Thoughts from planet Google

Colourful bikes, a tyrannosausrus rex sculpture that has evolving relationships with pink plastic flamingos, buildings identified by the fundamental physical constants, food never more than thirty feet away, and pool tables in the office: where else could this be but Google's headquarters? Scifoo 2010 has just ended, and I have to report that it was a rather extraordinary and mentally exhausting experience. The assembled intellectual weight was sufficient to threaten induced seismicity here in Sunnyvale California: a clutch of Nobel Laureates, prominent research scientists and students from all fields and all parts of the world, media folk, assorted other luminaries - and me. When my wife reviewed the list of participants, she observed that it appeared to be dominantly leading scientists but with a few wildcards - I, she commented, would fall into the latter category; I took this as a compliment.

As an "unconference," the entire scheduling of sessions was left until the first evening, and took place via a chaotic rush to grab a large coloured post-it note, scribble down your session title, and slap it onto a space on huge whiteboards with times and rooms. Somehow or another, it worked:

There were occasional challenges where a room with a designated capacity of sixteen held an audience of forty, but again it turned out not to be a problem, merely an opportunity for close-packed intellectual critical mass. The one thing it did have in common with conventional conferences was parallel sessions - really difficult choices that left all of us wishing that we lived in a multiverse (the topic of some of the sessions). For my session, I was fortunate to hook up that first night with Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, and Lenny Smith, Professor in Statistics at the London School of Economics and Senior Research Fellow of Pembroke  College, Oxford; both are leading figures in the world of climate science, and their presence provided a whole new dimension to my agenda. The close-to-forty people who attended (or crammed themselves into the sixteen-capacity room) engaged in a highly stimulating discussion - no issues were resolved, but it was serious fun. 

The spirit of Scifoo is that participants try to attend sessions on topics that they are completely unfamiliar with. This was not a problem for me. I am now aware that space is an emergent phenomenon, as is gravity, and that gravity has an entropic origin. Please don't quiz me on the details. I watched movies of previously blind mice successfully navigating a maze after having restorative genes delivered by viruses. I engaged in a discussion of "The future of the author," joined a debate about how to construct a virtual reality climate change game, ruminated on prediction markets, and learned the three rules for being a successful mad scientist. 

The steam from my poor brain is now diminishing, but there remains a lot to think about and contacts to follow up on. The entropic origin of gravity, however, I shall probably not dwell on further.....

 

Comments

[F]

That un-conference sound really cool. I'll have to have a look and see if any talk transcriptions are published.

Just to share: Extraterrestrial arenaceousness.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729205552.htm
Blowing in the Wind: Cassini Helps With Dune Whodunit on Saturn's Moon Titan

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729205651.htm
Martian Dust Devil Whirls Into Opportunity's View

Perhaps this is slightly less mind-bending than discussing gravity as an emergent property.

Cheers!

[Sandglass]

I believe that you will only find talk descriptions on tweets and blogs - being an unconference, everything was extremely informal - and undocumented.

Thanks for the links - I like dune controversies on distant moons!

[F]

Thank you for the hints. I may be able to find a little something, then. Better than fully peer-reviewed publications hiding behind a paywall any day.

[F]

I just wanted to note that the Accretionary Wedge which you (at least partially) inspired is very interesting. I still have quite a bit to read, but it is a positive banquet of food for thought.

Also, I may have found an over-abundance of Sci-Foo commentary. :D