Today was the first day of dotastronomy, hosted by the Adler Planetarium. There were talks by Arfon Smith (Github), Erin Braswell (Open Science), Dustin Lang (Astrometry), and Alberto Pepe (Authorea). Smith made a lot of parallels between the open collaborations built around github and scientific collaborations. I think this analogy might be deep. In the afternoon, unconference was characteristically diverse and interesting. Highlights for me included a session on making scientific articles readable on many platforms, and the attendant implications for libraries, journals, and the future of publishing. Also, there was a session on the putative future Open Source Sky Survey, for which Lang and I own a domain, and for which Astrometry.net is a fundamental technology (and possibly Enhance!). There were many good ideas for defining the mission and building the communities for this project.
At coffee break, Foreman-Mackey and I looked at McFee's project of using Kepler light-curves as basis vectors for synthesizing arbitrary music recordings. Late at night, tomorrow's hack day started early, with informal pitches and exploratory work at the bar. More on all this tomorrow!
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