Cofest

CollaborationFest 2025 will be a two-day collaborative work event at which participants work together to contribute code, documentation, training materials, and challenging analysis problems and use cases. Bring your own project ideas or come ready to collaborate with others on their projects!

BOSC has held CollaborationFests (aka CoFests) every year before or after ISMB since 2010. This year, we decided to hold the CollaborationFest as part of ISMB/ECCB and open it to all registered ISMB/ECCB participants. It will take place during the last two days of ISMB/ECCB.

CollaborationFest, CoFest for short, is a collaborative work event that has been held each of the past 13 years as a satellite event of BOSC. At these free events, held right before or after BOSC, participants  gather in small groups to exchange ideas and work together on projects including but not limited to hacking. Participants were encouraged to submit their project ideas in advance to facilitate collaboration.

CoFest 2023 took place during the two days just before BOSC, which was part of ISMB/ECCB 2023 in Lyon and online. It was the first in-person edition after several online-only CoFests, due to Covid pandemics. It was hosted by Jérémy Just at the nearby École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, which provided space and infrastructure, with funding from Complex Systems Institute for lunches and coffee breaks. Free virtual machines were made available by the French Institute for Bioinformatics and the Pôle scientifique de modélisation numérique.

Going home after attending BOSC was a little bittersweet. It’s my favorite conference because it brings together such a welcoming group of people, and the lineup of talks typically offers a great balance of technical learning and community-building insights. So on my flight home, I was coasting on dopamine from the good times, but also getting a little sad that it was over for this year. With the help of a few fellow BOSC enthusiasts (special shout-out to Nomi Harris for the event summary notes, photos and help recruiting contributors), I put together this little recap of the conference, with highlights and personal accounts contributed by a number of other participants. I couldn’t fit everything people shared into the blog post, but you can find the full quotes in the original google doc.

’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? Do it! Hotel room? It’s your room! Get some of your newest friends together and collaborate!

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!