BOF

BOF

Posted Feb 29, 2008 1:39 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: A Beijing trip report by DRBaldock
Parent article: A Beijing trip report

Wikipedia fails to explain why it's called that, and I think it's probably not obvious outside of English-speaking countries. There is a very old rhyming saying in English, "birds of a feather flock together." "birds of a feather" is an old poetic way of saying birds with the same kinds of feathers, i.e. birds that look the same, i.e. the birds of the same species. Apparently, if you watch birds a lot, you know that they congregate with their own kind. So people use the saying "birds of a feather flock together" to point out cases where people congregate with their own kind, such as at a BOF session at a conference.

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Could you please copy your statement to the wikipedia site? 

little pieces of knowledge like that tend to get lost if not kept in a common place.

Ernest