Science Foo Camp (scifoo) is an annual of

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

scientific

unconference An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid hierarchical aspects of a conventional conference, such as sponsored presentations and to ...

s organized by

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of ...

, Digital Science,

Alphabet Inc. Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and sev ...

, based on an idea from

Linda Stone Linda Stone (born 1955) is a writer and consultant who coined the phrase "continuous partial attention" in 1998. Stone also coined "email apnea" in 2008 which means "a temporary absence or suspension of breathing, or shallow breathing, while doin ...

. The event is based on the spirit and format of Foo Camp, an event focused on emerging technology, and is designed to encourage collaboration between scientists who would not typically work together. As such, it is unusual among conferences in three ways: # attendance is by invitation-only # the delegates come from many different areas of science rather than one subject, such as physics, chemistry or biology # the meeting has no fixed agenda; the invited scientists, technologists and policy makers set the conference program during the conference itself, based on their shared professional interests and enthusiasms, aka

The first event in 2006 was held under the

Chatham House Rule Under the Chatham House Rule, anyone who comes to a meeting is free to use information from the discussion, but is not allowed to reveal who made any particular comment. It is designed to increase openness of discussion. The rule is a system for h ...

. The policy at the second event was to allow open reporting by default; attendees were expected to indicate if their comments were off the record. Science Foo Camp has taken place annually at the Googleplex campus in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is th ...

, United States.

Organization

scifoo is organized by *

Tim O'Reilly Tim O'Reilly (born 6 June 1954) is the founder of O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates). He popularised the terms open source and Web 2.0. Education and early life Born in County Cork, Ireland, Tim O'Reilly moved to San Francisco, Ca ...

and Marsee Henon of

(FOO stands for "Friends of O'Reilly") * Daniel Hook of Digital Science *

Magdalena Skipper Magdalena Skipper is a British geneticist and the editor-in-chief of the journal ''Nature''. She previously served as an editor of '' Nature Reviews Genetics'' and the open access journal ''Nature Communications''. Education Skipper obtained ...

of ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...

'' * Cat Allman of

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

Previously Timo Hannay and

Chris DiBona Chris DiBona ('cdibona', born October 1971) was the director of open source at Google from August 2004 until January of 2023. The open source team at Google oversees license compliance and supports the open source developer community through pro ...

were also hosts and organisers. In 2021 the organizers of Sci Foo released a series of 5-minute lightning talks from alumni on YouTube and a twelve-minute video made at SciFoo 2009 is also available.

Previous events

Science Foo Camp has run every year since 2006: # August 2006.Back To Silicon Valley's Future
- ''Forbes'', August 11, 2006 # August 2007 # August 2008 # July 2009 # July 2010 # August 2011 # August 2012 # June 2013 # August 2014 # June 2015 # July 2016 # August 2017 # June 2018Sci Foo 2018: Changing the World, One Weekend at a Time
- 2 October 2018Sci Foo: intense intellectual, interdisciplinary interaction for influencers
- July 17, 2018 # July 2019https://www.digital-science.com/blog/news/scifoo-2019-a-weekend-of-ideas-and-collaboration/ Sci Foo 2019 – A weekend of ideas and collaboration] - 7 August 2019We Are Getting Ready for SciFoo!
- 10 July 2019 # October 2020 # Sci Foo Alumni Lightning Talks (online) May 13–15, 2021 # October 2021

References

{{Unconference Unconferences O'Reilly Media Recurring events established in 2006 2006 establishments in California