Future Now
The IFTF Blog
BioBarCamp
In a blog post the other day, I mentioned FooCamp--which is an annual invitation-only participant driven conference hosted by open source publishing legend Tim O'Reilly (who, interestingly enough, is credited with coining the term "Web 2.0"). On August 6th & 7th, the Institute will be hosting BioBarCamp. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, BarCamps are user-generated conferences—open, participatory workshop-events, during which content is provided by participants. They are sometimes referred to as unconferences. My colleague, Alex Pang, has observed, "[T]hese camps . . . at their best are semi-chaotic but intellectually exciting affairs." You can read more about BarCamps here.
BioBarCamp will focus on life sciences, biotechnology, personalized
genomics & medicine, bioinformatics and related topics. The one scheduled event is a talk by Jon Trowbridge, who will be pulling the wraps off a stealthy science-related project he's leading at at Google.
According to Alex, "For anyone with an interest in the future of science in general, biotechnology, the future of health, or life extension, it should be a stimulating couple days. Also it's interesting as an example of a VERY different kind of conference than the ones we [at IFTF] organize."