SciFoo things to read

I just got back from SciFoo. Thanks to Tim O'Reilly, Nature, and Google for putting together the conference, and also to Timo Hannay of Nature for inviting me.

I'm still sorting through everything I learned - SciFoo is a lot like the Hackers conference in that the idea is to put a lot of interesting people from all over who are actually doing things, and let them decide what the conference is about. It's spontaneous and exhausting, and also a lot of fun.

I kept track of the books, papers, and websites people mentioned as interesting and important, and I thought I'd share this list:

• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Robert Heinlein. Mentioned by Charles Simonyi, who carried it to the ISS and read it in space. (Amazon)
  
• Quantifying global exergy resources. W. Hermann. Mentioned by Saul Griffith and Joost Bonsen of Howtoons. (pdf)
  
• Cartesian Meditations. Husserl. Mentioned by Neal Stephenson.(Amazon)
  
• The End of Time. Julian Barbour. Mentioned by Neal Stephenson. (Amazon)
  
• The Road to Reality. Roger Penrose. Mentioned by Jaron Lanier. (Amazon)
  
• "Reprocessing the Universe." John Wheeler. Mentioned by Lee Smolin.
  
• The Mathematical Universe. Max Tegmark. Mentioned by Neal Stephenson. (arXiv)
  
• The Theory of abstract objects. Edward N Zalta. Mentioned by Neal Stephenson. (website)
  
• The usefulness of useless knowledge. Abraham Flexner. Mentioned by George Dyson. (excerpts at IAS)
  
• How many humans can the earth support. Joel E. Cohen. Mentioned by Kim Stanley Robinson. (Amazon)
  
• The world, the flesh, and the devil: an enquiry into the future of the three enemies of the rational soul (1929). John Desmond Bernal. Mentioned by Greg Bear. (copy)
  
• The myths of innovation. Scott Berkun. Distributed at SciFoo. (Amazon)
  
• 23andme.com - Genomics. Mentioned by Anne Wojcicki (co-founder) and Esther Dyson (board member). (website)
  
• Freebase - Open source data. Mentioned by Danny Hillis (co-founder) and me (founding team). (website)
  
• JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments). Mentioned by Moshe
  Pritsker (website)
  
• Bioscreencast.com - screencast sharing for life scientists. Mentioned by Deepak Singh. (website)
  
• Eigenfactor.org - ranking and mapping scientific knowledge. Mentioned by
  Carl Bergstrom (website)
  

I'm sure I missed some, and there were other sessions that I didn't attend, so I welcome suggestions for additions to this list from other conference attendees. Either email me (ptufts AT gmail DOT com) or post in the comments section.

Updated 9 Aug @ 3am

Sci Foo: Unconference schedule

Scifoo: Unconference schedule
Originally uploaded by ptufts.

SciFoo is an unconference. It works like this - invite several hundred hackers and scientists, put up an empty schedule, and let people fill in what they want to talk about.

Two days, up to ~14 parallel sessions, and somehow, it works. Talks are much less formal (and also less tedious) than a typical conference, and people in the audience tend to be interested enough to speak up. Many of the spontaneous sessions had around 20 people in the audience, but some (James Randi's talk) had many more.

Hackers, another conference I go to, does a hybrid approach with 3 parallel talks and a lot of spontaneous BoFs (birds of a feather sessions).

One of the key ingredients to an unconference - a sufficient number of small rooms so that you can have lots of 20-30 person talks, combined with good open space for people to hang out and meet. Large convention centers often lack the latter - San Francisco's Moscone Center's meeting halls are too large, and the food areas (where people congregate) are too impersonal and open.

Small hotels, or large company spaces on weekends (thanks, Google) seem to have the right mix of spaces.

Where the energy comes from, and where it goes

Where the energy comes from, and where it goes
Originally uploaded by ptufts.

This was the single most illuminating, fascinating slide from SciFoo. It's of a single diagram showing where all the energy on the earth comes from, where it gets stored, and where it goes.

The Nature of Time and Mathematics

The Nature of Time and Mathematics
Originally uploaded by ptufts.

SciFoo: an unconference where you can attend a talk titled "The Nature of Time and Mathematics", by Neal Stephenson, Jaron Lanier, and Lee Smolin, and see Martha Stewart in the front row and engaged in the group conversation.

SciFoo 07 memories

Freeman Dyson
Originally uploaded by ptufts.

I went to George Dyson's talk in the history of computing. After the talk, George's father Freeman reminisced about the early days - it's always good to have a primary source in the audience.

In this photo, Martin Rees (left) looks on as Freeman talks about working with Kurt Godel.

Charles Simonyi, Space Tourist #5

Charles Simonyi, Space Tourist #5
Originally uploaded by ptufts.

Charles Simonyi spoke at the first night of SciFoo at Google about being a space tourist. It was fascinating to hear first hand what it was like, and also good to hear an engineer's frank take on the space program.

Will he go in space again? Well, Russia's offering a 6 day $100M round-the-moon Soyuz trip. Not as comfortable as the relatively roomy ISS, but what an opportunity to see the moon close up.

Martha Stewart talks about astronaut food

Martha Stewart talks about astronaut food
Originally uploaded by ptufts.

At SciFoo, Charles Simonyi talked about being a space tourist (number five), and Martha Stewart talked about preparing meals for astronauts.

There are limits on what you can send into space not just weight limits, but food limits too. You don't want to send something that's difficult to eat in zero gravity. No fish allowed on the ISS. And you have to make something the astronauts can prepare and eat.