Greetings, my name is Paul Mineau, I’m a Data Scientist at Microsoft and starting a working group at a hacker space we have at Microsoft (the ‘Garage’). My plan is to host monthly events drawing crowds of 30+ people to learn R, Shiny, and some BioConductor. We will be giving out tasks to create Shiny web apps for exploratory analysis of various data related to Neuroblastoma not just genomics, even data on funding and clinical trial status. I plan on creating a tutorial similar to Sean Davis’s TCGA tutorial. We’ll be inviting people from the community who have some Biology skills and are motivated to help. MS will donate money, 17$/hour, for each MS employees who attend and hacks, to any non-profit of our choosing, I don't know all the details there yet but looks promising. My plan is to create a drug discovery lab by utilizing the GEO and other data, utilizing BioConductor running in the Microsoft Cloud (R Shiny server).

1. Does BioConductor have any resources we can utilize? i.e. is there anyone willing to come speak at one of our monthly events? We also have video teleconferencing. This goes for anyone that can teach BioConductor especially in the context of Neuroblastoma research.
2. Is BioConductor a non-profit? It could be a good place to donate to. I also plan on having events that are just fundraising for kids actively battling this disease.
3. I still need people for my leader ship team, it would be incredible to partner with BioConductor by having someone help us, this project is entirely based on BioConductor. They can help us remotely and the work involved is extremely minimal. We could really use the advising. 

Thanks in advance if there’s any way the BioConductor org can help!

Paul Mineau

Apropos question 1, I would be happy to talk to your group and I suspect other core members would provide input, particularly if it can be done remotely.

Apropos question 2, The Bioconductor Foundation of N.A., Inc., is an entity organized in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, recognized as an exempt organization under IRS code section 501(c)(3).  I can provide more information about the foundation off line.

Apropos question 3,  let's talk off line.

Vince