BioBarCamp in the Valley before the SciFoo Camp!
Posted by attilachordash on April 28, 2008
It seems that my favorite ever unconference, the SciFoo Camp will be aroundunconferenced by a BioBarCamp this year. The whole idea of the BioBarCamp is based upon the SciFoo Camp, so it is by no means a competitive but a complimentary event.
From the BarCamp wiki: “The BioBarCamp is an idea (fed by the tweets of the BioTwitterer community) to organize a life sciences – biotechnology – personalized genomics & medicine – bioinformatics unconference at the Bay Area around the 3rd SciFoo Camp time, which is 8-10th August. The SciFooCamp generates a lot of enthusiasm & activity but not just for those who are invited (only 200). On the other hand, it would be nice to organize a bio-related BarCamp, just like the Cambridge BarCamb, in which the bio-related SciFoo Campers and all the other biogeeks could gather together.”
The main activity is happening right now at the public BioBarCamp Google Group. If interested please join there or just follow the discussions. We are right now in the process of finding a proper venue and sponsors and any help would be most welcome. Right now 6 or 7 August seems to be the consensus day and we have a very generous offer from The Institute for the Future via Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in Palo Alto (no response from 23andMe so far, see below).
It’s against a classic Twitter story, just like this before. You can reconstruct the whole conversation with Twitter Search Engine Tweet Scan by searching for terms SciFoo, BioBarCamp, SciBarCamp but here are my selected tweets:
Scene One, 04/10/08 How the idea was born on that day in reverse chronological order:
Scene Two 04/22/08 How the biospecificity and name was born alongside with a possible venue idea:
Scene Three 04/23/08 an instant and crucial help from Eva Amsen of Easternblot who happens to be one of the organizers of the Toronto SciBarCamp and also a Twitter user. Eva simply passed on the BioBarCamp info to her fellow SciBarCamp organizers Jamie McQuay and Jen Dodd. Eva’s tweet:
Timo Hannay said
BioBarCamp sounds like a great idea — good luck with it!
(Disclosure: I’m one of the organisers of SciFoo.)
attila csordas said
Thank you, Timo. You are most welcome to visit if you can allocate the time! I recalled that you are a neuroscientist by default. BBCamp sounds like to me as an ideal SciFoo warm-up party too.
Eva said
(First an aside: can you link to my other Twitter account, this one: http://twitter.com/easternblot ? Because I’m slowly probably phasing the other one out, I think, and I’m getting follower request there now, but I’d rather add them to the other one.)
I had been thinking of a trip to San Francisco this summer, so once I know my schedule a bit better I might be able to plan that around BioBarCamp time. The more I think about it, the more doable it seems. But even if I don’t make it, I’m glad to have been of instant and crucial help =)
attila csordas said
Eva: Done. It would be terrific to meet with you there.
Timo Hannay said
Thanks, Attila! I’d love to attend BioBarCamp if I can fit it into my travel schedule. (I did indeed used to be a neurophysiologist.) When you have details, drop me an email or send a message via my Nature Network profile page.
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