SO'09

Open Laboratory - old Prefaces and Introductions

clock — Sun, 09 May 2010 15:22:33 +0000

Open Laboratory - old Prefaces and Introductions

One difference between reading Open Laboratory anthologies and reading the original posts included in them is that the printed versions are slightly edited and polished. Another difference is that the Prefaces and Introductions can be found only in the books. They have never been placed online.

But now that four books are out and we are halfway through collecting entries for the fifth one, when only the 2009 book is still selling, I think it is perfectly OK to place Prefaces and Introductions that I wrote myself online. I wrote Prefaces for the 2006, 2007 and 2008 book, as well as the Introduction for the 2006 one. The introductions for the subsequent editions were written by the year's guest editor, i.e., Reed Cartwright in 2007, Jennifer Rohn in 2008, and SciCurious in 2009.

So, under the fold are my three Prefaces and one Introduction. See how the world (and my understanding of it) of the online science communication has changed over the last few years:

Preface to the Open Laboratory 2006

The idea to publish a collection of science-related blogposts came recently from the publisher of this book, Lulu.com. The timing of the publication of this book, the first of its kind, is designed to coincide with the first Science Blogging Conference in January 2007 in Chapel Hill, NC. This left less than a month for the entire process of building this anthology from start to finish.

There are hundreds of science blogs and hundreds of medical blogs our there on the Internet. Many have been publishing for several years. Thus, there are hundreds of thousands of posts to choose from and pick the best fifty ever written. How does one compile an anthology at such short notice? For a blogger, the solution is obvious: a democratic method. I posted a call for nominations on my own blog and e-mailed several dozen science bloggers about this endeavor. That was on Christmas Eve, when most people are spending time with their families instead of surfing the Web, so the online traffic is very small. Yet, the idea was received with a considerable enthusiasm and within just a couple of days I had received (and, of course, posted links to) 218 nominations to pick from.

Then, I recruited twelve of my blog-friends to help me choose the best 50 posts. They certainly came through, on short notice, with detailed evaluations of all submitted posts. So, this is the place where I should profusely thank Jennifer Ouellette, Janet Stemwedel, John McKay, Carl Feagans, John Beetham, Alun Salt, Moheb Costandi, Heinrich Gompf, Leo Lincourt, Bill Hooker, Karmen Lee Franklin and Jennifer Wong for their willingness to spend a considerable amount of time and effort during the holidays to help with this project, as well as Alun Salt for designing the cover and Anton Zuiker for helping with the techincal aspects of putting together a book. Without them, this book would have been impossible to finish on time.

In assembling this collection, I was looking for the quality of writing as well as the diversity of topics and styles. It is not easy to move the work produced in one medium into another medium. Blog posts are dynamic. Books are static. How does one place hyperlinks on paper? Hyperlinks are the currency of the blogging world. Frequent updates and the comments posted by readers are what gives blogs their life. As a result, the posts included in this collection are, in a sense, the ones least typical for the online environment - those that are capable of standing alone, almost autistic in their resemblance to the essays of the hardcopy-printed world. This is no judgment on their quality, of course, as these are the best essays around, only a reminder that much that goes on online is much more conversational than the material presented here. Thus, I urge you to go to the nearest computer and look at science blogs in their natural medium.

Many of the posts collected in this anthology have garnered numerous - sometimes hundreds - of readers' comments that are worth checking out. See what hyperlinks are embedded in these posts. See some of the color images that had to be omitted for publication in a book. Then look around these blogs, see what else they have written over months and years of their existence and check out what other blogs they link to. Finally, join in the conversation yourself - post a comment or start your own blog!

This is the dawn of a new age of communication. In the beginning there were grunts, tom-tom drums, smoke signals, and the guy on the horse riding from village to village reading the latest King's Edict. Then came Gutenberg, ushering in the beginnings of the Media. That was the first time in history when literacy started spreading from clergy to all the others: professional classes, ruling classes, and beyond. It took a couple of more centuries, and the Industrial Revolution, before the invention of the daily newspaper. Another century passed before radio was invented, followed by television another half-century later.

Right now, we are in the middle of another Media revolution - the Internet is taking over. And for he first time, the Media is not a top-down production, a few with the loudspeaker talking down to the silent masses that are unable to respond and be heard. Today, the Media is a many-to-many communication. Unlike traditional journalists who are jacks of all trades, many of the participants in the new media are the true experts on the topics they communicate about. This includes scientists and physicians whose work is showcased in this anthology. Blogs, podcasts, video-files and social software are the way of the future. Don't allow yourself to be left behind!

January 11th, 2007
Chapel Hill, NC

Introduction to the Open Laboratory 2006

Science is one of those areas of life (sex being another) where nationality does not really matter. Let me be perfectly clear here that I am not talking about technology, engineering, or most of the applied science - those can be quite well kept within the borders of one country (and strictly enforced by patent and property laws, or kept secret within the confines of the DOD). I am talking about the pure, basic science driven by curiosity about the way world works.

The global nature of science is, of course, an ideal not quite yet supported by reality. There are rich and poor countries, countries with rich scientific traditions and those with none, countries in which science is highly regarded and those in which it is frowned upon. This means that different kinds of science are done in different parts of the world.

When I published my first scientific papers a few years ago, I received only very few requests for reprints from bigwigs at big US Universities. Most requests were from people working at small colleges and, surprisingly for me at the time, from people working in places like Argentina, Algeria and Poland. I was wondering why. Well, it is obvious, big Universities in the States have money to subscribe to many scientific journals. Small colleges and foreign schools cannot afford such a luxury.

Over the past five years or so, Internet has dramatically changed this picture. Almost nobody sends requests for reprints any more. People at big schools log into their online libraries and download PDF files. People from smaller places and abroad send e-mails asking for the PDF to be sent as an attachment. Search engines like ISI Web of Science and Medline bring to one's fingertips almost everything published in science practically as soon as it is published. Google Scholar is allowing people not affiliated with big Universities to find literature online. More and more journals are starting their online editions. Even big rich schools, like Harvard, are dropping expensive subscriptions for hardcopy versions of top scientific journals. Online journals, like PLoS, are fast becoming as respected as any print journals in the field.

Until about WWII the global centers of science were in Europe. Since about the 1950s, the USA had an absolute primacy in the world of science. We are experiencing another shift right now. The number of foreigners coming to the USA to study has about halved in the last couple of years. There are a number of reasons for this. The Patriot Act certainly makes it more difficult for people, especially from some countries, to get visas to study here. The anti-scientific atmosphere in the country is certainly a repellent. Creationist actions in Dover, PA, Cobb Co. GA, and Kansas are certainly not great PR for the state of our science (and science education). Slashing of funding for science (except for defense-related research and the crazy Moon/Mars project) does not look promising for a potential foreign student. Outright ban on some types of research (e.g., stem cell research) has even lured some American-born scientists to move to Singapore and similar places abroad.

But it is not just a repellent effect of today's America that is keeping all those smartest foreigners from coming here. They are also attracted to the new possibilities for success at home. Fall of communism, unification of Europe, lightning-fast economic development of a number of Asian nations, all these factors contribute to a new sense of optimism in so many parts of the world. One can, these days, actually do good science in many countries in which it was impossible a decade earlier. Universities and Institutes are being built, money is coming in, the old ways of doing science business are being rethought and reformed in many places, thus luring many young people to choose countries other than the scary USA for their professional development.

These kinds of concerns have been voiced repeatedly here in the States, and science has been quite politicized lately. Many articles in mainstream media, as well as posts on blogs, have been written lamenting these recent developments. Organizations have been formed (e.g., the Union of Concerned Scientists), and some blogs are almost entirely devoted to this problem (e.g., Chris Mooney's The Intersection). However, the scientists themselves are feeling more conflicted. On one hand, being good Americans, they would like to see the US retain its leading role in the world of science. They want to continue being able to do good science in this country. On the other hand, being good scientists, they feel that the globalization of science is a good thing. While most other human endeavors are parochial, science is universal, and the latest trends promise an internationalization of science never before seen in history. The increased communication and collaboration between scientists in many countries, coming from different scientific traditions, will lead to creative cross-pollination that can be only good for the progress of science.

So, what is the role of blogs going to be in the future of science? I believe the blogs are going to speed up the internationalization of science, with positive effects for both American and foreign scientists. What expert science bloggers are doing right now and will do even more in the future is take expensive information and make it free. People with access to expensive journal subscriptions will link, excerpt, and comment on technical papers as soon as they are published, thus making them available to scientists in small schools, in foreign countries, and, importantly, to amateur scientists.

Science teachers in elementary, middle and high schools will have the information at their fingertips and so will their students, resulting in a better communication and a kind of learning that is more fun. With online book publishing, textbooks will probably become a little less than ten years out of date at the time of publication. Journalists will know where to go to find correct information about a topic that requires scientific explanations. Random blogsurfers will pop in and see some really cool science-stuff with who knows what consequences - perhaps piquing an interest in science in a kid? The best science bloggers are able to also write well, translating difficult scientese into ordinary language, thus removing some of the mystique that keeps people afraid of science, as well as demostrating how science works and how controversies and food-fights are the best generators of new ideas and cool findings.

At the same time, the openness of the Internet is changing the way scientific findings are published. Open-access online journals and public peer-review are becoming more and more favoured over the traditional journals by the scientists themselves. It was recently shown that papers published in online journals are more frequently cited than those published in traditional journals (especially if the traditional journal does not post papers online at all, or hides them behind a subscription wall). Some scientists are starting to publish data and even day-to-day lab notebooks on their blogs. The new ways of publishing science are slowly changing the way science is done. And when the way science is done and published changes, this will change the way science is funded, taught and appreciated by the wider society.

Preface and Introduction were partially based on the following blog posts:
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/07/smoke_signals_blogs_and_the_fu.php
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/07/blogs_and_the_future_of_scienc.php
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2006/08/science_blogging_what_it_can_b.php

Preface to the Open Laboratory 2007

Open Laboratory 2007, the book you are holding in your hands right now, is the second science blogging anthology. The first one, the 2006 edition, was a complete surprise in every way. The idea itself, seemingly preposterous, was a surprise. The immediate, overwhelmingly positive response by science bloggers was a surprise. The number of posts submitted for consideration (over 200) was a surprise, particularly considering that the entire process was happening during the Christmas holidays, when many people go offline to travel and spend time with their family and friends. The dedication of a dozen colleagues from the scientific blogosphere who spent their holidays reading and evaluating all the submissions was a surprise. The speed at which the entire process ran was a surprise: it took less than a month from the first mention of the idea till the first copy of the book was sold. The overwhelmingly positive reviews of the book in the media and on blogs was a surprise.

At the time the first anthology was in preparation, there were a little over 700 science blogs written in English or other 'Western' languages. I had a list of all of them and visited them on a regular basis. All of those bloggers I consider to be my personal friends, even if we have never met in the physical world. Related blogs, e.g., those focusing on healthcare, medicine and nursing, also had similar numbers. There were probably about the same number of nature end environmental blogs at the time as well.

Since then, the field exploded with the number of science blogs, at least doubling over the course of the year. It is now impossible to track and list all of them, let alone read them all regularly. Due to a number of factors - and I like to think that the Science Blogging Conference and the first anthology had some impact - science blogging has hit the mainstream in 2007. Almost every major science journal and magazine published an article on science blogging during this year and most of them started their own blogs. The two oldest and largest science blogging communities that were formed the previous year, Scienceblogs.com (hosted by the Seed Media Group) and Nature Blog Network (hosted by the journal Nature), became online centers of scientific blogging and are both very well represented in the second anthology.

All of those trends were already apparent early in the year, just after the first book was published. Many took it for granted that publication would become an annual event. It quickly became obvious that the challenge of editing the second anthology would be too big for just one person's labor of love and a few weeks of work during the holidays. I needed to start the process early and I needed some help. The solution I came up with is to ask a prominent science blogger, each year a different person, to serve as the Editor of the anthology, while I would provide continuity and consistency by acting as a series editor.

Thus, for the 2007 edition, I asked Dr. Reed Cartwright, a genetics postdoc at North Carolina State University and the power behind two excellent blogs (The Panda's Thumb and De Rerum Natura), to serve as the Editor. This volume is the product of a year of his hard and dedicated work. He set up an automated submission system and several other online tools used to collect and evaluate the submitted posts, to communicate with the judges and authors, and to edit and prepare the manuscript. All of those tools made the job possible and will certainly be used again next year. He guided the evaluation process, made some tough decisions, put the manuscript together and made the book look beautiful! And not just that Reed did the perfect job, but he was also a pleasure to collaborate with throughout the year.

This year's response of the blogosphere was overwhelming - almost 500 of the best science posts of the year were submitted for consideration - quite a lot to read and evaluate. So, this is the place where we should thank Anna Kushnir, Karen Davis, Tiffany Cartwright, Karen James, Anne-Marie Hodge, Michelle Kiyota, Tara Smith, Jennifer Forman Orth, David Kroll, John Dupuis, Blake Stacey, Greg Laden, Michael Rathbun, Egon Willighagen, Martin Rundkvist, Arunn Narasimhan, Mike Dunford, Steve Matheson, Brian Switek, Kevin Zelnio, John Wilkins, Jeremy Bruno, Mike Bergin, Anton Zuiker, Ian Musgrave, Peter McGrath, Alex Palazzo and Dave Bacon for their willingness to spend a considerable amount of time and effort during the holidays to help with this project, as well as Alun Salt for designing the cover. Without them, this book would have been impossible to finish on time.

In assembling this collection, as was the case last year, we were looking for the quality of writing as well as the diversity of topics, forms, voices and styles. As it is not easy to move the work produced in one medium into another medium, the posts included in this collection are probably the least typical for the online environment. We had to choose posts that are capable of standing alone on the printed page without the dynamics introduced by hyperlinks, trackbacks and readers' comments. Thus, after you finish reading this collection, I hope you will venture online and take a look at science blogs in their natural medium and get the feel for the dynamic, ongoing conversation that goes on in the scientific blogosphere.

Some people are good research scientists. Some people are excellent writers. Science bloggers are both, combining their scientific expertise with the ability to turn it into a riveting story. I hope you enjoy this selection of their best essays.

Bora Zivkovic
January 13th, 2008
Chapel Hill, NC

Preface to the Open Laboratory 2008:

Printing presses, reams of paper, barrels of ink and distribution trucks are expensive. The price of printing limits how much can be distributed to the readers and who gets to write for print. The quality control is performed by a set of experts we call editors. Editors, using their best knowledge and experience, choose, among a myriad of submissions, exactly what pieces of text will see the light of day in a publication -- be it a daily newspaper, a glossy magazine or a scientific journal.

The World Wide Web is changing this in a dramatic way. The expense of writing something and publishing it online is miniscule. Thus, everyone is able to put their thoughts and ideas online, very fast, and practically for free. The quality control comes after publication and is communal -- the best, in theory, will rise to the top. Even the best of editors cannot come close to the combined expertise of millions. New measures, like online traffic, the number of incoming links, and the "Google juice" propel to the top the writings of those considered the best by the greatest number of other people. Of course, small groups of people peddling disnformation are capable of gaming the system and temporarily gaining online prominence, but over time, the larger groups tend to prevail and ensure that true quality wins the day.

Science is not immune to these changes either, but it has its own idiosyncratic challenges to deal with. Communication of research results among scientists still requires a pre-publication quality control -- the peer reviewers. And, for the research to be considered valid, it needs to be published in a proper scientific journal, which requires peer review and the decision-making by editors. Even as scientific journals move entirely online, and thus enabling inexpensive publication of vast numbers of scientific papers, the editorial process remains intact.

But communication among scientists is only one part of the ecosystem -- communicating science to the public is just as important. And it is here that the Web and the new technologies are eliciting the greatest changes. The online scientific papers are only at the center of an expanding circle of scientific discourse. Websites, library repositories, pre-publication sites (like arXiv and Nature Precedings), wikis, blogs, social networks (like Facebook) and microblogging platforms (like Twitter and FriendFeed) are all now parts of the ecosystem of scientific communication, all intertwined with each other and with the peer-reviewed papers.

Blogs are probably the most prominent venue of this new world of online communication. In science, blogs can be used in various ways. For instance, some blogs are a means for communication within members of a research group who may be geographically separated from each other. Other blogs are classroom tools in science education. Yet others are a part of marketing outreach by scientific organizations.

Still, the science blogs that are both the most popular and the most novel addition to this ecosystem are those written by individuals who write because of a personal passion for science and a wish to impart this passion to the lay audience. Most of those bloggers are themselves scientists, or on their way to becoming so; thus, their expertise on the topic vastly exceeds that of a science beat reporter for a local newspaper or that reporter's editor. They bring authority to their writing that most journalists in the mainstream media, outside of specialized scientific magazines, do not have. For this reason, they are quickly becoming the voices of authority on scientific topics online and increasingly the "go-to" places for a lay audience wanting their science-related news fix.

In addition, these popular bloggers also reveal their humanity every day. Aside from science, the popular science bloggers often write about other topics they feel strongly about, from politics and religion, and the trials and tribulations of life in the laboratory, to the hottest high-heeled shoes they just bought. They use humor. They use funny pictures and videos in their posts. They use regular, even colloquial language to write their posts. They are putting a human face on science, showing that science is inhabited by interesting, colorful characters far different from the popular stereotypes of insular, socially inept geeks. Their lay audience, often initially attracted to the blog by non-scientific topics, then gets to see how cool science is and how exciting it is to be a scientist.

This book, the third annual anthology of science blogging, is an attempt to showcase the best writing on science blogs to an audience not yet familiar with the science blogosphere. But a book is a print medium. It requires presses, paper, ink and trucks, which are expensive. A book severely limits what gets published and whose words are made available to the readers. How does one choose exactly which, out of millions of blogs posts, to include in such an anthology?

The solution is a combination of a traditional editorial system and the new community-based quality control. More than 520 blog posts have been submitted for consideration over the past year. Many of those were submitted by the readers because those blogs are already popular and considered to be the best by the community. Then, a panel of judges, most of them bloggers themselves, carefully read all of the entries and made suggestions to this year's editor, Jennifer Rohn, as to which blog posts most deserve to be included in this volume. Jennifer and her team took it from there and made the final decision and helped the authors polish their essays and modify them as needed for the move from the Web to print.

The result is The Open Laboratory 2008, containing 50 blog posts, one poem and one cartoon, each on a different topic, each written in a different form, each with a different voice. I hope you enjoy the quality and diversity of writing on science blogs presented in the book and I hope, even more, that reading the book will whet your appetite for more so that you seek out and start reading science blogs online in the future.

Bora Zivkovic
Chapel Hill
January 20th, 2009

clock Sun, 05/09/2010 - 11:22

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On organizing and/or participating in a Conference in the age of Twitter

clock — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 09:44:04 +0000

On organizing and/or participating in a Conference in the age of Twitter

This is the first time ever that I cared about SXSW conference or was jealous for not being there. Watching the blogs and Twitter stream, it appears to have been better and more exciting than ever. I guess I'll have to figure out a way to finally get myself there next year....

But this post is not really about SXSW. It is about presenting at such conferences. More specifically, how the back-channel (on Twitter and elsewhere) affects the way one needs to approach an invitation to speak at meetings where much of the audience is highly wired online: to say Yes or No to the invitation in the first place, and if Yes how to prepare and how to conduct oneself during the presentation.

A great example of this was the Future of Context panel at SXSW, with Jay Rosen, Matt Thompson and Tristan Harris, moderated by Staci Kramer.

After the meeting ended, Jay Rosen described in great detail all the things they did to prepare for the session and how that all worked - go and read: How the Backchannel Has Changed the Game for Conference Panelists. I will be sending the link to that post to all the speakers/panelists/presenters/moderators at ScienceOnline2011 once the program is set. That is definitely a post to bookmark and save if you are organizing a conference, or if you are ever invited to speak at one.

This includes people who tend to speak at conferences that are not filled to the brim with the Twitterati. Even at such conferences, a small but loud proportion of your audience WILL tweet. Be prepared! Even if you are speaking at the AAAS meeting.

There are other important things to think about - both for organizers and presenters.

First, public speaking is for some people the most terrifying thing they can ever be asked to do. But even those who are not completely terrified, may need some training in order to do well. Have new people be mentored by experienced speakers (I mentioned how we do that at ScienceOnline at the end of this post) by sharing the panel. As an organizer, work hard to help the new speakers to alleviate their fears, to make crystal-clear what is expected of them, to provide them support before, during and after their sessions.

Many organizers are hoping to increase diversity (of personal experiences and approaches, not just in terms of gender, race, age, ethnicity and such, though the diversity in the latter usually brings along the diversity in the former as well). They need to remember that announcing this intent is not enough. People who were not welcome at the table before have no reason to believe that they will be welcome now - so why bother. You have to do more - actively reach out and engage them. And, as your conference (like ScienceOnline) goes through years, if you are successful at bringing in the diverse groups to the table - they will notice. They will invite others to come next year. The meeting gains reputation, over the years, for being open and inclusive (nobody is a superstar and everybody is a superstar). Instead of being tokens, they become an integral part of the conference and help shape it. This takes work.

Second, the Back-channel should never become the Front-channel!!!! Never display tweets on the screen behind the speaker. Never. On the other hand, please make it easy for the speakers to monitor the Twitterverse on their own computer screens if they want to.

Third, if you are organizing a conference, think hard about the format. At a typical scientific conference, the speaker is a scientist who is presenting new data. The talk is likely to have a level of complexity (as well as an arrow of the narrative) that is not served well by constant interruption. In such cases, a traditional format, with a Q&A period (long enough!) at the end is just fine. TED and TEDx conferences are similar. Quick presentations, like Ignite or storytelling events are similar - the presentations are too short and too well-rehearsed to be able to withstand interruptions. But you have to have a Q&A at the end - it is irresponsible not to have it.

For example, many sessions at the AAAS meeting are three hours long! Including my session. And in each one of those that I attended, the moderator announced at the beginning that the Q&A will be at the end. Hmmm, how many people will still be in the room after 2 hours and 40 minutes? They will be either long gone, or brain-dead and eager to leave. So we tried to do the best we could with the format we had - we had 2-3 people ask questions after each one of our presentations (there were six of us at the panel) as well as at the very end. And you know what - at the end of the third hour, the room was still full and we were still getting more questions. Engaging the audience early on got them excited. They wanted to stay in the room and engage some more, 2-3 of them every 20 minutes or so, and several more at the end.

On the other end of the spectrum to the one-to-many lecture is a fully-fledged Unconference format. It is based on the insight that "The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage.". This, of course, depends on the topic, the speaker, and the audience.

As I explained at length in this post after ScienceOnline'09, and at even more length in this radio interview after ScienceOnline2010, our inaugural meeting in 2007 was a pure Unconference, but that we since decided to move to a hybrid format for a number of reasons I explained in both of these places.

Think, for example, of Workshops. We had a Blogging101 workshop at a different day, time and place in 07 and 08. We expanded the number of workshops in 2009 and had them as a part of the main program (just tagged as workshops), and then in 2010 we again moved them all to a different day, time and space to make it clear that these sessions are different - not Unconference-y in format, and for a good reason (we'll do the same next year).

A Blogging101 workshop, for example, will have an experience blogger at the front. The audience will be full of people who have never blogged and want to learn how. The moderator is an expert, and acts as a teacher or trainer or 'fount of wisdom' to the audience who came to get exactly that - instruction. The audience expects to learn how to start a blog, how to post the first introductory post, how to make a link and insert a picture, how to build a blogroll and change the visual design of the blog from an existing set of choices. They also expect some sage advice on what is regarded as proper blogging behavior so they do not get instantly slammed when they enter the blogosphere for "doing it wrong". The kinds of questions such an audience asks are going to be calls for help and clarification, perhaps for more information. They are unlikely to insert their own opinions and information, or to challenge the session leader. It is more of a classroom lecture (or lab) than a freewheeling discussion. Yet is has its own usefulness and should not be looked down upon because it is not in an Unconference format.

Actually, a Blogging102 workshop, where the audience already has some experience in blogging and is looking for tips and tricks for making their blogs better, looking better, and promoted better, there will be additional insights from the audience - which we saw at Scio10: that workshop was quite participatory and interactive.

Then, there are demos. A demo is just 12 minutes long with additional 3 minutes reserved for Q&A. The presenter is showing off his/her website or software or what-not to people who have not seen it before and would like to see how it works. Again, interruption of such a short and carefully prepared presentation would not be a good thing. If you have more to discuss - grab the presenter in the hallway afterwards. We are thinking of moving the Demos (both 12-minute presentations and potentially stations or booths) to a different day/time/space next year as well. Nothing wrong with that format, but it is not in an Unconference spirit.

Yet, the bulk of our conference is an Unconference. And we have seen that well-prepared presenters can turn even large 4-5 person panels into lively discussions off the bat. I have described one such 2009 panel in this post and there were several this year (most notably the Rebooting Science Journalism session). What we tell both moderators and participants is that the name of the session is not a title of a lecture but the topic of the conversation for that hour.

People who already have experience with the unconference format lead the way (we try to have such people lead the first morning sessions to set the tone for the rest of the event) and n00bs follow. Once everyone is in the swing of things and participating freely, it is easy to have a session be very informal. For example, last year Pete Binfield and Henry Gee started off their session with the question "Our topic is "A" - what do you want to talk about?". And that worked brilliantly as people who decided to attend that particular session already had questions and comments prepared in their minds and were ready to start discussing the topic right from the start. Other sessions require more of an intro, and that is OK as well.

So, the bottom line is that there is a spectrum of potential formats and each format has its pros and cons. The duration (from 5 minutes to 3 hours and everything in-between) will dictate how participatory the session can be. The relative difference between the expertise of the people on stage and the people in the audience is also a factor - more even they are, more participatory the session should be. As an organizer, always strive to have the sessions as participatory as the format/topic/people allows it, not less. Having less will diminish the experience - it will be seen as preaching down and trust will be lost.

And keep the Back-channel in mind - people in the room are not the only people participating. Make sure that the people following on Twitter, or Ustream or SecondLife can participate to some extent as well - perhaps let the people/audience in the room (all of them or a few chosen individuals) be moderators of Twitter chatter, and ask the cameraman to introduce questions from the Ustream audience into the room. We did both at ScienceOnline2010 and the feedback from virtual audience was positive. We'll try to do even better next year.

clock Tue, 03/23/2010 - 05:44

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ScienceOnline09 - an interview with Cameron Neylon

clock — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:15:39 +0000

ScienceOnline09 - an interview with Cameron Neylon

The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January.

Today, I asked Cameron Neylon from the Science in the open blog to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?

My background is in protein chemistry and biochemistry. Broadly speaking what I do is take proteins and use chemical and genetic approaches to change their sequence or modify their characteristics and then use a range of techniques to see what has happened.

What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?

The kid in the toyshop? Rich and famous? Actually no real idea and I'm not sure that it matters that much. The conclusion I've come to is that what I want to do is make some sort of difference by applying what I can do well and what I know in whatever the best place is. My background and knowledge is in the biological sciences so that seems a good start but the question is how to make the biggest difference. Over the years this has meant that I have moved from pure science to methods development to working in positions that support other people doing science to thinking about how to make the whole process of science and research work more effectively. To make a big difference doing the straight science you have to do the right thing at the right time - to affect a lot of people it has to be really earth shattering. But as what you do relates to more researchers or more people smaller differences can have bigger effects. If I could do something that improved the efficiency of all research by 0.001% that would be a huge contribution.

So when I grow up I want to be someone who made a difference.

What is your Real Life job?

I'm a senior scientist responsible for biological sciences at the ISIS Neutron Scattering Facility, which is run by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council. We provide and large scale facilities for the UK research community. Neutron scattering has traditionally been used mainly in the chemical and physical sciences (particularly in areas of polymer and magnetic structure and magnetic and structural dynamics) but has a lot of potential in solving particular types of structural problems in the biological sciences. My job is an interesting combination of directly supporting users who visit to exploit our facilities, methods development to expand the range of problems we have the expertise to tackle, and public relations and promotion of neutrons to the bioscience community.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

The ability to have an ongoing and distributed conversation with smart people regardless of where they are. I believe strongly that we can use the web to find efficiency gains of much more than 0.001% in how we do research by finding the right people to solve the right problems, by distributing the load across geographically separated groups and working more collaboratively. On top of this I find the potential to explain more effectively what science is and what it can and can't do to the wider community by directly involving them in the research process really exciting. While 2009 will rank as one of the most depressing years on record for public engagement with and understanding of science the potential to do a lot better - and to expand the kind of science we can do at the same time - is there for the taking.

When I look back at the last couple of years the amount of change in both the consumer web and the tools that are being specifically developed for researchers is massive. We've been through a big development of social networking sites for scientists which I personally believe haven't been very successful, mainly losing out the mainstream equivalents, but we're now seeing a second round of efforts that are learning from some of those mistakes and will be very interesting to watch. I still think there isn't enough focus on actually solving problems that the majority of researchers know that they actually have - there is still too much building of things that would be cool if people used them, but not giving those people a reason to use them. But I think 2010 will be a very interesting year with lots of new technologies maturing and coming online.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?

Blogging and Friendfeed in particular are a crucial aspect of the work I do looking at online tools for researchers. That is where the community is and where the most up to the minute conversations are happening with the newest ideas. Twitter is important because so many people are on it, a critical demonstration that its often the community, and not the tool which is important. Tools like Slideshare and Wikis, GoogleDocs and other collaborative services are also important to this work because they really underpin the distributed collaborative approach we are trying to develop and exploit. I think Google Wave will gradually become an important part of this ecosystem over the next 12-18 months as the clients and servers bed down and the hype and backlash cycle dies down enough for people to figure out what tasks it is good for.

When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?

I wrote up how I came to get involved with the online blogging community a while back - http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/08/22/how-i-got-into-open-science---a-tale-of-opportunism-and-serendipity/. In terms of the blogs on my blog roll there are many that will be familiar (Deepak Singh's BBGM, Jean-Claude Bradley's Usefulchem, John Wilbanks' Common Knowledge, Neil Saunders' What you're doing is rather desperate). I keep an eye on Richard Grant (The Scientist), Jenny Rohn, and Martin Fenner at Nature Network. Some other blogs that may not be as familiar to the regular sciblogger community but are well worth the effort are Greg Wilson's The Third Bit, Mike Ellis' Electronic Museum, PT Sefton's blog and Nico Adams' Staudinger's Semantic Molecules.

Blogs that I tracked down and got into my feed reader after last year included Christina's LIS Rant (now at SciBlogs) and Katherine Haxton's Endless Possibilities, as well as a wider selection of the more general science blogs, that are you know...actually about science rather than somewhat meta stuff that I do.

Is there anything that happened at this Conference - a session, something someone said or did or wrote - that will change the way you think about science communication, or something that you will take with you to your job, blog-reading and blog-writing?

What really struck me was both the diversity and the quality of presentations, discussions, and writing. Mostly it pushed me to up my game, which may be one of the reasons I'm posting less...

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

Absolutely, I will be there...ah that would be like, this January...in about two weeks...woops!

==========================

See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

clock Mon, 12/28/2009 - 06:15

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SO'09

SO'09 Interviews

SO'10

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Christian Casper

clock — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:23:48 +0000

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Christian Casper

Today, I asked Christian Casper to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?

My name is Christian Casper, and I recently finished a Ph.D. at North Carolina State University, in their program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media, in which I focused on online scientific communication. Before that I did an M.A. in English at Eastern Michigan University, with a thesis on the 1996 Nobel lectures in chemistry (the buckyball folks: Smalley, Kroto, and Curl).

I'm also a "recovering chemist" -- I did my undergrad at Iowa State University in chemistry, with a minor in biology, and I went to grad school in chemistry at the University of Michigan. I took my M.S. there when I decided that scientists and scientific communication were more interesting than atoms and molecules are!

I worked for a while as a technical writer at a small scientific-instrument company in Ann Arbor called Kaiser Optical Systems Inc. (KOSI for short) that developed components and eventually entire instruments for Raman spectroscopy. Although my primary duties at KOSI were to develop marketing and operations documentation, I also managed our applications laboratory, and I helped clients develop Raman-based applications for their research or their production facility or whatever they happened to be interested in. I enjoyed being able to still get my hands dirty, but I was really finding myself drawn to the study of language and rhetoric, so that's when I decided to go back to grad school.

What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?

I'm not quite sure! I was on the academic job market this past year, and I got a good tenure-track job offer from the English department at a large research university in the Southeast, but my wife was also on the market and we couldn't find positions together. She had been focused on post-secondary teaching for much longer than I had, so I yielded to her, and we happily moved back to Michigan, where she is now an assistant professor of biology at Eastern Michigan. I'm currently doing the final revisions on my dissertation (I successfully defended in July) and am looking for a position. If anyone out there needs someone with my skill set and is fine with my being in southeast Michigan, feel free to get in touch! I'm interested in consulting, communication, or development work for R&D organizations or higher education.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

In my doctoral work I was interested in how new forms of online communication might enact new genres and how they might alter the existing genre of the research article. I used my work primarily to answer some basic questions in what's called rhetorical genre theory, particularly regarding the ways that different genres can work together, but I think that people in the sciences might get something out of it too, although that wasn't my primary audience.

At the conference you led a session about Rhetoric in science, and this is also the topic of your research. How do you see the Web changing the language of scientific communication in both formal and informal venues?

It's hard to predict too far in the future, but it does seem like we're moving away from some of the more rigid, formal "rules" of scientific communication. This was happening before the Web really took off, of course. You see a lot more first-person and the active (as opposed to the passive) voice in the scientific literature even in, say, the 1980s than in the 1950s, and those old preferences for passive voice really seem to be disappearing now, except in some more
conservative quarters. Looking at the level of the entire publication unit, it seems like we're moving toward publishing shorter reports in higher quantities, but obviously there are a lot of factors involved with that beyond just the publication medium -- LPUs and things like that. I don't think the research paper per se is going to go away anytime soon -- there just isn't any selection pressure in that direction -- but there are going to be more ways to communicate informally across geographical separations. How exactly that plays out remains to be seen, especially in terms of professional rewards. That's more of a sociological issue than a rhetorical one, however, so that's getting out of my expertise!

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?

I haven't done much with those, but I do think that if I were to push my dissertation work further I'd want to take those things into account. I think blogs are especially interesting, particularly as a bridge between the professional and public spheres. I'm also interested in seeing how ResearchBlogging.org evolves, because that's another thing that alters the milieu, if you will, of the research article.

When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?

I actually discovered science blogs while trolling for research artifacts for a term paper in one of my doctoral seminars. This would have been in the spring of 2007. I did write a sort of speculative/theoretical paper that provided some of the basis for my later work.

As for favorites, I'm going to say that I enjoy most of the most popular ones, and I'll name a couple that I think deserve maybe even a bit more attention than they seem to get. I like Tetrapod Zoology, by Darren Naish, very much. In fact, I think that's the one that really first caught my eye, because it's really sophisticated on the one hand, but at the same time it's really accessible. I also really like Built on Facts, with Matt Springer. We need more blogs in the physical sciences, and I like that he doesn't shy away from equations but that he also does a really nice job of explaining their significance and what they mean. I also like that ScienceBlogs is bringing in some librarians and folks like that as well. We have a really outstanding library staff at NC State, so I'm glad to see that profession get some recognition on ScienceBlogs.

There's been so much, but I think the session from ScienceOnline09 that has stuck with me is the one on image and sound in scientific publishing. I have some nascent research questions coalescing in that area! I also really enjoyed the one on science blogging and the history of science, but that's because I personally am very interested in those "x of science" fields -- history, philosophy, rhetoric, sociology, and so on.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again soon.

I'm looking forward to making it back down to North Carolina for future conferences! I wish I could do it this year, but with my job situation up in the air I can't really make the commitment. Hopefully Anne and I can make it back sooner rather than later! Thanks for all you do to make these excellent conferences happen.

==========================

See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

clock Mon, 11/09/2009 - 05:23

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Just a quick note that a lot of basic work in rhetoric and composition theory has been done using scientific texts. One of the seminal books in this field, Charles Bazerman's "Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science," is available free online in PDF form:

http://wac.colostate.edu/books/bazerman_shaping/

Wow, thanks to Christian for the very honorable mention, I'm flattered :)

Darren -- You're welcome! My own background is more on the level of molecules than of organisms, but your blog reminds me of why I enjoyed my senior-level zoology course in high school so much. Keep up the good work.

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Daniel Brown

clock — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:24:26 +0000

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Daniel Brown

Today, I asked Daniel Brown from the Biochemical Soul blog to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?

My name is Daniel Brown, and I am a biologoholic.

I grew up as a rat-tail-sporting, barefoot redneck running around the pine forests of Northeastern Texas (specifically in a tiny town called Hooks). My daily pre-teen life apart from school pretty much consisted of me looking for critters alone in the woods - often trekking great distances (for a little kid anyway) through forests and over farmlands, skirting diamondback rattlers, copperheads, and other rednecks. Times were different then, eh? One of my most vivid memories from my childhood was when I came upon a flooded area of "my woods" a week or two after a big storm. The entire forest floor was covered in a couple of inches of water, which was itself filled with gloopy, slimy bunches of frog eggs. Each gelatinous mass was about the size of a softball, and I distinctly remember just sitting their feeling the goo between my fingers as tiny tadpole tails swirled within each isolated egg. I was completely mesmerized. I'm almost certain that I was born a biologist - but that moment in the forest of frog embryos in particular pretty much sealed the deal for me.

I grew out of my redneckdom not long after, though I certainly retained my country boy attitude. Since those days in the Texas woods my biological interests have varied widely. I spent time in my undergrad training (at an amazing liberal arts college called "Hendrix College" in Arkansas) working in the field of ecology, radio-tracking timber rattlesnakes in the Ozark Mountains. In a slightly more sophisticated echo of my days playing with frog eggs, I moved to the University of North Carolina where I worked for many years trying to figure out how genes tell a growing frog embryo how to make a heart (my Ph.D. work). After getting my doctorate, I stayed in the field of developmental biology and spent a few years studying brain development in mice.

I have now gone one step deeper into the realm of biology, moving into the field so cool it gets its own nickname: "evodevo." For the non-scientists out there, that's "evolutionary developmental biology." More on this below...

I am also a graphic artist (mostly digital these days) making both 2D still-lifes and 3D animations, and I'm an avid fossil collector.

Full disclosure: I was recently asked this exact same question by another blogger (The Reef Tank - not posted yet), so some of my above answer is a bit of self-plagiarism. Sue me.

What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?

I do not ever want to grow up. That is, I hope to remain the 8-year-old boy trapped in a man's body that I am until the day I die. That being said, in a fantastical world in which I have become that which I'd most like to be, I would become a full-time biologist/geologist/professor/fossilhunter/novelist/artist/animator/photographer/blogger/sculptor/whittler/musician/gamer. The cruel voice of Real Life has informed me, however, that I am not nearly talented enough to pull off this dream profession. Thus, my more realistic aspiration is to continue what I've been doing, which is to be a scientist/professor during the day and after I'm done with the day-time money-making, pick a hobby in the evening, go at it full steam for 1 to 6 months until one of the others beckon more loudly, and then switch.

What is your Real Life job?

Two months ago, I began a new position as a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Veronica Hinman in the Department of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in ~~the Arctic tundra~~ Pittsburgh. In my current work, I study not only how genes control an organism's development, but also how the genetic programs that control development (Gene Regulatory Networks) evolve at the molecular level (e.g. mutational changes in cis-regulatory elements). And not only do I get to work on such a fascinating subject, but I get to do so using those wacky, brainless creatures called "echinoderms" (e.g. starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers).

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

I am by far most interested in using the web, regardless of the specific medium, to disseminate and educate the general public on the awesomeness of nature and what we can learn about it through science. It sounds cheesy - but it's something we all know is sorely lacking in America today. It's sad when "the awesomeness of nature" seems like a laughable phrase. I find myself constantly dismayed by the lack of general fascination with the natural world among children and high school students. From my experience so far, my blogging has attracted a good number of students - but most of them arrive at my site because of some specific research they were doing. I definitely consider it a success if students end up coming to me to learn about specific topics. However, I (like most people/businesses on the web) would most like to discover ways to reach out and pull in people that would otherwise not seek out scientific knowledge. Which ties in with the next question...

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?

I find that blogging (and following blogs) figures prominently in my own thinking about my work. But beyond that I have yet to find (or rather, create) specific ties to my actual research. This is mostly because I only recently began my new research and have yet to blog about it (in fact I've been on quite a blogging hiatus since the summer because of the sheer magnitude of new information and techniques to learn).

However, I consider teaching and outreach to be an integral part of who I am and of my actual work. So in that sense, blogging has been the centerpiece of my attempts to reach out to the public and throw a little science at them.

I used Twitter a lot for a good while - both for discovery of interesting things and promotion of my own - but eventually I found the deluge of interesting information too overwhelming and time-consuming. More importantly for me, I found that my own tweets tended to be drowned out as well, with very few people discovering my posts.

I've now found that I've had by far the most success in reaching the general public through Facebook. My posts would generally be read by a core group of my own friends (most of which are not scientists), some of which would then repost, etc.

Unfortunately, Real Life has pretty much removed my ability to utilize fully any of the social networks for good science fascination dissemination.

When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites?

I went through most of graduate school performing actual science while completely oblivious to the existence of science blogs or the science blogging community. I'm not quite sure how that happened.

Then one day I somehow stumbled across (who do you think?) PZ at Pharyngula. Suddenly I was like, "Oh! This exists! I should do this!" Trust me - the exclamation marks were all there. I started blogging near-instantly. I had been putting together dumb little sites with my own rants and thoughts since about 1998, none of which was ever really seen by anyone. The discovery of science blogging really allowed me to find a central way to focus my thoughts and my intentions. By far my favorite blogs are the one you're reading, Southern Fried Science, Deep-Sea News, The Oyster's Garter, Cephalopodcast, Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice, and Sunsets, The Echinoblog, Observations of a Nerd, and Oh, For the Love of Science!.

This of course perfectly leads into the next question, because...

Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?

...I've left a bit of the story out. You see, after I discovered science blogs and started blogging, it was only a few months later that I discovered this thing called ScienceOnline09 - and it was being held only 1 mile from my workplace (the NIEHS). It was there that I met the squid-hatted Andrew, crab-hatted Kevin, and merry-making Miriam (and of course Bora!) of four of the aforementioned blogs. Merely meeting all the science bloggers present made me realize "Wow - there's even more to this thing than I thought. My blog is crap. I gotta fix that. I need to become more of a part of this community." Reading their blogs over the coming months also aroused my interest in marine biology and at least set me on the path to my current research in echinoderm evodevo. Thus, the contingent nature of life, much like that of evolutionary history, means that my attendance at ScienceOnline09 had a direct causative influence on me sitting in this lab right now surrounded by tubes of starfish DNA.

I haven't read everyone else's interviews, but I can only assume that many have said the same thing - Miss Baker's biology class and how she used blogging and the internet inside and outside the classroom completely opened my eyes to the possibilities of the Web as a teaching tool. I have no doubt that I will be using some sort of blogging/network medium as a supplement to my future courses.

It was so nice to meet you and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again soon.

==========================

See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

clock Thu, 10/29/2009 - 06:24

Tags

SO'09

SO'09 Interviews

SO'10

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Blake Stacey

clock — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:54:13 +0000

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Blake Stacey

Today, I asked my Scibling, Blake Stacey from the Science After Sunclipse blog to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? For example, what is your Real Life job?

Nominally, I do "complex systems modeling and analysis", but the projects I work on are hush-hush. It's all very need-to-know. I could figure out what I'm doing, but then I'd have to kill myself.

What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?

A hammy Shakespearean over-actor. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, and who would have thought the old man to've had so much blood in him?

I see from your blog that you wrote a science-fiction novel. What's that about?

Until Earthset is a tale of forbidden love, murder most foul and artificial intelligence, all set in an alternate 1968. Why I wrote it -- well, the compulsion to invent imaginary people and make them suffer is probably just one of those delightful spandrels we've inherited, a side effect of our brains thinking in narrative terms. After the fact, I was able to invent several justifications for my hobby. For example, we keep having arguments on the Blogohedron about the relationship between science and art, about how scientific accuracy works in fiction and all that, and it's nice to have a little practical experience in the matter. To a stuffy audience, I could sell my novel as a 130,000-word thesis on The Two Cultures Question (TM), but really, it's a murder mystery with robots.

Do you think science fiction has an obligation to be scientifically accurate?

Well, let's break that down a bit. "Science" is (a) a community of people using (b) a set of methods and tools to build (c) a body of knowledge which sometimes (d) gets applied to make technology. If the characters in your story investigate something wholly fictitious, like an alien monolith, using the practices which real scientists would actually employ, are you being "accurate"? Even stories not expressly written to be didactic build up our mental image of the world. Now, you could try to use fiction in an "educational" way to convey the facts of science, to transmit the data about our discoveries, but you can also use it to illuminate the methods of the trade and the social mores of the profession. Think of a novel like Contact -- or, to pick an extreme example, the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. The scientific knowledge base of the story is fanciful, but the travails of the characters do call to mind issues about science as a profession, such as the ways people (and women in particular) have had to balance career and family. Art is generally better at raising questions than providing answers. If you're looking for hard data in fiction, if you want to find the blueprint for a perfect society in a made-up story, well, peace be with you in your quest. But that's only half the picture. In the age of Open Access and Google Scholar, we can dig up any particular datum we need, if we know how to look; the challenge is having a clue on how to start, and knowing how to handle what we bring back. The former requires an understanding of the broad strokes of scientific knowledge, and the latter depends on good critical thinking skills. A science education has to teach both, to have any worth at all, and science fiction can help us explore science-as-method even though we've yet to dig up that monolith in Tycho crater.

At ScienceOline'09, Henry Gee argued that creating science fiction requires the same kind of imagination as doing science, because both start with inventing hypotheses about the world and then exploring what they would entail.

Yes, I'd say there's a great deal of truth in that. In science, hypotheses survive when they mesh well with the data, whereas in SF, the conjectures which endure are the ones which make for good stories. (Our understanding of the strong nuclear force has advanced quite a bit since 1972, but Asimov's The Gods Themselves hardly suffers for having arrived before quantum chromodynamics!) There's this notion afoot that if a scientist doesn't like a movie which has some science-talk in it, this has to be because the science was bad! This is rather like saying the only reason a plumber can dislike a movie is because it doesn't show anybody using the bathroom. Now, I don't want to make a blanket statement here, but I do know a few science people, and from what I've seen, they're plenty willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of a story -- except when the story itself isn't good enough to suspend disbelief for!

With one book down, where will you go next?

I'm taking a stab at mathematics education, partly spurred by my own unhappy memories of high-school mathematics classes, which in retrospect turned out to be four years of almost wholly wasted time. Coming from someone who went on to get a physics degree, that's pretty harsh! I happily deal with abstruse mathematics every working day, but you couldn't pay me to sit through Pre-Calculus again, so something must be off here.

And you'll be speaking on mathematics education at ScienceOnline'10?

With Maria Droujkova, yes. For all I know, we'll be demonstrating our spiffy computer graphics to an empty room, because we'll be scheduled at the same time as some "civility in communication" session, to which everybody will go so they can argue at each other about how best to be a nice person.

Finally meeting Brian Switek of Laelaps and Dr. SkySkull of Skulls in the Stars was fun, because we share enthusiasms even though we work in different fields -- Brian and I have gotten righteously steamed over "textbook cardboard", for example, which he finds in palaeontology and I in physics. But you asked if anything changed my views, which isn't the same as reaffirming them. That's more difficult to say. I can tell you, though, that meeting Stacy Baker's high-school students was a blast: I skipped out on the sessions of the last day to chat with them instead. They provided the questions, I tried to bring the answers. If anything at the conference changed the way I think about the biz, it was that conversation. When you meet the people who are poised to benefit the most from good science communication, the quarrels you used to have on the Blogohedron look downright silly.

It was so nice to finally meet you and thank you for the interview. I am looking forward to seeing you again next January.

Likewise. Thank you very much for the opportunity to ramble.

==========================

See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

clock Tue, 10/27/2009 - 06:54

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Thanks for putting this up! The Amazon link for Until Earthset is here, if anyone was curious.

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove

clock — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:54:56 +0000

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove

Today, I asked Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?

Thank you, Bora

I am a lucky individual who was given a chance to exist, create and interact with other living beings on this amazing planet. It is hard to put this into right words. Those who know me, know that I was shocked to find out the extent of the Bible Belt grip here in NC, and again, I can not help but have immense respect toward Nature and be as humble as our human existence allows. Dusko Radovic said once (I know there are plenty of ex-Yugoslav readers here, thus both original quote and translation): Â»Mi smo mrve na Zemlji, Zemlja je mrva u kosmosu. To se moze razumeti sve dok nas ne zaboli zub. Mrvine mrve mrva...Â« Â»We are crumbs on Earth, Earth is a crumb in the Universe. All that is easy to comprehend until we have a toothache. Crumb in the crumbs crumbÂ«

So, yes, I was lucky to be born in a wonderful country that used to be, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Belgrade. Lucky to be surrounded with amazing people who did good, one way or another. Ones who were kind and respectful to show me how to act, and the opposite ones, to show me how not to act and how to avoid the traps. For both of them one big thank you.

Part of why I consider myself lucky is to be able to study biology, and some 24 years ago University of Belgrade had really extensive curricula. Today, according to Bologna accords, BSc in Biology at University of Belgrade is equal to an MSc elsewhere, but when I graduated Serbia was still not part of the Bologna process. I worked for eight years at the Ecology Department at Institute for Biological Research on predator-prey relationships, small mammal identification and mostly owl research. Thus my full name doesn't ring much bells, as Tanja Sova does: 'sova' means an owl, and that was the word people associated with me so often, it became my pseudonym.

When I moved to USA, Arizona at first and two years ago to North Carolina, I developed a line of artwork inspired by nature. Discovering Etsy helped a lot in many ways, but that is a story for some other interview.

What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?

Growing up??? You are kidding! Why would I?

Oh, well... Since I went into adulthood, I was provided with tools to play seriously. You know, when we were young, it was digging around and taking care of pets that was considered play. With a degree, you just turned that play into some serious job. Now I play, I mean create artwork, and I love it. Yes, giving and sharing knowledge / skills is my ultimate wish what I want to do when I grow more gray, I mean when I grow up ;-)

What is your Real Life job?

In economy like this, and we've been trained that very well back in Yugoslavia / Serbia, one has to be like a cat: to get on its feet. I am open for possibilities, but for now I am self employed making mostly custom orders on Etsy.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

Biologist in me is active, although in the background for a while. Bringing the missing pieces into the puzzle of personal and professional knowledge, as well providing inspiration for art. As a parent, I enjoy sharing links with my children and discussing them. Sometimes I am too busy to be able to read all I would want to, so the most active blog reader in the family, Djordje comes with his opinion and it develops most of the time into a discussion either when we craft something together or when we are on the road.

When and how did you discover science blogs? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?

It's all your fault J OK, jokes apart, when we knew we were moving to NC, I googled information that I considered important to learn where am I moving to (SC and VA were options as well), and just came upon your blog. WOW! The new world opened. The amount of time I spend there really depends on available time I have, which is unpredictable. However, sometimes there are some hot topics that steal me from artwork and grab my full attention following the links. I was really, really glad to be able to meet in person many people whose blogs I have read. Irreplaceable experience which I am looking forward repeating. It was discovering many very cool people first of all, and learning about new blogs as well.

When did you become an artist? How do you combine your interests in science and art?

I would rather say that just like this figure was more of a freeing the captured sculpture from within, the same is with artist in us: circumstances make the artist surface from within, with each artwork it is more prominent. Whenever I can, I do my best to combine science and art. I've learned long time ago that having strong imagination helps understanding natural sciences, and understanding science brings vast amount of art themes to create. I really enjoy Etsy for although you can find ANYTHING there, it has somehow enough numbers of free thinking and highly educated people, many biologist themselves amongst sellers, who apply science knowledge / theme / process / subject into their art. Again, being popular amongst scientists and students, Etsy is helping in widening the public for really specific subjects that otherwise would not have as much appreciation in general public. Examples for such an artwork is this pendant that you can see here. The NYTimes article brought some amazing people, such as Leslie Vosshall, with whom I worked on pendants I am sure not many people from general public would appreciate or understand: Drossophila melanogaster and Aedes aegypti. Learning more about her and her work was even greater joy.

You led two sessions at the conference - one about producing Art for a blog, and the other about Open Access in developing countries. How did they go and what did you learn from them?

Meeting Glendon Mellow was a joy even before we met in person. There are so many interests we have in common and I love his visions of science. Luckily the format of unconference was really good, as you have on-the-spot exchanging and sharing information. I am hoping we tackled some strings and definitely know that there were dozens of tips shown that are more, in my opinion, technical information rather than art itself. However, all those tips are enhancing blogging. Lot of laughter, some quite unintentional but very welcome, as a result of miscommunication between Betul and Djordje :-)

Danica and I are coming from two different angles and I believe we have opened some questions and definitely paved the way to the upcoming 2010 session with Jelka Crnobrnja-Isailovic. I think session with Danica was also good example of how it is important to have people with different backgrounds in the library systems. Even in biology itself, I recall often a block to understanding between ecologists and molecular biologists, for instance. Demands of publishing at the same rate with laboratory experiments versus field work that needs to have few seasons before showing proper results worth publishing simply does not add up. That is one of the topics for upcoming session as well.

Jelka and I are not only colleagues, but first of all friends, and I am sure this will reflect in a fluid and relaxed session at the unconference in January.

I wish a day had more than 24 hours (48 would do just fine) for all I would want to do. It was so refreshing being again amongst scientists and some new kids on the block (Balasevicevi 'neki novi klinci'). I have learned a lot as a parent (at that time homeschooling Djordje), as a biologist to pass tricks and tips to my fellow biologists in Serbia, both who are in education and research, and to understand first-hand the American way of approaching problems I could only read about. Talking in person helps a lot, really. It is hard to stress who would stand out, for there are many, really, and placing the names I would not feel good for the others (say I will mention trilobite, tulumbe, vole dance, discussion about religion just to mention a few topics without mentioning the names), but I really have to say I was blown away with Ms Stacey's students! As my owns kids are similar age, I was honored to meet them, and quite a few young ladies and gentlemen impressed me the most with their knowledge, dignity, eloquence and mannerisms. My kudos to them. About my blog: have opened one, but still short in time to write. Hopefully in the future.

It was so nice to meet you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

I am looking forward being part of the conference again. Thank you and Anton for incredible amount of time and energy to organize these truly important events!

==========================

See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

clock Mon, 10/26/2009 - 05:54

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Categories

Meeting Tatjana was terrific! Can't wait to see her again next year.

Her artistic talent is stunning.

same here.

same here too!

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Arikia Millikan

clock — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:44:18 +0000

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with Arikia Millikan

Today, I asked Arikia Millikan, the former Overlord here at Scienceblogs.com, to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?

First and foremost, I consider myself a scientist, though perhaps not in the traditional sense. I studied the "hard sciences" throughout my education and scientific principles govern my outlook on the world. But my lab bench is my laptop and I mostly conduct observational studies on the way people use the Web to communicate.

I do experiments, too. I spent about eight months "Cat Herding" at ScienceBlogs, and that was a pretty major experiment. The variables were ideas as well as "physical" changes to the appearance and functionality of the network. Tweak this, upgrade that, measure the changes with analytics and user responses, update methods accordingly. Way better than the lab-coat variety, IMO, because while conducting my experiments, I got to play with awesome scientists online.

I'm also a communicator. I began my undergraduate studies in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. The first week of classes, we were instructed to forget everything we ever learned about writing, because we were only going to perform "technical writing" from there on out. I didn't like that. I remember thinking, "Science is hard enough for most people to understand, why would anyone purposely create a whole new language to further obfuscate the concepts, making it more abstract to the people who will eventually use products created by science?" So I got what I could from the program, which mostly was an ass-kicking in calc-based physics (but also a solid foundation in the fundamentals of computer programming), and my junior year I changed my major to psychology and joined the student newspaper. There I started the science beat and reported on scientific accomplishments and their societal implications.

What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?

I want to be someone who, in the future when people look back at the evolution of the Internet, they'll say, "Arikia Millikan played an important part in how awesome this is today." I'd also like - and this is my total pipe dream goal -- to write a tech column for Wired. It's the one publication I subscribe to in print and I read it cover-to-cover every month.

Most importantly, I want to be someone who never stops learning about and benefiting from technology. I am not going to be the old curmudgeon musing about what new technologies the young whippersnappers are in a frenzy about at any given moment. I think that, in the process of learning, some people acquire mental blocks where they think they can't learn new things, and this can be a very damaging state of mind. I'm 22 right now and I think I'm pretty quick to use and adapt to new gadgets, computer programs, and Web features as they emerge. But I want to be just as adept when I'm 72, Moore's Law be damned.

What is your Real Life job?

I'm funemployed! I have an assortment of freelance jobs and gigs that keep me mentally occupied and sustain my existence in New York City. The project I'm the most excited about right now is that I'm working with Nate Silver, founder of FiveThirtyEight, as his research assistant. He's in the process of writing a book about statistical predictions and there's a large focus on science. So basically, I get to travel around the country accompanying him on interviews with the most awesome scientists I can find. Besides that, I build websites, I have a handful of top-secret projects I work on sporadically with some really talented people in Brooklyn, and I write things occasionally. Working with Nate, I've realized that I'd like to write a lot more. I've always been someone who has a lot to say, but sometimes it's hard to say it when you're constantly in the presence of scientific greatness. It's like, who am I to write on a topic when there are tons of people already doing it way better than I ever could? I guess it's kind of a lame excuse. I'll try to try more and see what happens.

Oh, and I pick up shifts here and there at The Internet Garage, a grungy public computer lab in Williamsburg, the hipster sector of Brooklyn. I provide Internet and technical support for customers and help them use the equipment here, all of which is either crappy or broken. It's a pretty hilarious place. Most people think it's a drug front. I assure you that it's not, though the owners don't seem to be remotely concerned with turning a profit. I kind of want to write a screenplay about the IG someday.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

Well, it's the field of communication via the use of the Web as a science that interests me the most. The fact that the topic of conversation in the networks I study is science is just a bonus, really. On a recent trip to MIT with Nate, we met Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. He talked to us about the emergent field of Web Science and drew us a circular flow chart that I'm going to frame and mount on my wall. Web Science is different than Computer Science in that it takes human behavior online into account and examines the way our behavior shapes the development of the Web itself. That's the stuff that really gets me going. I want to know everything there is to know about this field.

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?

Blogging and social networking tools are the subject of my work. They enable the individual to simultaneously be consumers of content and providers, and that's a really powerful concept. I don't blog too much myself, though I do use all of the above social networking tools on a daily basis. My primary use of them is personal, but it blurs with the professional. I don't think the two necessarily have to be separate, and I think with the way voluntary information sharing is heading, it will soon be impossible to keep them separate. I think a lot of people are adamant about using sites like Twitter to enhance their professional careers and propagate their viewpoints, and that's awesome. But I'm 22 and living in the craziest city in the world. Sometimes a girl just needs to Tweet about a guy she just saw with full-face tattoos or a gambling adventure in a speakeasy bar. The question Twitter begs to know is "What are you doing?" after all.

When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?

To be honest, I discovered them when the magazine intern position I applied for with Seed Media Group was filled, but they had an opening with this thing called "ScienceBlogs". The first time I looked at the ScienceBlogs homepage, I had no idea what it was all about, and this turned out to be a large source of motivation in my work there. I figured that if I couldn't tell what the deal with the site was or intuitively access the best and most relevant content, most other people couldn't either. So I accepted the internship and set out to try to make ScienceBlogs better. In that process, I discovered that there was a more effective way for me to further scientific communication than by directly doing the communicating. And now I hope to make that my career.

Attending ScienceOnline 2009 showed me that, though the Internet is a big, mysterious place where there are tons of opportunities for deception, people are generally who you would expect them to be. To "know" someone online, and then meet them in real life, you get insight into layers of one's personality that, in the past, you may not have had access to. It makes just as much sense sometimes that a person has the exact opposite temperament online that they do IRL, than if their online and offline personalities are one and the same. Attending ScienceOnline last year reinforced the human component of what I do. Because, though it is about traffic and numbers and economics, the best part is knowing that you're helping someone achieve his or her goals of science communication.

Thank you so much. See you again in January at ScienceOnline2010!

==========================

See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

clock Mon, 10/05/2009 - 05:44

Tags

SO'09

SO'09 Interviews

Categories

Physical Sciences

Tatjana in NYTimes!

clock — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:41:34 +0000

Tatjana in NYTimes!

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove. Or you can remind yourself by checking this, this, this, this and this.

If you came to ScienceOnline09 (or followed virtually) you will remember that she co-moderated two sessions there: Open Access in the networked world: experience of developing and transition countries and How to paint your own blog images .

Well, today, Tatjana is in New York Times! I hear from those who get the papers in hardcopy, that the article starts on the front page, but the part with the interview with Tatjana and her husband Doug is on the third page of the online version of the article. I wish the theme of the piece was happier....but who knows, perhaps appearance in the Old Media (especially if the link is spread virally via New Media) may bring in a job!

What is really nice is that the online version of the article links to Tatjana's Etsy store, so perhaps she'll get some business that way!

clock Mon, 09/07/2009 - 08:41

Tags

north carolina

SO'09

workplace

Hvala, Boro :-)

In both versions it shows Etsy.com and it is important trend, as large number of US etsians are buying from US artisans as well. Many requests come with "OK, I know I can get this in the first store, but thought to give a chance to someone to make it and earn some money" which is in fact, helping both US economy, reducing carbon print, and giving a chance to local people. Also, there is a strong sense amongst users to use recycled / upcycled and organic material. I think it is really good promotion and bringing attention to etsy.

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with John Wilbanks

clock — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:49:53 +0000

ScienceOnline'09 - interview with John Wilbanks

Today, I asked John Wilbanks from the Common Knowledge blog to answer a few questions.

Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?

I'm John Wilbanks.

I abandoned a biology degree about six months into my university education, in favor of philosophy and languages. I've got some informal experience in molecular biology and genetics. I floundered into bioinformatics by accident about ten years ago. Turns out that the philosophy work in epistemology and semantics has at least some utility in the computer world.

What do you want to do/be when (and if ever) you grow up?

I'd love to be a professor, but I'd probably have to go get more letters after my name to make that happen.

What is your Real Life job?

I am the VP for Science at Creative Commons. As part of that, I direct the Science Commons project at CC.

What aspect of science communication and/or particular use of the Web in science interests you the most?

This question has forced me to write an entire blog post devoted to it. I'll be posting it later today, hopefully. Edit: Here it is!

How does (if it does) blogging figure in your work? How about social networks, e.g., Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook?

I blog intermittently, and I get some responses from it. I think I'm too intermittent and too verbose when I post for it to be a real conversation. But it's been a constant surprise to realize that people actually read it.

For me it's a place to vent. I learn by talking. So I also learn by blogging. The ideas take shape as I try to frame them, and I often look at something after it's on paper and feel a real sense of discovery. It's also a more informal place to get my thoughts out - someplace I can speak for myself more freely than as the John-who-works-at-Creative-Commons.

When and how did you discover science blogs? What are some of your favourites? Have you discovered any new cool science blogs while at the Conference?

I didn't really start reading blogs regularly til 2004 or so. Once I got over the activation potential and got a good feed aggregator going, it was all over. I actually got started with the Corante blogs - Copyfight and In the Pipeline, in particular. ITP remains one of my favorite blogs of any stripe. Derek Lowe should be required reading for anyone who thinks drug discovery is easy or that IPRs are the reason drug discovery is hard. Drug discovery is hard because making drugs bend to your will and then work in real human bodies is fiendishly hard, and reading the daily logs of a working medicinal chemist brings that point home in a visceral way.

I track a lot of stuff via the Nature Network Boston site also. They come in through a common RSS feed so I don't even think of them as separate blogs. I read The Loom. Brain Waves. All My Faults Are Stress Related. I read Dorothea Salo when she was at Caveat Lector, and again at the Book of Trogool.

I discovered Danica Radovanovic at the conference, and read her Digital Serendipities.

I was sadly only really there for a few minutes. The conference fell during a time of extreme travel. But it did bring home for me how varied the blogging culture is in the sciences - I lost some preconceptions I had about the real potential of blogs to change the system.

It was so nice to see you again and thank you for the interview. I hope to see you again next January.

==========================

See the 2008 interview series and 2009 series for more.

clock Wed, 09/02/2009 - 05:49

Tags

SO'09

SO'09 Interviews

Great interview with John - thanks for doing that. And for the link to his blog post. I agree. People like stories. And there are some great stories in science - and we need more great storytellers.

That's why our all-volunteer ragtag outfit created a four-part lecture series with E.O. Wilson, Sean Carroll and others that will be webcast free. Ed Wilson and Sean Carroll are both great scientists and great storytellers.

All the details are here to sign-up for the free web lectures:
http://Darwin150.com/events

And we have a Facebook group with 250,000 members celebrating Darwin and shooting to reach 1 million by the 150th anniversary date on November 24.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=53320310123

We are having fun, celebrating Darwin and spreading a little science education.

Phil
Founder, Darwin150
http://www.darwin150.com