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.
*Update - June 3, 2008* We now have a venue and confirmed dates for BioBarCamp
Date: August 6-7
Venue: [The Institute for the Future]
124 University Ave,
Palo Alto, CA, 94301
Remember the origin of BarCamp: "In 2005, a complementary alternative BarCamp was created by a past attendee of Foo Camp and a few individuals who were interested in organizing their own version of FooCamp, and hosted at the Socialtext offices in Palo Alto, California by Socialtext founder Ross Mayfield, with an open invitation to anyone who wanted to join."
Attila Csordas research scientist & biotech geek blogger /SciFoo Camper in 2007 & invited in 2008/
Possible hosts: I've already sent out the following letter to 23andMe, 04/22/08:
Dear 23andMe,
I - amongst few fortunate others alongside with Anne Wojcicki - was a happy participant of the SciFoo Camp, 2007 organized by O'Reilly and Nature and hosted by Google at the Googleplex. A big population of the SciFoo Campers were young biologists, bioinformaticians, which is a hint that maybe it is time to organize a specific Biotech - Genomics - Personalized Medicine - Regenerative Medicine related scientific unconference, a BioBarCamp (a version of SciBarCamp) specially for those geeky types in the field who would be eager to participate.
23andMe is the flagship web based biotech startup, so I'd like to ask whether you can host such an event around SciFoo time in early August to collect together the biotech geeks. In your official launch webcast back in November, 2007, I asked the following question:
Does 23andMe plan to organise research conferences to support research?
Linda Avery's and Anne Wojcicki's answer were: "It's something that we have and plan."
A BioBarCamp seems to be a good opportunity to realize that promise.
Best regards,
Attila Csordas
