The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (O|B|F) was founded in 2001 as a not-for-profit organization to provide collaborative infrastructure for bioinformatics projects. It owns assets for projects like Bio* and EMBOSS and organizes events like BOSC. The volunteer-run organization is governed by a Board of Directors and provides advocacy, code development support, and mentoring. The presentation discusses growing O|B|F's membership and redefining what it means to be an O|B|F-affiliated project in order to better support the community.

1. Open Bioinformatics
Foundation
Hilmar Lapp, President

2. What is the O|B|F?
• Founded in 2001, incorporated as a
not-for-profit company in Delaware
• Umbrella organization for the Bio*
projects (and EMBOSS)
• Entirely volunteer-run
• Owner of our community’s assets

3. What do we do?
• Provide collaborative code development
infrastructure
• Sponsor and run BOSC and other cross-
project initiatives
• Code Fests (and hackathons)
• Mentoring organization in Google
Summer of Code
• Advocacy and evangelism

4. O|B|F is governed by a
Board of Directors

5. O|B|F Board Alumni
• Steven Brenner (UC Berkeley)
• Ewan Birney (Assoc. Director, EBI)
• Andrew Dalke (Dalke Scientific)
• Kam Dahlquist (Loyola Marymount)

6. O|B|F has members,
and needs more
Members
100
75
50
25
0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

7. Creating an organization
that people aspire to serve
• Mission and services that are relevant
and matter to our community
• Working processes among the
leadership
• Minimal administrative overhead for
having a functional organization
• Non-profit status to accept tax-exempt
donations

9. Redefining O|B|F
affiliation
• Capitalize on O|B|F-affiliation as a brand
• What does it mean to be an O|B|F-
affiliated project?
• Size and activeness of community?
• Maturity?
• Long-term perspective?
• What is the process for becoming one?

10. Enabling effective flow of money
• Acting on opportunities to provision useful
service often costs money.
• Without an income stream, any proposals
to spend meet trepidation.
• Raising money cuts across projects, and
depends on tax-exempt status.
• However, becoming and maintaining tax-
exempt status causes substantial
overhead.

11. Fiscal Sponsorship

13. FAQs
• Will we keep our organization,
membership and processes? Yes.
• Who will be project liaison? The O|B|F
President.
• What does that mean for O|B|F-run
events? SPI services open up new
options, including for BOSC.

14. Join the BOSC Dinner
tonight
• George’s Greek Cafe, at 7pm
• Pay your own - cash preferred, but
credit card will work too
• Buffet style

15. Connect with us
• Web: http://www.open-bio.org/
• Twitter: @obf_news
• GitHub: http://github.com/obf/
• News blog: http://news.open-bio.org/
• Join us as a member.