Coffee breaks and SciBarCamp

I was reading the Incomplete Manifesto of Bruce Mau, and of the items reminded me of SciBarCamp:

“39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.”

update – Also, SciBarCamp is in yesterday’s National Post. (I’m going to add this quote from the author, found on Jamie’s blog: “Don’t blame me for the title!”)

update 2 – I have been asked by several people to write up something for the session about “Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Science” I did at SciBarCamp. I decided that the whole process of online and offline discussion was perhaps more interesting and informative than the actual discussion itself, so, yes, I am writing up something about the session, but it’s packed into a larger thing about the whole discussion. It ended up being ten steps, and the first two plus the introduction are neatly typed up already.  Here’s part one.