2nd Annual Meeting Roundup - Bioinformatics.org

J.W. Bizzaro • February 11, 2002

2nd Annual Meeting Roundup

The 2nd Annual Meeting (2AM) [1] was held Wednesday, January 30, at the O'Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference [2] in Tucson, Arizona. The meeting began with a well-attended introduction to the organization by myself (J.W. Bizzaro), followed by a description of the project management system and some key features of the website by Gary Van Domselaar. There were then seven talks by independent project administrators, honestly some of the best talks I have ever seen. I was left impressed by the degree of talent of the project leaders who chose to host their work with this organization.

In the evening, we presented the Benjamin Franklin Award for an individual's work promoting freedom and openness in bioinformatics. The laureate is considered someone who embodies the ideals of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) [3], a great scientist, inventor and altruist who never patented his inventions. This year the award went to...Michael B. Eisen [4] for his efforts with the Public Library of Science [5] project and for the pro-bono availability of his microarray clustering software, considered among the best in the field. Michael gave a presentation of the PLS project after the award, and many people stayed for a Birds of a Feather (BoF) meeting about the topic afterward.

Our camera was unfortunately stolen just prior to the award ceremony, so the photos of all of our earlier presentations are gone. We managed to get a cheap disposable camera and grab some of the speakers later on, but it's not the same. If anyone there during the talks has some pictures, please contact . We will post what we have shortly.

Bioinformatics.Org also had a booth at the conference for two days. We got to meet with many people, then and at other times, who either expressed support for what we are doing, offered contributions of their own projects and efforts, or just said that they are members. We enjoyed meeting every one and look forward to next year's meeting (3AM).

References:

1. http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/bio2002/pub/w/17/bio_org.html
2. http://conferences.oreilly.com/biocon/
3. http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/
4. http://mcb.berkeley.edu/faculty/GEN/eisenm.html
5. http://publiclibraryofscience.org

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