Nascent

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.