Stranger in a Strange Land: Part III, SciFoo ‘08 Day 2

Day 2, Saturday, began with a bus ride to Google. On the bus, I evesdropped on Andrew Hessel (fellow BioBarCamper) having an interesting conversation with Stewart Brand. I actually didn’t know who Stewart was, but I could just tell he was someone famous. I should have recognized him from reading the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, as he was the organizer of the original Trips Festival, but know is known as an author and Futurist.

Had interesting conversations over breakfast in a camp circle with people including Chris Uhlik, Director of Engineering at Google. I was fascinated with stories he told about being the first American engineer hired by Toyota and his stories of spending two years living at Toyota City.

Then it was off to sessions.

The first Session, presented by Chris Uhlik, was about Google’s “Big Solar” project. Yes, Google appears poised and ready to jump feet first into the Energy business. Other than that, I am not sure how much I am supposed to talk about. Suffice to say that they have a plan, a big plan and the Engineering and funds to back it (or at least get it off the ground).

The next session I attended was on Agin & Life Extension, a joint presentation by BioBarCampers Chris Patil, Attila Csordas and Aubrey de Gray. Attila got me into this whole adventure and for that I am truly grateful. Thank you, my friend. And Chris is just a freaking bundle of positive energy, smart as snap and a terrific person. We had a great time at BarCamp and I hope we get together again soon. In the mean time, I can follow his blog, Ouroboros.

From there, the sessions I attended get foggy. In honesty, that’s when I stopped talking notes and started listening.

I attended on session hosted by Joseph Jackson and Lars Bo Jeppesen about business models for Open Science companies which featured the web site Innocentive.com. The web site is pretty unique. Companies (or individuals) post problems and leave it to the general public to solve for them. Check out some of the Life Science problems and become a solver to earn big $$.

Another session hosted by renown physicists Lee Smolin, Garrett Lisi and Max Tegmark presumably about science Incubators, but it ended up being more about the FQ(x)i foundation as a model of intellectual incubation.

Between sessions I talked with Dan Janzen about his bug collection. Perhaps I impressed him by identifying a moth that he’s collected in Costa Rica, but I thought I had seen in Maryland. I also brought up the topic of tomato Horn Worm parasitic wasps, which he delightfully told me was the topic of a recent publication about the genetic diversity. His demonstration was on “Bar Coding” insects. I had a nice lunch with Christine Borgman and fellow Marylander Ken Beutow from the NCI (in Bethesda, not Frederick).

Another session was about detection of pandemic disease before it becomes a pandemic disease (my paraphrase) and hosted a who’s who of Virology & Infectious diseases: Ian Lipkin (see below), Joel Selanikio, Eric Rasmussen, Scott Layne, Tom Kalil (I think) and someone else I thought was a former (or current) Director at the CDC. I remember the conversation being lively, only itterupted by my dumb ass comment about how Influenza may be a good model system for this. Glad someone else has already thought of this….

Here’s a side with Ian Lipkin (?) presenting Akonni’s microarray platform in another session which I did not attend. Wanted to get the plug in for another FredCoBio alum.

Perhaps my favorite session was by Paul Stamets on how Mushrooms can Save the world. This TED talk is very similar to the one he gave.

I got a free copy of his book, Mycelium Running. I am looking forward to reading it. He also gave me some valuable advice on my own, unsuccessful mushroom farming adventure as well as how to cultivate my morrel farm, for which I am eternally grateful.

The last session of the evening was another favorite: Brian Malow, Science Comedian. better to watch than have me describe it. This is not the science geeky comedy, but funny none the less:

Brian is a great guy. We talked and laughed quite a bit over the weekend. So here’s another YouTube, more geeky, with some interviews:

After a more successful jams session, running late into the night and featuring Nat Torkington’s beautiful Gibson banjo. Here’s me holding it:

And Nat actually playing it:

The Hotel had the bar open this night (the only time I saw it open for the entire week) and I enjoyed lively conversation with Myles Axton (23andMe guinea pig and Nature Genetics publisher), Oanh Dang, Razi Naqvi and Jonathan Kuniholm (Co-Founderof the Open Prothesis Project).

Day 2 ended at about 2:30 AM, but I was ready to go Sunday morning.