Science Blogging Conference – Friday afternoon events

I spent a lot of time today offline (and in the car), and I am exhausted, but here is a very brief summary of the day (I’ll post the pictures and update the blog linkfest later – UPDATE: I just updated the Blog and Media Coverage page).
After the Blogging Skills Session, I drove a couple of participants back to the hotel, where we met up with several other bloggers for lunch. From there, we went to one of the afternoon Lab Tours – the one to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh, where the exhibit director Roy Campbell gave us a brilliant, informative and witty exclusive tour, both of the exhibit (including the visiting Dinosaur exhibit) and the vaults/collections and the fossil lab. Watch other blogs for summaries of other Lab Tours.
Then, we had great fun (about 40 of us) at dinner in Town Hall Grill. It was great to see some of the familiar faces again and to meet some online friends, old and new, in the meatspace for the first time. The restaurant staff, from the owner and the manager, to the chef and the servers went all out to make our evening a success and it was great. Watch out for some foodblogging from the others later!
We were also joined for a while by Jim Neal who is running for the Senate seat currently held by Elizabeth Dole (btw, the restaurant is just under the Edwards campaign headquarters)
The main program of the Science Blogging Conference is tomorrow. There is a winter advisory, so we’ll watch the weather and, if absolutely necessary, modify the afternoon program so at least the locals can drive to their homes safely (the out-of-towners are stuck in the hotel across the street so they may just as well finish all the sessions first).
Go to the Program page and start adding your questions, ideas and comments to the individual session pages. And participate in the blogging conference both online and offline as much as you can. Please use ‘scienceblogging.com’ as your tag when writing blog posts about it or uploading pictures, podcasts and videos.