As of November 21, 2023, the Open Bioinformatics Foundation and BOSC will no longer post on Twitter/X. Although in the past it was a useful social medium, it is no longer compatible with our values, as expressed in the OBF Code of Conduct: We are committed to creating a friendly and respectful place for learning, sharing and contributing. All participants in our events and communications are expected to show respect and courtesy to others.

In conjunction with our annual meeting, BOSC, the OBF runs a collaborative event (formerly called CodeFest, short for coding festival, and now called CollaborationFest, or CoFest for short). At these events, participants work together to contribute code, documentation, training materials, and challenging analysis problems and use cases.

BOSC 2024 , the 25th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, took place place July 15-16, 2024, as part of ISMB 2024, in Montréal, Canada and online. BOSC covers open source bioinformatics and open science. The theme for 2024 was Open Approaches to AI/ML; it was reflected in a panel discussion and a talk session. Videos of the talks from BOSC 2024 are available on our YouTube channel.

The call for applications for the OBF Event Fellowship 2023, round 3, is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 December 2023. Applications should be submitted via this Google Form. We have provided a Word template to help you draft the application locally before filling out the form – make a copy of this template.

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.

Sierra Moxon to speak about “LinkML: an open data modeling framework, grounded with ontologies” [If you missed the webinar, the video is here and the slides are here.] ISCBacademy is a series of free webinars sponsored by the International Society for Computational Biology. They are open to all, including those who are not ISCB members.

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.

Diversity, inclusion and accessibility (also known as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, DEI) are a major part of OBF and BOSC’s mission and core values. Below are some of the ways we have worked to promote DEI at OBF, BOSC, ISMB (the host conference for BOSC) and in the broader open bioinformatics community.

The 24th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, BOSC 2023, took place as part of ISMB/ECCB 2023 in Lyon, France, and online. ISMB/ECCB attracted a near-record number of attendees, with over 2100 in person and  about 900 more online. Most of the BOSC organizing committee (missing: Jessica Maia and Chris Fields)A full room at BOSC 2023 The opening session of BOSC kicked off with a welcome from chair Nomi Harris.

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.

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.