I am going to follow Antony's lead here and shamelessly steal Cameron's post to introduce the topic:

... sometimes someone puts together a programme that means you just have to shift the rest of the world around to make sure you can get there. Lisa Green and Hope Leman have put together the biggest concentration of speakers in the Open Science space that I think I have ever seen for the Science Commons Symposium -- Pacific Northwest to be held on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond on 20 February. If you are in the Seattle area and have an interest in the future of science, whether pro- or anti- the "open" movement, or just want to hear some great talks you should be there. If you can't be there then watch out for the video stream.

Along with [Cameron Neylon] you'lll get Jean-Claude Bradley, Antony Williams, Peter Murray-Rust, Heather Joseph, Stephen Friend, Peter Binfield, and John Wilbanks. Everything from policy to publication, software development to bench work, and from capturing the work of a single researcher to the challenges of placing several hundred million dollars' worth of drug discovery data into the public domain. All with a focus on how we make more science available and generate more innovation. Not to be missed, in person or online...

I'm going to be there, but don't let that put you off -- I'll be sitting quietly in the audience soaking up the amazing array of expertise on offer. You won't even notice me, I promise.

If you have any interest at all in Open Science (and why on Earth would you be reading me, if you didn't?), you should make every effort to attend this symposium. I'm a bit skeeved out by its being held on a Microsoft campus -- actually, I'm a lot skeeved out, and if it were any other lineup I probably wouldn't go for that reason alone. But this is simply too good to miss. Seriously, do yourself a favor and be there if you possibly can.