BOSC/Prepare for Vienna

This page has been set up to provide a forum for discussion regarding the planning of BOSC 2007.

BOSC Mandate:

1. provide developers with a forum for displaying the results of their development efforts to the wider research community;
2. provide a focused environment for developers and users to interact and share ideas about software development, and practical techniques in bioinformatics;
3. Inform the Research Community of important developments occuring within the Open Source Bioinformatics Developer community.

To this end, the BOSC conference must endeavor to meet these goals using the 16 hours of time that we are alloted during the two day ISMB SIG. Some suggestions that I have recieved for how to do this are:

1. Create separate sessions for different categories of talks. These should include, but not be limited to, a section for project updates by the developers of various projects. Define better requirements for acceptance of submission to each of the talk sessions, and communicate these requirements in the call for speakers.
2. Shorten the talk times, to allow more time for discussion and questions.
3. Expand on the idea of the keynote speaker. Create a special session for invited speakers. Call for greater involvement from the Open Source Developer community to decide which areas to concentrate on, and which experts to invite.
4. Organize a forum for informal, relaxed discussion and socializing among BOSC attendees, such as a dinner or visit to a local pub after the days activities.
5. Organize a forum for inter-SIG collaboration. Possibly create a slot to allow someone from the other SIGs to present needs, ideas to the Open Source Community, while also supporting the export of our own ideas to their SIGs.

Comments/questions to consider:

1. How do we facilitate the integration of disperate communities, or at least avoid excessive fragmentation. Suppose we create separate sessions for, say, Project Updates, and Emerging Informatics. What is going to prevent the developers from choosing to skip the Emerging Informatics session because they dont get anything out of it? Isn't one goal of BOSC to provide a forum for the discussion of new areas where Bioinformatics Infrastructure, especially Open Source Infrastructure, is needed? Remember that it is perfectly acceptable for people to wander from SIG to SIG with the price of their admission. They are not a captive audience.
2. In relation to the above, how do we prevent one community from completely taking over the conference for their own purposes?
3. How do we ensure that BOSC stays relevant to the wider ISMB-SIG audience? Is this important?

ideas

1. Create A Developer Challenge Forum. The year before BOSC (possibly at the end of each BOSC), teams of developers would be called on to submit a proposal for the development of a significant software product. Each team would be given a wiki on the upcoming BOSC 2XXX wiki site where they would communicate significant problems, resolutions, and achievements. At BOSC, there could be a session where these teams present the results of their work. If we had outside funding, we might be able to award travel fellowships to the team voted to have done the best work by the BOSC community, but we might need other criteria to be met before they could be entered into the competition?