scienceonline'09

Shortly after I arrived in Helsinki and was suffering from jet lag, my friend, Bora, published this interview he had with me via email. Bora -- "Coturnix" -- is the main organizer of the ScienceOnline conference series held in North Carolina in January. Each year, he interviews the speakers from that year's conference and publishes those interviews on his blog to help generate greater public interest in the conference and in science blogging in general, and to help the public learn more about the people who write the blogs that they enjoy. The best part of my interview is the featured image…
Arikia Millikan, then-Intern at ScienceBlogs.com (now gainfully employed Ex-Intern), demonstrates her facility in liveblogging the comparison between two pinot noirs. So why has it taken me exactly 11 weeks to write this post? I think it's because once we post it, I have to let go of how awesome this event was. But, this post has been sitting in my queue for way too long. So, now, I must finally tell all regular readers about our proposed live winetasting on 16 January at ScienceOnline'09. As you may know, about 240 science bloggers and associated miscreants gathered in Research…
I've been scarce around these parts and hope to get a Friday Fermentable up before midnight. However, I just wanted to share the following on the last couple of days discussions about Nature Publishing Group's various pronouncements on the importance of science blogging, especially their mention in Nature Methods of ScienceOnline'09, an unconference I co-organized this year with founders and online science visionaries, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker. Bora has the main stories and DrugMonkey adds commentary and his own personal experiences. But leave it to Anton Zuiker to capture the whole…
Okay people, these students in Miss Stacy Baker's biology classes and Extreme Biology blog have been rocking my world for quite some time. They've now burst onto the national media and were all the buzz of the recent ScienceOnline'09 conference. For those not familiar with the story, Stacy Baker is a biology teacher at the Calverton School in Huntingtown, Maryland, who began a website for student activities and class notes back in 2006. With the boundless enthusiasm of ninth-graders and more seasoned AP biology students, the site has become interactive: a blog, Extreme Biology, with videos…
Following on the heels of the ScienceOnline'09 conference, I was delighted to learn this morning that our local fishwrapper has launched its own Science and Medicine blog. Led by N&O science editor, Sarah Avery, the Science and Medicine blog will expand upon the surprisingly sparse coverage of one of the most scientifically dense areas of the United States: The Triangle is home to a wealth of medical and scientific research. While the nature of scientific advancement is incremental, many of these findings help advance our understanding of important diseases, drug therapies and natural…
Last Thursday, I entered The Research Triangle for the ScienceOnline09 conference. It was a place of both shadow and substance, both things and ideas. It was a place where the cryptic elements of the blogosphere manifested in three dimensions; personalities known only through pixelated text subject to the imagination took on faces and voices that would forever alter my perception of the messages flashing next to the user names I encounter every day as an administrator of ScienceBlogs. But unlike The Bermuda Triangle where people are rumored to disappear due to the activities of paranormal…
tags: annual science communication conference, ScienceOnline'09, SciO09, Sigma Xi, Research Triangle Park, science blogging conference, nature blog writing If you've been following this blog for very long, you will recall that a colleague (and former SciBling), Kevin Zelnio, and I co-hosted a session at the recent ScienceOnline '09 conference in North Carolina about Nature Blogging. I published a list of questions on my blog that were projected live onto a screen during our presentation (along with reader comments), to serve as a focal point to guide our discussion. I also asked the attendees…
It'll be a few days before I can get together posts on this past weekend's ScienceOnline'09 conference in frigid North Carolina. The Friday Fermentable Live! was a terrific success and it already looks like there are seven posts out there (for example, Eva Amsen on her Nature Networks blog, Expression Patterns, put up an account with vasectomy-like precision). I had the honor of participating in two sessions: one on gender and allies in STEM, online and off, with the youthful Alice Pawley and Zuska and another on pseudonymity/anonymity and building online reputation with PalMD. Speaking…
tags: annual science communication conference, ScienceOnline'09, SciO09, Sigma Xi, Research Triangle Park, science blogging conference, nature blog writing Naturalist Blogging in the heart of the Big Apple. Welcome everyone, to our session at the ScienceOnline '09 conference at Sigma Xi in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. This session is focuses on Nature Blog Writing and is being co-hosted by GrrlScientist (who is the author of this blog) and Kevin Zelnio, co-author of The Other 95%. This session is occurring live at the buttcrack of dawn (0900-1000 ET) on Sunday morning, 18 January 2008.…
Today kicks off the first day of events of the third annual ScienceOnline conference in North Carolina. Founded in 2007 by veteran ScienceBlogger, Coturnix from A Blog Around the Clock, ScienceOnline is the first conference devoted to discussing science as its role changes with the expansion of the internet. Several ScienceBloggers have traveled far and wide to attend the conference and participate in the events.
Let me just start off this post by thanking Mark and Chris Hoofnagle for inviting PalMD to join them at denialism blog. Through Orac, I had followed Pal at his White Coat Underground and was delighted when the Hoof-gents invited PalMD to a bigger forum in their ScienceBlogs digs. PalMD has now metamorphosized with his old blog now on ScienceBlogs. Congratulations, friend! My Mom, a retired nurse, will understand completely when I say that PalMD is the kind of doc I once thought I could be (and Mom, you've got to put this guy in your bookmarks!). Many speak of Pal's criticism of…
Well, PalMD and I have been working tirelessly on putting together a plan of discussion for the upcoming ScienceOnline'09 session on Anonymity and Pseudonymity - Building Reputation Online. Over the last several months, we have had a tremendous outpouring of comments on our own blogs and numerous other blogs that gives us far more fodder than could be discussed in a 75 minute unconference session. (Pal, I foresee a palcast on pseudonymity.). I still contend in all seriousness that the following 18 October 2008 quote from PhysioProf (cross-posted on his solo site) deserves to be the opening…
Bora/Coturnix has a nice post up this morning on science and nature things to do around the Research Triangle area for those of you coming to the area and staying before and/or after. While Bora resides in Chapel Hill, I take personal pride in singing the praises of Durham, the sometimes-maligned apex of the scalene triangle that comprises, well, the Research Triangle (the third point being Raleigh, the state capital). Since the unconference is being held at the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park (80% of which is actually in Durham), here are two of the most valuable resources I use:…
Hey, y'all who are coming to ScienceOnline'09 this coming Fri through Sat: I need a final count on those coming to the Saturday dinner buffet by mid-morning tomorrow (Mon, 12 Jan). Please, please, please sign up on the wiki tonight or tomorrow morning: http://www.scienceonline09.com/index.php/wiki/Saturday_Dinner/ I have to give the Radisson hotel a cashier's check on Monday (tomorrow) and want to make sure they prepare enough food to account for last-minute people but I don't want to overestimate the number as I will be the one to eat the cash for no-shows. I also don't want attendees…
In preparing for the ScienceOnline'09 session on Gender in Science - Online and Offline, one planned discussion point will be how to enlist allies representing the dominant power structure to enhance equality and diversity in the STEM disciplines. No one ally can do it all but a combination of like-minded people can make a huge difference. Here is a terrific example of an ally, written by superb higher ed reporter, Eric Ferreri, of the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer, on Dr Henry Friedman and CAPE, the Collegiate Athletic Pre-Medical Experience: Georgia Beasley was practicing her jump shot…
Let's face it, after the holidays I'm not terribly interested in drinking any beer or wine for the next two weeks. However, two weeks from today will mark the beginning of ScienceOnline'09, the online science communications unconference being held in our little ol' neck-o-the-woods. Being as how I'll have the chance to meet so many of you then, I'd like to throw out the idea of having a live Friday Fermentable. On the evening of Friday, 16 January, conference attendees will be gathering at the Radisson RTP headquarters hotel bar and Sigma Xi conference center between returning from…
In today's laboratory, we will consider cases where bloggers have been involuntarily unmasked, usually with malicious intentions. This is a series of interactive posts which I hope will provide disucssion points for a session I will help to lead on blogger pseudonymity at the ScienceOnline'09 unconference in RTP, NC, USA, 16-18 January 2009. Many bloggers choose to write under pseudonyms for personal and/or professional issues. I'll leave my session co-chair PalMD consideration of the special issues of the pseudonymous physician blogger. Several docs I know use pseudonyms simply because…
To those not following our discussion, PalMD and I (and a couple of pseudonymous women bloggers) will be leading a discussion session on the needs and justification for anonymity or pseudonymity in blogging at the upcoming ScienceOnline'09 conference (16-18 Jan 2009 in RTP, NC, USA). I've also been toying with the pros and cons of personally uncloaking and have been surprised that most readers and commenters don't really care whether I am Abel or [RealName]. The past posts in this series have focused on whether readers trust pseudonymous bloggers - "trust" is a powerful word that I now…
Here. PalMD, why don't we just put this up and say, "Discuss." btw, I sort of like my new pseudonym.
Wow. Thank you, dear Terra Sig readers, for your thoughtful responses to our first query about the concept of blogger pseudonymity. For background, I have threatened to reveal myself (in text, not photographically) and wished to use this opportunity to provide grist for a session led by me, PalMD, and several women bloggers on the sci/med blogging under a pseudonym at ScienceOnline'09 on 17 Jan 2009 at Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. Just as many people might be frightened by me uncloaking in meatspace, readers have responded that…