Bcc

Online. By at least a factor of two.

Our recent article entitled Lessons learnt from organizing a virtual conference discusses some of our technology choices and how we leveraged them to put on a successful online meeting. That article touches briefly on some of the challenges we faced, but it doesn’t fully convey how much work it was–both in advance and during the event.

Before we go any further, who are you? This post was written by Nomi Harris, the long-time (co-)chair of BOSC, and the co-chair (along with Dave Clements) of BCC2020 (the Bioinformatics Community Conference, a collaboration between the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) and the Galaxy Community Conference (GCC)). The perspective expressed in this post is mine alone, and does not necessarily reflect the views of others on the BCC2020 organizing committee. Also, although BCC2020 was an equal partnership between BOSC and GCC and the planning was done jointly (except for abstract reviews), my perspective is naturally BOSC-centric.

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program aims to promote diverse participation at events promoting open source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community. Edidiong Etuk (Eddie), an open-source lover and a software engineer from Nigeria, was supported to take part in Bioinformatics Open Source Conference 2020 by this fellowship granted to him in the application round-1 of 2020. Find more information here.

TL;DR This post is about my experience at Bioinformatics Community Conference 2020.

BCC2020 (the collaborative BOSC + GCC meeting) was held online, with over 800 people registered for some part of the meeting. We used Remo.co as the technology platform, along with Discord for chat. Read about why we chose those, how it worked out, and our tips for others who are organizing virtual conferences here.

“Table view” in Remo during BCC2020

We’re old hands at organizing in-person BOSC s (some of us were involved in planning the very first BOSC, in 2000), but this is the first time we’re attempting an online conference, and we want your help to make BCC2020 a rewarding experience for all.

We know many of you have attended other virtual conferences recently, and we’re interested in hearing what worked well and what didn’t. In particular, we are trying to figure out how to make virtual posters work, and how to run Q&A (with audio, or just typed? live, right after the talks, or asynchronous?). We’re also interested in ideas for adding fun social elements to what could otherwise be a pretty dull extended videoconference.

on behalf of the OBF Board members

We are delighted to announce that four awardees have been selected to receive the OBF travel fellowship for 2020 round 1, to support their participation in virtual events.

The OBF travel fellowship is now offered 2 times a year to multiple awardees towards supporting their participation in scientific workshops, conference and training events. The selection of individuals is made based on their applications, which state how their participation in the chosen event helps them promote open science practices in bioinformatics and/or enhance representation of minority groups in their communities.