A Blog Around The Clock

A month has passed.

It was a steep learning curve, but I think I have climbed high enough on it to be confident that I'll be fine on my own back in Chapel Hill. Being a part of the PLoS team is such an exhillarating experience - there is so much energy and optimism around the office, everybody from CEO to the newest intern living, breathing and dreaming Open Access 24/7.

Not to bore you about the job any more - you will be hearing about PLoS over and over again here - let me, for now, just show you some pictures (under the fold) from the farewell party last night at Jupiter in downtown Berkeley, where some of us spent about six hours drinking last night...

Who was there?

Four of us Sciencebloggers: Alex Palazzo and his lovely wife, Josh Rosenau (and his parents) who has just arrived, after driving all the way from Kansas, to take on his new job at NCSE, Chris Hoofnagle and myself.

There were several of my new PLoS colleagues: Russell Uman, Barbara Cohen, Hemai Parthasarathy, Liza Gross, Gavin Yamay and, briefly, Peter Jerram with whom I had a great lunch conversation earlier in the day.

Then, some other local bloggers, scientists, friends, fans and scifoo campers: Chris Patil who is very funny, especially after a few beers (and his command of the Croatian language is getting good!!), old blog friend of mine Alvaro Fernandez and his summer intern Andreas Engvig (an MD/ PhD in Cog Neuroscience from Norway), Josh Staiger who is an old blogging friend from his days in Chapel Hill (before Google stole him from IBM), Meg Stalcup, currently in her fourth graduate program (which makes her so interdisciplinary, one's head hurts, so of course she is invited to Science Foo Camp), Attila Csordas who is editing his Dissertation on his blog, Curtis Pickering of JeffsBench, Bosco Ho, a postdoc in Dave Agard's lab at UCSF, and...heck, after all the beer, I am not sure I got all the names so add yourself in the comments if you were there and I omitted you from the list.

It was so much fun to see all these people get to know each other and make friends...

Alvaro Fernandez

Alvaro and Josh Rosenau

Attila Csordasz

Attila again

Chris Patil and Alvaro

Chris and Attila

Chris and Attila

Chris and Professor Steve Steve

Chris Hoofnagle, Chris Patil and Liza Gross.

Gavin Yamay

Gavin and Prof.Steve Steve

Hemai Parthasarathy

Hemai

Josh Staiger

Josh Rosenau, Alex Palazzo and Alex's wife.

...again...

Alex and me, fuzzy, like our minds on beer...

...a sharper picture, though this may not apply to our brains at the time...

Attila was hungry...

...and pizza made him happy.

Added - two pictures taken by Attila: