[cancer] So I went and talked about genomics last night...

Last night I went to Portland's Nerd Nite, sponsored by Foro Scientia, and talked about genomics and cancer.



Waterloo Productions filmed the event, and some of my peeps were there to see and support me, specifically the_child, Lisa Costello, Mother of the Child, tillyjane (a/k/a my Mom) and the Niece. tillyjane was one of the winners of the Dry T-Shirt Contest, with her "Stop Plate Tectonics" message.

There were two talks before mine, one on what attracts us as evidenced by our Internet tracks through online search, fan fiction and dating sites; the other on the unpredictability of the future. So then I came on and rocked the house for 30 or 40 minutes on the topics of late-stage cancer and Whole Genome Sequencing. Because reasons! Then I answered a few questions from the stage, and answered quite a few more after the event. Some of those were fascinating, a few were heartbreaking, and they were all interested.

This was the first time I'd taken my talk on genomics onto a stage. I could have spoken at least twice as long, if time permitted, diving into more of the details, but I think it worked pretty well at this length. When Waterloo Productions has the video edited, I'll post a link. I'm also considering posting the presentation itself online.

All in all, I think this went pretty well. I have another talk coming up in May where I'll use a version of this presentation, and I'm interested in taking this talk to other audiences who might be interested in hearing it. People apparently don't get enough information about death, dying and healthcare.

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Photo © 2013 Waterloo Productions, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.