The Omics world

Well I had talked about how Deepak went to SciFoo recently. It turns out that some of this years SciFoo alumni led by the indomitable Jean Claude Bradley (JCB or Horace Moody ) started the “metaverse” version of these sessions on the Nature Island on Second Life called Second Nature.

In keeping with the “non conference” format of the original, session themes at SciFoo Lives On are decided on by the attendants , in this case on the wiki that serves as its permanent home outside of Second Life. Yesterdays session was on the role of “Video in Science” and of course we were there with Deepak as Whitewizard Chemistry and myself as Vishwaroop Baroque.

As I awkwardly bumped into the attendees thanks to my terrible gaming skills , the whitewizard chemistry told the audience about bioscreencast.com. This was followed by a talk by JCB on “YouTube and the Sciences” and finally one from someone at the SciVee project.

This was my first time in Second Life. I entered as a skeptic, since I always thought second Life is just a toy for gaming geeks and uber nerds. But I must say the poster session was just like the real thing with some added benefits. Like in the real thing, the questions made the poster session come alive but this time you get a text transcript of all conversations that took place and an overall rich experience. Not to mention the fact that the poster lives on on the NPG island and does not end up in my lab storage area ( read trash can).

I came away convinced that activities like this have a great value in enriching the online scientific experience.

Bertalan, one of the attendees, live blogged the event. You can catch also read about the goings on at Deepaks bbgm blog and of course on the bioscreencast.com blog.

A full text transcript is available on Jean Claude Bradleys blog