The best bit about conferences is actually the time you get to spend with people over lunch, in the breaks and in the bar in the evening. The sci foo events are designed to so that all the time is spent doing those three things…

Arrive at Building 43, Google, Mountain View, looking forward to this invite only unconference. I did not quite understand how the completely open format would work but the answer was very well. Friday started with an introduction to the scifoo concept from Tim from O’Reilly and Timo from Nature, all 200 people introducing themselves using 3 tags that described them and then everyone adding session proposals to the big board. Even though i had not planned to propose a session i found myself volunteering to lead one. It was peculiarly participatory…

The evening ended with 4 great presentations (the only pre-planned parts of the agenda). The first by Drew Endy on the time being right for some real convergence between biology and technology – *creating biological building blocks that others can use, just like we do with lego* and showed the work of school kids who had made eau d’E. coli. as part of the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition. Second up was Felice Frankel who showed some fantastic examples of communicating science through photography / imagery. Next up was Saul Griffiths introducing Howtoons (fantastic, am going to Amazon now to pre-order…) with an example from their next phase of work which is looking at communicating energy and climate change. Last up was Charles Simonyi recounting his experience of his *tourist* journey to the international space station earlier this year – also amazing – i liked the fact that when he came back down to earth he found it difficult to move his head under the new forces of gravity so all the first interviews show him being very *stiff headed*. Since Martha Stewart was also present she was asked about the food she had been asked to prepare for the space flight – curious.

I had not met a single person before the event but it was an amazing bunch of people, too many to mention so a list is added in this file, but i liked the fact there was 6 nobel laureates, some great sci fi authors (Neal Stephenson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Bear), Tim O’Reilly, Linda Stone, Sergey Brin……

Jump to day 1 entry and day 2 entry