[BiO BB] Call for Challenge entries for conference on Informatics for Phylogenetics, Evolution, and Biodiversity (iEvoBio)

[Hilmar Lapp]

The conference on Informatics for Phylogenetics, Evolution, and  
Biodiversity (iEvoBio) is holding a Challenge, a competition to create  
a new software tool, or add a new feature to an existing platform.  
Entries to the Challenge need to respond to its theme, which for 2011  
is "Data Integration".

Improving our understanding of the evolution of life requires  
combining data sets from a wide variety of disparate sources. Thus,  
data integration poses a serious challenge for evolutionary research.  
Entries for the 2011 iEvoBio challenge must enable new approaches to  
data interoperability or represent an exceptional example of  
integrating existing sources of data.

Further information on the nature of challenge entries and how to  
submit them can be found on the iEvoBio website at http://ievobio.org/challenge.html 
. Selected candidates will make short oral presentations to  
demonstrate their work in a "Challenge session" at the conference, and  
if suitable will automatically be entered into the Software Bazaar  
track of the conference.

Cash prizes will be awarded for first place ($1,000) and runner-up  
entries.  The winning entries will be selected by a vote of the  
iEvoBio meeting participants.

Challenge entries are only 1 of 5 kinds of contributed content that  
iEvoBio will feature. The other 4 are: 1) Full talks (closed), 2)  
Lightning talks, 3) Software Bazaar entries, and 4) Birds-of-a-Feather  
gatherings. The Call for Lightning Talks is currently open (see http://ievobio.org/ocs/index.php/ievobio/2011/) 
, and the information on Software Bazaar entries is forthcoming.

More details about the program and guidelines for contributing content  
are available at http://ievobio.org.  You can also find continuous  
updates on the conference's Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/ 
iEvoBio , or subscribe to the low-traffic iEvoBio announcements  
mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/ievobio-announce

iEvoBio is sponsored by the US National Evolutionary Synthesis Center  
(NESCent) in partnership with the Society for the Study of Ecolution  
(SSE) and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB). Additional  
support has been provided by the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).

The iEvoBio 2011 Organizing Committee:
Rob Guralnick (University of Colorado at Boulder) (Co-chair)
Cynthia Parr (Encyclopedia of Life) (Co-chair)
Dawn Field (UK National Environmental Research Center)
Mark Holder (University of Kansas)
Hilmar Lapp (NESCent)
Rod Page (University of Glasgow)