It also featured many notable scientists and science fiction authors such as Dr. Jack Cohen, Derek Briggs, Christopher McKay, David Wynn-Williams, Emily Holton, Peter Cattermole, Brian Aldiss, Sil Read, Wolf Read, Edward K. Smallwood, Adega Zuidema, Steve Hanly, Kevin Warwick and Dougal Dixon.
Epona is an offshoot of the Contact - Cultures Of The Imagination,[1] a bi-yearly conference, where scientists and Science Fiction authors come together and discuss how the human race may progress in space.
The contact idea came from an original premise by Joel Hagen and James Funaro, instructor of anthropology at Cabrillo College, Palo Alto.
Two groups of COTI Attendees are provided with simulated planetary conditions, then have to devise a species to fit in that ecology and that develops spaceflight and has "First contact" with one another, one race may be human.
The process was described in [4] This later developed into COTI - the roleplaying half simulating "first contact" and "The Bateson Project" - which is the strictly scientific disciplines come together.