Image by Pathfinder Linden via Flickr

Following BioBarCamp I missed one year anniversary of this blog. With sixty something posts I cannot say I’m very productive blogger, but I didn’t aim at being one, as probably all other science-types. My goal was to be engaged in the conversation and I have reached it much faster than I expected. I got lots of help and encouragement from people I wouldn’t even dear to email a year ago. I know much more than I did on things outside of my research area. While it sounds all pathetic, advantages of being part of this community are hard to overestimate – I wrote about it couple of times already (and Neils did a great job summarizing why you should have a web presence).

Where is “Freelancing science” heading? That’s a question I asked myself pretty often during last 12 months. At first, I just blogged about interesting stuff around bioinformatics. Then I made a jump into freelancing as scientists (and this experiment goes pretty well). Statistics on keywords people are using to find this blog clearly show that there’s some interest within bioinformatics community in following this path. But the idea for this blog I have right now is not about freelancing anymore. Or rather it’s about freelancing on the next level, because today I think about starting a non-profit institute.

I believe that small research groups formed as a non-profit organizations will have enourmous impact on science within next ten, twenty years (more about it in upcoming post about the future of scientists). In spirit of freelancing they will jump from one project to another (see Deepak’s post about bursty work and follow-ups), developing solutions and making discoveries much faster (or cheaper) than it is possible in beaurocratic environment. We do have tools for effective collaboration online, we have new generation scientists that do not feel attached to academic system and we have science which starts to evolve about undestanding data, not performing experiments. Is it time to try such approach?

So, watch this space to see how the idea develops. I’m also interested in your opinions and experiences with starting and cooperating with non-profits if you have any.