Bioinformatics forum: topic
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Good conferences?
Chris Cole
Friday, 11 July 2008 14:50 UTC
Which bioinformatics conferences do people consider to be the ‘good’?
I know this is going to be very subjective, but I have been wondering about this for a while now. I’m sure I’m not the only one that gets lots of spam (via email and snail mail) advertising the latest ‘International’ conference on X, Y and Z, but sometimes I’m confused as to whether these genuine or not.
So, how about compiling a list of recommended conferences with details as to their focus? I suggest we stick to ones which happen regularly so that we can look out for them in future.
I’ll start:
ISMB – very general, good, but can be overwhelming due to its size
BioSysBio – young researcher focus, but high quality
Genomes to Systems – general, but good quality and not too big.
3Dsig – very specific to structural bioinformatics
Comments or additions?
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Replies
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I typically prefer very small conferences. It makes it easier to actually talk to most people around. Two that I enjoyed a lot were “Modular Protein Domains” and “Interactome Networks” but these are not really bioinformatic conferences.
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Actually, I think bioinformatists should attend more biological and experimental conferences rather than professional bioinformatics meetings. The Gordon series conferences are high quality. I have applied for a sub-conference on G-couple phosphorylation. However, the VISA is not obtained in time. I will try it again in the next year.
It’s funny that the good bioinformatics conferences are too hard to publish a paper for me, much harder than a uniform journal. So joining a bioinformatic conference is not in my schedule.
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I was at the IBC in Dublin last month, which included quite a bit of bioinformatics. If you’re into the more statistical side of the subject, a big meeting (~900 participants) is good, because you get a range of subjects, of course including some that are not bioinformatics. Hearing about stuff that is not relevant is good for getting a different perspective.
I wish they had taped the microarray experimental design session – it was high quality, and would have been very useful. Plus it would take a few viewings to get the details in Rosemary Bailey’s talk.
I also agree with Yu (or should I call you Xue?) that attending biological conferences is important. It’s a good way of avoiding becoming useless, and also of finding the low-hanging fruit to pick.
Pedro’s comment about the size of conferences reminds me I should write a blog post about that. Different sized conference have different pluses and minuses.
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Bob – call me Yu, if you like. I agree with your opinion that the size of a conference should be controlled. In a large conference, too many people and too many questions. So it’s often difficult to talk with speakers personally.
As Chris mentioned, one awkard question is: If a conference is not good at all (With International conference on X), I will not choose it to attend. However, if one is truely good, eg., ISMB, it’s too hard to get a ticket to attend.
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Thanks for the comments.
I’d not heard of the Gordon series before. They look interesting, although some are very specific.
I feel that diversity is more important size. There needs to be bioinformatics ‘hook’ too, otherwise the conference becomes too general or not applicable. That’s true of some bioinformatics conference which can get too detailed on specific aspects.
I’m much more on the ‘experimental/biological’ spectrum of bioinformatics so tend to gravitate to those sorts of conferences anyway…
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Cold Spring Harbor Lab and Sanger have good meetings like The biology of genome.
SMBE: Society of molecular biology and evolution is good.
RECOMB: a conference bridging the computational, mathematical, and biological sciences.
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