ISCB-SC:Projects:Conference management

Details
The Student Council is involved in the organization of several events such as the ISCB Student Council Symposium, the | BioMeet series and the | BioSysBio conference. The organization of such events often involves review of submitted abstracts or papers, which is done my members of the organizing committees and other volunteers. The coordination of this process is complicated and inefficient if done by hand. For this reason we would like to implement a system that supports this process and allows us to manage submitted abstracts, reviewer assignments and reviewer comments.

As the Student Council is establishing collaborations with other groups, we want to offer those groups access to this system as well. This will be a significant contribution to the Student Council's activities for many years to come and open up new possibilities.

Tasks
The following questions must be addressed:
 * What functions are required? This will require to get in touch with a couple of people who have been in charge of organizing aforementioned events and find out about their preferences and needs.
 * Which existing, free tools provide these functions? We don't plan to implement the system from scratch, so we will use existing software. Several such tools are available under a wide range of different licenses. Examples are | ConfTool and | Indico (which seems to be close to what we are looking for).
 * What other software (database, web server) is required to run the system on a server?
 * What server can we run this software on? We can't spend money on this and it will be crucial to find a server that we can use for this purpose without being charged.

Skills
You don't need any special skills for this project. If you have experience installing and running server software that will be a plus, but this is by no means a requirement. Most importantly you should be motivated to contribute your part to the development of the scientific community.

Time Frame
We would like to set up the system as soon as possible. We expect that it will take about 2 to 3 months until we have agreed on a system, found a server for it and installed it. An additional 1 to 2 months will be required to compose a manual on how to use the system.

Of course someone will have to make sure that the system runs smoothly and be able to troubleshoot if there are any problems. This someone doesn't have to be you but if you are interested in a long term committment that would be greatly appreciated.

Contact
Get in touch with Nils Gehlenborg if you are interested in this project.