[Open-bio-l] Code fest 2010: thinking to '11

[Richard Holland]

Hello all,

Speaking now strictly in my personal/OBF-member role now and not with my company hat on.

On 13 Jul 2010, at 09:34, Steffen Möller wrote:

> Hi Raoul,
> 
> On 07/13/2010 03:01 PM, Raoul Bonnal wrote:
>> Codefest 2010 is finished and I think it has been a great success. 
>> I was so happy to do what I like to do more, coding, meeting people (it's better with a beer) and coding again.
>> Codefest +1
>> 
> +1 , the "no question asked" series of presentations at BOSC was kind of
> strange. But sure, all questions you would want to ask to BioPerl etc
> you would have asked a while ago, not at the conference.

+1, The question then arises, what is BOSC for. The Bio* projects function perfectly well these days without needing to present, and the audience tends to be made up of the already converted so they are not really attracting any extra users there. The hackathons/codefests are a much better and more useful event for the Bio* projects in my mind. The remaining talks about specific bits of software are very interesting but its not always obvious what the biological problem is that they're trying to solve - or whether it really is a problem unique to biological informatics or if they would be better off in a more generic informatics conference (where their code and design practices would also come under much closer scrutiny!).

>> I'd like to have a BOSC more... like a round table than just presentations which are for sure very useful but not enough in my idea. 
>> Bosc +1-
>> 
> +1  - these doing-something-together meetings are good.

+1 yes agreed, despite advances in comms technology still nothing beats a few beers at the pub with your laptops.

>> As requested by many people @ BBQ, I'm just wondering how it could be having a Codefest in Italy, that would be definetely amazing. If you like the idea, in the next months I'll try to figure out how to make it possible. Keep in mind that my working place is in Milan.
>> Codefest at Milan +1
>> 
> The problem is with the funding of the travel, which again would speak
> for an increased regionalisation of the efforts and the integration of
> others via the net.
> A conference nearby does not really help if you don't also have a paper
> on it :)

Indeed. I think regional efforts are going to be unavoidable because of this, so you'll need a key core of people at each one to keep the momentum going. e.g. a 'management team' at each Bio* project that has a knowledgeable senior member in every region that is able to lead these meetings when they take place.

>> Then, I realized that is very important to be on the same boat and I'd like to join the OBF in a more active way, how to start ?
>> 
> Well, we'd need the OBF for an OK to call it BOSC Hackathon, or BOSCF
> (for BOSCloudFest). But the meeting we could plan rightaway. I can offer
> the same for Luebeck, literally at the beach. Consider a free room
> settled, accomodation is about 45 Euros per night. The nearest airports
> would be the 50 miles apart Hamburg (Northern Germany) or Luebeck itself
> with direct RyanAir flights from around Europe (Bergamo, Pisa, Stansted,
> Barcelona, Edinburgh, "Stockholm", Gdansk and probably others).
> Actually, Richard and Dominique already plan to come, maybe we could
> synchronise things a bit.

Yup, definitely planning on coming to the Luebeck thing if it happens. In future, we can offer similar facilities in Cambridge (actually Babraham really, but close enough) - nearest airport Stansted, unfortunately no beach.

cheers,
Richard

> Many greetings
> 
> Steffen

--
Richard Holland, BSc MBCS
Operations and Delivery Director, Eagle Genomics Ltd
T: +44 (0)1223 654481 ext 3 | E: holland at eaglegenomics.com
http://www.eaglegenomics.com/