The iPlant Collaborative held its inaugural conference "Bringing Plant and Computing Scientists Together to Solve Grand Challenges" at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from the evening of April 7 to afternoon April 9, 2008. [Program] . 

The purpose of this conference was to 1) explain the nature of the project and 2) facilitate community discussion of what are the most compelling grand challenges, as well as the data, computational tools, and cyberinfrastructure necessary to solve those grand challenges. Attendance in person is not essential to project participation (see Grand Challenge Process and About iPC tabs for information on the project and participation in it (as well as "Director's Log").

Participation in person was balanced as much as possible among disciplines, both within and between the computing sciences and the plant sciences (including evolution, ecology, and organismic biology, as well as the molecular, cellular and developmental disciplines), as well as by type of institution, geography, underrepresented minorities, etc. International participation was encouraged. About 190 people attended the conference in person. [Registration List]