 As attendance at ISMB grew in the late 1990s, several satellite meetings and special interest group (SIG) meetings formed alongside the main conference.SIG meetings are held over one or two days before the main conference and focus on a specific topic, allowing more detailed discussion than there would be time for in the main conference.Notable SIG meetings include the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC), which has been held annually since 2000 and Bio-Ontologies, which has been held annually since 1998.