So BioBarCamp started yesterday with a bang and a great kick off. Not only did we somehow manage to start early we were consistently running ahead of schedule. With several hours initially scheduled for introductions this actually went pretty quick, although it was quite comprehensive. During the introduction many people expressed an interest in ‘Open Science’, ‘Open Data’, or some other open stuff, yet it was already pretty clear that many people meant many different things by this. It was suggested that with the time available we have a discussion session on what ‘Open Science’ might mean. Pedro and mysey live blogged this at Friendfeed and the discussion will continue this morning.
I think for me the most striking outcome of that session was that not only is this a radically new concept for many people but that many people don’t have any background understanding of open source software either which can make the discussion totally impenetrable to them. This, in my view strengthens the need for having some clear brands, or standards, that are easy to point to and easy to sign up to (or not). I pitched the idea, basically adapting from John Wilbank’s pitch at the meeting in Barcelona, that our first target should that all data and analysis associated with a published paper should be available. This seems an unarguable basic standard, but is one that we currently fall far short of. I will pitch this again in the session I have proposed on ‘Building a data commons’.
The schedule for today is up as a googledoc spreadsheet with many difficult decisions to make. My current thinking is;
- Kaitlin Thaney – Open Science Session
- Ricardo Vidal and Vivek Murthy (OpenWetWare and Epernicus). Using online communities to share resources efficiently.
- Jeremy England & Mark Kaganovich – Labmeeting, Keeping Stalin Out of Science (though I would also love to do John Cumbers on synthetic biology for space colonization, that is just so cool)
- Pedro Beltrao & Peter Binfield – Dealing with Noise in Science / How should scientific articles be measured.
- Hard choice: Andrew Hessel – building an open source biotech company or Nikesh Kotecha + Shirley Wu – Motivating annotation
- Another doozy: John Cumbers – Science Worship / Science Marketing or Hilary Spencer & Mathias Crawford – Interests in Scientific IP – Who Owns/Controls Scientific Communication and Data? The Major Players.
- Better turn up to mine I guess :)
-  Joseph Perla – Cloud computing, Robotics and the future of Science and Joel Dudley & Charles Parrot – Open Access Scientific Computing Grids & OpenMac Grid
I am beginning to think I should have brought two laptops and two webcams. Then I could have recorded one and gone to the other. Whatever happens I will try to cover as much as I can in the BioBarCamp room at FriendFeed, and where possible and appropriate I will broadcast and record via Mogulus. The wireless was a bit tenuous yesterday so I am not absolutely sure how well this will work.
Finally, this has been great opportunity to meet up with people I know and have met before, those who I feel I know well but have never met face to face, and indeed those whose name I vaguely know (or should know) but have never connected with before. I’m not going to say who is in which list because I will forget someone! But if I haven’t said hello yet do come up and harass me because I probably just haven’t connected your online persona with the person in front of me!