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 Monday, February 3, 2003
It is pretty humourous looking at the room. Usually at science meetings the room fills up from the middle. Some people always go up front but most people start in the middle, try top find an aisle seat. But, because the outlets in this room are along the right side, there is a definite skew to people's seating arrangement. There are a lot of people huddled with their computers along the right side, trying to find juice, while the left side has hardly anyone with their laptop out. Several of us have brought power strips and extension cords to help out. One guy hbrought an 8 outlet strip with a 50 foot three prong extention cord (think big, thick and orange). He is prepared. 8:34:19 AM 
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Well, the first tutorial is delayed because so many people did not get up early and get through registration. I was up and ready to go by 7, when registration opened, so I had no trouble. I got breakfast (a nice open air affair) and checked out the computer room. Apple is also providing wireless access which is why I am able to write from my seat in the conference room while I wait. I brought along a 12 extension cord so I can find a plug easily. When they design new conference rooms in the future, they have to provide many more outlets than they do now. 8:28:44 AM
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Apple and the Mac are making a huge push in bioinformatics. Two years ago at meetings, 90% of the laptops were PCs running Linux (usually IT people), maybe 9% were PCs running Windows (usually CEOs) and the rest were Macs (usually biologists). The only computer that crashed during a presentation was a Windows machine. Last year at the first of these BioCon meetings I noticed a big shift. The number of Macs was up to maybe 50%. It looked like people had titaniums if they could afford it, and iBooks if not. Finally, the developers who needed Unix could get not only the OS they needed (OS X) but also a cool piece of hardware. They loved it. In fact, I was the only one running Mac OS9 on a bronze Powerbook. It seems that the Mac numbers may be a little higher this year. There are a lot of iBooks and titaniums.
Apple recognizes this and has a very big presence at the meetings. The computer room, open to all, has over 20 computers, either iMacs or towers. I got to use a 23 inch flat screen (So gooooood!) and to test out Safari (pretty nice) and take a look at Keynote (I'm hooked.) If the IT researchers at universities that are developing all the bioinformatics tools want Macs, it could be a huge tipping point for the adoption of these computers. It may not hurt MS but it could have an affect on Sun. 8:24:11 AM
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Well, I am at the O'Reilly Bioinformatics Conference in San Diego getting ready for the first day of sessions. Today is devoted to tutorials. I am attending 'Introduction to Whole Genome Analysis' and 'Relational Databases fro Bioinformatics'. The first BioCon last year was one of the best meetings I have ever attended and I have high hopes that this year's will be as much fun. The weather is wonderful and the location is sweet. 8:12:34 AM
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