Future of Bioinformatics group at BioCurious

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Just copying this to a separate thread, so it doesn't get ignored...

On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 6:03 PM, Jonathan Reyles <jre...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ill be back for the bioinformatics mtgs at the 30th but I would like us to be in active discussions by email on what we can do to improve the quality and experience. We essentially need to be a community and really just throw in ideas regardless how silly they may initially seem. Feel free to even post upcoming events or ask about having relevant bioinformatics study groups at BioC in this mailing list.

It's too overwhelming for just one ot even two folks to do the vast majority of the work to get this going. I have proposed that we just stick with some of the work Johan initiated as that is well defined and has a very specific goal. We basically just need to get one project done first to get the ball rolling.

If we can all share where we are at, what we are specifically curious about and even what knowledge gaps we are having then we can all gather whatever resource we need to acquire the skill (whether it be workshops, guest speakers hackathons or intensives).  I'm thinking about starting another survey so that we can together prepare a schedule of things to do for the upcoming meetups.

JR

 

On Jun 22, 2013 11:47 AM, "Patrik D'haeseleer" <pat...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Joe,

The Bioinformatics group has been put on hold because of low attendance, and Jon being out of town.

If anyone wants to step up, and commit to running the bioinformatics group every week, please step up!

Patrik

On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 8:43 AM, Joe Landau <jrla...@gmail.com> wrote:

Will there be a meeting this Sunday, the 23rd?

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Here's some soul-searching ideas to think about ideas to think about, just to get the discussion started:

- If we are to continue to have a Bioinformatics community project, we *have* to have someone there leading the group every week. As a last resort, if whomever is in charge can't make it, the meetup listing should be taken down. We've had a couple complaints from new people who showed up and nobody was there.

- The community projects are intended to get people in the door and participating, and then to move them on to becoming a member. What do we have to offer to people interested in bioinformatics that would encourage them to become a member?

- Should we require that people at least have some experience with scripting languages? There's plenty of bioinformatics-specific skills to be learned. If people need to learn basic programming skills, maybe they'd be better off at Hacker Dojo or a community college.

- Working through the Rosalind exercises is great practice, but perhaps that is better suited for a study group, like the Tuesday group working their way through Albert's Molecular Biology of the Cell?

- I really do think that a community project should primarily be a *project*. Preferably something sufficiently large and open-ended that anyone with some computer experience can contribute, whether it's dealing with big data, setting up a database or website, or developing novel algorithms.

Patrik

[Barbara Collignon]

Hey everyone,  

I am personally interested in setting up an epigenetic project . I would be fine taking the lead if you are interested too. Let me know. 

Barbara

Sent from my iPhone