Bika Lab S
Project Management in Cape Town

LIMS/LIS, portal content and workflow management · 1 Stop lab solution.

The Bika Open Source LIMS project started out as prototype, Bach, piloted in the Western Cape wine industry in Given the cost of unwieldy pre-Internet proprietary systems, there was a clear need for affordable, easy-to-use LIMS and instrument integration. The software's future is ensured with effective organisational structure and many global developers, in high demand, currently expanding the system with the support of sponsoring clients, peer review by co-developers, and testing by fast expanding user base. The Foundation invites academics, open source development communities, philanthropists and institutional role players to participate and sponsor development and distribution of public health laboratory systems. Bika aims to fulfil laboratory requirements holistically, with full system ownership, including the program code, by the lab and complete knowledge transfer to staff. This propagates the system to everybody's benefit without any barriers. Systems remain customisable and continue to inherit further enhancements from other contributions free of charge. Open Source contributes to local economies, directly through savings in license fees, and indirectly through the benefit of skills development, doing away with the black boxes of conventional proprietary, closed-source information technology. The tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution. Bika does not take on work in the defence industry, and in support of Bishop Tutu's Plea to the people of Israel: Liberate yourselves by liberating Palestine, neither there. Development of Bika Cannabis is under way, please submit your requirements towards a best of breed design. Working under the Open Source philosophy is very comfortable because it is a way to share and show work. The automated results publication, instrument interfaces and query functions are winners. Our analysts spend their time much more productively in the lab, far less on client queries. Mark Shuttleworth, Linux' Elon Musk, is preparing Canonical for an IPO and that is why Unity phone and desktop convergence was dropped earlier. Unity lives on as community project with Shuttleworth support. Too much of a proposal, my FOSS recommendation was not published. There are not many good independent lab blogs covering day to day lab subjects sans overt marketing, and hardly any on lab automation. Related to jungle bush quail and rock partridge, spurfowl were long mistook to be a peasant subfamily. Reclassified Pterinistis, they restrict themselves to Africa, thrive, and near all prevail safe on threatened species lists. Uninformed, and very old misconception, but one we struggle with every day as users 'mistake themselves for paying clients'. Open Source expectation and misconception observations. Social media hype not withstanding, useful shared information can be found and contributed to on otherwise business driven LinkedIn's lab related groups, speed reading with hot air detectors on. With the LIMS Circus group we aim to be both informative, entertaining and provocative, towards the witty standard set by Slashdot Science.