Well that was a fun evening. I’ve entered the Googleplex, gained a pocket full of kryptonite and stroked a flying car. Better yet, I’ve downed several bottles of beer with some of the greatest minds on the planet.

This is SciFoo, an invitation-only unconference of brilliant minds (and me), organised by Nature, Google and O’Reilly. A couple of hundred people – scientists, artists, business folk, technologists – are brought together in Google’s HQ in Mountain View to discuss life, the universe and everything.

At the opening session, each delegate is asked to give their name, job and three words to describe their interests. Many selected safe, descriptive terms but with so many creative types around we got a fair few chuckles. Our very own Jenny Rohn received the biggest huzzar for declaring ‘Scientists are sexy’. Timo Hannay of Nature.com playfully suggested ‘Print is dead’, to which Nature Editor Phil Campbell retorted ‘Print lives yet’. And author Neal Stevenson broke the rules by using a sentence to describe himself: “Putting the ‘hard’ back into ‘hard science fiction’”. Very apt, if you’ve read one of his novels.

I don’t think I’m going to get much sleep over the next two days. Much more soon…