Derek and Clive live (sort of): Nick Loman chats to Clive Brown at ONT

Nick Loman had a nice cosy chat with Clive Brown at AGBT and tells us all about it on his blog Pathgogens: Genes and Genomes. It reads to me like a very reasonable assessment of why we have heard so little from Oxford Nanopore in the last 12 months. ONT have a very disruptive technology that could be months, years or decades from release, but when it comes it could knock the socks off Illumina and others.

I completely agree with Nicks comments that when ONT deliver the community will be quick to forget the lack of information. They hype is created as much by our own discussions as ONT's announcement followed by silence.

I was surprised to hear Clive say the ONT were caught off-guard with the interest in their AGBT 2012 presentation. No-one in the world could stand up at the biggest sequencing technology meeting their is, tell everyone about MinION and then expect us to nod serenely and go back to MiSeq vs PGM (the battle is clearly being won). We were excited, enthralled and desperate to get our hands on the technology first. No wonder we pesterd and griped, most of us probably felt like we might be missing out not to be in the early-access program (unless you're all in it and I'm the only one who isn't).

I, like Nick, sure hope I'm not on Clive's naughty list!

Although Nick may find himself on it not for his negative comments on ONT's strategy but more for his "I spotted a distinctive bald head" comment!

PS: Derek and Clive Live had a lot more swearing!