioinformatics to the BOSC attendees. The committee will select several submitted abstracts for 10-minute talks, with a few minutes for questions afterward. Accepted abstracts will be published on the BOSC web site.
4. Discussions of Software Design and Engineering: This venue will allow speakers to to present Design Practices in their Open Source Project, or an Open Source Project they have used and were happy with, or present ideas on the practice of Software Design which would benifit the Open Source Developer Community. Talks will be 5 minutes long, with a few minutes for questions afterward. Accepted abstracts will be published on the BOSC web site.

All submissions must be sent, along with the following information, to the bosc mailing list (bosc@open-bio.org) by May 14th, 2007:

1. Abstract (no more than a few paragraphs) or Use Case
2. Open Source License (if talking about your Software)
3. project website (if talking about your Software)
4. at least one contact email (personal or list)

Accepted speakers will be contacted by the BOSC organizing committee on May 28, 2007.

Call For Wifi Workshops

This year, the BOSC committee will enhance the infrastructure for what were currently labeled Birds of a Feather sessions with a wireless router. This will allow groups to interact with software or websites much more while they are discussing their favorite projects. The BOSC committee will accept ideas for these up to the last day of the conference, on a first come-first-served basis until no more space is left in the conference room.

Lets Create an OBF Software CD!

This year we will be devoting a small BOSC session to the task of laying the groundwork for the creation and management of a single CD of OBF applications, libraries for easy installation. The goal is to start the process create a CD to distribute for the next BOSC.

Call for Volunteers

The BOSC Organizing Committee would like to invite attendees to take a more active role in making BOSC a successful conference by volunteering your services. The following opportunities for assistance exist:

• Set up, Clean up: Volunteers are needed to help set up and clean up any aspects of the conference room that are not done by the conference organizers.
• Historian/Photographers: Volunteers are needed to help record aspects about BOSC 2007 for future reference. Possibilities include blogging the conference, writing up a review article for the ISCB, etc.. The Photographer will take digital photographs of all speakers, recording each speakers name with their image name for easy inclusion on the BOSC summary website after the conference. Pictures from past Past BOSC conferences are available in our gallery.