ScienceOnline2011 update

ScienceOnline2011 is starting exactly two months from now. There is still a lot of work to do, but Anton and I have a lot of help from the community – from people online who crowdsource things that need to be done, to local volunteers who are helping with various aspects of organization. The fifth conference promises to be bigger and better than ever.

You want to see the excitement? Just check the Twitter use of the hashtag #scio11 (also on Twapperkeeper which is missing automated RTs and @replies and tweets by private accounts but is already registering 2427 tweets!). Subscribe to the official @scio11 account (as well as @scienceblogging – both will have multiple users during the conference itself) and follow the Twitter List of all #scio11 attendees.

You can also bookmark the Facebook Event page, the FriendFeed room and Lanyard.

Everything online, including blog posts, that has the hashtag #scio11 in it, is now also aggregated on Scienceblogging.org (scroll down), so please tag your posts accordingly, or place them directly on Delicious.

If you have pictures on Flickr that are in any way related to science blogging, please add tag #scienceblogging and later, once the conference starts, ALSO the tag #scio11. Both will also be displayed on Scienceblogging.org.

Your starting point for the conference is, of course, the homepage where the key links and information are displayed up front. The homepage also contains the official scio11 blog with news and updates. During the conference itself, this is where we will have a number of attendees post their coverage of individual sessions.

The most important part of the site is the planning wiki so you should familiarize yourself with it. If you are registered to attend the conference, you should probably also register as a wiki user for ease of use, and if you are watching from afar you can still edit as “guest”.

What kind of information can you find on the wiki?

If you have registered to attend, you will be able to find Accommodation and Transportation information (to be updated with hotel discount codes soon) and you can organize Carpooling and Room-sharing among yourselves.

You can find information about the previous four conferences, including
interviews with some of the past participants and quotes of nice things people said about the last year’s conference.

Promo materials and information about Sponsors will be up soon.

There is a list of all the participants’ blogs and homepages (if you are one of them, feel free to edit, add additional URLs etc.) as well as a blogroll of science/nature/medicine blogs located in North Carolina (if you have one and it is not listed, let me know or just add it to the page).

The Program Suggestions page was used for a few months now by a number of people volunteering to moderate sessions, etc. This has now starting to crystallize into a more definitive version of the program on the Program Finalization page (edited by moderators and panelists, as well as myself). In a couple of days, we will have a final program and it will be posted on the Program page (to be edited only by me).

Information about Workshops, Lab and Museum Tours, Friday dinners and the Saturday Banquet will be posted soon.

Soon, probably on Monday, I will start my series of posts about “who is coming to ScienceOnline2011” and will cross-post them on A Blog Around The Clock, Science In The Triangle blog, Scienceblogging.org blog and official ScienceOnline2011 blog, but if you cannot wait for these to unfold over two months, you can check out the registration list here (also accessible from the homepage/blog and this wiki page).

More updates soon….