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.

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.