My longest and most poorly written post ever. Feel free to look into your cards and provide a better and more complete predictions. - Pawel Szczesny

This will take some time to read and digest, but it is obviously provocative (in the sense of "thought-provoking") and will undoubtedly result in a vigorous discussion here. - Bora Zivkovic

Thanks Bora, I hope so. It's a result of accumulating ideas over a few months - it couldn't be shorter :) - Pawel Szczesny

I think it's business, not universities, that will innovate on the mental training for science side of things. Universities are more likely to face opposition from the old guard claiming unfairness. - Mr. Gunn

Radical innovation mostly comes from outside, from the fringes. Not from the top, not from the center. - Meryn Stol

The translator idea is also a great one - I've been approached by people with questions about genetic profiling and stem cells because of my online presence, so that's possibly the beginnings of this trend. You're also right that this is an excellent niche for librarians. - Mr. Gunn

Your curation comment is exactly what I was trying to get at with my "Pandora vs. last.fm" analogy a couple blog posts ago. Curation is needed, at least initially, to get applications using the data robustly, and a little goes a long way. It almost implies a need for some sort of more formalized interpretive structure over the primary data generation, beyond that provided by the data generators themselves, and (shall I say it) science journalists. - Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn, I have obviously missed your post (I have almost two months backlog in Google Reader), but indeed we are talking about the same things. As for the innovation and mental side of training, you're both right - I've clearly overestimated amount of pressure for getting research money. Getting the funding is not an issue for universities (they can always hire somebody with a grant). - Pawel Szczesny

Some people are thinking a lot about the future, especially nowadays - "our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future." - http://tinyurl.com/cs5rrj - joergkurtwegner

I applied for a biocurator job myself (http://tbe.taleo.net/NA6...) -- must have blown the second interview as I haven't heard from 'em since. - Bill Hooker

@Bill - applying, interviewing, waiting ... be ready for a change ... this is for sure one future of scientists. - joergkurtwegner

Bill, I didn't realize they actually were hiring for this kind of stuff. That's cool. - Mr. Gunn

Yeah well, the bastards aren't hiring *me*... :-) - Bill Hooker

Mr. Gunn (and Bill?), every month a few offers for such jobs are posted to Biocurator mailing list: http://mailman.tairgroup.org/piperma... - Pawel Szczesny

@Pawel, thanks! There are two interesting looking jobs there... I will at least make enquiries. - Bill Hooker

curator focus may shift towards the design of tools for user editing and annotation, or maybe interoperability standards - Mike Chelen