 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 . Satellite meetings are usually two days long and are held in conjunction with ISMB . The 12th CAMDA conference and the 9th 3DSIG meeting were held as satellite meetings of ISMB / ECCB 2013 . 
