SciBarCamp Palo Alto coverage

Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I attended the SciBarCamp Palo Alto un-conference, generously hosted and deliciously catered for by the IFTF.

Pictures of the event shared via PicasaWeb

I did my best to record as much of this amazing conference via ustream using the hodgepodge of tools that happened to be in my car at the time. (When I produce films I hire cameramen, and I'm not also trying to be an active participant in what I'm filming -- bit of a conflict of interest, heh.)

There were challenges in keeping the stream going, due to the limited wifi network for guests at the IFTF. I'd love to work with the organizers next time around and arrange more technical stuff in advance, and increase the success and quality of these streams.

Keynote speech (broken up into 3 parts due to connection drops):








I did a panel w/ Dr. Kirsten Sanford on "Spinning Science", which was great fun, well-attended and well-debated. (cuts off at 50mins due to connection issues)




Matt Baggott did a "Psychedelics WTF" presentation that I wished I could have hung out more for, but I was still trying to set up capture devices for as many presentations as possible.



I took some audio of some other rooms that I wasn't in -- I'll edit and post that later.

Reverend Billy on the Dance of Capitalism and Creativity

Introduced to me by Pirate Cat's own DJ Spider of the League of Pissed Off Voters, here's a bit from Reverend Billy (The Church of Life After Shopping is his website and movement) remarking on the "freezing" effect that the capitalist progression from initial creativity to gentrification has on the production of art and music.

Rev. Billy is presently running for mayor of New York City and has almost achieved enough donations from independent sources to acquire a $120,000 campaign matching fund from the state. He will be visiting San Francisco on Tuesday, July 21st...