Tag Archives: ScienceOnline09

The Open Laboratory 2008 is here!

openlab08cover.JPGI know you have all been trembling in anticipation! But the day has finally arrived – the third science blogging anthology, The Open Lab 2008, is now up for sale!
This year’s guest editor, Jennifer Rohn, did a fantastic job of putting together the best anthology ever! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Jennifer is a pro, so she assembled a team:
Richard Grant was the assistant editor (yes, the posts were really, professionally edited this year, and thus much improved in the process).
Maria Brumm did the technical part, the typesetting, starting out with the template designed last year by Reed Cartwright.
The new cover (not depicted here as well as it looks in Real Life) was designed by Dave Ng, using the artwork by Glendon Mellow.
We received around 830 submissions (give and take, some doubles, some spam, etc. – we gave up counting in the end) and that amazing pool of blog posts was narrowed down to 50 essays, one poem and one cartoon by a team of judges:
Eva Amsen, Tania Glyde, Richard Grant, Stephen Curry, Ed Yong, Katie, Mo, Jonathan Sanderson, Maria Brumm, Martin Rundkvist, Cameron Neylon and, well, Jennifer and me.
If your post is included in the anthology, or if you were a judge, you may way want to display one of the badges on your website/blog – the codes are under the fold.
If you have missed them the first time around, you can still buy the 2006 anthology and the 2007 anthology. Both of those, as well as the new one, are available in paperback or as a PDF download at Lulu.com. In a few weeks, the book will also be available at other online retailers, e.g., Amazon.com, but we prefer that you buy from Lulu.com as the proceeds will go towards organizing ScienceOnline’10 next January.
As always, we will appreciate if you spread the word about the book – the link to the page where you can buy it is, again, here.
Update: Thanks to everyone for spreading the word:
Living the Scientific Life
Neurotopia
Science After Sunclipse
White Coat Underground
The Beagle Project Blog
Marmorkrebs
Confessions of a Science Librarian
PodBlack Cat
The Digital Cuttlefish
Bad Astronomy
The OpenHelix Blog
Laelaps
Aardvarchaeology
Observations of a Nerd
The Oyster’s Garter
Space Cadet Girl
TalkingScience
The Flying Trilobite
Bayblab
Greg Laden
The Mr Science Show
Uncertain Principles
Skepchick
Pro-science
Life Sciences Info @ Imperial College London Library
remote central
Books, Inq. — The Epilogue
Tom Paine’s Ghost
Catalogue of Organisms
Page 3.14
Sciencewomen
Hope for Pandora
Michael Nielsen
Mind the Gap
Biofortified
Tomorrow’s Table
A canna’ change the laws of physics
P2P Foundation

Continue reading

This morning on the radio – podcast is now online!

Podcast of this morning’s radio show is now up – you can listen to it here.
We covered ScienceOnline09, including its history, several individual sessions and underlying themes, the changes in science communication and journalism and more. A brief plug for PLoS at the beginning. Answered a couple of e-mailed questions, including one from Greg Laden (who almost stumped me – had to think quickly on my feet!).
Thanks to Stephanie and Mike for inviting me on.

ScienceOnline’09 – Saturday 3:15pm – Blog carnivals

scienceonline09.jpg
The very first blog carnival was conceived right here, in Chapel Hill, some four-five years ago or so. Since then, the idea took off and there are now thousands of blog carnivals, some generalist, some regional, but most are topical with topics ranging from food to sports to politics. But, probably due to the funny name, new bloggers and observers are often baffled at the concept. I thought it would be a good idea to have a session that explains the concept of the carnival, specifically how the carnivals related to science, nature and medicine are somewhat different from other kinds of carnivals, and why they are Good For You.
Well, there are two people who have spent a lot of time studying and writing about science-related carnivals. I am one of them (read this for the latest, as well as for the links to older material) but as an organizer I did not want to tie myself down with actually leading the session. The other one is Mike Bergin, so he was the obvious choice to invite to lead this session – Blog carnivals: why you should participate.
Mike has written probably the most comprehensive guide to blog carnivals ever – a must read if you intend to participate in, host or start a carnival. So, in his session, he delivered – a good explanation of what a carnival is, how to approach it as a new blogger (or an old blogger for that matter) and why carnivals are an important aspect of the blogosphere.
Science-related carnivals are similar to popular science magazines, or, in some cases, even to lightly peer-reviewed journals. A well-maintained archive of a carnival is like a human-managed search engine on the topic: you can use it to start your search of a topic and how science blogosphere covered it at the moment it was hot news. This function will become more and more important in the future, as blogosphere becomes older.
Sure, you can go to Google or Technorati and search blogs for a topic, but what you’ll get are millions of hits, most of them simple links or copy+paste jobs – useless waste of time. A carnival will contain the best examples of blog coverage of the topic and the included posts will often also contain links to other worthwhile coverage of the same topic – thus a good start for a smart, targeted search. Not to mention how much more fun it is to read stuff with a human touch and an editorial hand as compared to just using an automated, soulless application.
But carnivals have several other functions. And I was happy to see some of them mentioned in other sessions at the conference.
For instance, many bloggers use carnivals for self-discipline in their blogging. Yes, you post LOLcats and YouTube videos most of the time, but once every week or two you make yourself sit down and do some research and write a serious, carnival-worthy post, just so you can submit it to your favourite carnival.
Furthermore, the existence of a particular carnival may make a blogger get outside of regular topics and explore something different. For instance, The Giant’s Shoulders has provoked many science bloggers to start digging into the history of science and writing posts about classical papers or historical concepts in science. This was, I understand, stressed strongly in the ‘History of Science’ session that day.
One function of carnivals that many appreciate the most is the community building it enables. For intance, in her analysis of the connectivity of science blogs, Christina Pikas discovered an unusually tight cluster of female scientist blogs. Several of those bloggers were present at the conference and, in a few sessions, all credited Scientiae carnival as one of the key community-building tools.
We could also see (and hear, oh did we ever!) that marine bloggers are also a tightly-knit community. In another session (on blogging networks, for instance) they mentioned that Carnival of the Blue is a key tool for building their community, discovering and introducing new marine biology bloggers, introducing each other and organizing events (even if it’s The Invertebrate War – a wonderful community-building tool in itself).
I And The Bird was mentioned as an important tool for building communities in the ‘Nature blogging’ session as well. A carnival similar to Scientiae but focused on minorities in science may come out of discussions at the conference as well.
Finally, usually around Christmas when everyone is either busy or offline, some carnivals suffer gaps or start appearing dead – managing them takes work! The discussions at the conference led to appeals to rescue some of those, with immediate results – Circus of the Spineless has a new manager and will re-start publishing on Monday. Likewise, Tangled Bank (the carnival equivalent of Nature) is about to stage a comeback.
I hope that Mike’s session has informed new people about the importance of carnivals and spurred others to revive old or start new ones.
More coverage of this session:
10000birds: Talking Blog Carnivals at ScienceOnline09
Nature Blog Network: What is a Blog Carnival?
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Semi-live Blogging Scienceonline09: Day 1
Living the Scientific Life: What Happened to Tangled Bank?
Living the Scientific Life: Science Blog Carnivals: Another Endangered Species
Other sessions in this time-slot that I missed:
Open Notebook Science:
bjoern.brembs.net: ScienceOnline09: Open Notebook Science
Highly Allochthonous: ScienceOnline Day 1: generalised ramblings
Science in the open: The integrated lab record – or the web native lab notebook
Art and science — online and offline:
The Flying Trilobite: ScienceOnline09 – Art & Science afterword
Ideonexus: ScienceOnline09: Science and Art
Bioephemera: Art vs. Science, Part One: Semiconductor
The Flying Trilobite: Art & Science at ScienceOnline ’09 discussion continues…
Expression Patterns: ScienceOnline09 – Day 2
Nobel Intent: ScienceOnline 09: History, art, and science
Anonymity, Pseudonymity – building reputation online:
HASTAC blogs: Liveblogging ScienceOnline ’09: Anonymity and Pseudonymity – Building Reputation Online
Knowledge Sharing: ScienceOnline’09: Anonymity, Pseudonymity
Confessions of a Science Librarian: ScienceOnline ’09: Saturday summary
Christina’s LIS Rant: Science Online ’09: Saturday PM
Extreme Biology: Anna’s Favorite Moment from Science Online ’09
The blog/media coverage linkfest is growing fast (perhaps start at the bottom and work your way up, posting comments on the way and saying Hello to your new friends), there are ongoing discussions on FriendFeed and new pictures on Flickr. Also, if you were there, please fill up this short form to give us feedback, so we can make next year’s meeting even better.

A very nice article about ScienceOnline09 in BioTechniques

By Colleen M. Smith: NEWS: ScienceOnline’09 explores the evolution of science on the web:

Research Triangle Park, NC, Jan. 16–The third annual science communication conference, ScienceOnline’09, took place at the Sigma Xi Center last weekend. The event was open to all scientists, bloggers, educators, students, journalists, and others interested in exploring science and ways to communicate it on the web….

Thank them – they made ScienceOnline’09 possible

scienceonline09.jpg

ScienceOnline’09, the third annual science communication conference (successor to the 2007 and 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conferences), was another unqualified success wifi issues notwithstanding. Around 215 scientists, educators, students, journalists and bloggers gathered for three days of activities, meals, sessions and hallway conversations to explore ways to use online tools to promote the public understanding of, and engagement in, science.

Find a comprehensive listing of links to the many blog entries and video clips posted before, during and after the conference to learn about the conversations and networking at the conference.

Like our first two conferences, ScienceOnline’09 was a collective activity many organizations, companies and individuals pitched in, in ways large and small, to keep this conference free, attendees fed and the discussion lively. Please join us in thanking them read below, and click through to their websites to show your interest in what they do. (We thanked the sponsors of the second event here and the first event here.)

So, a huge Thank you to our sponsors for helping us to keep this event free:

Our host
Sigma Xi once again hosted the ScienceOnline’09 conference, as well as the WiSE networking event for free in their beautiful center. Meg Murphy kindly facilitated this – she’s the unsung hero of the conference! and Mike was on hand for tech support. Sigma Xi was founded in 1886 to honor excellence in scientific investigation and encourage a sense of companionship and cooperation among researchers in all fields of science and engineering.

Our institutional partner
The NC Museum of Life and Science, which last year arranged for the awesome grab bags, this year stepped up to be our institutional partner (to handle our funds). Debbie May, VP for Administration/CFO, was a delight to work with, and Troy Livingston, VP for Innovation Learning, continues to be one of our biggest boosters. The museum exists to create a place of lifelong learning where people, from young child to senior citizen, embrace science as a way of knowing about themselves, their community, and their world.

Our sponsors
Burroughs Wellcome Fund once again gave us a substantial grant to support the conference. Russ Campbell, communications officer, helped to make sure this funding was available to us. BWFund is an independent private foundation dedicated to advancing the biomedical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center repeated its support with a biotechnology event sponsorship grant; Ginny DeLuca and Chris Brodie there are our supporters. NCBiotech seeks to provide longterm economic and societal benefits to North Carolina by supporting biotechnology research, business and education statewide.

We used the grants from BWFund and NCBiotech to give small travel stipends to our many session discussion leaders.

JMP Software, for the third year in a row, provided a cash grant to help pay for our delicious lunch. JMP is a division of SAS, the leader in business intelligence and analytics – they’ve also donated a copy of their JMP 8 software (worth $1500), which we’ll have as a drawing prize on Saturday (you need to fill the feedback form to enter the drawing).

Science In the Triangle was a new sponsor this year. This site is an evolving experiment in community science journalism and scientific community organizing. If you are based here in the Triangle, think about how you might collaborate with the site to spread news of your organization or research – Anton and I are looking forward to getting involved with the effort.

Research Triangle Foundation helped us even our accounts with a last-minute grant. The Foundation just celebrated the 50th anniversary of Research Triangle Park, and will host the XXVI International Association of Science Parks World Conference June 14, 2009.

Blogads has sponsored many of our BlogTogether events over the last four years, and once again Henry Copeland and his crew made a donation to this conference. They pioneered blog advertising in 2002 and trailblaze today.

We used the donations from JMP, Science In the Triangle, Research Triangle Foundation and Blogads to feed everyone, with good coffee in the morning and delicious sandwiches and Mediterranean salads at lunch.

Our donors
Enrico Maria Balli, Kim Gainer, Ryan Somma and Russ Campbell made personal cash donations, and David Kroll, our coorganizer, dipped into his own pocket to help make the conference unique.

Grab bag of science swag
This year, IBM provided recycled reusable bags. Other organizations, companies and individuals donated materials, including: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Seed Magazine, Public Library of Science, COPUS Year of Science, Harper Collins, JMP Software, NC Sea Grant, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and others to be named later.

Friday events
Counter Culture Coffee invited us to attend their weekly coffee cupping. Mark Overbay, marketing communications manager, facilitated our group of 25 and gave a tour of the coffee roasting operation.

Afternoon lab tours were hosted by NCCU‘s Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (David Kroll, director), Duke’s Lemur Center and Smart Home (Karl Bates arranged these), and the NC Museum of Natural Sciences (Roy Campbell was host and tour leader).

Rebecca Skloot couldn’t join us last year, but with her book finally drafted and off to her publisher, she was game to come to RTP this year to attend ScienceOnline’09 and keynote the Women in Science and Engineering networking event Friday night at Sigma Xi. Erica Tsai, Phoebe Lee, Ana Sanchez, Amrika Deonarine and Rachel Witek put together a fantastic event, and Skloot’s talk about the immortal contribution of Henrietta Lacks to science was riveting. (Abel Pharmboy hosted a rousing wine tasting, too.)

Our discussion leaders
ScienceOnline’09 was an unconference in which all attendees were encouraged to participate and share alike; we asked 77 of them to serve as session discussion leaders, to provide their experiences or perspectives as a way to spark the session conversations. See the conference agenda to find out who facilitated which session.

Our volunteers
Elle Cayabyab Gitlin and Risha Zuckerman demanded the opportunity to spend the conference sitting at our welcome/registration table -; they were awesome! Larry Boles and Bill Hooker stuck around to help clean up. Lots of others helped out throughout the weekend, offering rides, organizing the swag table, keeping us on track and much more. Kevin Zelnio designed awesome name badges that in the end, couldn’t be completed due to some technical difficulties with our printer. Thank you to you all.

The Food
Meals were catered or ordered from Fetzko Coffees, Weaver Street Market, Saladelia Cafe, and Mediterranean Deli. The Thursday Early Bird Dinner was held at Town Hall Grill. Many local attendees brought fruit to share.

The organizers
Finally, big thanks to Anton Zuiker and Abel Pharmboy for making this all possible, by patiently putting together all the pieces of the conference throughout the entire year of planning. See you all next year!

Again, a huge ‘thank you’ to all the individuals and organizations supporting our free, publicunderstandingofscience conference.

ScienceOnline’09 on Minnesota Atheist Radio

Science is moving onto the internet. Collection of data, collaboration between researchers, communication and critique of results, teaching and learning–all are increasingly being done online. ScienceOnline, held January 16 – 18 in 2009, is a conference dedicated to discussing the intersection of science and online technologies. Bora Zivkovic, one of the founders and organizers of ScienceOnline will join Atheists Talk Sunday, February 1, to talk about the purpose of the conference, the results of this year’s sessions, and why it’s important to meet your online colleagues in person.
Produced by Minnesota Atheists. Directed and hosted by Mike Haubrich. Interview by Stephanie Zvan.

Podcast Coming Soon!
SUBSCRIBE TO THE iTunes PODCAST
SUBSCRIBE TO THE STANDARD RSS FEED
Write a review of Atheists Talk
Listen to AM 950 KTNF on Sunday at 9AM Central to hear Atheists Talk produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call the studio at 952-946-6205 or email us at radio@mnatheists.org.

ScienceOnline’09 – Saturday 2pm, and on the organization of an Unconference

scienceonline09.jpg
About a month ago we had a spirited debate on Twitter if ScienceOnline09 is an Unconference or not. I think the problem stems from two distinct meanings of the term.
See what Wikipedia, the Unconference Blog and this article say about the concept.
On one hand, people in the tech industry who like to attend various BarCamps and FooCamps (like SciFoo) really like the idea that the program is set entirely by participants ahead of the coference, either on a wiki, or on a big white poster board on the morning of the conference, and thus take it that this is the defining aspect of an Unconference. It is fun to do it this way, it sounds democratic and in the spirit of the “wisdom of the crowds” but it has serious drawbacks we wanted to avoid – on that later, keep reading.
On the other hand, the term Unconference also applies to the way sessions are run, regardless of who picked the topics. It is probably the best to quote Dave Winer on this:

The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.

Thus, if the person on the podium is talking and the audience is jotting notes, you are doing it Wrong. The unconferenc-ey session is highly participatory, with the person behind the lectern serving, pretty much, only as a moderator, breaking the ice and defining the topic at the beginning, making sure nobody hijacks the discussion, and making sure that the discussion does not veer off on crazy tangents without ever coming back to the topic.
In a perfect world, every conference and every session would be an Unconference in both senses of the term, but in the real world, it does not work that way. Why? Here is my experience from organizing three conferences to date, and why we chose a hybrid model.
First, for the 1st Science Blogging Conference, we did it the full Unconference way – the Program was set by the participants on the wiki beforehand. It worked pretty well, actually. But there was also something that bothered me at the time, and even more when we opened for the suggestions for the 2nd conference: the Program (just as it happened at SciFoo) was quickly populated by sessions suggested by A-type, self-promoting, middle-aged, white males – people just like me. The women, minorities, the very young, the very old, the tech non-savvy, the n00bs, the marginalized, the shy, the always-silenced… they got silenced again. And we wanted to hear their voices. Especially their voices.
Second, many of the suggestions were for sessions that are blogging universals, e.g., how to deal with trolls, which don’t have much to do with science. Most of the suggestions were about blogging in general. But, blogging is not the only thing in science online. There are online scientific journals, magazines, books, social networks, virtual words, various repositories, applications, video, reference software, etc. and that’s just the technical side, not to mention the social aspects of it all. The blogs are just one part of that ecosystem, perhaps the glue that binds those all together, and we wanted to have more than just blogging sessions – we wanted to explore how all those aspects relate to each other and how the Web is changing the way science is done. This is the motivation, also, for the name-change of the conference to make this point clear: instead of Science Blogging Conference, now it is called ScienceOnline.
Third, ScienceOnline is an evolving conference and we are trying to have year-to-year continuity, a year-to-year improvement, and yet having each conference having its own coherence and its own “stamp”. Discussions starting in one year continue the next year, perhaps with an entire year of events and technical inventions in-between to report on, perhaps becoming more focused or more derived, or splitting into two or three more specific sessions. They should be providing something new to repeat participants, yet are not completely out of context for the first-time guests either.
A general “science education online” session in 2007 became a “using online technologies in the classroom” session in 2008, which became three sessions in 2009: online science for kids/parents, use of online technologies in middle/high schools from students’ perspective, and using online technology in college teaching. The ‘gender and race’ session last year provided so much fodder, it turned into four sessions this year (gender in science, race in science, blogging through transitions, and anonymity/pseudonymity session).
This is a tough balance to provide, and the “wisdom of the crowds” does not work well with fine-tuning the sessions in this way. If we continued to let the participants set the Program on the wiki by themselves, every year we would have the same conference: a bunch of white, middle-age geeks leading sessions about beating the trolls on blogs. It would get old pretty fast.
So, we decided to have a much bigger say on what the Program will be, picking among the suggestions that arrive on the wiki, working with moderators on building and defining their sessions, and actively pursuing interesting people to talk about interesting topics, in order to have exciting, novel, fresh and coherent program every year.
In other words, the pre-conference crowd-planning may work for one-off conferences, but not for a series of annual conferences. Also, as the meeting gets bigger and bigger each year, a proper balance and diversity is harder to attain: this year 31 out of 77 presenters/moderators/panelists were women, which is actually not as good a ratio as we had last year, when the conference was smaller, but some changes always happen at the last moment and are out of our control. On the other hand, the diversity in race, ethnicity and age was greater this year than before.
Fourth, not every topic lends itself well to the unconference format. First, there are demos – 15 minute show-and-tell sessions where someone shows their site or software to the potentially interested users. There is not enough time for a long discussion beyond a brief Q&A. Then, there are workshops where it is obviously intended to have an expert in front and the audience coming in with a specific goal to learn something new – Blogging 101, Blogging 102 and ‘Paint your own blog images’ sessions fall into this category.
Then, there are sessions where the person on the podium clearly has greater expertise than all or most in the room, but once the audience learns something, a discussion may ensue, thus, having about half the time for a presentation and half the time for discussion is perfectly OK – examples: Semantic Web session, GeneWiki session, Rhetorics session, Carnivals session, Online resources for kids and parents session.
Some sessions are introductory (Open Access), some highly derived (Impact Factor, Open Notebook Science). On the other hand, some sessions were quite possible to open up to the audience right off the bat, even as easily as the moderator starting with a question “the topic is X, what do you want to talk about?”.
And then, there are the panels (three this year) which are an entirely different animal….
Interestingly, in the feedback form (90 respondents so far – if you are not one of them, please take a couple of minutes to fill it – we will analyze the data and use it to make the next conference better), most people really liked the free-flowing feel of the participatory sessions. Some like the unconference feel so much they actively disliked when a session was any less than 100% participatory. And then, there are always a couple who are uneasy with the format and would prefer more top-down control and formalized lecture-like sessions (no, we are not going that way!). I think a hybrid model, with each session’s format geared towards it’s topic and audience, is the way to go, perhaps erring on the side of free-flow when in doubt.
So, while we were planning this year’s program, I wanted to combine several of the things I mentioned above and do an experiment. I wanted to see if we could still have a free-flowing participatory discussion if we had a huge panel with a lot of panelists, each panelist being kind of a blogging superstar, and each having unique experiences that others in the room don’t have. Can we pull that off?
So, in the spirit of sessions evolving out of previous year’s sessions, I thought that expanding the “blogging on the ocean” session of 2008 could be expanded into a “blogging from various exotic and weird places” panel this year. So, I put the feelers out to see if there was any interest in this. And – oh yes! – there was interest, was there ever!
In the end, we had quite a large and delicious set of people on the panel: Karen James, Talia Page, Anne-Marie Hodge, Meredith Barrett, Kevin Zelnio, Vanessa Woods and Rick McPhearson, all participating in the session on Blogging adventure: how to post from strange locations (it could have been even bigger, as I also tried to lure in Samantha Larson (who liveblogged her ascent to the top of Mt.Everest), John McKay (who liveblogged a mammoth dig), Laura Hendrix (who blogs from rural places in the developing world) and perhaps some of the Antartctica bloggers, but they either could not come or could not be reached in time).
weird places 1.jpg
And, even with such a large panel, and each panelist having a story to tell, it worked wonderfully! First, they started off by engaging the audience – asking us to liveblog the session while they were going around the room and making it physically and mentally difficult to do – lights going on and off, strange noises, chairs shaking, pens falling out of our hands, weird insects falling into our hair…hey, it wasn’t easy!
Getting the taste of what it feels like to try to blog outside the comfort of our pajamas in our basements, we were eager to hear about the real challenges they experiences while blogging from strange places. Rick and Kevin are marine biologists and they do their field work on ships, submarines and while diving. When you are out at sea, there is a lot of water around you, and that water contains a lot of salt. Neither water nor salt are good for your laptops! But more importantly, there is no time – a month at sea is all one has to collect a year-worth of data. Thus data-collecting takes precedence. They work 24/7 on their research, do not even sleep enough, and there is just no time for sitting down and writing.
weird places 2.jpg
The time constraints were also the biggest problem for Anne-Marie, Vanessa and Meredith, who do ecological/conservation field-work in the tropics. Anne-Marie blogged from Belize last summer, Vanessa studies bonobos in Kenya, and Meredith studies lemurs on Madagascar. In such places, electricity is another limiting factor – it is unreliable, or rationed. Likewise for internet access.
Anne-Marie also realized that poachers do not like cameras that they set up to take pictures of animals in the rainforest – when they triggered the light-beams and got pictures taken off, they just smashed and broke the expensive equipment.
Finally, having diarrhea-inducing tropical diseases, like Ghiardia, is not just all-around bad news for you, but also a special impediment to blogging. While in India, Talia had to use an Internet cafe to write her blog. First time the nasty bug sent her running to the bathroom someone stole her notes from the computer desk. She diligently immediately copied them from memory, but then had to run to the bathroom again. But this time, there was no toilet paper. Oh, look, what’s that in my hand? Notes? I am so glad I took them with me so they do not get stolen again. And notes are on paper – a very useful material in this situation. You know how that story ended….
Next year, Talia will report on blogging from South American countryside, and in 2012 she will blog from space – a Virgin Atlantic space flight. By that time, as technology progresses, she probably will not need to have a laptop with her – we will be able to instantly see what she sees, hear what she hears, and read what she says. I hope.
A number of people in the room added their stories, and a number of technical suggestions were made (see the wiki page of the session and the blog coverage of this session). Sending datasets to one’s advisor back home is one problem – requires time and bandwidth and reliable internet.
On the other hand, blogging requires time and energy – something most people in the field do not have. Thus, long essays on a blog are unlikely to become common. But Twittering, or using audio (something you can do while walking and talking, or while finally resting in the hammock with a cold beer in the evening) may catch on as the favourite method for communicating the wonders of doing science in the field.
Other coverage of this session:
Highly Allochthonous: Liveblogging from ScienceOnline…
Pondering Pikaia: ScienceOnline09 Conference Update
Space Cadet Girl: For a Good Time, Check out Science Online 09
TalkingScience: For A Good Time, Check out Bloggers from Science Online 09
Deep Sea News: Science Online ’09: Blogging Adventure
Sessions in this timeslot I missed:
Web and the History of Science (which I really, really wanted to see, but we messed up the schedule when we printed the program, swapping some sessions in comparison to the program we had on the wiki):
Skulls in the Stars: ScienceOnline ’09: Web and the History of Science
Ideonexus: ScienceOnline09: The Web and the History of Science
Knowledge Sharing: ScienceOnline’09: Web and the History of Science
Christina’s LIS Rant: Science Online ’09: Saturday PM
Nobel Intent: ScienceOnline 09: History, art, and science
Race in science – online and offline:
HASTAC blogs: Liveblogging ScienceOnline ’09: Race in Science Online and Offline
Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline’09: Diversity in science, online and off
Almost Diamonds: Whither Allies
Thesis – with Children: On Not Quite Passing
Alternative careers: how to become a journal editor
Confessions of a Science Librarian: ScienceOnline ’09: Saturday summary
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Semi-live Blogging Scienceonline09: Day 1
Expression Patterns: ScienceOnline09 – Day 2
The blog/media coverage linkfest is growing fast (perhaps start at the bottom and work your way up, posting comments on the way and saying Hello to your new friends), there are ongoing discussions on FriendFeed and new pictures on Flickr. Also, if you were there, please fill up this short form to give us feedback, so we can make next year’s meeting even better.

ScienceOnline’09 – Saturday 11:30am

scienceonline09.jpg
You know that I have been very intrigued by the way the Web is changing the way we use language, especially in science communication, and have inserted my thoughts on that into many a post over the past couple of years. I have also been in a more-or-less continuous communication with Christian Casper over the past several months, for various reasons (including one really fun one – the Millionth Comment party at the Zoo). So, over those months, we came up with the idea for him to do a session, a little more academic in tone than what most other sessions were going to be, on Rhetoric of science: print vs. web
As the interested lay audience is bypassing the intermediaries of the media, who are more often than not, sensationalist and wrong, they increasingly rely on science bloggers, most of whom are actual experts, being scientists, for their science news. Bloggers use different rhetoric than journalists, being both more accurate on facts, and using more approachable and readable language.
At the same time, the rise of Open Access publishing is making primary research available to everyone. Thus, papers originally intended for colleagues as the only audience are now being read by everyone. I was wondering if this will make the language in scientific papers gradually become more readable, especially as new metrics that include traffic, number of downloads and trackbacks replaces the Impact Factor.
But, I had to somehow set the stage for this session. And I mulled a blog post in my head for a long time. Then, with a perfect timing, and containing everything I wanted in there, I posted this, a blog post that was read very widely, I am happy to say.
With that in mind, the session was exactly what I wanted and expected. We had a very interesting discussion about the use of language, mostly between Christian Casper, Henry Gee, Tom Levenson, Leah Gordon, Bob O’Hara, Roger Harris and myself. Check out the wiki page for more details.
Casper at SO09.jpg
Other blogs that mention this session:
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Semi-live Blogging Scienceonline09: Day 1
Sample coverage of other sessions in this time slot:
Semantic web in science: how to build it, how to use it (this was a Big Hit of the conference):
business|bytes|genes|molecules: download, mirror, fork
Ideonexus: ScienceOnline09: The Semantic Web in Science
Knowledge Sharing: ScienceOnline’09: Semantic Web
Christina’s LIS Rant: Science Online ’09: Saturday AM
Teaching College Science: Blogs and Beyond
Pondering Pikaia: ScienceOnline09 Conference Update
Crowded Head, Cozy Bed: Teaching College Science: Blogs and Beyond
Highly Allochthonous: ScienceOnline Day 1: generalised ramblings
CIT Blog: Ideas for using blogs and wikis in your course
Deep Sea News: Science Online ’09: Blogs in College Teaching
Confessions of a Science Librarian: ScienceOnline ’09: Saturday summary
Expression Patterns: ScienceOnline09 – Day 2
A Fish Eye View: Blogging in the college classroom
Gender in science
Sciencewomen: Alice’s gender and science session: How can we be allies?
Lecture Notes: Gender in Science Section
Lecture Notes: Gender in Science Section Part 2: personal perspective
Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline’09: Diversity in science, online and off
Almost Diamonds: Whither Allies
The blog/media coverage linkfest is growing fast (perhaps start at the bottom and work your way up, posting comments on the way and saying Hello to your new friends), there are ongoing discussions on FriendFeed and new pictures on Flickr. Also, if you were there, please fill up this short form to give us feedback, so we can make next year’s meeting even better.

ScienceOnline’09 – Saturday 10:15am

scienceonline09.jpg
Moving on with the morning, once again, I had to make a tough choice. OK, in this case, it wasn’t that tough, really, as this was the session I was looking forward to all along: Science online – middle/high school perspective (or: ‘how the Facebook generation does it’?) , led by Stacy Baker and her students.
But this session has a long history….
We had a session on using blogs in science education at the 1st science blogging conference and it was quite an eye-opener. It was led by Adnaan Wasey and Lea Winerman (from the The Online PBS NewsHour at the time). Takehome message #1: a lot of science educational materials on the Web are not accurate (and need scientists to verify them). Takehome message #2: no matter how good a blog post is, it is useless to a teacher if it does not fit into the curriculum as designed by the state. The result of that discussion was the starting of the initiative to collect in one place all the posts that cover Basic Concepts.
At the 2nd Science Blogging Conference, we had snow! And because this is NC, structurally unprepared for snow, about 30 of our registered participants could not show up – almost all of them middle/high school teachers from all around the state! Thus, although the session about education was led by Maestro himself, David Warlick, it had a strange feeling: a bunch of bloggers, scientists and web developers were sitting in the room talking about people who were not there – teachers and students – people who actually have day-to-day experience with technology in the classroom.
So, the very next day, I started plotting a plan to bring in a Real Teacher and Real Students to the conference to tell us from their perspective how online technologies are used in a science classroom. So, naturally, I started looking around the Triangle and NC for candidate teachers, but without much success. Then, one day, I saw that my SciBling Sandy posted this and I saw the first comment by a familiar name….so I responded by posting this and the rest is history. Both Stacy Baker and Elisa Hoffman (from that comment thread) came to ScienceOnline’09 in the end, but it was logistically feasible only for Miss Baker to bring along the students, so she ended up leading the session with eight of them.
scienceOnline09 - Miss Baker.jpgNow, don’t think that logistics of doing this were easy! There were legal issues (e.g., exactly who is allowed to drive a vehicle with students!), and there were ethical issues, especially regarding the students’ privacy and anonymity (you may have noticed that their names were not listed anywhere on the wiki or elsewhere online – it was up to them, after discussing this with Miss Baker, to reveal as little or as much as they wanted, but only in person at the conference, not plastered all over the internets). But going through all the intricacies of organizing this session was a pleasure to do with Miss Baker, not the least because we could both easily and comfortably use bazillions of communication channels: from phone and e-mail, through Twitter, Facebook to FriendFeed and others. That’s one Teacher Who Rocks!
But all of this work paid off! What a pleasurable sight it was when the yellow school bus pulled up at the Radisson!
In their session, the students explained to us how, in their Biology classes (9th grade Biology, and 11th grade AP Biology) they use various online tools, why they use such a variety, and pros and cons of each tool. For instance, their blog is public (these days, I’d say, very public!), commenting is open to everyone (even solicited, though moderated) and part of the students’ grades depends on the quality of their posts and comments there. On the other hand, they use Twitter and Ning in a closed, private setting for in-class discussions. In-between are their wiki, their video page, the Flickr account, etc., which are public but not as visible or popular as the blog. They do not use Facebook for school due to difficulties in separating personal from professional and the potential for the Creepy Treehouse effect (check their session’s wiki page for links to everything mentioned in this paragraph).
ScienceOnline09 - students.jpg
At a large conference like this (200+ people were there on Saturday), moderating a session or being on a panel is the opportunity to have one’s 5 minutes (OK, really 65 minutes) in the spotlight, with everyone’s attention trained at you. But with Miss Baker and her students, it was different – their session was just a highlight, a small part of it, they stole the entire show! And that was good! Why?
First, I’ve been to a bunch of techie/blogging conferences and most of the people in attendance look…, well, they look sort of like me: mostly male, white, 40-ish, middle-class, graying geeks. We have always strived to make our conference more diverse than that, and one aspect of diversity is certainly age. The eight students (and there were 3 others in the 16-18yrs old range as well, who came with their parents) changed the tone of the conference in a very positive way. Just their presence made the conference more exciting and lively and relaxed.
Second, I’ve been watching the blogosphere, including edublogs, for quite some time now and have noticed that Generation Wars erupt every now and then. There are two highly opinionated camps in those wars. One camp takes it for granted that the kids are ‘digital natives’ who use the Web intuitively while all those over 30 are dinosaurs. The other camp likes to remind that computers, Internet and Web were thought of, invented and built by the elders and that kids tend to be digitally illiterate and need to be taught the basics in school. Of course, both camps are somewhat right: digital nimbleness has to be learned (as far as I know, nobody Twittered from the womb….yet), and anyone of any age can become a digital native after a while. Some people of all ages have become so, the others of all ages are still behind the times.
This was an opportunity for some tremenduously smart, self-aware, thoughthful and Web-savvy teenagers to mingle with a crowd that usually thinks of them in purely abstract, academic terms. The two age groups got to meet each other in flesh and dispel some of each other’s myths about the other. Perhaps some (on both sides) were surprised with the computer savviness of the other. It’s hard to tell who was more excited about meeting each other! We all learned from this interaction.
I hope that the conference was as eye-opening to the students as it was for us. For a couple of days they were equals with all those scientists, librarians, popular bloggers, web developers, journalists and writers – not just treated as equals due to good will, but because they are equals in the domain of the use of online technologies in science communication and education. All of this is new to everyone, and age plays no role in the degree of expertise one has. They came to learn from us, and we learned from them just as much. I hope that this experience is going to help them in their future lives and careers, and I sure hope they can come back next year!
Other coverage of this session:
The Scientist: Blogging Biology
Extreme Biology: Thank You Miss Baker for Science Online ’09
Ideonexus: ScienceOnline09: Science Online – middle/high school perspective
CIT Blog: What your future students think
Extreme Biology: Pictures from Science Online ’09
Extreme Biology: Blog Posts About Our Science Online ’09 Presentation
Deep Sea News: Science Online ’09: Miss Baker and Her Students
Confessions of a Science Librarian: ScienceOnline ’09: Saturday summary
Lab Cat: SBC09: Blogging for High School Science Classes
Extreme Biology: Anna’s Favorite Moment from Science Online ’09
Nobel Intent: ScienceOnline 09: Learning science with social media
Extreme Biology: Erik’s Favorite Moment from Science Online ’09
Extreme Biology: Stephen’s Favorite Moment from Science Online ’09
Sample coverage of sessions I missed in this time slot:
Not just text – image, sound and video in peer-reviewed literature:
Ars Technica: Science Online 09: moving beyond text
Knowledge Sharing: ScienceOnline’09: Video in Scientific Research
The Logical Operator: Making movies…for SCIENCE! (ScienceOnline ’09)
Christina’s LIS Rant: Science Online ’09: Saturday AM
Gobbledygook: Interview with Moshe Pritsker
JoVE Blog: JoVE Update, Jan 09
Transitions – changing your online persona as your real life changes:
Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline’09: Managing your online persona through transitions.
Pondering Pikaia: ScienceOnline09 Conference Update
Highly Allochthonous: ScienceOnline Day 1: generalised ramblings
Sciencewomen: ScienceOnline 2009: Transitions
Lecturer Notes: Transitions Session Rough Cut
Lecturer Notes: Troll in the Room
Sciencewomen: Recommendations for crafting your online presence as your real life changes
Community intelligence applied to gene annotation (another session that, in the private feedback form, was mentioned by several people as their highlight of the conference, despite very few blog posts covering it):
business|bytes|genes|molecules: Rethinking Wikipedia
Lab Life: Everything social
BioGPS: BioGPS’s target audience
The blog/media coverage linkfest is growing fast (perhaps start at the bottom and work your way up, posting comments on the way and saying Hello to your new friends), there are ongoing discussions on FriendFeed and new pictures on Flickr. Also, if you were there, please fill up this short form to give us feedback, so we can make next year’s meeting even better.

ScienceOnline’09 – Saturday 9am

scienceonline09.jpg
Like everyone else, I had tough choices to make – which session to go to out of four in each time slot! Of course, I spent a year planning, and talking with moderators/panelists/presenters and building each session over time. Now I wanted to see them all. How could I afford to miss any one of them?!
But choices had to be made, and I knew I could rely on the blogosphere to write about other sessions so I could get the idea of how the other stuff went. The blog/media coverage linkfest is growing fast (perhaps start at the bottom and work your way up, posting comments on the way and saying Hello to your new friends), there are ongoing discussions on FriendFeed and new pictures on Flickr.
Also, if you were there, please fill up this short form to give us feedback, so we can make next year’s meeting even better.
So, first thing in the morning, I went to You are a science blogger but you want to publish a pop-sci book? , moderated by Tom Levenson and Dave Munger. Am I thinking about writing a book? No, and this session re-affirmed that decision. I can edit books. I can throw blooks up on Lulu.com. I may even get a collection of essays put together one day. But book-length exposition is not my forte – I do not have the patience and discipline for it. Blogs are just a perfect medium for me – jumping in when the inspiration hits and not worrying when it doesn’t. But for those who are interested in writing a book, this session was chockful of good information, from how to pitch a proposal, to how to make yourself disciplined, to how to actually organize your thoughts for such an endeavor.
Others who blogged about this session:
Pondering Pikaia: ScienceOnline09 Conference Update
Highly Allochthonous: ScienceOnline Day 1: generalised ramblings
Laelaps: SciOnline’09 and the future of Laelaps
Sessions I missed in this time-slot, but others have covered:
Open Access publishing: present and future:
Sciencewomen: Open Access publishing at ScienceOnline 2009
Knowledge Sharing: ScienceOnline’09: Open Access Publishing
bjoern.brembs.net: ScienceOnline09: Midway in the first day
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Semi-live Blogging Scienceonline09: Day 1
McBlawg: Science Online ’09 – How was it…. via the internet?
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Reflections on ScienceOnline09
Deep Sea News: LiveBlogging Science Online ’09: Open Access
Michael Nielsen: The role of open licensing in open science
Christina’s LIS Rant: Science Online ’09: Saturday AM
Science Fiction on Science Blogs?:
The Logical Operator: Science Fiction on Science Blogs – Science Online ’09, Day 1
Ideonexus: ScienceOnline09: Science Fiction in Science Blogs
Confessions of a Science Librarian: ScienceOnline ’09: Saturday summary
Expression Patterns: ScienceOnline09 – Day 2
Science blogging without the blog? (interesting – many people in the private feedback forms indicated they liked this session a lot, but very few blogged about it):
Nobel Intent: ScienceOnline 09: Nobel Intent gives back

ScienceOnline’09 – WiSE Lacks Shanties

scienceonline09.jpg
After the Museum tour and dropping by Radisson briefly to see who else has arrived in the meantime, I went home to see the family and walk the reconvalesecent dog for a few minutes (thus choosing to miss Friday Fermentable except for the last few minutes), then back to Sigma Xi for the WiSE networking event.
WiSE 1.jpg
WiSE 4.jpg
WiSE 5 Erica.jpg
The place was packed (my estimate – 300 people) with women in science and engineering from local universities (Duke, NCSU, UNC, NCCU and others) as well as many participants of ScienceOnline09. This was an opportunity for local women in science not just to meet and network with each other (they can do that often as they are all local), but also to meet some of their superstar heroes they know only from the online world and who, just so happens, were in town that night. And in some cases, it was in reverse – guests from far away getting to meet their Triangle heroes, for instance when Erik, one of Miss Baker’s students sought out and found his hero – Meredith Barrett (picture by Miss Baker) – hard to tell which one of them was more excited about the meeting!
Erik meets Meredith.jpg
The high point of the evening was the talk by Rebecca Skloot about the origin of HeLa cells, ubiqutous tools in cell biology and cancer research, and the difficult process of writing a book about this. The talk was edge-of-the-seat gripping and quite thought-provoking with several layers of ethical issues involved: the ethics of the doctors who took the cells from Henrietta Lacks, the ethics of scientists who started using the cells, the ethics of business that produce and sell the HeLa cells, the ethics of interviewing the family and writing her book, and the ethical question of what to do with the proceeds and whatever moral obligation the scientific community may have towards the descendants of Henrietta Lacks. It is a mind-boggling case for legal scholars and ethicists to ponder, and quite an eye-opener for the biomedical research community.
WiSE 2.jpg
WiSE 3.jpg
WiSE 6 Rebecca.jpg
After the talk, and schmoozing over delicious chocolate cake a little more, we went over to the hotel, where Ocean Bloggers, with funny hats, were singing shanties….
Radisson Friday 3.jpg
Radisson Friday 2.jpg
Radisson Friday 1.jpg
Radisson Friday 5 - Glendon.jpg
While the Nature Network bloggers meetup, with guests, was at the next table – it just looks serene because of the contrast with the marine rambunctiousness next door…
Radisson Friday 4.jpg
The blog/media coverage linkfest is growing fast (perhaps start at the bottom and work your way up, posting comments on the way), there are ongoing discussions on FriendFeed and new pictures on Flickr.
Also, if you were there, please fill up this short form to give us feedback, so we can make next year’s meeting even better.

ScienceOnline’09 – Friday Lab Tour: the NC Museum of Natural Sciences

scienceonline09.jpg
After coffee cupping, still pretty frozen, we went back to Radisson to see who else has arrived for ScienceOnline09 in the meantime. I set up my temporary field Headquarters in the lobby (photo by Lenore):
My Radisson HQ.jpg
After a quick lunch, it was time for Lab Tours (check blog posts and pictures for other people’s experiences). A bunch of us went to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences where Roy Campbell, the Director of Exhibits, gave us a fantastic whirlwind tour through the Museum and the vaults, the secret basement chambers that general public cannot access.
NCMNS - 2 Roy on map.jpg
NCMNS - 1 map.jpg
I’ve been going to the Museum for 17 years now, pretty regularly (I used to volunteer there when it was still in the old building), yet I always notice something new, some new detail or improvement they made since the last time I visited.
NCMNS - 3.jpg
NCMNS - 4.jpg
This was a pretty big group – if I remember correctly (and it’s all a blur now), we had Melissa, Paula, Elissa, Robyn, Molly, Kim , Patty, Daniel, Sol, Enrico, Carlos, as well as the entire contingent from Miss Baker’s class – eight students, two parents and Miss Baker herself.
NCMNS - 5.jpg
NCMNS - 6.jpg
But there is no group big enough or rowdy enough to get Roy off his game. The Museum is enormous, and I don’t think there is anyone in the world but Roy who is capable of giving a tour of it in just two hours and covering everything and going everywhere and saying so much interesting stuff!
I am sure that the visit to the palaeontology lab (where an amazingly well preserved and complete skeleton of a bipedal crocodile was being cleaned) and the vaults was the greatest hit with the group:
NCMNS - 7.jpg
NCMNS - 8.jpg
But for me, the most exciting was a brief look through one of the windows, onto the lot next door, where the bulldozers were hard at work digging a big hole – for the new wing of the Museum, as big as the main building, or so it appearrs. And that new wing – now THAT’S going to be exciting and unique, but you will have to read this blog for some time in the future until you get to hear the entire story once it becomes public….

ScienceOnline’09 – Friday Morning Coffee Cupping

scienceonline09.jpg
Friday morning was really, really cold (for North Carolina), so what better way to start off ScienceOnline09 than at Counter Culture Coffee where about 25 or so participants (and several other people – this is an open event) showed up bright and early to learn about the science (and business) of coffee.
Counter Culture 1.jpg
Counter Culture 6 - Henry and Janet.jpg
Counter Culture 9 - Viktor, Bob and Cameron.jpg
Coffee is one of those things that you just drink, unthinkingly, at the time of the morning when it is hard to think anyway. So this was quite an eye-opener – learning what happens between the moment the coffee plant is planted and the moment when you taste the coffee. And there are many steps in-between, and each step involves hard decisions as to how to do it as everything can affect the taste of coffee in the end: where to plant, how to plant, when and how to harvest, how to process it after harvesting, how to ship and store the beans, how to roast it, how to prepare the coffee. And we saw the process as well as learned about the effects of different geographies and practices on the final experience.
Counter Culture 7.jpg
Counter Culture 8.jpg
Counter Culture 10 - Diana.jpg
Our hosts presented us with three different ‘mystery’ coffees. First, we smelled the dry, freshly ground beans. Then we smelled it as soon as the hot water was poured over it. Then we smelled it at the exact moment when we broke the layer of foam that formed on the surface (and that can be a STRONG burst of aroma!). Then we tasted one spoonful of coffee. Then we waited about half-a-minute and evaluated the aftertaste.
Counter Culture 12 - Paul sniffing.jpg
Counter Culture 5 - Paul Jones.jpg
Counter Culture 11 - Danielle, Enrico, Brazilians.jpg
At each of those steps we tried to do what is probably the hardest part of the exercise – translate the olfactory associations into words. Smell, the oldest sense, the only one that does not get pre-processed in the thalamus before getting processed in the cortex, is incredibly difficult to describe with language – it affects our emotions more than our rationality. It is hard to ‘classify’ smells in any meaningful way. So, it is not a surprise that some of the descriptions of coffee aromas spoken in the room on Friday took quite a flight of fancy, e.g., “barbequing in the forest”, “dirty baby diapers” and “deflated inflatable kid’s toys heated by the Sun out in the yard”….
Counter Culture 4 - Arikia.jpg
Counter Culture 3 - cat herder.jpg
Counter Culture 13 - Henry.jpg
After the tasting, we were shown the rest of facility, including the stacks of bags of coffee, from all around the world, all of it either certified organic, or uncertified but known to be organic anyway.
Counter Culture 17 - storehouse.jpg
Counter Culture 16 - bag of coffee.jpg
Then, we were shown the process of coffee roasting. You start with a barrel of unroasted coffee:
Counter Culture 18 - unroasted.jpg
Then, after testing a small batch, decide which one of the three different roasting machines to use, at which temperature, etc.:
Counter Culture 19 - roasting machine.jpg
Counter Culture 20 - roasting machine 2.jpg
What comes out is a barrel of roasted coffee, ready for grinding and turning into delicious liquid:
Counter Culture 21 - roasted.jpg
Now, I have to admit, I came to this event with a whole set of handicaps. First, I am, unlike some other bloggers, incapable of writing poetry or even creative fiction. Thus, my verbal descriptions of coffee smells were quite technical and prosaic, unlike some I mentioned above.
Counter Culture 14 - Cameron and Anton.jpg
Second, where I come from, the only liquid that can be called coffee is Turkish coffee. Espresso is frowned upon as “too quick”, thin and weak. Everything else is derogatorily called “instant coffee”, to be served only in hospitals. I have never heard of a concept of decaf before I came to the USA. So, for me, the American coffee is just a very rarely used caffeine delivery device, when I need a really fast, strong and short-lived boost of the drug and nothing else is available.
Counter Culture 15.jpg
When I want to enjoy the taste coffee, I fix myself a Turkish coffee (OK, French Roast will do in a pinch), or have a coffee cake, or get a Mocca. So, trying to figure out the differences between three types of liquids that I barely ever drink was not easy – I was quite a novice. Not that I could not make distinctions between them, but it just not do for me what it did to regular American coffee drinkers.
And finally, after two hours of talking, thinking, smelling and tasting coffee on a very chilly morning, it would have been nice to actually drink a cup!
People you can see in these pictures are Erin Davis, Paul Jones, Henry Gee, Anton Zuiker, Cameron Neylon, DNLee, Carlos Hotta, Victor Henning, Paula Signorini, Enrico Balli, PalMD, Janet Stemwedel, Erin Johsnon, Arikia Millikan, Bjoern Brembs, Diana Pauly and Bob O’Hara, among others. Several of them have already (live)blogged the Coffee Cupping with much greater expertise than I ever could, so visit their blogs for their takes.
Counter Culture 2 - PalMD.jpg
More pictures can be found on Flickr and more blog/media coverage here.

ScienceOnline09 – Thursday

scienceonline09.jpg
I am still trying to recover from the previous week. It was quite busy for me, as you may have guessed. But I can start slowly posting my own hazy recollections and pictures now, I think, starting with the first day, Thursday.
After meeting with Anton at Sigma Xi to unload the swag, I went over to Radisson hotel to see who was already there and found Blake, Pal, Bob, Grrrl and gg in the bar:
scio09-thursday at Radisson.jpg
A couple of hours later we got in the car and went to the Early Bird Dinner to Town Hall Grill – another tradition at our conferences (we ate there both in 2007 and 2008 as well). I was very happy to be joined by Mrs.Coturnix and Coturnietta, Pal, Anton, gg, Henry, Danielle, Lenore, Danica, Sol, Kevin, Cameron, Irradiatus, Diana and Bjoern (did I forget anyone?).
scio09-thursday THG2.jpg
The food, as always there, was fantastic. After a rich mozzarela/mesclun/tomato salad (and I got to eat half of my daughter’s salad as well), I had snapper and mussels (with no marine conservation bloggers in attendance, we felt more free to order seafood….), followed by an immense chocolate cake. I hope that others, once they get home and process everything they experienced last week, will remember to blog about the dinner as well. If you do, it’s likely the restaurant page will link to your review as well.
scio09-thursday THG.jpg

ScienceOnline’09 – Monday blogging and beyond…

scienceonline09.jpg
Today, most of the ScienceOnline09 participants are either traveling home or trying to recover. While many managed to blog or liveblog during the conference, as well as discuss the conference on FriendFeed or Twitter and post pictures on Flickr, others have a different mode: taking some time to digest and then write thoughtful summaries later, once they are rested. First of those summaries are starting to show up online and I will keep updating you as others come in:
Highly Allochthonous: ScienceOnline Day 2: generalised ramblings
The Intersection: Echinoderms Emerge Victorious!
White Coat Underground: I believe!
Lecture Notes: Gender in Science Section
Lecture Notes: Gender in Science Section Part 2: personal perspective
Lecturer Notes: Science Online 09
The OpenHelix Blog: …And Boy is My Brain Tired…
The End Of The Pier Show: Come Out From Under There: We Won’t Bite
Space Cadet Girl: For a Good Time, Check out Science Online 09
DrugMonkey: My friends went to sciOnline09 and all I got was…
Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline’09: Diversity in science, online and off
10000birds: Stalking the Red-cockaded Woodpecker
The Scientist NewsBlog: New Impact Metric
Digital Serendipities: Reflections on ScienceOnline09
Laelaps: SciOnline’09 and the future of Laelaps
The Olive Tree: Return from SciOnline’09
Scientific American: The Semantic Web in Action
The Olive Tree: Zoo Review: The North Carolina Zoo
McBlawg: Science Online ’09 – How was it…. via the internet?
The Island of Doubt: Blogging, slogging and flogging
Nobel Intent: ScienceOnline 09: Nobel Intent gives back
Greg Laden: Where’s Greg?
Physics for girls?: Back home from ScienceOnline 09
White Coat Underground: Science Communication 2.0
Counter Minds: ScienceOnline09′ Extravaganza
The Intersection: How Many SciBlings Do You Recognize?
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Reflections on ScienceOnline09
Extreme Biology: Thank You Miss Baker for Science Online ’09
Greg Laden: Science Online 09 Sbling Group Photo
Flying Trilobite: Art Monday: airport sketches
The Other 95%: Missed Conference
Urban Science Adventures!: Book Review – Blog Carnival is up
Skulls in the Stars: Back from ScienceOnline ’09!
The Oyster’s Garter: NOM NOM NOM: Digesting Science Online
Brontossauros em meu jardim: Por uma blogosfera mais madura
Expression Patterns: Evidence
Ideonexus: Science Online 2009
business|bytes|genes|molecules: download, mirror, fork
Greg Laden: Science Online 09
Blogfish: Science Online 09 and the ocean of the unknown
Thesis – with Children: ScienceOnline’09 – The Roundup
Sciencewomen: Snapshots of ScienceOnline09
NICHOLAS INSIDER: from the trenches: Communicating science one key at a time
The Drinking Bird: One closer to 10,000
Ideonexus: ScienceOnline09: Science Fiction in Science Blogs
Bioephemera: Art vs. Science, Part One: Semiconductor
Science in the open: A specialist OpenID service to provide unique researcher IDs?
Open Access News: PLoS ONE will offer more impact-related data on articles
Almost Diamonds: Whither Allies
Terra Sigillata: ScienceOnline’09: megaprops to Sigma Xi and all who contributed
Ideonexus: ScienceOnline09: Science Online – middle/high school perspective
Knowledge Sharing: ScienceOnline’09: Open Access Publishing
The End Of The Pier Show: Impact Fauna
Ars Technica: Science Online 09: moving beyond text
Deep Sea News: LiveBlogging Science Online ’09: Open Access
Eclectic Glob of Tangential Verbosity: Science Online 09
Southern Fried Science: Getting a sense of porpoise
Genomeweb blog: At Least We Know Open Access Was a Hit
TalkingScience: For A Good Time, Check out Bloggers from Science Online 09
AlexLey.com: SO’09: Thank you, please come again
AlexLey.com: SO’09: The structure of a Saturday
AlexLey.com: World Air Traffic
AlexLey.com: SO’09: Designing Sundays
Lab Life: Everything social
Expression Patterns: ScienceOnline09 – Day 1
TGAW: iNaturalist: East Coast vs. West Coast
Ideonexus: ScienceOnline09: The Semantic Web in Science
CIT Blog: What your future students think
Crowded Head, Cozy Bed: Teaching College Science: Blogs and Beyond
Knowledge Sharing: ScienceOnline’09: Video in Scientific Research
Knowledge Sharing: ScienceOnline’09: Semantic Web
Page 3.14: The Buzz: ScienceOnline’09: A Communication Convention
bjoern.brembs.blog: ScienceOnline09: How to get rid of the impact factor
Also, help me out here. Both Google Blosearch and Technorati are idiosyncratic – some posts show up very quickly, some with a long delay and some never. If I have missed a post of yours, old or new, about ScienceOnline09, please let me know by e-mail or by posting the permalink in the comments here. It also helps if your post contains the word “ScienceOnline’09″ in it and/or the link to the wiki homepage.

ScienceOnline’09 – How was it for you?

ScienceOnline09 is over, people are going home, and the online coverage so far appears to be very positive. I hope that conversations started at the conference continue, online and offline.
In the meantime, if you have participated either in RealLife or virtually, and while the memories are still fresh in your mind, please take a minute and fill in the feedback form, to help us make the next year’s conference even better. Thank you!

ScienceOnline’09 – Sunday blogging

scienceonline09.jpg
And here is what bloggers wrote so far today:
The Logical Operator: Not-so-live blogging Science Online ’09
The Logical Operator: Science Fiction on Science Blogs – Science Online ’09, Day 1
The End Of The Pier Show: Lines Written At 1.20 am ET Sunday 18 January
The End Of The Pier Show: Prevarication, 7.30 am ET, Sunday 18 January
Highly Allochthonous: ScienceOnline Day 1: generalised ramblings
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Nature Blogging 101
White Coat Underground: Carolina dreamin’
Makroskop, laboratorium przyszłości: Science Online ’09
The Flying Trilobite: ScienceOnline09 – my bouncing brain
The Flying Trilobite: ScienceOnline09 – Art & Science afterword
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Semi-live Blogging Scienceonline09: Day 2
Gobbledygook: ScienceOnline09: Providing public health and medical information to all
business|bytes|genes|molecules: Rethinking Wikipedia
FairerScience Weblog: Gender, Race and Oversized Postcards
Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets: Science Online 09: In Praise Of Connections
Open Reading Frame: Another wonderful conference
Southern Fried Science: Thoughts on ScienceOnline’09
Rastro de Carbono: Filosofando sobre divulgação e jornalismo científico
Brontossauros em meu jardim: Importante! Boas e más notícias!
Raio-X: Lablogatórios no ScienceOnline’09
The Real Paul Jones: Science Online 09, The Opposite(s) of Property, Steam Power and Carrboro Obama Fest
Expression Patterns: I’m asleep right now
business|bytes|genes|molecules: ScienceOnline’09: The return journey
Biochemicalsoul: ScienceOnline09 – Warm, Fuzzy Feelings
Mistersugar: ScienceOnline’09 is pau hana
Check the pictures on Flickr and live microblogging on Twitter and FriendFeed.

ScienceOnline’09 – Saturday blogging

Too tired (and it’s too late) to write anything myself….but others have done it:
Sciencewomen: Overwhelmed at ScienceOnline 2009
Sciencewomen: Open Access publishing at ScienceOnline 2009
Sciencewomen: Alice’s gender and science session: How can we be allies?
Sciencewomen: ScienceOnline09: The day wends on
Highly Allochthonous: Liveblogging from ScienceOnline…
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): What Happened to Tangled Bank?
Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline’09: Managing your online persona through transitions.
Culture Dish: Documents for my ScienceOnline 09 Getting Published Talk
The End Of The Pier Show:
Thoughts from Kansas: Synchronicity
The Intersection: Weekend At ScienceOnline’09
Endless Possibilities v2.0: ScienceOnline’09
Charles Darwin’s blog: A glass of sherry in the direction of those
The End Of The Pier Show: Lines on the First Morning of ScienceOnline09
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Semi-live Blogging Scienceonline09: Day 1
10000birds: Talking Blog Carnivals at ScienceOnline09
bjoern.brembs.net: ScienceOnline09: Open Notebook Science
bjoern.brembs.net: ScienceOnline09: Midway in the first day
bjoern.brembs.net: ScienceOnline09: Social Networks for Scientists
Crowded Head, Cozy Bed: Science Online Notes
Physics for girls?: ScienceOnline ’09
HASTAC blogs: Liveblogging ScienceOnline ’09: Coffee Cupping Event
HASTAC blogs: Liveblogging ScienceOnline ’09: Race in Science Online and Offline
HASTAC blogs: Liveblogging ScienceOnline ’09: Anonymity and Pseudonymity – Building Reputation Online
HASTAC blogs: Liveblogging Science Online ’09: Social networks for scientists
UDreamOfJanie: Lounging About
Pondering Pikaia: ScienceOnline09 Conference Update
Lots more on Twitter and Friendfeed. Continuing tomorrow….

ScienceOnline09 – Thursday and Friday

scienceonline09.jpg
ScienceOnline09 is in full swing. I don’t have much time and opportunity to go online, as you may have noticed – so many old friends to hug! Already a full day behind us – a lovely dinner at Town Hall Grill last night, Coffee Cupping this morning, Lab Tours in the afternoon (I went to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences), then a quick run home to see Mrs.Coturnix and walk the dog, then back to Sigma Xi, the Friday Fermentable, the Women’s Networking Event and the amazing talk by Rebecca Skloot. An hour at the bar listening to ocean-bloggers singing shanties, then, exhausted, time to go back home and see what people have blogged about it all so far. Check it out:
Thursday, January 15th, 2009:
Thoughts from Kansas: Deep ScienceOnline ’09 Thoughts
Laelaps: Almost time for Science Online ’09!
Deep Sea News: Out of the Depths, We are Reborn! (again)
Adventures in Ethics and Science: On my way to ScienceOnline’09
The Beagle Project Blog: ScienceOnline09 on my mind
Biology in Science Fiction: I’m Sorry I’ll Be Missing ScienceOnline09
The Oyster’s Garter: Off to Science Online 2009
Urban Science Adventures!: ScienceOnline09 Conference Begins
Lecturer Notes: SO’09 I’ve Arrived
Greg Laden: Live Blogging the NC ScienceOnline 09 Conference
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: Arrived in NC
Cephalopodcast: The Invertebrate Wars Redux
Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets: Science Online 09: A Field Guide
Highly Allochthonous: Coming to America
Skulls in the Stars: Off to ScienceOnline ’09!
Friday, January 16th, 2009:
Etherized: ScienceOnline09 Conference in Raleigh, NC
Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline’09: Liveblogging Coffee Cupping at Counter Culture Coffee
Gobbledygook: ScienceOnline09: Providing public health and medical information to all
Greg Laden: Live Blogging the NC ScienceOnline 09 Conference
The End Of The Pier Show: Lines Written Over Breakfast, Friday 16 January
Greg Laden: Janie Belle has Entered the Building
Laelaps: Made it!
Expression Patterns: Friday Fermentable Liveblog
Deep Thoughts and Silliness: ScienceOnline09: live-blogging the wine tasting
Bioephemera: ScienceOnline09!
Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline’09: Liveblogging Coffee Cupping at Counter Culture Coffee.
Adventures in Ethics and Science: ScienceOnline’09: Liveblogging a Friday Fermentable wine-tasting.
Sciencewomen: Friday Night at ScienceOnline
Pharyngula: Heat wave!
Science After Sunclipse: ScienceOnline’09: The Conference That Rhymes
Thesis – with Children: ScienceOnline’09
Urban Science Adventures!: ScienceOnline09 Conference Begins
Thesis – with Children: Liveblogging – with Wine
Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets: Science Online 09: The Limitations Of Iconography
bjoern.brembs.blog: ScienceOnline09: FridayFermentable liveblogging wine tasting
The Flying Trilobite: Arrival at ScienceOnline ’09
FairerScience Weblog: Waiting for the wine tasting
Mistersugar: ScienceOnline’09 is on
Pondering Pikaia: In Which I Venture North for Blog Fun
Endless Forms: In Which I Venture North for Blog Fun
Check the rest here.
Follow the conversations also on FriendFeed, Facebook and Twitter and check out the pictures on Flickr.

ScienceOnline’09 – introducing the participants 10

scienceonline09.jpg
The interest in the conference was overwhelming this year. When we opened the registration back in September we did not expect that we would have to close it in less than three weeks, already over our maximal number of 200. As a result, our waitlist got bigger and bigger and, occasionally, as someone would cancel, we could invite someone from the waitlist to register.
About a dozen people held off until the end, hoping they would still be able to make it, but had to cancel over the last week or two. In their place, we invited several people from the waitlist (and yes, we are still over capacity, and hope everyone will take the crowding with good humor). Let me introduce them today:
Arikia Millikan is everybody’s favourite intern here at scienceblogs.com and she blogs on Page 3.14. She will join Erin Johnson in presenting Scienceblogs.com at the conference.
Clark Boyd is the Technology Correspondent for PRI’s The World.
Joshua Rosenau is my SciBling, over at Thoughts from Kansas, as well as the Public Information Project Director at NCSE.
Christopher Conklin works for Blogads, the Chapel Hill based pioneering online advertising company.
Jason Smith is the Associate Editor and webmaster at UNC’s Endeavors magazine.
Nathan Swick blogs on The Drinking Bird and is a Scholarship Coordinator at the UNC-Morehead Planetarium & Science Center.
Benjamin Schell, Christopher Perrien and Tessa Perrien write for Science in the Triangle, an evolving experiment in community science journalism and scientific-community organizing.
Catherine Clabby is an Associate Editor and Katie Lord is the Associate Publisher at American Scientist magazine.
Karen Ventii is a science writer and a (former, but nobody is really “former”) SciBling (at Science To Life).
acmegirl is a blogger on Thesis – with Children.
KT Vaughan is the Pharmacy Librarian, a blogger on Pharmacy Librarian and Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Pharmacy at UNC.
Harvey Krasny is the Founder of CaroTech, LLC.
Caroline McMillan is a journalism student at UNC, the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Carrboro Commons and Editor-in-Chief of ‘Rivals’ magazine (yes, UNC and Duke students can work together!).
Leah Gordon is the Knowledge Management Specialist at MEASURE Evaluation Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Allison Gruber is a science writing student at Duke University.
Angela Czahor is a science writing student at Duke University.
Alexandra Levitt is a science writing student at Duke University.
Grace Baranowski is a science writing student at Duke University.
Diane Bosnjak is an AIBS/COPUS organizer of Year of Science 2008.
Nancy Shepherd, MBA PhD is the President and CEO at Shepherd Research, LLC
Soumya Vemuganti is a graduate student at UNC in the Departnent of Cell and Developmental Biology, she is starting to write for an online health website and interested in pursuing a career in medical/science writing.
Elie Dolgin is associate editor at The Scientist
Chris Nicolini is the Web Producer and Editor for the American Institute of Physics
Pamela Reynolds is a Graduate Student in the Biology Department at UNC.

ScienceOnline09 – virtual participation

scienceonline09.jpg
It’s here. The first traveling participants are arriving tomorrow! Anywhere between 200 and 240 people are expected at any given time during the three days of the conference, with another 60+ people, regrettably, remaining on the waitlist even after some last-minute cancellations allowed us to invite a couple of dozen waitlisted folks. The waitlisted locals are welcome to add their names to extra events, e.g., meals or lab tours if there are empty slots remaining, just to meet the participants face-to-face if they want to.
Those who will be here in person will get to meet each other in Real Life. But others can also participate and follow from the distance in various ways. The Demos will be screencast and most of the sessions will be either live-streamed or recorded and all the videos will be deposited or linked to somewhere on the wiki. More details about this later.
Throughout the conference, your best starting point will be the Live Coverage page which will be enriched over the next day or two to provide more content.
There will be ongoing discussions on Facebook, on FriendFeed and Twitter (use the scio09 hashtag).
Tag your Flickr images with scio09 as well.
If you blog about it, made sure that there is a term or link to scienceonline09.com somewhere in your post, so I can find it and, whenever I can, add it to the Blog and Media Coverage page.
And finally, don’t forget that each session has its own wiki page where discussion is supposed to take place.

Science 2.0 article quotes four ScienceOnline’09 participants

Science 2.0: New online tools may revolutionize research quotes Michael Nielsen, Eva Amsen, Corie Lok and Jean-Claude Bradley. Article is good but short. If you come to ScienceOnline’09 or participate virtually, you can get the longer story straight from them.

ScienceOnline’09 – the Weather

The weather prediction for this week is cold and clear to partly cloudy. If you are coming from Canada, you’ll probably think that’s warm, but for us here, this is very cold. At least, it appears at the moment, we will avoid snow unlike last year:
NCweather.JPG
http://blog.coturnix.org/tag/scienceonline09/
blog.coturnix.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2013-48
336419
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FEXFUQBA56YI4WZ2LOMCT5NJDERQX2AE
<urn:uuid:eccec102-e93e-426e-963e-b32d90cee5a6>
2013-12-09T13:57:21Z
76.74.254.120
sha1:D23M5KA5PAGKU3CSOMRV7WVBNBUMORW4
<urn:uuid:1d1457b2-e506-4de9-9bd0-61e060ccedfe>
http://blog.coturnix.org/tag/scienceonline09/
length
response
<urn:uuid:2fc75b3c-c816-4608-83c5-6e67e776c38e>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2013-48
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for Winter 2013
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf