SocBiN board in Skövde

Board meeting, March 29, 2001, 17:30-18:30, Billingehus, Skövde
Attendees: Finn Drablös, Inge Jonassen, Henrik Vissing, Bo Servenius, Björn Olsson,

• Reports
• Board activities during the year: most of the interactions during the past year have taking place by email. However, in conjunction with the ISMB 2000 meeting in San Diego, Aug 2000 some of the members from the board and the planning committee met to discuss the program for Bioinformatics 2001. At this meeting also the change of venue from Trondheim to Skövde was decided up on. At this meeting Daniel Oskarsson was elected to the board of SocBiN in agreement to the annual generel meeting of 2000.
• Membership - Bo Servenius reported membership figures gotten from Bengt Persson - a total of 213 members as registed at the website (www.socbin.org)
• Distribution on different countries according to email domain adresses.

Sverige 96
Norge 19
Danmark 14
Finland 12
Island 2
Estland 2
".com" 40
• Bioinformatics 2000 in Helsingör - final balance of the conference economics revealed a surplus of surplus of 5470,56 SEK
• Bioinformatics 2001 in Skövde - some preliminary figures reported by Björn Olsson
• Revenues
• Registration fees 1MSEK
• Sponsors  and exhibitors 300 KSEK
• Expenditures
• Attendee number dependent  500 KSEK
• Fixed costs 700
• However, there are  serious problems with the different rules for MOMS/VAT it will probably take quite some time before we have some final figures
• Registrations for Bioinformatics 2001
• Break even number of attendees 300
• At the end of the announced registration period - 170
• Current preliminary count at the conference - 337
• Country distribution:
• 56% svenskar
• 35 fi
• 31 dk
• 7 is
• 12 no
• The organisers have really done a great effort to track down potentail attendees. The emaillists that this genereated should be cleaned up and reused to attract participants for future conferences
• Economic report - Bo Servenius reported on behalf of Bengt Persson on the current economical status for SocBiN. Due to administartive delays in getting SocBiN registered with the tax authories in Sweden (Skattemyndigheterna) the SocBiN has still not established its own book keeping. Bengt Persson is running the economy out of his own accounts. Because of this situation it is not possible to present any formal balance. The auditor Arne Elefsson has been contacted in these matters and aggreed that it is not necessary to present anyformal balance.
• The board decided to bring this message ahead the the general annual meeting.
• Last year general meeting - followups
• The minutes from last year general meeting has been signed.
• It was decided that the all formal documents as minutes balance etc should be kept by the president.
• Next year conference
• Inge Jonassen
• SAS Radisson i Bergen
• Contact with consultatst to do the administrative work  - Plus Convention
• 300NKR/person + provision - good track record
• Date 4-7 April first weekend after Eastern
• Attendee fee - similar to Skövde
• More expesive hotel  - 1000NKR/single room
• Lecture hall -  OK
• Discussion regarding general meeting tomorrow 
• Agenda items
• Economic report - how to handle not formally correct - trust in Bengt! Suggest to get it approved by the General assembly.
• Elections
• Positions up for nominations

• Bo Servenius, President willing to be reelected
• Mark Johnson, willing to be reelected
• Henrik Nielsen, has declined to be reelected
• Daniel  Oskarson, has represented Iceland informatly, willing to be elected formally.

• Relations to NorFA - some uncertainty expressed about NorFA's intentions.
• AOB
• Other activities for SocBIN
• Web seriously need to be updated
• We need also to start use it for spreding information regarding Bioinformatics in general. Listings of bioinfo groups, courses, events  etc.
• Can anyone help Bengt?

SocBiN - Society for Bioinformatics in the Nordic countries

Board meeting

Attendees: Arne Elofsson, Inge Jonassen, Finn Drablös, Ingvar Eidhammer, Nikolaj Blom, Bo Servenius, Esko Ukkonen.

• Experiences from the ongoing conference were discussed. The board members were encourage to write down their experienced from this year conferences as well as suggestions for next year conference program and send them on to Inge.
• Next year conference in Bergen, Norway was discussed. Inge Jonassen described the planning works that already have started. There will be a conference organising consultatnt taking care of much of the administarative work and the SAS Raddisson hotel at the Brygge will be the venue. Pricelevel of the services and the arrangements were discussed. It was pointed out the necessarity to keep a low pricelevel not to make it to expencive for students to attend. Seperate price levels for students, academics, and commercial registrants were suggested. Inge will try to get some preliminary figures for the pricing out early.
• Program for next year conference was discussed. It was suggested that we should try to find some earlier not covered themes in the session program. As earlier years we will meet at the ISMB meeting this summer to discuss the session program and potential speakers to invite. Until then send your suggestions on to the Program committee.
• It was discussed the possibility to arrange totorial sessions in conjunction with next years confence. Funding from NorFA could make this more feasible. It was suggested that we should start out in the small scale an offer one or maybe two totorials next year.
• Sponsors for next year contenference were discussed. Some has already expressed their interest to go in as a major sponsors. Inge Jonassen will scetch on a sponsors program so that we can present it to potential sponsors at time of the ISMB meeting this summer.
• Following persons were elected to an organising committee for Bioinformatics 2002: Inge Jonassen, Finn Drablös, Ingvar Eidhammer, Björn Olsson, and Nikolaj Blom.
• Following persons were elected to a program committee for Bioinformatics 2002: Arne Elofsson, Inge Jonassen, Henrik Vissing, David Liberles, Jens Lagergren, Maonio Viheinen, Marc Johnsson, Elgo Arjas, and Jan Komorowski
• Information about bioinformatics activities within the Nordic countries needs to be spread. It was discussed to establish a web repository were all groups working within bioinformatics within the Nordic countries could present their ongoing works. In a similar way the different bioinformatics educational program could be presented.