SpotOn London 2012 (#solo12): How Fringe Sessions And Beer Make A Memorable Conference

For the first post from the recent SpotOn London conference, which explored new approaches and technologies relating to science policy, outreach and tools, I am very excited to feature this post from my boss, for all intents and purposes. Khalil was an important part of helping SpotOn London happen, particularly on the behind the scenes techy side of things and here he follows that up with discussion of fringe events. Conference fringes are growing rapidly in popularity and help delegates get to know each other and develop new ideas in a much less formal environment than is usually possible in the conference itself. In the case of SpotOn, fringes generally are a chance for everyone to indulge their nerdier personality traits.

Name: Khalil A. Cassimally

Date: November 11-12^th 2012

Location: Wellcome Collection, London

Website: http://www.nature.com/spoton/in/london/

When one travels over 6,000 miles to attend a conference, one sure hopes that the conference will be stimulating. SpotOn London 2012 was much more than just stimulating, it was a blast. With sessions covering science policy, outreach and online tools, SpotOn London 2012 (referred to as #solo12 on Twitter) elicited some very interesting discussions. But perhaps more interesting about #solo12 was the emphasis placed on socialising thanks to the fringe events organised.

My journey from Mauritius to London's Wellcome Trust, the venue of this year's SpotOn London conference, began four days prior to the conference's official start. That day began weirdly early, with me rushing around and packing a suitcase before jumping onto a plane minutes after Obama's confirmed re-election to the US presidency. Fourteen hours later, there I was in grey London waiting for a tube at Heathrow's Terminal 4 and longing for a cup of coffee.

SpotOn London began before it officially began. While the actual sessions didn't kick off until Sunday, a bunch of coding nerds and geeks (I use the term affectionately) attended the Hackathon, organised by Digital Science in the MacMillan Building one day before. Since I'm not a coder, it's fair to say that the most productive thing I did on the day was to take pictures of nerds, laptops, tablets and smartphones and post them on Twitter accompanied by shots of the great view from the office window and post them on Instagram.

Things did get a little less virtual and more chatty that evening at the Camden Head Pub. The Story Collider was in town for the first time in London, or outside the US for that matter. ‘Collider offers a platform to anyone who wants to tell their own science story. I've had the chance to listen to Ben Lillie, one of ‘Collider's co-founders, recount a personal story before and my anticipation was great for this one. The show was indeed great with some terrific stories that had everything from bombs, drugs and copulation...!

The actual conference itself lasted two days and passed by stunningly fast. Such was the quality of the sessions (I was livestreaming some of them-incidentally you can watch all of the #solo12 sessions here, blame me for any sound problems).

There was one fringe event during the conference-after the first day: science bingo! Believe it or not, I had no clue what bingo was before attending science bingo. In case you are a bingo virgin, bingo is a game that's apparently very popular in the UK whereby you get a sheet with various numbers arranged in rows and columns. An announcer then randomly shouts out some numbers (or science words, in this case) and if any of them appear on your sheet, you strike them off. If you so happen to have struck a row, column or diagonal, you cry out "Bingo!" like a lunatic and you win prizes. How cool is that!? Very cool, especially when the prizes are mugs, computer mouses and lots of #solo12 pins! Sarcasm aside, it was a great lot of fun. It is perhaps necessary to remind you at this point that the venue was a bar and alcohol was in abundance.

On a more important note, those fringe events, for me at least, achieved something which I do look for at conferences: communication. For the introverted type like me, it is not exactly easy to elicit conversations with people I've never met in person before. And the formal setting of most conferences does not exactly help. But once things get informal (and once beer is involved), people loosen up and conversations just flow. It's great. It's what conferences, especially SpotOn, are all about: exchanging ideas.

We've got plenty more from SpotOn London coming over the next few days, including more on the conference itself as well as thoughts on organising a discussion session for an event like this and a round up of some of the best posts and resources that came out of #SOLO12 so keep watching.