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There's an editorial about Science Foo Camp in this week's issue of Nature.
I'm now in Sebastopol, CA for the original technogeek Foo Camp. Now that I have web access again, I'll try to post something about this, along with some final reflections on SciFoo, sometime between now and Monday.
Science Foo Camp wrapped up yesterday after what felt like a very short, very intense time. There was some more amazing sessions in the morning, but apart from one in which I presented a brief segment on Nature's activities in Second Life (on which more another time), I missed them all. Instead I spent the time outside the conference rooms meeting people whom I had promised myself that I would speak with before they went home (for exmaple, one of the guys from the excellent OpenWetWare project). Such are the constant dilemmas of fascination that characterised the whole event.
Then to lunch and a wrap-up session in which Tim O'Reilly and I asked for feedback from the other participants. The main questions on my mind were the obvious ones: had people got anything valuable out of attending, and should we hold more SciFoos in future? The answers, to my ears at least, were a resounding yes and yes. So, although this was the first SciFoo, I strongly suspect it won't be the last. Foo works for scientists too.
Special thanks and kudos to Google for being such great hosts, to O'Reilly for teaching us how Foo Camps are done, and most of all to everyone who came (many of whom were completely unfamiliar with the Foo Camp concept) for acting as willing guinea pigs in our slightly whacky experiment, and for entering into the spirit of the occasion so willingly and so completely.
I'm now on holiday with my family for a couple of weeks, but I hope to post some more considered reflections on SciFoo in the next few days.
I'm in rather a hurry to go to Sunday's sessions, but to give you a flavour of what's going on at Science Foo Camp, here are some sessions that I attended on Saturday:
OK, back to the Googleplex for Sunday's sessions.
You know you've arrived in Silicon Valley — and at Science Foo Camp — when the guy checking in ahead of you at the hotel not only looks incredibly like Danny Hillis, but actually turns out to be Danny Hillis.
By the time I got to the SciFoo venue at the Googleplex yesterday evening, it was already swarming with other great people, most of whom I knew only by name and reputation. After some food, beer and chat in the evening sun, the event proper kicked off with a brief introduction by Tim O'Reilly and me, some very brief (3 words each) self-introductions from the other 200-or-so attendees. Then one of the most fun parts of any Foo Camp: writing the agenda. Three huge bright white boards were soon littered with pen marks describing proposed sessions. These included one from John Lester and me about 'Web 2.0 and virtual worlds in science' (or something like that). I didn't even get a chance to study the other offerings very carefully, so can't say what else I'll be hearing about today.
We rounded off the evening with three invited 'teaser' talks to give a flavour of the goodies to come. In true Foo spirit (which in this case is arguably a euphemism for our mild disorganisation), the speakers were given only a few minutes warning, but came up with the goods all the same. One talk was on the nascent digital revolution in fabrication (following on from the digital revolutions that have already happened in communications and computing). The next was about controlling neuronal activity, and hence some types of animal actions and behaviours, using flashes of laser light. The last was about a genuine but harebrained-sounding project in the 1950s aimed at building a vast nuclear-bomb-powered rocket that would allow humans to populate other planets in the solar system. Each talk was amazing in its own unique way.
I left the Googleplex for the hotel shattered. In London (where I'd left my body clock), it was already past 6am. A fat, opalescent moon peered above the trees as I climbed into my car and pointed it back up the road. I reflected that this felt just like the original Foo Camps, except with scientists. Everything, in other words, that we'd hoped.
I'm about to climb on a plane to travel to what I expect will be the most amazing scientific meeting I've ever attended.
What would be your ideal scientific conference? It's a thought game I've sometimes played. Naturally, some of the most amazing minds on the planet would be there. Lots of them, but not so many that you might not hear or speak to most of them — around 200, say. And what about the topic? There are just too many interesting subjects to choose from, so my perfect meeting wouldn't have a theme as such: the topics would be as varied as the delegates, and it would be up to them to decide what they wanted to talk about. The venue? Somewhere warm (as in climate) but also cool (as in credibility). California? Silicon Valley? I know: the Googleplex!
Except it's not a daydream, it's happening for real, and even as I write these words I can hardly believe it. A couple of hundred of the greatest thinkers in science and technology (and me) are converging on the US West Coast for Science Foo Camp, a meeting being organised by O'Reilly (originators of the Foo Camp format) and Nature, and being hosted by Google at their Mountain View headquarters. In true Foo Camp style, there's no agenda yet, but by the end of Friday evening, shortly after our kick-off dinner, there will be. And then two remarkable days will follow.
It's an invitation-only event, so if you haven't already been invited and confirmed your attendance then, sorry, you can't come. But I will try to write up my impressions on this blog (when I'm not too busy participating). I'll also be collecting links to coverage elsewhere on the web under the Connotea tag 'scifoo'.
Now, off I go...
A couple of days ago we were lucky enough to welcome Frank Burnet, a leading practitioner and proponent of science communication. He is based at the UWE in Bristol, UK and, among many other things, is a director of the Cheltenham Festival of Science.
I didn't take my usual set of verbose notes because I was far too busy enjoying Frank's talk. He described various ways of communicating science, particularly to non-scientists. These ranged from the traditional (e.g., lectures) to the much less traditional (e.g., ads on buses, quizzes in supermarkets, demos at motorway service stations, and drama-led debates). Suffice it to say that if you get a chance to see what his team is up to, or to hear Frank talk, then do. He's a very insightful, engaging and entertaining guy, and he's working in an area — the public understanding of science — that should be important to us all.
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