UK news-rag The Grauniad has a series of interviews with some of the people behind the next generation web, so-called Web 2.0. After reading these interviews, I can't help wondering, who are the equivalent pioneers in bioinformatics?
The interviews include...
...and several others too. Most of the interviews are worth reading, I particularly enjoyed Mullenweg's which contains a wonderful quote:
Q: What is your big idea?
A: I don't have big ideas. I sometimes have small ideas, which seem to work out.
So who is currently pioneering the “Web of Science”, Bioinformatics 2.0 if you like? Ensemblian Ewan Birney? Ian Holmes at Berkeley? Or somebody else?
[Image credit: Picture from Steve Jurvetson]
Comments
We're all different! / (i'm not) / shhh!
I'd probably go along with Neil... no "great man" histories of bioinformatics here please.... except Stew Postgenomic, Chris Mungall, Lincoln Stein, Jason Stajich... could go on forever really.
Having said that, we are currently hiring Ajax programmers for a very Web 2.0 kind of project (our genome browser wiki-thingy)... so if you feel like you could be the next pioneer of Bioinformatics 2.0, please check it out!
We're all individuals
You might argue that bioinformatics is a collective endeavour, built on the open-source community ethos and hence larger than any one individual.
Or you could list your favourite bioinformaticians :)
Bioinformatics.org run the Benjamin Franklin award each year - its main focus is promoting open access, but there are some "notables" in the list.
How about organisations that promote bioinformatics, e.g. O'Reilly?
Commerce and Science
Collaboration 2.0 then :) I was thinking more of independent Scientists, rather than commercial organisations like O'Reilly, Nature and Google. I think Ian supplied a good list, but it obviously goes on and on...