In this article, we will discuss the Fo Camp and gatherings aimed at promoting dialogue and conversation. We often hear complaints about high-level meetings that only provide “mere talk.” However, perhaps not enough consideration is given to gatherings that explicitly aim to foster dialogue and interaction among people, in the hope that people will be inspired and that unexpected developments will follow. It is the organizers’ duty to increase opportunities for positive interaction.
The Idea of Fo Camp
A few years ago, publisher Tim O’Reilly and his colleagues envisioned the idea for such a gathering. O’Reilly is a prominent advocate for interactive web activities such as wikis and blogging. In the same spirit, the agenda of these meetings is immediately developed by attendees, around 100 people, who gather at an interesting location and camp together for three days. The initial idea was to invite “O’Reilly friends,” thus the first “Fo Camp” was conceived. Although there weren’t major demonstrations or initiatives, there was plenty of inspiration and undoubtedly some increases in the revenues of alcohol manufacturers.
Fo Science Gathering
Given Nature’s and its publishers’ interest in collaborative publishing – see, for example, comment threads on some news stories at news@nature.com and our experience with open peer review (http://blogs.nature.com/peer-to-peer/2006/12/report_of_natures_peer_review_trial.html) – it was not surprising that we collaborated with O’Reilly and conceptualized the idea of “Fo Science.” It was also gratifying that Google found the idea interesting enough to host such a gathering. Thus, around 200 people – primarily scientists, with some technicians and writers – attended at “Googleplex” in Mountain View, California, at the beginning of this month to spend a long weekend of conversation.
The Agenda and Talks
Invited attendees, diverse in discipline, age, and nationality, were not told who would come beside them. They were simply invited to arrive at the venue. Formal presentations were not encouraged. The key to the dynamic was the agenda: a wall schedule with a blank matrix of one-hour sessions in several differently sized rooms stretching over two and a half days, with each session being defined by any individual participant as the meeting progressed. (It was amusing to see who could attract a session deemed worthy of the attention of 150 people, and who could only muster an audience of eight.)
Comments from attendees abounded regarding the stimulation of ideas and feedback they received from an unusual mix of experiences.
Discussions and Ideas
After a preliminary session, participants developed an agenda that included topics such as “How to Fire Scientists,” “Open Peer Review and Wiki Science,” “The Future of Human Evolution,” “Text Mining,” “Educational Robotics,” “Global Health,” “The Semantic Web and Life Sciences,” and “Citizen Scientists” (featured in this week’s Nature podcast).
Such meetings are sure to discuss contemporary shared issues – such as the relationship between science and politics, how scientists should handle media misinformation, and the balance between open and proprietary approaches to anything and everything. But there were also plenty of unconventional ideas, like placing an atmospheric sensor on every mobile phone, and analyzing the “parameter space” of science and technology in order to map and predict future developments.
Organization and Inspiration
The exercise can be portrayed as a massive act of self-indulgence. For example, an entrepreneur wishing to design a $20 floating buoy for ocean experimentation received ideas on how to advance his project, and feedback was provided to public participants in clinical trials regarding their plans to use at-home DNA kits to increase participation in a cancer trial. Many attendees commented on the inspiration they gained from receiving feedback on their ideas from an unusual mix of experiences.
But
Above all, it was the spontaneous way of organizing that gave the meeting an extraordinary and commendable momentum. If this is what a talking place can be like, let’s have more of them.
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Firdous Fo. Nature 442, 848 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/442848a
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Published on August 23, 2006
Issue Date: August 24, 2006
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/442848a
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