[Pipet Devel] barCode

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Greetings all.

I just got back from a conference/shin-dig in Boston, hosted by IBM. 
It's called 'barCode', and it's a 'developerWorks' conference they hold
at....bars, thus the name.  Well, this was at a very big bar/nightclub
called 'Jillians'.

David Lapointe (from UMass, and on the Loci list) found out about it and
sent me an e-mail.  I then sent an e-mail to Rick Ree (Pyhy/Mavric
coordinator from Harvard, also on the Loci list).  And, we all met
there, and I got to meet Rick for the first time.

So, why am I bringing this up?  Well, the guest speaker at the
conference was Miguel de Icaza.  If you don't know he is, I can start by
saying Loci would not be quite the same without him.  Miguel is the
founder and project leader of Gnome.

Miguel spoke for nearly an hour under colored lights and in front of a
big-screen TV that sits behind a bar, normally showing hockey games. 
Needless to say, it was quite a bit different from the scientific
seminars I am used to.  And his speeking style was right for the
atmosphere: Several times he yelled out that people in the audience were
drunk :-)

He, of course, presented Gnome, using some new presentation app that
runs in Gnome.  From time-to-time he switched to the desktop and demoed
some features.  He got some laughs when Gnumeric (the Gnome spreadsheet
app) crashed.  And they often booed when Miguel chose some tacky Gtk
theme.

Besides the chuckles, I did learn a little bit about Bonobo and thought
a bit about how it could be used in Loci.  I saw a Bonobo component that
drew vector graphics from an SVG file and did very cool things like
antialiasing and alpha-channel semi-transparencies (while being
DnD'd!).  I think this is what we're looking for to do our
bioinformatics viewers, as I reminded David several times during the
talk.

A little while after the presentation (and after some more free drinks,
pizza, and a nifty pen from IBM), David, Rick and I went up to meet
Miguel, who was mobbed by dozens of people.  We all got to meet him, and
I got to talk to him about The Open Lab and Loci.  In fact, I got to say
quite a bit, and I was surprised that he seemed very interested.  One
thing I mentioned was that the name of his company in Boston (Helix
Code) sounds like their involved in bioinformatics.  He said that his
girlfriend is a biologist, thus the use of names such as Bonobo and
Evolution (the PIM).  After several minutes, I gave him my card (which
has no e-mail address on it, duh), and he asked for my e-mail address.

Shortly after meeting Miguel, the three of us went to grab some more
goodies from IBM.  We got a 'squishy alien head', a stainless steel
thermo mug, a coaster, and an even cooler pen.  IBM paid for everything:
all sorts of food AND AN OPEN BAR.  It didn't cost anything to register
either.  They said they'll be holding these conferences once per
quarter.  (Do you see what your missing out on Gary?)  :-) 

Well, it was nice, and it was good to see David and Rick.  And I'd like
to see the rest of you guys some day.

Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
                      +----------------------------------+
                      |           J.W. Bizzaro           |
                      |                                  |
                      | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ |
                      |                                  |
                      |        BIOINFORMATICS.ORG        |
                      |           The Open Lab           |
                      |                                  |
                      |    http://bioinformatics.org/    |
                      +----------------------------------+