Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 13:29:08 +0200 From: Johann Visagie <johann@egenetics.com> To: chat@freebsd.org, advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, 2001 Message-ID: <20010322132908.P65109@fling.sanbi.ac.za>
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In July 2000 I posted to these lists about the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) 2000, which was held in San Diego last August. I'll not repeat what I posted then - you can read it here: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=100577+0+/usr/local/www/db/text/2000/freebsd-chat/20000730.freebsd-chat For even more info, see the article that Trish Lynch wrote for Open Magazine which was recently republished in the FreeBSD 'zine: http://www.freebsdzine.org/200103/science.php3 Anyone who has not been living under a rock this past year :) should have an idea that the biosciences are gearing up to be one of the premier fields of human scientific endeavour for the forseeable future, now that the "post-genome era" is upon us. To reiterate some of the points I made last year: - Biocomputing is still an almost 100% Unix-dominated field. - It's already a big field, and destined to be HUGE. - Of course, therefore, open source operating systems and tools are coming to play an increasingly important part. Companies like Incyte regularly get PR mileage out of their massive Linux clusters. - Hence this is one area where BSD in general and FreeBSD in particular should be actively advocated, IMHO. And this year I'll add another point: - While dot.coms are slumping, many genomics firms are now seeing their stock price do what internet startups did some five years back. Following my postings last year, Jordan graciously offered to contact the BOSC organisers and supply free FreeBSD CDs to conference-goers. Let me tell you, those CDs wer a hit! :-) BOSC is still a smallish conference, and if your conference pack consists of one folder with some boring documentation and a shiny new shrink-wrapped CD, that CD is bound to draw attention. I did my bit, parading around in my Beastie T-shirt and offering installation help to anyone who seemed to be scrutinising the CD curiously. I had to compete with a large contingent sporting Tux paraphernalia (and one OpenBSD T-shirt, at least). FreeBSD's increasingly mature support for the Alpha platform is a drawcard, I believe. SGI has always been and still is a major player in the bioinfor- matics field, but while that company is having its problems Compaq is stepping into the breach, selling many Alpha boxes (particularly in Japan, we've found). At the conference last year Alpha CDs were in almost as much demand as i386 ones. The small but steadily growing community of people who use FreeBSD in bioinformatics and other biocomputing fields has not been sitting still either. We have set up a mailing list: http://www.plig.net/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-bio ... and we're steadily adding more and more relevant ports to the "biology" category of the ports tree. Maintaining the FreeBSD ports has led me to become more involved with some of these open source development efforts (and in some cases to try to steer them gently away from a single-platform, NIH scenario). At any rate, attached is the announcement for BOSC 2001, which will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Please spread the word to the BSD community. :-) -- Johann ----- Forwarded message from Ewan Birney <birney@ebi.ac.uk> ----- > From: Ewan Birney <birney@ebi.ac.uk> > Subject: [Bioperl-l] BOSC meeting announcement > To: bioperl-l@bioperl.org, "'biojava-l@biojava.org'" <biojava-l@biojava.org>, > biopython@biopython.org, biocorba-l@biocorba.org, emboss-dev@embnet.org > Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 22:55:45 +0000 (GMT) > > > BOSC 2001 (http://www.open-bio.org/bosc2001/) > --------------------------------------------- > > We are pleased to announce that the Bioinformatics Open Source > Conference (BOSC2001) is now open for registration. Please see the > web site at http://www.open-bio.org/bosc2001/ for complete details. > Like last year, BOSC is running as a satellite meeting to ISMB, allowing > those traveling to Copenhagen to attend both meetings. > > KEY DATES: > Deadline for BOSC registration June 19, 2001 > BOSC2001 July 19-20 > ISMB tutorials July 21 > ISMB main sessions July 22-25 > > This year, BOSC will be organized around existing open source > bioinformatics projects such as Biojava, Bioperl, Biopython, EMBOSS and > others. The mornings will feature presentations drawn from submitted > abstracts. During the afternoons there will be a chance for collaborative > coding (desktop machines provided courtsey of Sun and there will also be > ethernet hubs), and the ability to have small, across-group meetings. The > leaders of most of the open source projects are expected to be there and > based on previous years we expect a good attendance of open source > bioinformaticians. > > BOSC will be held in parallel with the BioPathways Consortium meeting > (see www.biopathways.org for more details). Close cooperation and joint > registration will allow attendees to participate in both events. ----- End forwarded message ----- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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