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Can Uber for Bioinformatics?
At Uber, we work to reimagine the way the world moves for the better. We believe that everyone should be empowered to move freely and safely—physically, economically, and socially. ― Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp
Uber, a milestone for sharing economics, is known for delivering food or package, ridesharing, and ride-hailing etc. Riders are attracted by the cash-free, transparent waiting time and collect fares. Drivers are addicted into a dynamic pricing model based on the local supply and demand at the time of the accepting the order, i.e., the surging price, certain times boost per trip, or other promotions. Besides, the good thing about Uber is the transparent rating credit system. Riders and drivers both could rate each other and leave each trip feedback, which does matter for the next riding or driving. Because certain cities block low rated customers and drivers to use the Uber app.
You might wonder why I talk about this Uber thing, or even believe I has lost mind since yesterday’s Tips and Tricks talk. With the development of sequencing technologies, Bioinformatics as A Career has been everywhere. There is a great need for the bioinformatics questions or requests to be asked and answered. Although there are Bioinformatics Q&A platforms available to conveniently search or post questions, such as BioStars (https://www.biostars.org), SeqAnswers (http://seqanswers.com), and Bioinformatics StackExchange (https://bioinformatics.stackexchange.com). The relevant answers are usually evaluated/rated by the community, therefor your specific questions cannot be guaranteed, and it might take days or weeks to hear the reply. This is mostly due to no effective rewarding model to address your questions for the bioinformatician community. In another words, learning from Uber provides a solution to tackle the question raisers’ concerns, i.e., a balance between the waited time and guaranteed result. You might argue Uber paying the drivers for tips and fare. What the bioinformactian driver can get? There are many ways to earn credits for answering questions, which even can be used to prove the ability for job market. Anyway, there are definitely a lot of interesting sparkles when I say Uber for Bioinformatics.
Can you imagine one day your bioinformatics abilities was tipped after you accepting an question order?
<Xi Zhang, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow, Archibald Lab, Dalhousie University>
<Last updated by Xi Zhang on Feb 28th,2022>