Here is a cool idea for startup weekends in science by Paweł Szczęsny. Why not combine the ideas of code sprints and distributed teams for doing science? i.e. set up an intense interaction for a short period for a group of researchers with the aim of say, writing a paper, in a week?
Shorter periods would be incredibly useful too. From experience, nearly every paper I have written tends to stall at some stage and lately I’ve gotten a lot out of closeting together some of the authors and just doing an extended period of discussion and writing without distractions a la a code sprint.
Imagine being able to do this online in an effective way - call them thought sprints. It would just be awesome.