Monday 8 October 2012

1st RDKit User Group Meeting

Just back from the first ever RDKit User Group Meeting, organised by Nathan "Broon" Brown of the Institute for Cancer Research in London, and presided over by Greg Landrum, the lead developer of RDKit.

Really great meeting - a mixture of round-table discussions, scientific presentations, tutorials and RDKit on Raspberry Pi compilation tips. Got to meet a lot of new people. Check out Nathan's tweets for an overview.

The talks and other material will appear in a few weeks so there's no point me talking about them too much now. One thing I will note is that Greg kicked off his history of RDKit by blaming me for prodding him into action with the one of the first emails to the rdkit-discuss mailing list. It seems that I am responsible for collapsing that wavefunction. Also, look out for Andrew Dalke's Roche-sponsored MCS code in the next release.

As an aside, it was interesting to note the background of the 30 or so participants. Apart from the ICR attendees, there were only a few academics, with the remainder from pharma or pharma consulting or software vendors (i.e. me now) or George Papadatos (are you an academic too George?).

And talking of George, the next RDKit UGM will be hosted by the EBI, so I'll have even less to travel next time.

5 comments:

Paul Emsley said...

Richard C., JP and Linda were (Oxford) academics! (I think! :-)

Noel O'Boyle said...

Is this a "known Unknown"? :-) I bow to the greater knowledge of your anonymous comment, and have upgraded the number of academics from a single to a few. Thanks!

Paul Emsley said...

Unknown as in very unfamiliar with open id. I do have a name. I think, though, if you were talking about the speakers, then I withdraw my comment - because JP was indeed funded by Inhibox.

Paul Emsley said...

One more go (well, that is his email address, anyway).

Unknown said...

Yes, I am.
:)