If your reaction isn’t “who the hell is Wayne Leibel?”, then I’m pretty impressed, but I fully expect it to be. Don’t worry, it’s ok. (Besides his mate choice research, he’s probably best known for writing regular columns in two of the biggest aquarium hobby magazines, making him one of the people I’ve admired most since I was a little kid). The point of this shitty story (shitty to everyone but me) is that it makes me feel the need to comment on how fantastic the academic community is - for democratizing knowledge and ensuring ideas are judged above all else. I have been lucky enough to attend the Ecological and Evolutionary Ethology of Fishes conference in Boston this past week, and it’s been an incredible venue for scientists from 15 countries, from students to established heavyweights, to get together and discuss their research, share their problems, and get suggestions from everyone else. Not in my wildest dreams did I think that such a venue would be so cooperative - there really is no hint of secrecy or competition, just a genuine desire for answers. There I was chatting with Wayne, the guy who “knows everything”, and we were talking about how important it is to learn from amateur aquarium hobbyists and their observations. Maybe I was too cynical going into this thing, after experiencing a life of watching so many self-congratulatory events in almost every field, but nothing here was about the accomplishments of the past. It was about reaching out to novel ideas, trying to find new ways to explain behaviour, preserve fisheries, and understand evolution. I just wish there was a way to get the rest of the world to understand the advances that could be made if egos were put aside and people actually bought into cooperative efforts.

I’m starting to get really excited about the whole open source design concept.