Community

’ello Co-Fest Friends! After failing to find a good spot for an in-person CoFest, we decided to have the CoFest remotely! I was really excited to meet you all at this event (and have you all meet each other) in the real world, but we’ll have to settle for doing that at BOSC (for those who are there). By all means, don’t let this stop your in-person innovations! Want to meet up and work at a café? [Read More]

Guest post by Thomas Schlapp, CoFest organizer This year we’re looking to have another post-BOSC CoFest! Last year (my first year being involved in BOSC at all) showed me just how collaborative and innovative this community can be. I’d absolutely LOVE to see more of it again. Last year we saw six very fascinating projects see progress (look them over HERE!). Let’s see if we cannot do just a few more in the name of innovation and collaboration! [Read More]

We are excited to announce that BOSC and Bio-Ontologies will join forces for part of a day at ISMB 2022. The joint session will include talks chosen from abstracts submitted to BOSC or Bio-Ontologies, plus a keynote speaker who is well known in both the ontology and open science communities! BOSC and Bio-Ontologies are two of the longest-running COSIs (Communities of Special Interest) at ISMB: BOSC started in 2000 and Bio-Ontologies in 1998. [Read More]

Yesterday we hosted the OBF/BOSC contribution to the ISCBacademy webinar. Our former OBF-board member and Open Life Science co-lead Yo Yehudi presented how internship programs such as Google Summer of Code or Outreachy can be a great way to grow your open source community. If you missed the event, you can now watch the recording on YouTube. Lalit Narayan, who is an undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, was a first-time webinar attendee: [Read More]

Announcement drafted by Malvika Sharan, Caleb Kibet and Hilya Zahroh, with the OBF Board’s input. The call for applications for the OBF Event Fellowship 2022, round 1 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 April 2022. Applications should be submitted via this Google Form. We have provided a Word template to help you draft the application locally before filling the form – make a copy of this template. [Read More]

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program aims to support and encourage diverse participation at events focusing on open source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community. Each year we open two calls for applications, deadlines for which are 1 April and 1 October. In 2021, we received 15 applications, of which three applicants, Sona Charles (Indian Institute of Spices Research, India), Anshika Sah (Institute of Home Economics, India) and Rupesh Gelal (Nepal Engineering College, Nepal) were awarded funding across the two open calls. [Read More]

We are delighted to announce that Caleb Kibet and Hilyatuz Zahroh, two members who recently joined the OBF board, will be joining Malvika Sharan as the co-chairs of the OBF Event Fellowship program. Inviting contributions from the OBF board members, as well as bringing insights from their lived experiences, Caleb, Hilya and Malvika will re-evaluate how we can manage the OBF Event fellowship more effectively going forward. There is a growing body of evidence, including the report from BOSC 2021, that virtual events are indeed more equitable for our colleagues from the Global South (see references: [1] & [2]), who were inadvertently excluded from most international events which required expensive travelling before the pandemic. [Read More]

As previously described, during the November 2021 public Board meeting, the OBF announced two new initiatives to be voted on by the OBF membership. Both of these received a large majority of votes: OBF Community Support Sponsorship (53 for, 3 against, 2 abstaining) OBF Code of Conduct (54 for, 2 against, 1 abstaining) The work to set up the new Community Support Sponsorship is underway. The new Code of Conduct is now available on the OBF website. [Read More]

Date & Time: Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 15:00 UTC / 11am EDT Location: online webinar hosted by ISCB Speaker: Yo Yehudi, Open Life Science (former OBF board member and Google Summer of Code admin & mentor) Topic: Growing open source communities with internships The ISCB, which runs the annual ISMB conference, is offering a series of ISCBacademy webinars hosted by the Communities of Special Interest (COSIs), which include BOSC/OBF. These webinars are free to ISCB members. [Read More]

During our last public Board meeting, the OBF announced two new initiatives that are being proposed for approval by the OBF membership in a formal votes. 1. OBF Community Support Sponsorship: a proposed new grant programme, based on the OBF Event Fellowships but aimed at supporting grassroots projects running events in their own communities. For details see: - /2021/05/11/obf-community-support-sponsorship/ - https://github.com/OBF/obf-docs/issues/86 2. Code of Conduct: BOSC has a code of conduct, as part of the parent conference, but OBF does not yet have its own code of conduct. [Read More]