Science Foo Camp

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Science Foo Camp, also known as SciFoo, is a series of interdisciplinary scientific conferences organised by O'Reilly Media and Nature Publishing Group (FOO stands for "Friends of O'Reilly"). It is based on the spirit and format of Foo Camp, an unconference focussed on emerging technology, and is designed to encourage collaboration between scientists who would not typically work together. As such, it is particularly unusual among scientific conferences in three ways; it is invitation-only, the invitees come from all over science rather than one subject (such as physics, chemistry or biology), and 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. The first event in 2006 was held under Chatham House rules (meaning that what is said at the conference can not be attributed to any one person). 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.

Thus far, SciFoo has been hosted by Google at the Googleplex. The first meeting was held in August 2006^[1], and the second took place in August 2007^[2].