Indico is an event management platform similar in purpose and function to the more well-known Whova and Eventbrite but importantly different in two respects. First, it is run out of CERN and was developed explicitly to facilitate academic meetings, conferences, and events. Second, it is open source. Together, these make it an attractive candidate for innovating in the area of science or research event management software. Funds from this grant support a series of extensions and improvements to the Indico platform, including conference personalization for attendees and integration with other open science platforms. Grant funds will also support a series of outreach and dissemination activities to grow awareness and foster adoption of the platform. 

Since 2020 the Sloan Foundation has been supporting the establishment of Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) within universities as a strategy to institutionalize support for open source software in the research enterprise. In 2023, Sloan provided two years of funding to six institutions, including Georgia Institute of Technology, to establish OSPOs, to launch a set of pilot activities to determine the most promising strategies for supporting open source software development on their respective campuses, and to develop a clear vision for a long-term institutional support ecosystem for open source. This grant provides an additional two years of support to the Georgia Tech OSPO, led by research software engineers Jeff Young, Fang Liu, and Ron Rahaman, to build on early successes and bridge to independent sustainability beyond Sloan funding.