Stranger in a Strange Land: Part I, BioBarCamp

I have been thinking about how to write a summary of my week away from Frederick County for the past three days. I guess the best way to do it is in words and pictures.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent at BioBarCamp, hosted by the Institute for the Future in downtown Palo Alto

We arrived early to set-up and then the campers started showing up around noon for lunch, drinks and networking. It was the first time I had a chance to meet Attila and John Cumbers, whom I have been chatting with on-line for a long time. Since they’re both grad students and just a tad younger than me, they have seemingly uncontrollable energy for this kind of chaos.

You can find the complete list of attendees (although I think maybe a couple non-registered people showed up) as well as the entire schedule of events on the Wiki. At BioBarCamp, I made a presentation about “Afterbirth derived mesenchymal stem cells as a sustainable alternative to Bone-marrow stem cells”. Here’s what I presented:http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dt2zc5z_0d7kwz8c4

For more information see: Pedro’s blog, Carmeron’s presentations, Cameron’s video feeds (select the “On-Demand” button for talks),Cameron’s blog, Pedro’s Flickr page, IFTF’s blog, the FriendFeed room and McBlawg

The Keynote on Thursday AM was by Aubrey de Gray. You can see his key note, which was streamed live by Cameron HERE (go to lower left of the flash screen and pick “on Demand”).

This is from the TED Conference in 2006:

I can’t figure out how to embed it, but click the link to view Aubrey’s moment of fame on the Colbert Show Feb. 11, 2008. He has also appeared on Barbara Walters Special April1, 2008.

I was planning on knocking the whole week off today, but I am already tired and have enough links in here already. My summary of BioBarCamp was that it was increadibly fun, interesting, entertaining and tiring. I mer some very talented young people, and a couple older ones like me and heard some interesting sessions.

We concluded with a Panel discussion on Biotech Start-up’s and I was asked to sit on the panel. I thought it was entertaining, but not all that enlightening. We started by trying to define “Open Science”, which we didn’t actually do, so this lead to yet another session on Thursday (which I believe is in Cameron’s video collection).

Dinner on Wednesday at the Macaroni Grill was fine, but I like the more personal touch on Thursday at Bucca di Beppo. Maybe it was just the Chianti?

I’ll pick up with SciFoo camp tomorrow.