This post is a general response to the H+ Summit, June 12-13 2010 at the Harvard University Science Center in Cambridge, MA. I will respond to particular talks elsewhere.

The summit was surprisingly small. The entire thing basically happened in one lecture hall and the lobby. There were a few tables in the lobby advertising other groups and events, for example the Singularity Summit. The refreshments were very sparse and the nametags were plain, barely readable due to the small print, and undecorated. I’d expect at least the Summit’s logo at the top of the name tag or something.

Alex Lightman really went above and beyond the call of duty in bringing the whole thing together. He was clearly working hard to keep everything running smoothly, and several times was ready to jump up to the microphone with a joke or two (or the World Cup game score) during technical difficulties.

The conference was, predictably, very technology-centered. Very few people worked without slides, and most of the audience had laptops. Well, the audience that was in-person; apparently, millions of people were watching the streaming broadcast. Questions for the speakers would theoretically have come from Twitter, but for much of the event Twitter and Twitter search were malfunctioning. Nonetheless, a significant Twitter conversation took place during the event with the #hplus hashtag. A number of times, a discussion took place on Twitter during a presentation, only to have the speaker join in as soon as they sat down.

The theme was “The Rise of the Citizen Scientist” and so predictably most people tried to work the phrase “citizen scientist” into their presentations at some point, whether it made sense or not, and whether they knew what the phrase meant or not. Still, the concept of “citizen science” was very interesting, and we got to see a lot of presentations on both the history of non-academic science and practical DIY stuff.

Some people complained about the amount of philosophy and other ’soft’ topics represented, as they expected the conference to be primarily about science. I had no such expectation, and I was actually pleasantly surprised by the large amount of science talks at the summit. That said, I think some of the talks on topics like design were quite valuable.

There was a “science comedian” in the mix, Brian Malow, for the moment called a “transhumorist”. He was pretty good, though the jokes mostly got their humor from the “that’s a reference I know” effect. Example: “Sorry, that was an endothermic joke. -pause for laughs- It required some energy from you to work. -laughs from people who didn’t get it the first time-

It was generally awesome getting to see a lot of these people in person for the first time, though I’d met a few of them before. Altogether, this was an event with a lot of positive energy and mostly devoid of negativity (aside from a Twitter troll and a certain polemical philosopher who shall not be named). It at least was a nice place to go and feel like the quest for a better future is not hopeless, for a little while. And I imagine anyone going there trying to find an interesting startup to spend some money on was not disappointed.