World of Warcraft Offers Radical New Venue for Scientific Conference

Over at Science, John Bohannon recounts (form the June 20 issue) his experience in organizing a conference that, ultimately, lead to the tragic death of University of Maryland computer scientist Wayne Lutters at the hand (or paws) of a pack of hyenas. In fact, at various points throughout the conference the entire membership seems to have met their demise in some form or another.

Bohannon was one of the organizers of the first ever (to my knowledge, at least) World of Warcraft scientific conference, a three-day online event held in the the fictional, virtual world of Azeroth in May 2008. This inaugural conference boasted about 200-300 attendees.

In addition to the regular hazards of planning and participating in any large scientific conferences, attendees to this event had to appropriately level their characters to survive such things as the aforementioned hyenas and other carnivorous beasts, while the organizers had to figure out unique solutions to organizing meaningful information distribution in this sort of an environment.

The entire concept blows my mind and only makes me sad that I was not aware of this in the planning stages so that I could attend! To read Bohannon's tale of the event, check out Slaying Monsters for Science over at Science magazine. (No subscription needed for this one, it looks like.) Or, if also a WoW enthusiast, you can look into joining The Science Guild which, from the looks of things, plans to continue with future such events.