The Blue Obelisk 5+ years on

#blueobelisk

Not only was the blue obelisk a theme at #pmrsymp, but Brian Brook had MADE a blue obelisk! It’s made of wood and nearly 2 metres high. Many of the attendees signed it;

And then I went to San Diego where 5+ years ago we first met under the Blue Obelisk. Yes, there is a real Obelisk. In fact there are two – the Greater Blue Obelisk and the Lesser Blue Obelisk. We met under the “blue obelisk” –most of us found this one:

But Geoff Hutchison found this one!

Geoff waited for half-an-hour and we waited for half-an-hour and each of us thought “how could you possibly not find the obelisk in Horton Plaza”. Luckily we went to look for each other = without that the Blue Obelisk might happened.

Anyway I was there because Aaron Culich drove me. Aaron’s a compsci, very interested in how we interact with molecules and some great ideas for “strongly typed parser combinators” which will create a domain-specific-language for us.

And he took a picture of me

So the Blue Obelisk is flourishing. More obelisks have found their way to people – I am very flattered by mine. Much more software has been written. Our sphere of influence increases. Our code is taken seriously.

J.Cheminformatics (open Source) is running a special issue from the PMR Symposium and if anyone has an idea for a Blue-Obelisk-related paper let me or Christoph or David know. We’ve already got a lot of people who say they will contribute.

Until the next time

KEEP SMILING