SciBarCamp PA Day 2 and Beyond

I’ve been trying to find the time to throw up a post about the second day of SciBarCamp, so here it goes.  I am kind of glad I didn’t rush one up on Friday morning since I have found so many more worthy posts from other people, especially some of the pictures.  I forgot to bring my camera, so my pictures were just from my Blackberry, which aren’t bad but really not that good.

Before we get into Day 2, I wanted to share something from the flight in.  I had a window seat on the flight in and it seemed like we were on a Southern approach to SFO.  I was amazed at the seemingly endless “sludge ponds” that lined SF Bay in all colors of the rainbow.  I saw a post this morning on twitter that points to the fact that these are actually “Salt Ponds” and teeming with life.  The post also has a link to view on GoogleMaps

So back to Day 2 of SciBarCamp.  The sessions started right on time at 9:30 AM.  My first session was a OpenSource Health/disease research discussion with Jen McCabe of NextHealth.org (among others) and Alexandra Carmichael of CureTogether.com

From Alex Pang's Flickr stream

Next up was a discussion with Matt Baggott entitled “WTF, Psychedelics?”  discussing the use of psychoactive compounds in research, primarily MDMA or “Ecstasy”.   Some pretty cool stuff

U-stream of this discussion can be found on Naomi Most‘s most awesome blog post HERE.

Then the last session before lunch was with Dewayne  Hendricks of Warpspeed.com.  There we discussed Asimov’s Foundation trilogy and Buckminster Fullers “World Game“.   Dewayne was a participant in the original World game 40 years ago and recently re-played the game to many of the same prognostic outcomes. I’ll have to tell you, the conclusion’s aren’t that good.

After lunching on an endless supply of delicious Curried dishes, the afternoon sessions were with Naomi Most and DrKiki (aka Dr Kirsten Sanford)  called “Spinning Science”.   Click on the picture to take you to the full Ustream or go to nthmost’s web page for more.

After this session was one by Grad student and WIRED science writer Aaron Rowe & Rick Henrikson: The future of medical technology. I don’t have any pictures form that one, but I would recommend looking through some of the comments on FriendFeed for this and many other sessions.  I think that pretty much every session had one person tweeting or directly inputting on FriendFeed.

My last session was Brian Mallow, the Science Comedian.  Since I’ve already posted about Brina, so I’ll spare you again.  There were many other sessions I missed, as highlighted in an excellent post by Martin Fenner.   There are also a couple of good  Photo albums out there.

Mine is HERE, Naomi’s HERE and Alex Pang’s HERE

One great shot from Alex’s collection is the Group Shot we took at 1 PM:

That evening, while some prepared to head to SciFoo at Google the next day (Pictured Duncan and  Andrew), I headed out with a numbe of other BarCampers to a Singularity University event at NASA Ames.

One of the goals of Singularity is to save 1 billion people in this 9 week course.  They call this the “Humanity’s Grand Challenge”

Suffice to say that they had a number of “Brilliant” people on the panel (pun intended), but I think my time would’ve been better spent in a pub somewhere.  Geesh…

It was an amazing and wonderful week in San Francisco, but I think I’ve had enough of the Left Coast for another year.

Greetings from #scbPA

A quick morning post about Day 1 at SciBarCamp Palo Alto.

After an uneventful flight across the contintent on Tuesday, we (my traveling companion in Palo Alto is my new business partner in Gahaga Joseph Jackson)  were bright and early Wednesday in search of coffee on Main Street Palo Alto.

I find it odd that they get so little rain here that most shops are open foyer, without doors and awning and such to keep the rain out.  Also, the weather is odd because it’s so “temperate”, tempertures hovering only a few degrees between 58-63 F all day/night in mid-July.

So we stopped in for a coffee at the University Cafe on University Ave to kill an hour before things got started

Then down the street to the Institute for the Future, our gracious hosts for the two-day event, the same place we held BioBarCamp last year.

In standard BarCamp format, Alex Pang of IFTF made some opening remarks:

Then everyone mingles and discussed topics for sessions (to be held all day today):

Sessions are then posted to a White Board with room assignments and time slots, 1 hour each session:

During all of this session planning, there is a lot of networking and catching up to do with people you only encounter at these sorts of unconferences.  One new person I had a chance to chat with briefly was Chia Hwu from 23andMe who I hope will be giving us more insight  into their recently announced Research Revolution.

I was trying to figure out why my web cam wasn’t working on Ustream.  Still can’t figure it out.  We then had a Keynote Address by Sean Mooney (recently relocated to the Bucks Insititute from Indiana University).  I tried tweeting it and streaming it, but found that so distracting I couldn’t concentrate on the talk.  Excerpts of the keynote stream (via my new friend Naomi Most from PirateCat Radio) can be seen HERE (trying to get this post up and get in a shower, so I won’t embed).  I would also suggest following via the FriendFeed room, which integrates twitter feeds and allows more detailed discussions.

This all wrapped up around 6 PM and we split up into smaller groups for food.  I hung around with the organizers and went right next door for some Sushi at Miyake‘s:

Pictured here are Chris Patil, John Gilby and Brian Mallow.  I like hanging out with these guys because they know how to have fun.  Brian, Joseph and I ended up running into Shelley and her husband and having a couple beers at a nearby pub.  Brian is hilarious. I think he managed to reiterate a good portion of this routine into our pub conversation last night.  Well worth the watch:

Must wrap up and grab a shower now.  It’s going to be another full day of sessions, belly laughs and maybe even a couple beers.  Then NASA Ames is cohosting a Singularity U event called “Humanities Greatest Challenges” .  This is going to be an awesome day.

Is Science where IT was 25 years ago?

In case you haven’t noticed, my blogging has lately been dragged into the blackhole that has become the Twitterverse.  I spend so much time tweeting and reading interesting articles posted by my followers and friends and scouring my Google Reader RSS feeds to spew forth things I find interesting to the twitterverse.  I am neglecting FredCoBio.

My apologies.

I do promise to be more engaged this week.  I am leaving in the early afternoon tomorow for Palo Alto, CA to attend SciBarCamp.  Silicon Valley, the land of Google and Yahoo.  A Stranger in a Strange Land, me a Biotech guy in The Garden of Eden of IT.

I was just thinking about the way things were 25 years ago in 1984.  The Orwellian era, the first 4 years of Reganonimics.  Man, things were interesting back then.

After graduating a term early from Wittenberg in 84, we moved back between Rochester and Cleveland for a few months looking for work.  Finally, I landed a job selling windows in Rochester which lasted for about 3 months.  The windows were “made” by US Steel.  One of the lines in the canned pitch I spewed was that “if US Steel goes under , we’re all in trouble.”   I quit because I couldn’t stand bilking people for more money in windows than their house was worth, even without windows.  Then I got a contract job at Xerox, another local company in a new concept called “telemarketing”.

I was there about 18 months, from ’84 until ’85.  I was selling photocopiers (when you work at Xerox, you learn not to call them Xerox machines), Xerox Memroywriter Typewriters ( a daisy wheel typewriter/printer with a limited 10-40K of memory ) and this nebulous thing called an “ethernet”.  The idea of an ethernet was invented by Joseph Wilson for a “paperless office” some time in the mid 1960′s.  Our training was primarily composed of watching 16mm movies (probably Kodak film, which had entered the xerography business by his point in time) made by Joseph Wilson explaining how this “ethernet” would revolutionize the modern American office place.  In retrospect, it was fascinating.  At the time, for a 20-something more interested in what soccer match or practice was coming up that afternoon than actual work, it was like “meh”.    I could push more photocopiers and Memorywriter memory upgrades (after using it, most people did realize how much time it really saved to hit the F1 button to type the return address on an evnvelope than to key every stroke) without having to deal with trying to explain how a “paperless office” would make their life simple.  I made good money for the 80′s, but was still selling more than an entire sales branch of 5-6 field reps and only making 1/2 what one field guy would make.  Selling an ethernet installation over the phone was an entirely different issue.  That got under my skin, so I quit and decided to get back to my college training in Biology and Chemistry.

Before I left Xerox, I witnessed the most remarkable thing: a “facimile” transmission (perhaps the first in North America, The Japanese were rumored to have done this already) between Xerox Palo Alto and our building, building 813 on Henrietta Rd.   A single page of typed text took probably 45 minutes to transmit, but think of how much better that was than via US Postal Service back in 1984?

And so, as I prepare to leave my family alone for nearly a week,  I can’t help but to think of the irony of returning to Palo Alto.  I had this moment of transcendental thought perhaps linking those events of 25 years ago with today.  I hope to engage intelligent (mostly 20 something) people in conversations about how we need to be able to explain in common terms how the medical breakthroughs we have been working on for the past  25 years are analogous to the situation of  ”IT” ( a term surely not yet invented in ’85) and the state opf science today.  So much ignorance and denial of the potential benefits.  So much misunderstanding of the basics of the art.  And how quickly the art of IT advanced and how bio science is in the same state today.  That people could actually question the nature of life as evolving and dynamic, not fabricated by one of many Gods. That our collective knowledge of biological sciences is still so preliminary because the “hardware” doesn’t exist to exploit it fully.  Geesh, it freaks me out.

So I am going to Palo Alto in the AM, leaving FredCoBio.  As may late, great friend Ian Clarkson used to say (who’s father ained considerable noteriety as a UK trained toxicologist at the U of R who discovereded that methylmercury hydroxide, a by-product of some type of fungal infection of grain silos in Baghdad, was responsible for killing 10′s of thousands of people in the 70′s):  If you’re going to trip, you might as well travel.

And what a Long Strange Trip it’s been.

Mushroom hunting: Let the Festivities begin!

At SciFoo at Google in August ’08 I met Paul Stamets of Fungi.com.  One of the many give a ways was his book, Mycelium Running.  I have been obsessed ever since.  I had the opportunity to ask Paul about cultivating morels I have my yard.  I am watching and waiting for my morels to sprout (which is typically 2-5 days after the first heavy rain in April in this region), but in the mean time I am checking out what’s come to fruit after the rains this weekend.  I’ve also propagated some shiitake (which I bought at fungi.com in the form of plug spawn) and some shaggy parasol mushrooms I picked out of the goat yard in the fall.  I am cultivating these in corrugated cardboard (in one case a pizza box) which I left out over the winter.  The mycelium are running, but I am worried I have some undesirable mold running, too.  Time will tell.

In any event, I put together this enjoyable slide show of my Sunday morning mushroom adventure (updated with music):

Now that I have moved my operations into FITCI@Hood, I hope to take advantage of the Hood Biology department to help me identify some of these fungi.  I bought the National Audobon Societies Field Guide, but I can never make a firm identification.  you don’t want to be making bad taxonomic decisions when it comes to wild mushrooms.  Any experts ut there who would like to start a c”shroom hunting Club?  One interesting thing about Paul is that he was the Ken Kesey & the Merry Prankster’sofficial mycologist.

I think I have blogged his TED talk before, but it’s worth another post

BHAG: “Big, Hairy, Agressive Goal”

Be big or stay home, as we used to say in High School.

As I watched “Meet the Press” this morning I was inspired by what I heard at the very end of the interview.

President-elect Barack Obama stated that he wanted to have scientific presentations at the White House while he was the chief resident.

Here’s the transcript from this morning’s broadcast (you can watch the whole interview HERE, on MSNBC):

MR. BROKAW: Who are the kinds of artists that you would like to bring to the White House?

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Oh, well, you know, we have thought about this because part of what we want to do is to open up the White House and, and remind people this is, this is the people’s house. There is an incredible bully pulpit to be used when it comes to, for example, education. Yes, we’re going to have an education policy. Yes, we’re going to be putting more money into school construction. But, ultimately, we want to talk about parents reading to their kids. We want to invite kids from local schools into the White House. When it comes to science, elevating science once again, and having lectures in the White House where people are talking about traveling to the stars or breaking down atoms, inspiring our youth to get a sense of what discovery is all about. Thinking about the diversity of our culture and, and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that, once again, we appreciate this incredible tapestry that’s America. I–you know, that, I think, is, is going to be incredibly important, particularly because we’re going through hard times. And, historically, what has always brought us through hard times is that national character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look forward, that, that sense that better days are ahead. I think that our art and our culture, our science, you know, that’s the essence of what makes America special, and, and we want to project that as much as possible in the White House.

So, I am going to write to our Congressman, the honorable Roscoe Bartlett, and see if I can arrange a BioBarCamp at the White House. An “Unconference” like Foo camp.

I’ll let you know how it goes. I the mean time, if you’d like to attend (assuming I am successful), let me know.

Nature blogs

It’s funny, but I was searching Nature for my blog last week.  A few months ago, I noticed that I was in the “most popular blogs” section.  A couple days ago, I couldn’t find my blog anywhere on Nature.  I thought maybe it was some link through SciFoo association, since Nature is a sponsor of SciFoo.

Then today, there is a write up about the meme that I posted a couple days ago in Nature.

I guess we’re back in favor.  You can read it HERE, but will cut & paste below:

Why do we blog and other important questions, answered by 34 science bloggers

Date:  Sunday, 30 Nov ember 2008 – 22:05 UTC

What started out as a few questions to science bloggers in the Nature Network Bloggers Forum, has turned into a collection of more than 30 blog posts not limited to Nature Network (big thanks to Bora and others for spreading the word). The following science bloggers answered a set of 10 questions about their blogging (roughly in chronological order):

Henry Gee
Eva Amsen
Steffi Suhr
Stephen Curry
Maxine Clarke
Martin Fenner
Bora Zivkovic
Clare Dudman
T. Ryan Gregory
Massimo Pinto (and another post in Italian)
Mike Haubrich
Larry Moran
John Wilkins
Kristi Vogel
Paolo Nuin
Heather Etchevers
Lee Turnpenny
Ricardo Vidal
Bob O’Hara
Deepak Singh
Frank Norman
Jim Hardy
Andrew Perry
Pedro Beltrao
Shirley Wu
Angelos Markos
Thomas Soderqvist
Sandy Gautam
Duncan Hull
John Dupuis
Mike Fowler
Viktor Poór
Richard Grant
Ed Yong
GrrlScientist

Please contact me if I missed a blog post.

Reading these blog posts is not only interesting and entertaining, but probably also a very good introduction to the current state of science blogging. Below is a personal summary of some of the answers. Oh, the best title was probably from Frank Norman: La meme chose.

1. What is your blog about?
Most bloggers seem to write about many different science-related topics. And only a minority about the actual science they are doing. Some bloggers gave more specific answers:

• My blog is about science, in particular evolution and genomes. (T. Ryan Gregory)
• It’s a sort of a window of transparency over a weird scientific environment, the Italian science jobs and funding market. (Massimo Pinto)
• Basically the philosophical implications of science. (John Wilkins)
• Anything releted to Biotechnology in Frederick County, MD. (Jim Hardy)
• The general theme is how we can bring the worlds of information technology and the life sciences together. (Deepak Singh)
• I am trying to put the people behind the science into the spotlight: the technicians, operational support, science management and others. (Steffi Suhr)
• We write about making sense of medicine and medical science in museums. (Thomas Soderqvist)
• Ostensibly about theoretical population biology. (Mike Fowler)
• I am interested in how the internet is changing the way we publish and communicate science. (me)

2. What will you never write about?
Several people mentioned that they would not give out personal information about other people, or comment directly on what’s going on in their institution/company. Most people also avoid to talk religious beliefs or politics. Confidential information, including unreleased papers, was mentioned several times. The release of calcium from intracellular stores is another topic that several people would never blog about. Also:

• Only write about things I actually understand. (Ed Yong)
• I will never ask anyone to give me money via this blog. (Maxine Clarke)
• I hope that I will not have to write blog posts that are evaluated, measured and put on a resumé. (me)

3. Have you ever considered leaving science?
Several people said something similar to Bora Zivkovic: Leaving research – yes, I already did that. Leaving science – never.

4. What would you do instead?
Some interesting answers. And a science background would be helpful in most of the jobs:

• Zookeeper, or an animal trainer in a circus (Bora Zivkovic)
• Jazz trumpeteer (Massimo Pinto)
• Own a used book store (John Dupuis)
• I’d try my best to get a job in video game development (Andrew Perry)
• Tend olive trees in Greece (Duncan Hull)
• Graphic designer (Ricardo Vidal)
• Write very bad science fiction (John Wilkins)

5. What do you think will science blogging be like in 5 years?
This was a difficult question that some didn’t answer. Larry Moran said: pretty much the same as it is now. T. Ryan Gregory thinks that more professional researchers will join the blogosphere as this becomes socially acceptable. Andrew Perry thinks that research groups will be tied together more and more by their blogs. Eva Amsen thinks that there will be so many science blogs that we have to specialize. And I wrote that some science bloggers will be able to make enough money to earn a living from it.

6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?
Thomas Soderqvist said that there is no the most extraordinary thing. But I hadn’t expected to get so many interesting contacts with colleagues around the world. Many people (including myself) had similar answers. Going to SciFoo is certainly an extraordinary thing an SciFoo invitation was mentioned by Pedro Beltrao, Jim Hardy, Duncan Hull and Deepak Singh. Some other answers:

• The Editor-in-Chief of Nature once told David Attenborough that he should read my blog. (Ed Yong)
• Getting a job with PLoS in the comments of one of my posts. (Bora Zivkovic)
• Co-founded a network of science bloggers (The DNA Network) and been invited (and accepted!) to work at MIT. (Ricardo Vidal)
• Getting interviewed by Jon Udell. (Deepak Singh)
• I loaned a power cable to a Nature editor. (Bob O’Hara)

7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?
For most people that was not a big issue. Ed Yong regrets to have written nice things about studies that later turned out to be rubbish not so good.

8. When did you first learn about science blogging?
Many different answers. Nodalpoint was mentioned by several bloggers, including Duncan Hull, Paolo Nuin and Pedro Beltrao. T. Ryan Gregory was introduced to science blogging by his graduate student. The most hilarious answer is from Henry Gee and involves a garage, an old washing-machine motor and heavier-than-air flight.

9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?
The standard answer seems to be that most of them don’t know or don’t care. I would hope that in the future we will have more answers like the one from Bora Zivkovic: That’s what they are paying me for and I hope they are happy.

10. How the heck do you have time to blog and do research at the same time?
Most people blog in their spare time. I hope to see more daytime bloggers that blog as part of their science job in 5 years (this relates to questions #5, #8 and #9).

11. Extra credit: are you able to write an entry to your blog that takes the form of a poem about your research?

Not all bloggers answered that question, but you can find poetry by Heather Etchevers (who suggested that question), Stephen Curry (who inspired it), Henry Gee, Eva Amsen, Bora Zivkovic, Maxine Clarke (a play), Massimo Pinto (science fiction), Shirley Wu (karaoke), Mike Fowler, Bob O’Hara (art), Viktor Poór (a dance) and myself. Paolo Nuin needs a few more encouraging comments before he will write a poem.

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Last updated: Sunday, 30 Nov 2008 – 22:05 UTC

Scientistist & Their Desks

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time on the web, following Twitter messages and FriendFeed and reading blogs all over the world. Mostly science based, most of them from associations made in August at SciFoo or BioBar Camp in California.  Eva posted this video, which I think you would find if you went into just about any academic lab setting here in FredCoBio

Portrait Of A Scientist – Scientist and Their Desks from Imagine Science Films on Vimeo.

And I got this Science Blog meme from Blind.Scientist.  My answers follow

The Science Blog Meme

It started here and I got it from here. Here are my responses:

1. What is your blog about?

Anything releted to Biotechnology in Frederick County, MD (and occasionally else where).

2. What will you never write about?

Biotech in Montgomery County (unless it is a company that moved from FredCo to MoCo or has ties in MoCo)

3. Have you ever considered leaving science?

Yes.  After college, I was in Sales at Xerox and selling Windows in Upstate NY.  After a couple of years I realized that I would never be happy selling office equipment, so I got a lab job.  The rest is history.

4. What would you do instead?

I’d live on a beach somewhere, just fishing all day

5. What do you think science blogging will be like in 5 years?

More interactive and more people involved.

6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?

Getting invited to SciFoo camp and meeting all of these famous people at Google.  Mind boggling.

7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?

Yes, one time I left a comment on PIMM when I was half in the bag late one night which I retracted.  I had to pull down a blog post last week, at the request of MATAN, inviting everyone to the Ground breaking at Riverside.  I was asked to post it by a former colleague, but apparently it was a “private” invitation.

8. When did you first learn about science blogging?

I owe it all to Attila at PIMM.  I was googling about making stem cells from afterbirth and found his famous post. We already had a home blog and this inspired me to start a work blog (and since my wife doesn’t let me post on the home blog any more.)

9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?

“What is a blog?”

10. Extra credit: are you able to write an entry to your blog that takes the form of a poem about your research?

Never considered it, but maybe I’ll give it a try some time.  I don’t really do research, though.  I am an operations guy who makes stuff.

One more thing I found interesting this morning, again from PIMM.  A new Science based Search engine called VALDO.  Check out the PROTOCOLS page (search term Stem Cells added by me, but you can change to whatever interests you).  It’s really good and will be added to my Protocols & SOPS page momentarily.

Pauls, Plugs and the Periodic Table (or the 3 P’s)

I’ve been busily toying around in the Lab and following up with different SciFoo lead, so haven’t been posting much.

The first plug is literally a plug, or a bunch of plugs. A couple of years a go I went in on half a batch of Mushrooms with Paul Silber : spiral dowels infused with mushroom mycelium. We split the loot in 1/2, each taking a hundred or so mycelium infused dowels of Shiitake, Chicken of the Woods and Oyster Mushrooms. I spent the better part of two days drilling holes and plugging logs and nothing happened. But I got some advice from Paul Stamets at SciFoo and decided to plop a couple of logs in the creek for a couple days, now the Shiitakes are in bloom!

I have one Open Science Project we’re working, which involves the development of a “cheap” “inexpensive” hand-held, battery operated PCR device. If anyone reading would like to contribute, you may do so through the DIYbio Google group or just give me a call.

I also wanted to mentioned that our friends around the corner in the Omega Center, ImQuest, have won an NIH grant in the tune of $6.5MM over the next five years. The grant is “to support the development of a long lasting, safe, and acceptable combination topical microbicide product” for the prevention of HIV transmission. I had the chance, briefly, to meet Robert Buckheit when he was in FITCI last week. He’s been reading the blog and promised to make the next BioBeers (not scheduled yet, but probably in November or December).

And today, trying to come up with something to post about, I read this little write up on The Periodic Table of Videos in Genome Technology. There is a video of almost every element in the periodic table, narrated by some whacky chap from Nottingham with hair standing straight up in the air. This one about Na (sodium for you Biology majors) is particularly amusing:

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.

BioBarCamp: It’s a wrap!

Greeting back to my friends in Frederick County from the Left coast. BioBarCamp is a wrap and now I am sitting in my hotel editing my photo captions and running through the notes in FriendFeed.

So here is my quick run down of what a BioBarCamp is all about. Day one starts with lunch and a couple beers, idle mingling and introductions. Then people write up suggestions for sessions they would like to lead. The topics were diverse, but the intent of BioBarCamp was to be a “BIO” focused effort before SciFooCamp (later today at Google), which has no real topic and involves a lot a math, physics, computer and stuff. Bio geeks just can’t get enough and we need to keep to ourselves. The crowd was really dominated by Grad students, quite a few from across the block at Stanford. A few gray beards like myself, but mostly 20-somethings.

BioBarCamp day2

After introductions a keynote talk to get everyone fired up. Not that there hasn’t already been all sorts of theorizing and collaborating and chatting about the most mundane and nerdy stuff. The Day one speaker was Jon Trowbridge from Google talking about top secret stuff I can’t reveal. Well, I could probably reveal it, but I don’t really understand what it is or how I would use it. Essentially, a new Google project for transportation and storage of massive data files (tera bites worth of data). I don’t personally have a huge interest in this kind of stuff, but it was interesting none the less.

After the keynote, people mingled some more, talked to people they thought were interesting and then evaluated the Session Suggestions, marking the one’s that they would like to attend. This takes a lot more effort than you might think, especially when there is some much beer and 75 some odd people much like myself (did I mention that most of them were a bit younger, though?).

Throughout the day, we also posted ideas about the future on the wall, which are supposed to be added to Sciencex2.org.

At 6 we shlepped off down the road to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. I was hoping to sample some more regional fare, but it is hard to find a place that can accommodate a group our size. I have to admit, the Cheese Cake Factory in downtown Palo Alto is much more grandiose that the one I’ve been to in the Inner Harbor, Baltimore.

After dinner, the long ride back to Sunnyvale on the bus. Fortunately, I had some companions on this trip. Joseph, Cameron, Micheal and I spent a good portion of the one hour (for freakin 12 miles!!!) bus ride chatting about science and the day and stuff in general. It made the bus trip almost tolerable, even with the indigent crowd on board at 10 PM.

Day two kicked off with a talk by Aubrey de Gray. Maybe this doesn’t mean too much to the casual reader, but it was a pretty big deal for me. Aubrey is quite a celebrity, actually. He’s been all over the Washington Post (I am too lazy to link back to my post on the topic, so find it yourself), interviewed by Barbara Walters (I think on the Living Forever special she ran on April Fools day) and played a funny clip from his interview with Steve Cobert. I couldn’t find that one, but I’ll link to this rather silly YouTube. By the way, Cameron was streaming the entirty of day two and you scan see Aubrey’s talk on that feed HERE. You’ll need to select the “on Demand” button on the bottom of the screen and pick the video you want to watch. In the deGray speech, you’ll see yours truly seating next to the screen with the Indians hat. I appear to be obsessed with stroking my beard (I wonder why?), but fortunately not picking my nose.

After this talk, the sessions started and ran until about 6 PM. I attended a session about seeding an asteroid with life and establishing a sustainable space colony on Mars by a NASA AMES scientist (my new buddy John), DIYbio (Mac Cowell from Boston, another new buddy), Mediating medical costs, a very interesting talk of “multiplexing” via Flow cytometry, Chris Patel talking about life extension from a more mechanistic perspective, a fascinating talk on oncolytic viruses and a couple more.

The final session was a plenary panel discussion about starting your own business. I was asked to sit on the panel along with 5 others who have experience with Biotech start-ups. Shirley (and others) captured the gist of the session on the FriendFeed, but you had to be there. You can probably drag it up on Cameron’s video site as well.