The Bioinformatics Virtual Coordination Network (BVCN) was founded in an effort to facilitate entry of researchers in environmental and biomedical sciences into computational biology and to mitigate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on bioinformatics research. As labs shut down and field research came to a halt as a result of the pandemic, the network was established so bioinformatics researchers could continue to learn about large-scale data analysis and computational biology. The conference aimed specifically to give researchers an overview of the steps and challenges in organizing a bioinformatics project.