The second scifoo camp organised by Nature Publishing Group, O’Reilly and Google is fast approaching. I’m looking forward to attending and meeting all the other foo campers, who look like an eclectic bunch of scientists. It will also be fun to have a look around the Googleplex headquarters in California and experience an unconference style event. According to some of the promotional material, there may be a chance to meet Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. So I’m wondering, given the chance, what interesting questions could you ask them?

Here is my short list of topics for conversation:

1. It’s taking you both a long time to finish your PhD’s, about ten years or so. When are you expecting to submit? (cheeky grin) Do you think Stanford University will ever award you an honorary doctorate?
2. Following the invesment in biotech startup 23andMe (see Google goes biotech) what are googles plans in the healthcare and biotech industry? In the future, what new products and services geared towards biotechnology and bioinformatics might Google offer?
3. Privacy is an ever growing issue, both for scientists and the general public, as more desktop applications move to the web. How can individuals protect their privacy on the web when their personal data can be commercially valuable?
4. The recent rise of Celebrities sequencing their own Genomes has alarmed many scientists. Where do you stand on the controversial issue of personal genomics? Is DNA mania spinning out of control?
5. Google Scholar is a handy service used by Scientists all over the world. Does Google have any plans to broaden and extend these sorts of services to the scientific community? For example, can we expect services like Google Metabolic Maps anytime soon? How would you go about creating these applications?

I’m sure there are plenty of other juicy topics for conversation, I should get around to posting some of these to the sci foo wiki . I think scifoo will be scifun, or as Timo Hannay puts it a ’ giant, manic, weekend-long dinner party for geeks ’.

(Photo credit: Picture by George Dyson courtesy of Esther Dyson)