Last night I met up with P. J. Manney and we attended a Senior Associate get-together in Sunnyvale. Along the way, we bumped into Tyler Emerson and James Clement. At the event, I got the chance to chat with Christine Peterson (briefly) and with John Smart.

The event had two speakers. First up was science fiction writer and UC Irvine professor Dr. Gregory Benford. Benford has won two Nebula awards, one of which was for his ground-breaking novel Timescape. But he wasn't talking science fiction last night; he was giving us the background on his new company Genescient, which develops treatments for diseases related to aging. It sounds like they have some pretty serious research backing up what they're doing; my guess is that we will be hearing a lot from companies like this over the next few years.

I got to pondering similar get-togethers in the Silicon Valley 15-20 years ago, introducing radical new business models based on emerging internet technology -- or maybe even 30+ years ago, where the speaker might have introduced a radical concept like the personal computer. I wonder if businesses built on longevity therapies are going to follow a similar trajectory?

We also heard from Science Comedian Brian Malow, who is carving out an interesting niche for himself. I had the chance to see Brian once before at a Bay Area comedy club, and he is quite a funny guy. Plus he obviously has guts -- would you want to try to make a room full of geeks laugh? I'm hoping we'll hear from him on one of our podcasts this weekend.

Back at the hotel, I got the chance to say hi to James Hughes and Geroge Dvorsky. Looking forward to seeing more of all these folks over the next two days.

This morning I'm getting things organized for the the first day of the unconference, and starting to round up potential guests for this evening's podcast. More later.