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Document experience at AIBBC conference on open-source tools
Added a personal account of attending the AIBBC conference, highlighting the importance of open-source tools in education and sharing insights from the event.
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title: "Bridging Learning Gaps Through Open-Source Tools"
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url: /YYYY/MM/DD/YYYY-MM-DD-your-name-blog-title/
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My desire to share my masters’ research output into a real world demonstration had finally come to its fruition. This was achieved by securing a competitive travel grant from the Open Bioinformatics Foundation Event Fellowship. Leaving the chilly landscapes of Glasgow, Scotland for the warm, tropical weather in my home country, Kenya, I was honored to attend the African International Biotechnology and Biomedical Conference (AIBBC), where scientists from around the world gather to exchange ideas that directly address Africa’s needs.
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Welcome to the OBF Blog Submission Template!
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📌 PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:
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Do NOT edit this template file directly. Instead, follow the steps below to submit your blog post.
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---
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## How to Submit Your Blog Post
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### 1. Create a GitHub Account (if needed)
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If you don’t have a GitHub account, create one at https://github.com/signup
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---
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### 2. Fork the OBF Website Repository
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Go to the OBF website repository:
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https://github.com/OBF/OBF.github.io
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Click the **"Fork"** button (top right) to create a copy under your GitHub account.
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---
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### 3. Create a New Blog Post Markdown File
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In your forked repository:
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1. Navigate to `content/posts/`
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2. Click **"Add file" → "Create new file"**
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3. Name your file based on the date using the format:
My simple and urgent plan was to showcase that open-source educational tools are practical, fair, high-impact solutions and not just an alternative means to the huge learning gap created by expensive proprietary software, especially in resource-constrained environments like Africa. My core contribution was to demonstrate how freely available platforms, particularly R Shiny, can revolutionize learning. My poster, "BRIDGING TECHNOLOGY AND GENETIC EDUCATION: AN OPEN SOURCE SHINY APPLICATION FOR TEACHING PATERNITY ANALYSIS", served as the definitive proof of concept.
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4. View template raw, and Copy and paste all the contents of this template into the new file.
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5. Replace the placeholder text (date, title, author, content, image name, etc.) with your actual blog content.
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Standing proudly beside my poster, I highlighted the complexity of teaching kinship inference and presented our solution, DadApp, the open source R shiny tool. I shared the successful results from the Kenya Institute of Primate Research (KIPRE) pilot study that described the increase of interest and confidence upon using DadApp as an active learning tool. The results were uniquely compelling to the audience which sparked the discussion among lecturers and researchers from many institutions across Africa, who recognized the immense value of such open source tools. They saw an accessible, validated tool that could be replicated and scaled here in Africa where technology is gradually accessible.
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---
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### 4. Upload Your Images
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1. Navigate to the folder: `static/img/YYYY/` for the current year
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2. Click **"Add file" → "Upload files"**
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3. Upload your image(s) here using the format YYYY-MM-DD-image-name.jpg
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To insert images in your blog post, use the following format (without the static prefix):
However, what stood out was how diverse my audience was: Some asked what Open Source is and why it matters in the Biotechnology and Biomedical fields? Whereas some audience members were advanced to ask what license is the Shiny App released under and if it allows commercial use, modification and/or redistribution? The diverse audience validated the continuous need for sensitizing about the importance of Open Source tools and Open Science in general. One of the biggest highlights which was satisfying was to experience a Professor from one of the leading universities in Kenya appreciating the content of the poster and commenting that such Open Source tools are the future as they can help in enhancing flexibility in curriculum design. He further added that lecturers and those passionate in capacity development can tailor such tools to course goals especially in lessons that are mathematically and coding intensive.
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1. Go to your fork’s main page on GitHub
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2. Click **"Contribute" → "Open pull request"**
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3. Make sure it targets the `main` branch of
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https://github.com/OBF/OBF.github.io
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4. Use the title: `New blog post: [your title] by [your name]`
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5. Click **"Create pull request"**
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The AIBBC conference was a humbling experience because for the first time I got to see something that was once a thoughtful concept became a product that was exciting and appreciated by my peers to advanced scientists and lecturers from different scientific backgrounds. However, my greatest achievement was showing that advanced learning does not have to rely on expensive softwares but can also be achieved with an open source Shiny App like DadApp. Students/participants can utilize such open source tools to explore data, visualize results, and understand scientific principles that once felt out of reach. The sparked conversations, encouragement and collaborative opportunities ignited a strong desire amongst the audience to champion genuine scientific equity, and a recognition that every scientist has a role in bringing that future of Open Science to life.
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Looking back, the bridge from Glasgow to Kenya became one of ideas, innovation, and global learning. I hope the experience leaves a lasting impact on both myself and the audience long after the conference.
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We will review your post, help with final edits, and publish it for you.
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‘When knowledge travels freely, learning knows no borders.’
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---
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## Paste the Reviewed Content below and use the instructions to add images, URLs, etc
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Delete the instructions above once you are ready to submit your blog post. Feel free to structure your content as you like, but here are some suggestions to get you started.
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# Your Blog Post (do not inlude this line or repeat the title here)
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**_The_** [**_Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program_**](/travel-awards) **_aims to promote diverse participation at events promoting open-source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community. [FULL NAME],_** _**a [YOUR POSITION, e.g., MSc/PhD researcher] at**_ _**[YOUR INSTITUTION]**_, **_was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend_** _**the**_ **_[EVENT NAME](EVENT URL)_**.
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## Introduction
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Write an engaging intro! What was the event? Where did you go? Why was it exciting?
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## Background or Context
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What motivated you to apply or attend? How does this relate to your work or goals?
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## Key Highlights
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Describe the sessions, people, activities, or discoveries that stood out, emphasising how they relate to open science in bioinformatics.
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- You can use bullet points
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- Or numbered lists
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- Or paragraphs with images and links
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(Keep this section brief! You're not writing a grant proposal!)
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### Add Images
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Upload your images to `static/img/YYYY/` for the current year.
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Then use the following without the static prefix:
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```markdown
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```
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#### Add an image to your first paragraph
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Due to a quirk in the way our web templating system is set up, you need to include an image in the opening paragraph in order to have it show up on the [Posts page](https://www.open-bio.org/blog/).
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You can put a good image (ideally, one that shows you at the conference, and is more wide than tall) at the end of the canned text about the OBF Event Fellowship,
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on the next line but with no blank line in between.
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See, for example, https://github.com/OBF/OBF.github.io/blob/main/content/posts/2025-08-25-Tayyaba-Alvi-ISMB2025.md.
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