Having just touched down in London from SciFoo 2008, I stare, tinged with jetlag, at the blank page and wonder how anyone could adequately summarize a get-together so bizarrely wonderful.
Spoiled for choice Dueling, self-organized sessions at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California
I participated in sessions on the possibility of using Massively Multiplayer Online Games as a sort of giant geeky cluster processor for scientific research projects, and saw a flying car (or ‘roadable aircraft’, as the CEO of Terrafugia, who looks about ten years old, prefers to call it). I watched the Pope’s astronomer defend Vatican-inspired cosmological research, talked about Descartes and Maxwell with one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson, and – after a day’s session had pummeled my brain into submission – laughed non-stop through an hour of science-inspired stand-up comedy. I watched a rather dry presentation about databases for mega-data devolve into a philosophical argument about whether Craig Venter is a ‘real’ scientist for gathering large datasets and seeing correlations without posing a hypothesis. In fact, later there was an entire session brainstorming how the traditional scientific method might evolve and be tweaked for better effect in the future. I saw an earnest neurologist and an evo-devo maven debate the deeper implications of a dancing cockatoo and glib gerontologists positing how we might extend our lifespans through multiple targeted interventions. I ate lunch with carbon sequestration specialists and Google engineers, sat in the hotel hot tub with futurists and solid-state physicists, skived off talks in the bright Silicon Valley sunshine with statisticians, professors of risk and macroeconomists.
Non-linear A freewheeling discussion of public engagement, LabLit and why Everything is the Media’s Fault (check out a certain someone’s fetching five o’clock shadow)
The chaotic nature of the entire event was equally evident in the session I helped organize with SF novelist John Gilbey and pseudoscience basher Ben Goldacre called ‘Seducing the Public with Science. (Ben wanted to call it ’Pimping Science’ or ‘Seducing the Pubic’ but was gently overruled.) Someone spontaneously decided to summarize the unfolding discussion on the white board and, as you can see from the figure above, what it lacked in coherence it made up for in raw enthusiasm.
The only drawback was that the Googleplex’s impressive array of free snacks did not include Cheetos or indeed much in the way of the faux cheese-based snack food which is so imperative to fuel my intellectual thought processes. Fortunately, there was a goodly amount of evening booze and a critical mass of Brits to help deploy it liberally. (And yes, both Matt and Cameron managed to look adorable with hangovers. What’s their secret?)
A great meeting indeed! I also just posted a summary of my impressions: See here
Cool, first comment!
So, aside from having a laugh and getting drunk (both admirable enterprises on their own!), what did you get out of the unconference? What was the major, or minor collective, overarching message?
bugger :(
No, I’d have to say that ‘bugger’ was not among the top five overarching messages that I picked up.
But seriously, folks. That’s a tough one. It was all very future-oriented and permeated with optimism – even the climate change folks were pretty upbeat. I appreciated the roll-up-your-sleeves, can-do attitude which, I suspect, was down to the heavy Yank influence.
Sounds wonderful. Slowly turning green.
I think “Seducing the Pubic” might have been a bit hairy, to be honest.
Oh, Richard.
That’s all I got.
Sorry that there was a lack of Cheetos, Jenny. I hope that the absurd abundance of all other foods helped with your attention span just a little.
I too am seriously jealous. I think the full impact of SciFoo only hit me a week after it was over. There was way too much information to process on the spot – complete sensory and intellectual overload. At the risk of sounding even cheesier, it was a truly eye-opening weekend. I hope that it was the same for you.
The tents I really didn’t get though. Not then and not now. I know that they are meant to reference the original O’Reilly Foo camps, but I thought they were kinda weird.
The camp chairs had cup-holders, which were good for coffee cups and bottles of beer.
Yes, it was too much all at once. There were probably 20 talks I didn’t want to miss but had to, due to the parallel streams, but it only took a few sessions to fry my brain. I felt like that Gary Larson cartoon where the pupil has the need to pull out a second brain halfway through the exam.
I am seriously considering exploring the MMOG woman about using gamers to crunch my HeLa cell screen. Might make more sense if I blog about is separately, though. (Or is this just the sunstroke talking?)
actually Jenny, it’s a Brit thing. We get taught it at junior school, along with other life-skills such as humour(dry), arrogance, and French(annoying the).
I think they dropped the sandals/socks part of the curriculum a few years back.
Thanks for the mention, Jenny… and with all the impossible choices to be made – every hour – it’s an honor if anyone shows up to your session at all.
Seducing the Public was one of my favorite sessions.
Great to meet you. Who was your evo devo maven? I’m curious what she has to say about that cockatoo.
So much to take in and synthesize. I’ll be making my own blog posts very soon. But, first, I hope to be making rapid eye movements.
Hey Brian! Nice to see you here. I’m still planning on interviewing you for LabLit, so don’t run away, and I’ve got that footage of some of your act to share. (It’s vast, though: do you have an ftp site?) I’ll be in touch by email.
The two cockatoo protagonists were neurologist Ani Patel, who actually rescued the feathered dancer from a sleezy YouTube celeb existence of drugs, rock and loose birds, for independent testing (thereby confirming it as the first example of an animal besides humans being able to dance to a beat) and my good friend Armand Leroi who does evo-devo at Imperial and who is a he, not a she.
In true SciFoo spirit, Ani and Armand have corresponded but had never before had a chance to meet in real life. Their joint double act will probably never be repeated.
Hey Jenny. I just met Ani when he sat down next to me at the final SciFoo wrap-up session – because we’re both involved in next year’s inaugural San Diego Science Festival. I can’t wait to talk to him again.
I need to be preparing for a show tonight and, after that, we can talk about video and interviews.
Looking forward to it!
I suspect Ani could charm the feathers off more than a cockatoo.
Good luck with your show and speak soon! When’s the SF festival taking place?
I’m on the advisory board of the inaugural San Diego Science Festival – not San Francisco – (and I think Ani will be participating – he lives there). It’s slated for March/April 2009.
But…. the same people have recently networked with the Cambridge, Mass., people that have already done two annual festivals, I believe, and some folks in Philadelphia and San Francisco that are in very early planning stages, so no dates yet. But I hope to get involved with all of them, if possible.
Especially the one here in SF! Towards that, some of them are coming to my show tonight. :)
The show that I’m supposed to be preparing for right now! .
Sounds exciting – keep us posted!
It was all very future-oriented and permeated with optimism
You must have missed the session about Global Catastrophes and Existential Risks…
To avoid being pointlessly jealous (I’ll never get to go anyway), I’m just pretending that there is no such thing as SciFoo and you’re all just collectively making it up as some kind of long-running unfunny joke.
Aw, Eva.
hugs
You know what the really sad thing was? It wasn’t a hangover – I was just that wiped out by the whole thing. But I’ll take any compliments that are going anyway :)
@Sabine _It was all very future-oriented and permeated with optimism…You must have missed the session about Global Catastrophes and Existential Risks…
Heh. Actually, I think that’s the session that was parallel to the stand-up comedy. As we all funneled out of the room, still chuckling, we passed an eerily quiet room full of really depressed looking people and someone whispered, ’That’s the the doom and death session’.
@Eva We’ll put in a good word for you for next year. They seldom invite the same people twice, so we’ll be the green ones in 2009.
Great summary, Jenny – particularly the final sentence. I’ve got at least 3 blog posts planned, to make everyone even more jealous, including a photo-tour of the Googleplex and film footage of the flying car. Stay tuned…
Better you than me for the details – it all seems a bit of a blur now.
Did you manage to film the robot swarm, though? Everyone I talked to missed it.
It was nice to meet you Jennifer – hopefully we’ll get to meet again in London in a few weeks
Ditto!
I’m sure you looked good with a hangover too, but I don’t think I caught you at it.
Afternoon all
I arrived here from It’s time for Conference 2.0 and am definitely jealous about this Foo thing. But I’m also intrigued to see reference to dancing cockatoos.
This idea seems to have been burbling away in podcasts (I think the Guardian may have covered it) and possibly some others but just on the cusp of getting into my consciousness I suppose.
I have been wondering if anyone’s seen The Ladykillers (the original one – 1955 – with Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness). I’d always been convinced that the cockatoo was dancing along with the music in that film, but perhaps it’s just doing that movement anyway – 4min 10 with music – The Ladykillers Part 5 and without music, ~15 seconds The Ladykillers Part 2"
Possibly I’m just imagining it :)