[Open-Bioinformatics-Foundation] Feedback needed: Open Bioinformatics Foundation Events in 2003

[Chris Dagdigian]

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Open Bioinformatics Foundation Events in 2003
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[This email has some important questions we want your feedback on; 
please
read it through if possible]


The board meeting at BOSC indicated that we would undertake two events 
in 2003 -

BOSC 2003 - Elia Stupka was nominated as the chair of the BOSC 
committee (elia@fugu-sg.org)

Open-Bio Hackathon '03 - Ewan Birney was nominated as the chair of the  
hackathon committee (birney@ebi.ac.uk)

BOSC is designed to be our annual meeting where we hope most people 
involved in open source bioinformatics can physically attend, listen to 
talks and organise those all-too-rare face-to-face meetings.

Hackathons are newer thing (we have only done 1 before). Currently we 
aim to be an invite only, 1 week event where a critical mass of proven 
open source programmers try to solve some problems, with the likely 
goal of interoperability and standards.


BOSC 2003
----------------

Both these endeavours need some planning. ISMB 2003 will be held in 
Brisbane, australia. This means a long trip for both east coast US and  
Europeans, though the cost of flights actually comparable to the Europe 
to
Edmonton flight this year. One question is how many people would


    (a) defintely come if in Brisbane

    (b) potentially come if in Brisbane

    (c) definitely not come if in Brisbane, but would if in US

    (d) would not be coming to BOSC 2003, wherever it is.


to BOSC 2003 if we held it as is traditional just before ISMB, in 
Brisbane. If people could reply to Elia directly (elia@fugu-sg.org) 
that would be great. I realise that there is a big tendancy not to 
respond to these sorts of emails, but we need this information to 
formulate our plans and budget, so *PLEASE* respond, ideally *NOW* 
while it is fresh in your
mind. I think ideally we would like to do it in Brisbane, but if there 
is a really small response of people who want to come to it, we may 
have to reconsider.


Would any sponsors like to indicate up front that they could provide  
signficant sponsorship so that we could run our own travel funds, for  
example, ensuring speakers could make it?



   Hackathon
   ---------------

   We are looking for two types of organisations to help with hackathons:

   (a) Sponsors - we need to raise between $30,000 to $50,000 to cover a 
  hackathon. The two main costs are location and flights. Sponsors can 
expect to help set the agenda of what should be tackled during the  
hackathon, can send a limited number of their own people to the 
hackathon  and can enjoy all the PR that is generated by the hackathon, 
with
prominent mention in the materials, web sites and reports.


   (b) Hosts - we need to find someone who would be willing to host us. 
We expect the Host to probably be a sponsor themselves (though this is 
not a  necessity) and should have a good plan for how to house and 
manage 20  geeks for about 1 week - crucial things is a good room to 
work in and some  local technical knowledge to set up an internet 
uplink and a local network  (all the geeks come with their own laptops, 
so there is no need to provide
desktop hardware).

By preference, we would like to have no-strings-attached money from 
either commerical or otherwise independent organisations; writing 
academic grants to fly 20 people to one place is I guess conceptually 
possibly but
would be a first for us at the very least. If there are people who 
would like to investigate either becoming hosts or becoming sponsors 
please contact Ewan Birney (birney@ebi.ac.uk)



Ewan Birney, on behalf of the
Open Bioinformatics Foundation Board.