This “unconference” was was unbelievably cool. Scientists really do get a bad rap for being geeky, and one could understandably fear that a meeting of science online groupies might wind up being a gathering of socially inept researchers who have an odd twitch, resemble Frankenstein a bit, and blog from dark corners of their labs because no one will talk to them at a bar. Not so!

The crowd was as diverse as it was interesting: a group of high schoolers with exceptional vocabularies came with their biology teacher, Miss Baker, to educate some of the older folks; there were flocks of Europeans having intense conversations over the incredibly tasty espresso with a rocket-fuel kick, and plenty of twenty-something science YouTube filmmakers and rockstars who are cruising through grad school. A friendly, fun crowd indeed. I even saw a Brazilian guy do a salsa move out of the corner of my eye…

This was also my first experience being on a panel with scientists (if you haven’t noticed yet, I’m not a scientist, my background is in English and French literature). The unconference format allowed us to play …we flipped the lights on and off, slammed doors, walked around the room pinching people as if we were insects. In sum: we terrorized our audience– and it was premeditated (we planned it on a Skype call). Our panel figured that hosting an “Adventure Blogging” session was reason enough for a little ruckus.

Although everyone I spoke with at the conference had something interesting to say, I had the opportunity to talk with three people whom I believe will be of particular interest to Space Cadet readers:

Karen James is working on the Beagle Project, which aims to rebuild the ship that carried Charles Darwin around the world. But this is no old school kind of thing: Karen and her colleagues teamed up with astronaut Mike Barratt, who will be talking to the Beagle crew from the International Space Station. And yours truly also plans to call the Beagle from the Virgin Galactic. If you were wearing a diaper, trapped in a small space, and could only make one phone call (these are the likely circumstances of space tourism at present), who better to call than a bunch of pirates?

Vanessa Woods blogs about bonobos in the Congo and has written a number of witty books. The one I can’t wait to read is It’s True! Space Turns You Into Spaghetti

I also had the good fortune to get stuck in the bathroom line next to Sheril Kirshenbaum– there are good things about long lines in the women’s bathroom, after all! She’s fine tuning the final draft of her book, which is going to be a fantastic read. Keep on the look-out for Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future. I particularly like to read Sheril’s blog since she always seems to have an interesting angle. As her bio says, she is a marine biologist, freelance writer, and author…and sometimes she’s a classicist, radio jock, or congressional staffer. And in an interview with Virginia Hughes Sheril says that she wants to be an astronaut!