Category Archives: SO’10

Bora jumps!

Busy with ScienceOnline2010 I did not have time to check out the new articles in PLoS ONE and other PLoS titles. Finally I found some time today, and here are my picks from the past few days. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. There are my own picks for the week – you go and look for your own favourites:

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People
You cannot see the feedback that many participants at ScienceOnline2010 have already provided to Anton and me (keep them coming – we take the responses very seriously), but the recurring theme for the “highlight of the conference” question was “Meeting the People”; and the main request for the future is “provide more time for informal conversations”.
You will see even more of that kind of sentiment if you peruse the growing list of blog coverage. Or glean it from photographs posted on Flickr and Picasa here, here, here, here and here. Or on YouTube videos here and here.
While Early Bird Dinner, Friday Workshops, Coffee Cupping, Lab/Museum Tours, Friday gala, long lunch breaks, evenings at the hotel bar, and Saturday banquet were all good opportunities for mingling and schmoozing and networking, obviously people crave even more, and we will try to make sure to provide even more such opportunities next year. Your suggestions as to how to do this are welcome.
As the conference is growing, each year I get to meet many people I have only interacted online before. And for over 90% of them, as soon as they walk in I recognize them from their pictures on blogs and Facebook or their Twitter avatars, and squeal and jump and hug them as if seeing a long-lost friend. That is exactly how it feels. Some online denizens spill a lot of their personal life, glories and worries, on their blogs. But even those who write ‘serious’ blogs and never post anything personal or introspective, perhaps do not realize how much of their personality seeps through between the lines. And it is quite incredible how offline personalities match online personalities – no matter how hard one tries to concoct an artificial online persona, the real person comes through and is recognizable in Real Life at first Hello.
There were 267 people there. If I spent an hour with everyone, that would take almost two weeks with little-to-no sleep. Not having that much time, I at least tried to say Hello to everyone (almost succeeded!). Even a brief handshake and a smile is enough to put a human face to an online name and to make future online interactions more meaningful.
The importance of meeting online friends in real life is something that Anton Zuiker has instilled in all us locals here over the years. The BlogTogether is his brainchild – the unofficial organization of local (Triangle NC) bloggers that has over the years organized numerous meetups, Long Tables, and conferences, including the 2005 Bloggercon (where Anton and I first met – he was wondering who this n00b was sitting next to Dave Winer, not that I had any idea at the time who Dave Winer was), 2006 Podcastercon, and the four ScienceOnline conferences in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Out of the small band of early adopters in the region grew a huge community of people who use the Web in various ways. And everyone craves the human touch and face-to-face contact. Just check the Social Carolina calendar – so many opportunities for online folks to meet in meatspace. There is a regular Triangle Tweetup, and Ignite Raleigh and soon the first TEDxRTP, there are monthly Techie Tuesdays at the RTP headquarters, not to mention all the smaller ad hoc gatherings. More specifically to science, there is now a large organization of Science Communicators of North Carolina, most of whom do at least part of their work online, and we have recently started Science In The Triangle website and blog where we announce, and subsequently report, on science and technology events and news in the area.
We kicked off the conference program on Saturday morning with a session on the importance of meatspace, science freelancing, science motels and coworking. One of the moderators of that session, Brian Russell, runs Carrboro Creative Coworking space, and the PRC building where we held the Friday workshops was just waiting for the conference to be over before it undergoes a complete redesign and renovation to become the second coworking space in the Triangle, focused on science and technology. The importance of face-to-face interactions was noted in several other sessions. And the BlogTogether spirit permeated the entire meeting.
Books
Who would have thunk that books would be such a hit at a gathering of Web evangelists (many of whom probably have Kindles and are salivating at the prospect of laying their hands on the iSlate)! But it was. There were two sessions dedicated to the topic, both often mentioned as “my favourite session” by the attendees. See some excellent coverage of those by Jennifer, Morgan, Eric and an entire series of posts by Brian.
Months ago, when I was putting together the program schedule and trying to assign rooms for session, I did not predict that books would be such a hot topic. It is totally my mistake, for which I apologize, for assigning one of these sessions to the small room.
The books included in the swag bags were quite a hit – and not just with us old fogies, but also with the younger set: Miss Baker’s high school students who went home with quite a loot! A number of people brought books for the book-exchange table in the back of the room, and if I am correct, all the books found new owners.
Many book authors were present, as well as bloggers who snagged book deals recently. Several brought (or had their publishers send) free copies of their books to the conference and were at the ready to sign them for the lucky winners. Durham’s Regulator Bookshop sold many copies of Michael Specter’s ‘Denialism’ and Felice Frankel’s ‘No Small Matter’ at the Friday Gala and ten lucky attendees at the gala got copies of ‘Denialism’ by raffle.
During Saturday banquet, books (including more ‘Denialism’ and ‘No Small Matter’, several copies of ‘Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ by Rebecca Skloot, ‘Newton and the Counterfeiter’ by Tom Levenson, ‘The Carbon Age’ by Eric Roston, ‘The Tangled Bank’ by Carl Zimmer, ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ by Henry Gee, and several copies of 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions of Open Laboratory anthologies) went to the winners of Twitter Trivia Contest held in-between Ignite talks. The questions were about stuff said at the meeting earlier in the day and the guests tweeted their answers. We could all see on the screen who got the correct answers first. Some answers were very funny, and the people following from outside were confused with a flurry of short, seemingly meaningless tweets referring to duck penises and such. The toughest question was “what do Anton and Bora drink to celebrate the successful ending of the conference each year?” – only four people got it right (slivovitz – the fastest tweeter was John McKay, probably the person at the conference I waited the longest to finally meet in person – six years!) and no, it’s not Carl Zimmer’s blood.
On Friday, everyone signed the conference board and those whose signatures were covered by the dice won the remaining books:

Finally, those who could not get the books by luck, had to resort to blackmail…
So, why are dead-tree books so popular with the online set? No idea! But perhaps there is something real about a book that kindles and slates and tablets and iPhones don’t have. Just like a conversation with a person while sitting at the same table feels more real than the conversation with the same person online (though the online dialogue may well be much more information-rich), it seems like a book feels more real than the electronic book reader. Both are objects of about the same size and weight, both have words on a page to be read – yet there is something more intimate about the paper book. You may read an eBook on an airplane or during daily commute on a train, but you want an old-timey book to take with you to the beach, or to snuggle with at home under the covers. Will that feeling disappear in another generation or two? I don’t know.
But if this sentiment persists for another year, perhaps we can organize something more next year, perhaps find all the published authors in the list of registrants in advance and get copies of everyone’s book for giveaways and other stuff – suggestions are welcome.
Twitter
One thing that happened between last year’s conference and this one was the explosion of Twitter. While collecting information about all the participants I also linked to their Twitter accounts and put together a Twitter List of all the participants. Obviously, a very large proportion of attendees were going to use Twitter, and many others were curious to follow the proceedings using this channel.
Anticipating this, we determined the hashtag (#scio10) early on and started our own Twitter account which, with 568 followers, obviously attracted many more people than just the participants.
In previous years, wifi was nice, but (except for moderators/presenters) not necessary. But this year, with everyone trying to tweet, wifi was essential. So we hired the pros – the amazing guys from SignalShare who made sure we were swimming in bandwidth and will also provide us with stats in a couple of weeks, which we may share with you later – for now: we transmitted 25 gigabytes of data over 2 days!
Not just that everyone could tweet and liveblog at all times, but session moderators got bold and logged into SecondLife in one session, and Skyped in guest speakers in two sessions (Science And Entertainment, and Open Access in the Developing World) without a glitch. Not to mention that (almost) all sessions were recorded (videos will be on YouTube shortly – a professional is editing them right now) and several were livestreamed on Ustream and a couple into SecondLife.

[Twitter Board at the RTP headquarters on Friday night]
Dr.Free-Ride was voted to be the best live-tweeter of the conference and has blogged some interesting thoughts about the experience (as well as a whole series of posts containing well organized collections of her tweets from each session – a good way to save the tweets forever). Check out also what Dave Munger wrote about it, as well as Chris Brodie’s links to (and evaluation of) various ways to find stored tweets (apparently almost 7000 of them, and still going strong three days after the meeting).

[Live Twitter screen]
Interestingly, our FriendFeed room was not used as much, considering that scientists and science bloggers tend to love it and use it a lot. I guess the purchase of FriendFeed by Facebook led many people to abandon the service although it is still, IMHO, the best venue for live online coverage of conferences. We’ll see what future brings – Google Wave?
Twitter itself was mentioned in many sessions as one of the tools people use to do, teach or communicate science. Considering that it was mentioned in only one session last year, this is a huge change. Now that Twitter is more of a way of talking than a company, something twitter-like is likely here to stay.
Diversity
We started and ended the conference with sessions on diversity in science online and offline, both of which got high marks from everyone who attended. Here, I only want to note that out of 269 people who registered at the door (or did not, but were reliably spotted by two or more witnesses, or locals who did not register but crashed the meeting and we know them well), 133 were men and 134 were women. This is a rare parity at tech, bloggy or science conferences. And it felt that way – comfortable for all. Also, we had 10 attendees younger than 18 and, if I am correct, two older than 70 – and every possible age in-between.
Overarching Themes
It is interesting how the conference evolved over the past four years. The first meeting was all about blogging – all sessions and conversations were about the way people use blogs to do, teach and communicate science. Most of the people gathered back in 2007 were bloggers. But things have changed over time…more about it in a second.
The 2008 meeting started expanding from blogs to other stuff scientists and those interested in science do online. If there was a theme, it was Activism – how to use blogs and other online tools to push back against enemies of reason and also how to influence the influentials (especially elected officials at various levels).
The 2009 meeting had one huge underlying theme – that of Power. But the other big theme then was Openness. We talked a lot about everything Open – from Open Notebook Science to Open Access Publishing. It was an appropriate year to have a lot of focus on it as this was the time when Open Access movement made huge strides, many scientists first became aware of Open Access and what it is, and many scientists were first made aware of the bankruptcy of the Impact Factor.
Since then, the emotions about it have calmed down a little bit – there is a sense that “good guys won” (the NIH open access mandate, the domino effect of Harvard’s OA mandate, huge growth in participation in OA week around the globe, enormous growth in the number of OA journals, etc.) and that we can now talk calmly about building the future system together. A number of people, including representatives of Nature and Elsevier, told me (or tweeted or mentioned in their feedback forms) that they really liked the session led by Pete Binfield on article-level metrics – instead of being combative (PLoS rulz!), it was a constructive discussion of strategies for moving forward all together to make the publishing world better adapted to the modern world.
As ScienceOnline is a modified Unconference – see this post for the detailed explanation of how we build the program – the content tends to reflect the composition of the meeting. First two years, the meeting was dominated by bloggers. Third by Open Access Evangelists. This one? Three groups, really: the ocean bloggers (not so much numerically as the fact that they are highly visible…..er, audible), the librarians, and, biggest cohort of all: science and medical journalists and writers.
As the Program grew on a wiki page with potential attendees suggesting sessions and volunteering to lead them, this year’s Program matched the profile of the group. Thus, there is no surprise that a couple of sessions, a couple of demos and an Ignite talk had marine themes. Likewise for sessions about librarianship and databases and reference managers.
But what was noticeable was lots and lots of sessions on the media and journalism. Which is perfectly fitting – 2009 was a year of great turmoil in the world of journalism, including science/medical journalism, with newspaper folding, journalists losing jobs and vigorous discussions about the future media ecosystems occuring throughout the year in various online and offline venues. This WAS the perfect year to have a focus on the media.
For the best coverage of the media ‘track’, see Ed Yong before and after, Christine Ottery before and after, David Dobbs, DeLene Beeland before and after and some more after, Andria Krewson, Sabine Vollmer, Ryan Somma, Janet Stemwedel and Eric Johnson.
What about my prediction that this year’s theme will be Trust? I think it was right. The word was used over and over again in many sessions, in various meanings, but mainly in the context of journalists and scientists (especially blogging scientists) eyeing each other with semi-suspicion and trying to (re)learn to trust each other. This world is changing, and the establishment of trust between these two formerly warring parties is a necessity. It was great to see the entire journalistic track start with Ed Yong opening his session with “Bloggers vs. Journalists is over – we will not talk about that, let’s move on”. And that sentiment remained with us throughout the meeting (perhaps meeting face-to-face engenders trust). During the provocative and excellent session on “Which scientists should journalists trust?” led by Connie St.Louis and Christine Ottery (who shared with me the 1st prize for Bounciest Happiest Energizer Bunny of #scio10), some outside onlookers on Twitter tried to inject the bloggers vs. journalists division into the conversation (something like “but bloggers can never be journalists”) and it was wonderful to see several people in the room politely (or is it civilly?) counter that (OK, OK, it was delicious to watch the wicked smack-downs by the likes of Ed Yong and Brian Switek).
But there are several other themes this year besides Trust, Bloggers vs. Journalists is over, and Importance of Meatspace and they are all related to each other in a way. One of them we shall perhaps call Integration.
Blog is software. If you search my blog for that phrase (or similar) you will find several instances of it. I was happy to see that phrase quoted on Twitter in another session and also happy to see Carl Zimmer repeat it at the beginning of his session. Blog is a tool, a medium. Like every other medium, it affects the form and format and the message. But it is not in itself a different means of communication. Corporate blogs and science blogs and political action blogs and personal blogs all have very different tones. It doesn’t matter.
One reason this meeting did not feel like a bloggers’ conference, unlike the previous ones, is that most people in attendance have by now gone beyond the idea of ‘being a blogger’, whatever that means. Whatever one does – scientific research, or science publishing, or science teaching, or science journalism, or freelance writing, etc, these days one needs to use a whole plethora of tools, only one of which is a blogging software. To succeed in this business, one cannot be a single-medium person any more. One has to use both the traditional channels of communication – books, scientific journals, popular science magazines, newspapers, photography, art, radio, television, movies – and the new communications technologies – websites, blogs, wikis, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, photoshop, art Tablets, podcasts, videos, etc. and combine most or all of them in one’s work.
Which explains why there was so much energy in the dialogue between people whose background is in Old Media and those who first entered the world of communication in the New Media, usually as bloggers. The two groups were eager to learn from each other how to best use each other’s tools. This may also explain why there was so much interest in the sessions about the book business – scientists who entered communication by becoming bloggers are now looking to expand into some of the more traditional realms because the non-techie segments of the population still use (and trust more!) the traditional channels. The Web-savvy scientists eager to improve the way science is reported, explained and presented in the media, in order to make the society more scientific, are intent on penetrating the traditional media – from books to newspapers to radio to Hollywood – in order to improve it from within by bringing their expertise into it.
Another big difference between previous three meetings and this one, in my opinion, is a switch from pure communication to Engagement. What do I mean by that? Everything we discussed in the previous years was geared toward a goal of making the information available and making sure people get it – that is a one-to-many approach: we are the experts, you are the non-experts, listen to us! This year, everyone was exploring the ways to get people engaged in some action. We had several sessions and demos covering a whole range of Citizen Science projects, in which communication tools were not just a way for scientists to talk to an audience, but for the public to get engaged in science – to do science. The scientists and journalists were exploring ways to engage each other more deeply (the Talking Trash session was a great example of this), Anil Dash was trying to figure out how to get people engaged in giving expertise to the government and affect policy, Nate Silver and Arikia Millikan were interested in scientifically studying how to best engage with people online, etc.
Most clear example of this shift between the past years and this one was the session by Miss Baker and her students. Last year she was teaching in a high school in Baltimore and her eight students from there came to the conference to tell us how they use online tools. That is, how they find, read and evaluate the scientific information we put out there – a more-or-less passive reading process. This year, students from her new school in Staten Island did something completely different: they showed us how they do stuff online, how they study the Web, how they design educational materials, make videos, run blogs, design computer games, and what criteria they find important in estimating the potential success of their projects with their peers. I don’t think these kids are any different from the kids we saw last year, or that they grew up in much different environments. I think it is just the case that the world of the Web has changed in the past year in a way that crossed over a threshold from expert=>non-expert communication (with potential for feedback in comments, sure) to a ‘we can all help each other become experts’ way of thinking and doing things, where experts are there more in an advisory role than as lecturers.
What will be the theme next year? Who knows, too early to tell. But it will be affected by the composition of the registrants, so start thinking now and recruiting your friends and colleagues now.
The Unconference
Our conference is growing (roughly 130, 170, 210 and 270 people attended them in the past four years respectively). We like it that way. We like to bring in fresh blood, not just have a reunion each year. But this also means that many of the n00bs at the meeting have never experienced an Unconference before. Some instantly fall in love with the format. But others find its perceived lack of structure uncomfortable (and pick Keynote, workshops, Ignite and demos as their faves in the feedback form). When I hear a complaint that the ‘audience hijacked the session from the moderator’ I think to myself “Great – that session was in the true unconference spirit”.
It is the job of the audience to NOT let the person on stage drone on. This is why the people on the stage are called moderators, not speakers. Most of our audience grokked this fast, and of course many have already been to unconferences before, either ours, or Scifoo, or various other Bar Camps etc. This year’s sessions, at least those I saw myself, were all highly participatory. And we want them that way.
The trick is how to get new people to understand the concept beforehand and embrace it. How to make sure that all the moderators are up to speed with the concept and able to function as moderators in it? What can be done online in advance to help that transition? How can the conference begin so everyone ‘gets it’ fast? Suggestions are welcome.
The fact that the conference is growing so fast means there are now many people who have attended it at least once and, perhaps with this experience under their belts, can moderate sessions next year. We hope that over the years the unconference format becomes so ubiquitous at conferences of all kinds that nobody will be surprised by it any more.
Plans for the Future
Yes, we have started planning already 😉
The first big question is growth. There were 267 people here this year. There were 168 on the waitlist (though some of these managed to get in, but most did not). There is a huge interest in attending future meetings. What do we do? How big can the conference get before it loses its fun and intimate atmosphere? If we allow it to grow, where do we do it? We love Sigma Xi – it is so….scientific! Would a new venue that can hold more people be as nice?
As I said at the Friday event, before Michael Specter’s talk, we are not moving the conference to another town. There are good reasons we want to have this meeting permanently in the Triangle area: the incredible scientific community and an incredible online community, plus infrastructure and….well, I don’t want to move 😉
People who want to organize a ‘franchise’ elsewhere should be free to do so – just contact us if you want to tap into our experience and expertise in organizing such an event. The ScienceOnline London version of the event is already going strong, planning for the third meeting this June. In 2011, there will be ScienceOnline Belgrade in Serbia. Anyone else who wants to organize it somewhere else, let us know.
Timing? We traditionally do this during the MLK, Jr weekend mainly because it is the time when the smallest number of other (scientific, skeptical, techie, etc.) meetings are taking place in any given year. But we will re-evaluate this – moving the conference to a later date, or to workdays instead of weekend, are ideas on the table for us to think about.
Thanks to everyone who has already filled the feedback form – we will read and re-read and analyze these carefully. We do it every year and use your feedback to make the next event even better. Stay in touch.

Thanks, Ernie Hood!

Stacy Baker’s students got a Flip camera and did a bunch of brief video interviews of ScienceOnline2010 participants. Here’s one of them:

If you have participated in ScienceOnline2010 (including virtually), please let us know the good and the bad about it and help us make the next year’s event even better. Just go to this online form and fill it. Give us details. Every year we carefully study your responses and incorporate much of your ideas and critiques in the planning for the next event.
Thanks

Chris Perrien interviewed by Ernie Hood about ScienceOnline2010 and Science In The Triangle:

Anton, interviewed in front of Sigma Xi by Ernie Hood:

Yes, we have it.
You can check out the app in iTunes here.
Features include a schedule quick-reference, information about the conference as a whole, and a brief nod to the participating sponsors.
The app is named ‘SciOnline10’ due to the (visible) naming restrictions on the device. Searching for Science, Online, or ScienceOnline2010 (or the app name, SciOnline10) will find it on the App Store if the link doesn’t work for you.

A couple of last-minute cancellations allowed us to bring in a few more people from the (enormous!) waitlist. Here are the lucky, under-the-wire, last-day registrants:
Chris Mooney is a science journalist and writer. He blogs on The Intersection and tweets.
Anne Frances Johnson is a Freelance Science Writer, a graduate of the The Medical and Science Journalism Program at UNC.
Kevin Smith is the Scholarly Communications Officer at Perkins Library at Duke University and he blogs on Scholarly Communications @ Duke.
Jennifer Brock is a science teacher at Martin Middle School in Raleigh.
Susan Booker is the News Editor for Environmental Health Perspectives. And she is on Twitter.

Of course, our conferences always attract a nice contingent of physicians, nurses, medical journalists, biomedical researchers and med-bloggers, so it is not surprising that ScienceOnline2010 will also have sessions devoted to the world of medicine. Check them out:
Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0–where do they intersect? – Walter Jessen
Description: Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are defined as Web-based services for healthcare consumers/patients, health professionals and biomedical researchers that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual reality approaches to enable and facilitate (1) social networking; (2) participation; (3) apomediation (guidance generated and available from peripheral mediators); (4) openness; and (5) collaboration within and between these user groups for the purposes of maintaining and/or restoring human health. How are these themes being applied in scientific research? What are the reasons some themes are better applied than others? How are researchers integrating Science 2.0 tools into their workflows? Do they offer an immediate benefit? Where could there be improvement? What are the social and cultural obstacles to widespread adoption of Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0? Discuss here.
Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything – Pal MD and Val Jones.
Description: We all know that there are potential pitfalls to having a prominent online presence, but for physicians, the implications affect more than just themselves. How should doctors and similar professionals manage their online life? What are the ethical and legal implications? Discuss “here”:http://www.scienceonline2010.com/index.php/wiki/Privacy_ethics_and_disasters/
Medical journalism – Walter Jessen and Karl Leif Bates
Description: It could be argued that healthcare already has a “killer app” – search. According to research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 61% of us look online for medical information. In an age of horizontal information distribution and social networks, what sort of medical information, disinformation and misinformation does one find? How do we fight publishers of medical information that is inaccurate, misleading or wrong? Is a website sponsored by a drug company more reliable than one sponsored by a disease group? Can a University PR site be trusted? How about an M.D or Ph.D. that blogs on medicine or medical research? What about a federal agency such as the FDA or CDC? What difference does a seal of approval from the Health on the Net Foundation (HONcode) make if Google’s algorithms don’t value it? Discuss here.

At least no snow….

Of course, this conference would not be itself if it was not full of Open Access evangelists and a lot of sessions about the world of publishing, the data, repositories, building a semantic web, networking and other things that scientists can now do in the age of WWW. This year, apart from journalists/writers, the largest cohort appear to be librarians and information scientists. So it is not surprising to see a number of sessions (and several demos) on these topics, for example:
Repositories for Fun and Profit – Dorothea Salo
Description: Why are my librarians bothering me with all this repository nonsense? What’s a repository, and how is it different from a website? What can a repository do for me? Why should I bother with them? Does anybody use them? What’s all this about metadata, anyway? Find out from a real live repository librarian!
Science in the cloud – John Hogenesch
Description: A series of parallel revolutions are occurring in science as data, analysis, ideas, and even scientific manuscript authoring are moving away from the desktop and into the cloud. In this session we will focus on science and the cloud starting with the concept of Open Access, moving to cloud-based computation and its use cases, and how new efforts are bringing cloud approaches to the entire authorship and review process. Discuss here.
Shakespeare wasn’t a semantic web guy – Jonathan Rees
Description: That which we call a rose, by any other name, wouldn’t be identified by a computer as a rose. This talk will go through the Shared Name initiative which promotes community-wide use of shared names for records from public databases. The goal is to have a significant effect on the practice of bioinformatics by making it easier to share and link data sets and tools across projects. Selecting and maintaining names is a serious capacity building problem for moving the RDF world from the hacker and hobbyist community to the regular user. And a growing body of experience emphasizes that for any solution to be generally adopted, it must not only be technically sound, but also serve and empower the community of users. Discuss here.
Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0–where do they intersect? – Walter Jessen
Description: Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are defined as Web-based services for healthcare consumers/patients, health professionals and biomedical researchers that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual reality approaches to enable and facilitate (1) social networking; (2) participation; (3) apomediation (guidance generated and available from peripheral mediators); (4) openness; and (5) collaboration within and between these user groups for the purposes of maintaining and/or restoring human health. How are these themes being applied in scientific research? What are the reasons some themes are better applied than others? How are researchers integrating Science 2.0 tools into their workflows? Do they offer an immediate benefit? Where could there be improvement? What are the social and cultural obstacles to widespread adoption of Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0? Discuss here.
Scientists! What can your librarian do for you? – Stephanie Willen Brown and Dorothea Salo
Description: Find free, scholarly, science stuff on the Internet, via your public or state library, or on the “free Web.” Learn tips & tricks for getting full-text science research at all levels, through resources like DOAJ and NC Live (for those with a North Carolina library card; other states often offer free resources to library card holders). Find out about some options for storing science material at your academic institution’s Institutional Repository. We will also talk about the broader access to material stored in institutional repositories and elsewhere on the Web. Discuss here.
Open Access Publishing and Freeing the Scientific Literature (or Why Freedom is about more than just not paying for things) – Jonathan Eisen
Description: Open Access (OA) publishing in science has and continues to spread. We will discuss a variety of issues relating to OA publishing including different types of OA, why “open” and “free (as in no cost)” mean different things, the latest government and university mandates on OA publishing, financial aspects of OA, and the interdependence of OA and other forms of open science. Discuss here.
Online Reference Managers – John Dupuis and Christina Pikas moderating, with Kevin Emamy, Jason Hoyt, Trevor Owens and Michael Habib (Scopus) in the ‘hot seats’.
Description: Reference managers, sometimes called citation managers or bibliography managers, help you keep, organize, and re-use citation information. A few years ago, the options were limited to expensive proprietary desktop clients or BibTeX for people writing in LaTeX. Now we’ve got lots of choices, many that are online, support collaboration and information sharing, and that work with the authoring tools you use to write papers. In this session we’ll hear from representatives of some of these tools and we’ll talk about the features that make them useful. Together we will discuss some tips and tricks, best practices and maybe even get into upcoming features, wish lists and the future of citation management software. Discuss here.
Earth Science, Web 2.0+, and Geospatial Applications – Jacqueline Floyd and Chris Rowan
Description: We will discuss online and mobile applications for earth science research, including solid earth, ocean, and atmosphere subtopics. Current topics planned for discussion are Google Earth for geospatial applications, iPhone and other mobile applications, collaboration tools such as Google Wave, and cloud computing platforms such as Amazon’s EC2 for computationally intensive applications such as seismic tomography or climate modeling. Also, we’ll discuss web analytics: defining and measuring what makes a science website or online application successful. Discuss here.
Open Access and Science Career Hurdles in the Developing world – Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove and Jelka Crnobrnja Isailovic
Description: Changes in a country in neverending transition are affecting deeply both PhD students and qualified researchers. To enter or to stay in Serbian scientific community depends only on participation in journals positioned on SCI list. Moreover, ranking system is not stable, it could be changed quickly upon decision of small group of scientists already established as tenured. More than thinking about challenging topics in science that are worthy to work on, scientists in Serbia should calculate what and where to publish with the minimum of costs in order to reach as high score as possible, and ensure payment for the following months. Changing ranking system amongst scientists, as well Bologna accords implementation in practice: what are thoughts amongst students and researchers at two institutions in Serbia: IBISS and Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Nis. What are the guidelines to help overcoming obstacles in this process? Are promotion and approval of the Open Access journals the best helping hands in overcoming obstacles and bringing Serbian science where it belongs? The results of discussed session ScienceOnline in 2009 and points of view of researchers in natural sciences. Importance of the short time in publishing in open science with urgency of protecting endangered species and habitats. Discuss here.
Article-level metrics – Peter Binfield
Description: In an attempt to measure the article, as opposed to the journal it is published in, PLoS has recently implemented a suite of article-level metrics on all PLoS Articles. These metrics include online usage, citations, social bookmarks, comments, notes, ratings, and blog coverage. This presentation will go into the motivation for this program; provide information on how it has been implemented; and cover plans for future enhancements. Discuss here.
Open Notebook Science – Jean-Claude Bradley, Steven J. Koch and Cameron Neylon
Description: The sharing of experimental data under near real-time conditions has a place in the scientific process. Some recent examples in chemistry will be detailed using social software such as blogs, wikis and public Google Spreadsheets. In one example the utility of sharing solubility measurements not available from the traditional scientific literature will be detailed. In another case work published in the peer-reviewed literature was evaluated extremely quickly by the blogosphere to resolve some controversial claims. The full sharing of experimental details was essential to resolving the issue. See here for more information on Open Notebook Science. Discuss here.

The conference is starting in just a few days. Overwhelmed yet? Here are some tips – what to do while at the conference, as well as what to do if not physically present but interested in following virtually.
Unless a few more waitlisters manage to squeeze in at the last moment, this post will be the last post introducing the participants – we expect as many as 275 people in one place during some events!
Morgan Giddings is a Systems Biology Professor at UNC Chapel Hill. She blogs on Morgan on Science and is writing a book on Marketing Your Science. She is also on Twitter.
Bill Cannon works at Krell Institute and the ASCR Discovery and he tweets.
Denise Young is the Director of Education Programs at the UNC Morehead Planetarium and Science Center in Chapel Hill.
William Saleu comes all the way from Papua New Guinea. He is currently a graduate student at the Duke Marine Lab. He blogs and tweets.
Lyndell Bade recently moved to Greenville NC to start graduate studies in the Biology Department at East Carolina University doing shark research. She blogs on SaveOurSharks and People, Policy, Planet and tweets.

Every year, we pay special attention to sessions that explore the use of the Web in science education. This year is no different – there are several sessions to choose from:
Citizen Science and Students – Sandra Porter, Tara Richerson (science_goddess), and Antony Williams
Description: Students are a great resource for projects that require large numbers of volunteers. We will discuss examples of projects that combine student learning with authentic research and the power of blogs to connect students with projects. Discuss here.
Science Education: Adults – Darlene Cavalier
Description: “Cavalier’s site Science Cheerleader aims to increase adult science literacy through a variety of channels including a partnership with GMU’s Prof James Trefil, efforts to involve adults in science policy discussions, and by directing adults to “on ramps” where they can find opportunities to volunteer to “do science” as part of formal or informal science activities.” Discuss here.
Broader Impact Done Right – Karen James, Kevin Zelnio, Miriam Goldstein, Rick MacPherson, Jeff Ives and Beth Beck
Description: Often, scientists fulfill their “broader impacts” requirements in mediocre ways that appear to reach a broad audience, but in effect have very little impact. Recent expeditions have used a multifaceted approach to cast as wide a net as possible using established online resources like blogs and microblogs, audio and video podcasts, traditional and new media. These resources are easy to share and spread the mission of the expeditions and the excitement of discovery and the science being done in real time. We will take examples and experiences from the recent SEAPLEX and Darwin and the Adventure expeditions as well as the sustained efforts of NASA and NEAQ. We will explore such questions as “What are the elements of successful short- and long-term online science outreach projects and programs?” and “Does the focus on specific (and often peripheral) debates dominating so much of the science blogosphere attract or disenchant potential readers of/participants in online science?” Discuss here.
Science online talks between generations– Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp
Description: In huge meetings around the world several organizations try to initiate a dialogue between top scientists and young researchers -the Lindau Meetings of Nobel Laureates are one of them providing numerous opportunities for an exchange of ideas and thoughts between young researchers and Nobel Laureates. The idea is to support this dialogue with a special platform in the web, where current science topics can be discussed and the talks and thoughts can be followed by a broader public. We’d like to discuss how one can initiate a continued communication process even between two meetings. Which internet/social web tools might be useful to bridge the communication habits of a younger generation with that of an older generation? Discuss here.
Not too easy – how to make science blogging interesting (and yet stay challenging) for children under 10 – Jessica Riccò
Description: Jessica Riccò edits a science magazine for kids and also does the online science pages for children for the “Deutsches Museum” (= biggest science museum in Germany, located in Munich). She will lead a discussion about how to get children interested in science blogs (and why that’s more effective than ex-cathedra teaching). Discuss here.
Connections with mathematics and programming through modeling. – Maria Droujkova and Blake Stacey
Description: Computer models and simulations can make abstract mathematics concrete and explore idealizations we make of the real world. We’ll discuss how to use widely-available software to visualize mathematics, and how students can do what professional scientists do, like using computers to get numerical solutions when analytic tools are unavailable. Discuss here.
Blogging the Future – The Use of Online Media in the Next Generation of Scientists – Stacy Baker
Description: Ms. Baker has changed schools (moved from Maryland to Staten Island) and the use of the Web in teaching is now an even greater part of her teaching job. She is going to come again with a new set of high school students to discuss how they use the web in the classroom. See her site and her school’s site. Discuss here.

ScienceOnline2010 is starting in three days! If you are not excited yet….well, I think you should be! And perhaps I can help you….with this post.
First, see the complete list of attendees, or, if you want more details about everyone, browse through these introductory posts. It is always good to know more about people you are about to spend two or three days with….
Then, check out the Program to see which session in each time-slot you want to participate in. Go to individual session pages right now and join in the discussions, or ask questions. Start shaping the discussion online before it even starts offline.
This is an Unconference, meant to be highly participatory. The point of the meeting is to have conversations. The sessions’ titles are meant to be topics for conversations, not lectures. The session moderators are supposed to keep the room engaged and on topic, not to drone on and on in a lecture. And then, there are all those informal conversations that happen in the hallways, and during additional events, and in the hotel lobby and at the hotel bar…..
What to do if you will not be physically present but want to follow? Graham Steel has some ideas, but there are plenty of ways to follow, and to some extent participate in the meeting.
This is an Unconference also in the sense that it is open. Not just that we allow, we actively encourage participants to cover the meeting online – not just sessions, but everything that happens there. The participants are encouraged to livetweet the meeting, to discuss it in various online places like FriendFeed and Facebook, and to blog about it: either liveblog, or a series of blog posts afterwards, or one big summary post at the end.
So, follow our official Twitter account, follow the #scio10 hashtag on Twitter, and follow the Twitter List that aggregates all the participants. Subscribe to our FriendFeed room and our Facebook event. A lot of coverage will also be found on the Science In The Triangle site and blog.
All (except one) sessions will be recorded and the videos posted on the scienceinthetriangle YouTube channel. You can also search YouTube for the #scio10 hashtag later on.
The sessions in rooms D and E will also be livestreamed on The RTP stream – there are chatrooms on the side: use them to discuss in real time. We will have assigned “room monitors” who will check the chatrooms and, if they see an interesting question or comment, inject them into the real-world conversation in the room.
Likewise, these same sessions (in rooms D and E) will be livestremed into SecondLife on the RTP Island. Again, we will have someone keep an eye on the conversations there and may read out a good question out loud into the room.
We are also encouraging participants to make photographic, audio and video recordings of various events – not just sessions, but hallway conversations and other events. We hope they will interview each other. And then post all those audio and video files online and tag them all with #scio10 hashtag for easy search. We will collect everything from anywhere on the Web with that tag in one place – check the wiki (and our other communication channels) for more information when the meeting starts.
One way to warm up and get excited for the conference is to read some blog and media coverage from the previous years. Check out the collected links of coverage of the 2007 meeting, the 2008 meeting and the 2009 meeting. Of course, the 2010 meeting has already generated quite a lot of coverage (this time in reverse-chronological order) and we expect much more, so try to catch up (and add to it on your own blogs).
Finally, some of the past participants revealed much more about themselves in a series of interviews I conducted with them over the past two years. Many of them will be here again this year/week (marked with an asterisk) so you can see what they had to say about themselves, their science/Web projects, and about the conference itself:
The 2008 meeting:
Let The Beagle sail: Interview with Karen James*
An Island In the Mountains: Interview with James Hrynyshyn*
Bloggers….In…..Spaaaaace! Interview with Talia Page
What He Says! Interview with Deepak Singh*
Per Holothuroidea Ad Astra: Interview with Sheril Kirshenbaum*
How was it for you? Interview with Graham Steel
Buffy and C.S.I in the Writing Lab: Interview with Jennifer Ouelette*
From Viruses to Viral Video: Interview with Anna Kushnir*
Say ‘Hi’ if you see him running – Interview with Dave Munger*
A Different Kind of Handshake: Interview with Vanessa Woods*
Visualize This! Interview with Moshe Pritsker
From the trenches of Open Access: Interview with Hemai Parthasarathy
Openness is Essential Freedom: Interview with Vedran Vucic
FairerScience in an Unfair World: Interview with Patricia Campbell
Our Seed Overlord: Interview with Virginia Hughes
The mite hunting a dinosaur that could not catch a dog: Interview with Brian Switek*
The Sirenian Call? Interview with Jennifer Jacquet
Getting Publishing up to Speed: Interview with Bill Hooker*
Riding the Dinosaurs toward Science Literacy: Interview with Gabrielle Lyon
Survivorman! Interview with Aaron Rowe*
Librarians have been doing it for a hundred years! Interview with Christina Pikas*
Soapbox for Puzzle-Solving: Interview with Tom Levenson*
PLoS, it rhymes with floss: Interview with Liz Allen
Isopods At The Gate: Interview with Kevin Zelnio*
The Future is Here and it is Bright: Interview with Anne-Marie Hodge*
The Warlord in the Library: Interview with John Dupuis*
Kids with ‘Dr’ in front of their names: Interview with Ryan Somma*
The Cool Aunt of the scienceblogging community: Interview with Janet Stemwedel*
One of a Mind: Interview with Shelley Batts
Ebola, for your kids! Interview with Tara Smith
Cutting-edge Communication at Duke: Interview with Karl Leif Bates*
Making the Data Public: Interview With Xan Gregg*
Watch Your Shoes! Interview with Suzanne Franks*
Guarding the Coral Reefs like a Moray Eel: Interview with Rick MacPherson*
Start Them Early: Interview with Karen Ventii*
Think of a Dust-Free Keypad: Interview with Rose Reis
Turning the Tables on Me: Interview on the Confessions of a Science Librarian*
Shortly After Hell Freezes Over: Interview with Elisabeth Montegna*
Communicating Genomics: Interview with Kendall Morgan
Removing the Bricks from the Classroom Walls: Interview with David Warlick
Doing science publicly: Interview with Jean-Claude Bradley*
The 2009 meeting:
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Sol Lederman*
ScienceOnline’09 – Interview with Greg Laden*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with SciCurious*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Peter Lipson*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Glendon Mellow*
ScienceOnline’09 – Interview with GG aka Dr.SkySkull*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Betul Kacar Arslan*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Eva Amsen
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with GrrrlScientist
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Miriam Goldstein*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Katherine Haxton
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Stephanie Zvan*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Stacy Baker*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Bob O’Hara
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Djordje Jeremic*
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Erica Tsai
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Elissa Hoffman
ScienceOnline’09 – Interview with Henry Gee*
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Sam Dupuis*
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Russ Campbell*
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Danica Radovanovic*
Clock Interview: John Hogenesch – genes, clocks, Web and ScienceOnline’09*
ScienceOnline’09: Interview with Bjoern Brembs
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Erin Cline Davis
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Carlos Hotta
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Danielle Lee
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Victor Henning
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with John Wilbanks
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Kevin Emamy*
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Arikia Millikan*
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove*
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Blake Stacey*
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Daniel Brown
ScienceOnline’09 – interview with Christian Casper
ScienceOnline09 – an interview with Cameron Neylon*
Caryn Shechtman: A Blogger Success Story (an interview with Yours Truly)*

As you know you can see everyone who’s registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what.
Anna Kushnir is a veteran of our conferences. She is the Senior Analyst at Gryphon Scientific and she blogs on Lab Life. I interviewed Anna a couple of years ago.
Erik Martin is the Community manager at reddit.com. He blogs on Megazoa and he tweets.
Anna Lena Phillips is the Assistant Book-Review Editor at the American Scientist and the Poetry Editor at the Fringe magazine.
Amy Freitag is a graduate student in ecology and conservation at Duke University and is one of the co-bloggers on Southern Fried Science.
Maria-Jose Vinas is a freelance science writer and journalist (and a veterinarian). She is the public information coordinator and twitterer for the American Geophysical Union.
Larry Boles is an animal keeper at the Museum of Life+Science in Durham. He manages the department’s blog and works with the Innovation and Learning group on Adult Science Programs. He will be your leader for the Museum tour. Larry is also on Twitter.

A number of sessions at the Conference are looking at sociological aspects of the Web and science. I have already pointed, in quite a lot of detail, to the session on civility and politeness, as well as several other sessions that touch on the topics of language and trust. Let’s look at several others that approach the social aspects of science online (and offline) from different angles:
Casting a wider net: Promoting gender and ethnic diversity in STEM – D.N.Lee and Anne Jefferson
Description: We will introduce programs that attract wider audiences to science, math, and engineering at various institutions/education levels, programs that mentor students (high school, undergrad & grad students) in research and education excellence. How Social Media tools can be used to raise the profile of and build support networks for under-represented scientists and engineers. Discuss here
The Importance of Meatspace: Science Motels, science freelancing and science coworking – Brian Russell and Paweł Szczęsny
Description: Science careers and science workplaces are undergoing dramatic change, driven by internal shifts in the practice of science and external shifts in labor markets and workplace design and management. This session will be split into two sections. The first half will explore the shift from freelance scientists to virtual contract research organization, and explore alternative models for R&D;. The second half will explore possible models for science motels and science coworking, building on the “research cloud” scenario presented in the Institute for the Future’s “Future Knowledge Ecosystems” report, released in 2009 as part of the Research Triangle Park’s 50th anniversary. We will use a group brainstorming process to develop a map of ideas about how freelancer scientists, virtual CROs and flexible lab/workspaces may co-evolve in over the coming decade. Discuss here
Privacy, ethics, and disasters: how being online as a doctor changes everything – Pal MD and Val Jones.
Description: We all know that there are potential pitfalls to having a prominent online presence, but for physicians, the implications affect more than just themselves. How should doctors and similar professionals manage their online life? What are the ethical and legal implications? Discuss here.
Legal Aspects of publishing, sharing and blogging science – Victoria Stodden
Description: Not giving legal advice, but discussion of CC-licences, copyright, Fair Use, libel laws, etc. Discuss here.
Citizen Science – Darlene Cavalier, Scott Baker and Ben MacNeill
Description: Not so long ago, “citizen scientist” would have seemed to be a contradiction in terms. Science is traditionally something done by people in lab coats who hold PhDs. As with classical music or acting, amateurs might be able to appreciate science, but they could not contribute to it. Today, however, enabled by technology and empowered by social change, science-interested laypeople are transforming the way science gets done. Through a myriad of different projects, citizen scientists are collaborating with professionals, conducting field studies, and adding valuable local detail to research. Discuss here.
An Open History of Science – John McKay and Eric Michael Johnson
Description: We will be talking about how the history of science and the history of the open-access movement have intersected. Steven Johnson touches on this theme in his latest book, The Invention of Air, in that 18th century British polymath Joseph Priestley was a strong advocate of publishing scientific data widely in order to create a greater dialogue between scientists. While Johnson only mentions this briefly in the case of Priestley, this theme runs strongly through the history of science and is what makes the debate over the patenting of genes or the availability of open-access journals such important topics today. Discuss here.
Web Science: An examination of the World Wide Web and how it is transforming our society – Arikia Millikan and Nate Silver
Description: Web Science is an emerging field that attempts to study how people use the Web and communicate with each other through what is considered the “largest human information construct in history”. In this session we will discuss what exactly the Web is, how it is evolving based on user behavior, and how things like search engines, blogs, and social networking tools are shaping the society in which we live. We will also explore how to analyze the Web, and what we can do to actively take part in its construction to ensure that it continues to benefit society. Discuss here.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Session: Engaging underrepresented groups in online science media – David Kroll and Damond Nollan
Description: The conference timing may keep some attendees away in their hometowns participating in local MLK activities. Therefore, we are introducing a session to promote the principles of Dr King in the context of online science communication: promoting social justice and eliminating racism in areas ranging from healthcare to scientific career paths. We plan to take a different angle from the blogging about gender/race session: how do we cultivate emerging science writers from underrepresented groups to promote science, for example, in areas of health disparities (i.e., diabetes, substance abuse, prostate cancer) and in providing opportunities to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Locally in Durham, North Carolina, efforts are underway through the non-profit Kramden Institute to start by making newly-refurbished computers available to honors students in underserved school districts as a model for what can be done nationally. We’ll also be represented by local IT and social media folks who are setting up the infrastructure to make internet access more affordable and accessible. Any advice, comments or ideas are welcome from attendees, especially if you engage with underrepresented groups in your respective line of online or offline work. Discuss here.

As you know you can see everyone who’s registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what.
Michael Specter is a science journalist and writer for The New Yorker. His latest book is “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives”. He will be the Keynote Speaker on Friday evening and will participate at the conference on Saturday as well. Michael is on Twitter, too.
Dr.Isis will apparate from wherever it is that Goddesses live, and co-moderate the session Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents. She is on Twitter as well.
Stephanie Levi is a cell biologist and the Coordinator for the Student Center for Science Engagement at Northeastern Illinois University. She blogs on Science Is Sexy and is also one of the bloggers on Talking Science. There is more information here. And she is on Twitter.
Cassie Rodenberg is a freelance science writer and blogger, a regular contributor to the science sections of Popular Mechanics and The Charlotte Observer, and she also tweets.
Robin Mackar is the News Director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and National Toxicology Program (NTP).
Alicia Roberts is the Director of partner relations, networked journalism grant project at The Charlotte Observer.

Last year we had a session on Art And Science and a workshop How To Paint Your Own Blog Pictures. At this year’s conference we have more sessions that explore the visual aspects of science. Click on links to see what discussions have already started on these pages and add your questions and thoughts:
Paint your blog images using a digital tablet led by Glendon Mellow
Description: Get a chance to test out a digital tablet, and see why it’s like having an entire art supply store on your computer. Beginning with tutorials on Glendon’s blog before the conference, we’ll try using Gimp, ArtRage & Photoshop in conjunction with a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet to heighten the impact of an image using this easy and versatile input device.
Scientific visualization – Tara Richerson (science_goddess)
Description: A picture is not only worth a thousand words—it is also worth a thousand numbers. This session will focus on ways to move from raw quantitative and qualitative data to a variety of visuals that communicate with all audiences.
Art and Science: Visual Metaphors – Glendon Mellow and Felice Frankel
Description: How has our vocabulary of metaphors changed in the wake of scientific inquiry and visualization? This year, let’s take a trip through metaphors in science-based art and discuss how visual representations can enhance understanding, inspire wonder in science and the tension along the Accuracy-Artistic Divide.
Connections with mathematics and programming through modeling– Maria Droujkova and Blake Stacey
Description: Computer models and simulations can make abstract mathematics concrete and explore idealizations we make of the real world. We’ll discuss how to use widely-available software to visualize mathematics, and how students can do what professional scientists do, like using computers to get numerical solutions when analytic tools are unavailable.

It is getting really close! You can see everyone who’s registered for the conference, and I need to do only a couple of more of these posts to introduce everyone.
David Shiffman is a graduate student at the College of Charleston in South Carolina studying shark conservation. He blogs on Southern Fried Science and tweets. At the conference, David will do an Ignite talk “The Online Community Environmental Action Network: How it can help you and your blog – WhySharksMatter”.
Katie Lord is the Associate Publisher of American Scientist, the popular science magazine published by Sigma Xi.
Andre Blackman is the Health Communications Analyst at RTI International. He blogs on Pulse + Signal and tweets.
Ann Allen is a Copy Editor and books page editor at the Charlotte Observer.
Princess Ojiaku is a Biology graduate student at NC Central University. She blogs on Science with Moxie and tweets.
Karyn Hede is a freelance science and medical writer and consultant in Chapel Hill. She teaches at UNC and has authored the book ‘Moving On: Managing Career Transitions‘.

We are in the final stretch – it is getting really exciting!
I’ll introduce a few more registrants tomorrow (lucky waitlisters – there were a couple of cancellations this week), but today I’d like to remind you, if you are registered for the conference, to add your name (by editing the appropriate wiki page) to one of the Friday Tours.
Coffee Cupping at Counter Culture Coffee
It’s cold in the morning, and nothing helps better than the smell of fresh, hot coffee. And learning some science of coffee: from how it is grown to how it gets to the final consumer. If you are interested in this tour, sign up at this page and join us for Coffee Cupping at Counter Culture Coffee in Durham. It is really close to the hotel, so use the Radisson free shuttles. Locals: offer to give guests a ride.
Coffee Cupping starts at 9:45am and the address of Counter Culture Coffee for those who are driving is: 4911 S. Alston Ave., Durham, NC 27713
Lab Tours
As we do every year, we get your brain centers dedicated for science excitement stimulated with a choice of tours to local science museums and labs. All tours are 2-4pm on Friday, January 15th. Details about transportation will be posted on the wiki, but we always appreciate when locals offer to take out-of-town guests – it’s easy to just swing by Radisson and ask.
The wiki page to sign up for Lab Tours is here – just add your name to one of them. The choices this year are:
DiVE Into Alcohol — a biochemistry demonstration inside the Duke University Immersive Virtual Environment in Durham.
NC Museum of Life + Science in Durham.
RTI International in RTP – This tour will likely include microscopy and use of nanotechnology.
North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.
Duke Lemur Center in Durham.
These tours should get your sciency juices going so you will be totally ready and excited for the conference next day 😉

The conference is only a week away!!!!!
I have introduced the participants, and the Program over the past couple of months (there’s a little bit more to come). Today, we’ll go into the night….the dark side! There are three evenings during the meeting, thus three evening events for participants. Importantly, all three are also open to locals (or whoever is in town that day) who are not registered to attend the main program of the conference.
On Thursday night, for those early birds whose flights from far-away places bring them in on Thursday, as well as for the locals who are already here, we will have a very special treat. We will meet for a lively dinner event at a local restaurant (Alivia’s Bistro in Durham, 900 West Main St., Durham, NC 27701). The event will be organized by our friends The Monti and will include storytelling by local scientists.
The theme for this show is Inspirations and five storytellers will be talking about the things in their pasts that ignited the fire in them and propelled them forward in life, love and career. The five fascinating people who will not give lecture, but tell use stories are:
Scott Huler is a science writer and journalist, an NPR contributor, and an author of several books, including Defining the Wind about the origins of the Beaufort Scale.
Amanda Lamb is a crime reporter for WRAL-TV and the author of two books: “Deadly Dose” and “Smotherhood.”
Vanessa Woods is an author and journalist from Australia who now resides here in Durham, NC and does research in primate behavior (and conservation) at Duke. Half of the year or so she spends in Congo (actually, in both Congos) studying and helping protect chimps and bonobos. She has written a number of books, including It’s every monkey for themselves.
John Kessel teaches American literature, science fiction, fantasy, and fiction writing at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He is a Nebula Prize winning Science Fiction author, his opus including “Corrupting Dr. Nice” and “Good News From Outer Space”, as well as editor of numerous SF anthologies and collections.
Rob Dunn teaches ecology and conservation in the Department of Biology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and the author of Every Living Thing
The event will be held on Thursday, Jan 14 at 7:30pm (doors open at 6:30). The tickets are $10 (50 seats are allotted to ScienceOnline2010). You should purchase your tickets by clicking here. Tickets just went on sale this morning at 10am.
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On Friday evening, we will have a gala hosted and sponsored by the RTP Foundation headquarters (12 Davis Drive, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709), in collaboration with SCONC, at 6:30-9:30pm, featuring Michael Specter as our special guest speaker. Food and cocktails will be served. There will be door-prizes as well….
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On Saturday night, we will have a Banquet at the Radisson RTP hotel. The sign-up list for a buffet-style banquet is now live here with details on the menu offerings. The cost is $36/person, including tips and taxes. Wine will also be available for $20/bottle. Add your name to that wiki page (by registering, logging in and editing the page) and don’t forget to send your payment to David!
At the end of the banquet, we will have a series of fast-paced, exciting Ignite talks given by these folks:
“Why Triangle is Better than Silicon Valley” – Wayne Sutton
“My “Little Black Book” of Scientists I Love” – Joanne Manaster
“Crowdsourced Chemistry – Why Online Chemistry Data Needs Your Help” – Antony Williams
“Blogging on the tenure track” – Janet Stemwedel
“Being mentored – not only for grad students” – Pawel Szczesny
“Dive Into Your Imagination” – Annie Crawley
“SARS, Drugs, and Biosensors” – Aaron Rowe
“The Story of NanoBioTechnology” – Mary Spiro
“Data mining the literature with Zotero” – Trevor Owens
“The Online Community Environmental Action Network: How it can help you and your blog – WhySharksMatter” – David Shiffman
“Games in Open Science Education” – Antony Williams and Jean-Claude Bradley
I hope you will join us for the evening festivities even if you are not registered for the rest of the meeting, but will be in town at the time. And then, afterwards, there is always the bar at Radisson for those with stamina…..

If you are coming to ScienceOnline2010 and you have checked the amazing Program there, you have noticed that there will be a set of hands-on workshops on Friday morning.
If you will be attending (and even if you are not registered for the rest of the conference but will be in town on that day), you can sign up for workshops now – one 10am and one 11am worskhop. How do you sign up? By editing the Workshops page of the wiki – just add the number (up to 50 per session) and your name under the titles of workshops you want to participate in.
How do you choose which two workshops to attend?
If you want to start a blog and don’t know how, sign up for Blogging 101 and an hour later you will have your own blog, ready to fill with content of your own, perhaps starting with your coverage of the conference over those three days.
If you already write a blog, but want to make your blog better, prettier, more interesting, more functional and, importantly, less isolated, i.e., better connected to the rest of the Web, sign up for Blogging 102.
If running a single, personal blog is not your thing (or you’ve already been doing it for years) and you are ready to step up and design your own site, something more complex and more flexible, with news, podcasts, videos, perhaps multiple blogs written by multiple users, then it may be time to start getting familiar with Drupal (yes, even the White House is now using Drupal for its sites). Get started in the Make your own social networking site with Drupal workshop.
Scientific articles get deposited into mysterious online places called Library Repositories. What are those? How do you use them? How do you find information in them? If you publish a paper, how do you deposit it there? This will all be answered in the Repositories for Fun and Profit session.
Sick of searching the Web for other people’s images to use in your blog posts? Make your own. Learn how to use easy artistic and graphic tools in the Paint your blog images using a digital tablet session (watch that page – you may be asked to download software ahead of time).
Everyone can point a Flip camera and shoot, then upload the file on YouTube, right? Yes, but there are things to know and tricks to use to make your videos much better, thus more interesting, useful and educational. Learn the basics of Storyboarding your science video and posting it online.
Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Stumbleupon….you have heard of all of these and other social networking sites. But you are not on them and don’t know how to use them. Or you are on them, but not really sure how to use them. Perhaps all you give and get there is silly and useless stuff. How do you find science information and/or other scientists on these services, how do you use those services to exchange useful information, to collaborate, or promote your organization? Find out in the Social media for beginners workshop.
Perhaps sound is your thing, rather than writing, images and video. Learn how to record and upload audio files and how to make them good, fun and useful in the Podcasting 101 session.
You can ask questions of the workshop leaders on their individual pages. Start signing up now.

If you have been following sciency blogosphere, or my blog, or tweets about #scio10, or checked out the Program of the conference, you may have noticed that I have predicted that the “overarching theme” of the meeting will shift from last-year’s focus on Power to this year’s, hopefully, emphasis on Trust. Several sessions will, directly or indirectly, address the question of trust – who trusts whom, how and why.
With no non-verbal clues available online (apart from an occasional smiley-face), one has to convey not just meaning, but also intent and mood, using only language. And intent and mood are important in determining trustworthiness of a person.
What, if any, is the difference between civility and politeness? I am not sure, but the way I think about it is that politeness is about language, while civility is about behavior, especially behavior that reflects respect for others.
Thus, one can be involved in quite a fiery discussion, using a lot of foul language, yet remain civil in the sense of intellectual respect for one’s opponent.
On the other hand, one can use perfectly nice and polished language, yet be entirely disrespectful of other people with the intent of completely destroying their reputations (the “kabuki” of the scientific discourse I explored in this post). One can stab another with a knife and slowly twist it while keeping complete composure and a smile.
Example of the latter: some trolls. We get them around here a lot. They are GW denialists or anti-vaccination loons, or rabid Animal Rightists. They sometimes post comments that are written in a perfectly polite language – our spam filters don’t detect a single ‘iffy’ word in there. The comment is polite and seems civil on the surface. It may be posed as a question, or a statement preceded by a very “sorry I am interrupting” introduction designed to soften the ire. But it is uncivil for a variety of reasons: the post may have nothing to do with that topic at all; the commenter obviously did not read the post; the commenter obviously did not read the other comments on the thread; the commenter comes unprepared and uninformed; the comment is essentially a copy+paste or regurgitation of talking points, errors of which the commenter is unaware of; the commenter asks to be spoon-fed readily available information (including that included in the body of the post already, or a link within it); if spoon-fed the commenter does not read (or even try to understand) and asks for it again; if not spoon-fed the commenter keeps whining for it; if told off the commenter gets all gruffy and puffy and complains about the “impolite bloggers”. All polite, nothing civil about it. Then, the blogger who loses patience and tells such a commenter to go to hell is impolite, but civil – the commenter got just as much respect as earned/deserved.
Being known for being generally mellow and tolerant and using nice language, when I do fly off the handle people take notice – if even I got so irritated by someone, that means that that particular someone probably more than deserved it. It is a power I use very rarely and carefully. But when I do, it is devastating.
There are also differences in what is deemed civil on different platforms. Comments on my blog that use strong language and I find perfectly reasonable here I would quickly delete if they were posted on a PLoS ONE article. Comments on my blog will be of a higher level of both civility and politeness than a blog where foul language is the norm, or on YouTube, or in the comments on MSM articles (because they stupidly misunderstood a court case so they never moderated comments or nurtured a community by showing up in the comments themselves).
There are also cultural differences. In a session at last year’s ScienceOnline2009, it appeared that (generally speaking, on average – the caveats all in place) Americans were more tolerant of much harsher and fouler language, and still deemed it polite, than the Brits in the room.
Anyway, those are just my two cents. There will be an entire session devoted to this topic. This will be the only session at the meeting that will NOT be recorded (audio or video) or livestreamed. But I am sure a lot of people in the room will livetweet it and later blog about it so you will get to know what was said there. That session is:

Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents
Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 11:30am – 12:35pm:
Moderated by Janet Stemwedel, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Dr.Isis
Description: Janet, Sheril, and Isis regularly write about the role of civility in dialog with the public and other scientists. In this session, we will discuss the definition of civility, its importance in the communication of science, and how the call to civility can be used to derail discourse. Additionally, we will discuss the importance of finding the appropriate balance of civility and tolerance for what gets labeled as incivility in reaching and engaging each other. We reserve the right to use the words “balls,” “muppethugger,” and “wackaloon,” to FWDAOTI liberally, and cannot guarantee that at least one of the moderators will not lose her junk.
Discuss:
Janet says: We’re going to be putting up links to some posts we think bear on the questions we’ll be discussing (or on issues in the same ballpark). Feel free to add suggestions of your own (and if you don’t mind, please identify yourself before your suggestions so this page can itself work like a conversation).
Here are my initial offerings:
from my blog:
#scio10 preparation: Is there a special problem of online civility?: A brand-new post in which I blatantly crowdsource some questions I think we might discuss in our session.
How did we do at dialogue? There’s a chart in this post (adapted from material from the Public Conversations Project) comparing the features of arguments and dialogues. I don’t think it quite captures the civility/incivility divide (at least, the one I suspect a lot of people have in mind, which includes exhortations to argue civilly), but I think this kind of comparison could still be useful for our conversation. (For one thing, it suggests different kinds of aims we might have in our interactions with others.)
Unscientific America: Are scientists all on the same team? The quick answer: they are not, at least not for every issue or goal. But dealing successfully with these differences is probably connected to the question of civility in interesting (which is to say, complicated) ways.
Getting along vs. fixing the problem. In which, while trying to make sense of a fight about civility and tone, I see both sides … and deal with an unbidden memory of an incident that squicks me out.
And here are some posts from other people that I think are very relevant to discussions of civility online:
The Angry Black Woman: The Privilege of Politeness
Thus Spake Zuska: This is The Patriarchy: When Talking to the Master, Speak in a Civil Tone
Starts With A Bang: Weekend Diversion: How to Argue
On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess: How to Argue … [UPDATED]
DrugMonkey: Weekend Diversion: How to argue … and actually accomplish something
DrugMonkey: How to Argue Part II: On name-calling and ad hominem attacks
DrugMonkey: How to Argue Part III: Sometimes, it’s just time for a good fight

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To this list of links, I would add a few more:
A Blog Around The Clock: The Shock Value of Science Blogs – I tend to write long mother-of-all-posts-on-the-topic posts. This is one of those….and it provoked quite a lot of responses on other blogs at the time.
A Blog Around The Clock: What does it mean that a nation is ‘Unscientific’? – this one is even longer, and only one part really deals with Civility, but most of it deals with Trust.
A Blog Around The Clock: ScienceOnline’09 – Saturday 4:30pm and beyond: the Question of Power – where we left off last year. Have we moved forward in the span of a year?
Transcription and Translation: Trust & Influence – The Real Human Currency
Greta Christina’s Blog: Atheists and Anger – a 2-part internet Classic.
Greta Christina’s Blog: Atheists and Anger: A Reply to the Hurricane
Almost Diamonds: Community Index is a good collection of useful links on the topic.
Almost Diamonds: Today’s Question – a case-study.
Digidave’s Quickies: The Culture of Internet Comments – quick funny videos that will make you laugh first, and then will make you think.
Digiphile: George Washington’s Rules for Social Media – some advice is ageless.
Bioephemera: Online civility: what does it mean to be ‘on the same team’? – call for discussion at the session.
On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess: The Foreplay Before ScienceOnline, Part 1 – call for discussion at the session.
Adventures in Ethics and Science: #scio10 preparation: Things I like about having conversations online
Greg Laden: Coturnix on Civility and Politeness
The Intersection: Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents
Cosmic Variance: Being Polite and Being Right
Adventures in Ethics and Science: #scio10 preparation: What people might have in mind when they say they want online civility.
The Island of Doubt: Silencing the climate deniers: A cautionary tale from LinkedIn

And today, to finish with the introductions to the sessions on the Program, here is what will happen on Sunday, January 17 at 11:30am – 12:35pm:
A. Medical journalism – Walter Jessen and Karl Leif Bates
Description: It could be argued that healthcare already has a “killer app” – search. According to research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 61% of us look online for medical information. In an age of horizontal information distribution and social networks, what sort of medical information, disinformation and misinformation does one find? How do we fight publishers of medical information that is inaccurate, misleading or wrong? Is a website sponsored by a drug company more reliable than one sponsored by a disease group? Can a University PR site be trusted? How about an M.D or Ph.D. that blogs on medicine or medical research? What about a federal agency such as the FDA or CDC? What difference does a seal of approval from the Health on the Net Foundation (HONcode) make if Google’s algorithms don’t value it? Discuss here.
B. Open Notebook Science – Jean-Claude Bradley, Steven J. Koch and Cameron Neylon
Description: The sharing of experimental data under near real-time conditions has a place in the scientific process. Some recent examples in chemistry will be detailed using social software such as blogs, wikis and public Google Spreadsheets. In one example the utility of sharing solubility measurements not available from the traditional scientific literature will be detailed. In another case work published in the peer-reviewed literature was evaluated extremely quickly by the blogosphere to resolve some controversial claims. The full sharing of experimental details was essential to resolving the issue. See here for more information on Open Notebook Science. Discuss here.
C. Online Civility and Its (Muppethugging) Discontents – Janet Stemwedel, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Dr.Isis
Description: Janet, Sheril, and Isis regularly write about the role of civility in dialog with the public and other scientists. In this session, we will discuss the definition of civility, its importance in the communication of science, and how the call to civility can be used to derail discourse. Additionally, we will discuss the importance of finding the appropriate balance of civility and tolerance for what gets labeled as incivility in reaching and engaging each other. We reserve the right to use the words “balls,” “muppethugger,” and “wackaloon,” to FWDAOTI liberally, and cannot guarantee that at least one of the moderators will not lose her junk. Discuss here.
D. Blogging the Future – The Use of Online Media in the Next Generation of Scientists – Stacy Baker
Description: Ms. Baker has changed schools (moved from Maryland to Staten Island) and the use of the Web in teaching is now an even greater part of her teaching job. She is going to come again with a new set of high school students to discuss how they use the web in the classroom. See “her site”:http://www.extremebiology.net/ and her “school’s site”:http://www.statenislandacademy.org/info/twitter.asp . Discuss here.
E. Demos
– SciVee.tv – Ken Liu
Description: – publishing scientific videos on “SciVee.tv”:http://scivee.tv/
Discuss here.
– Social Networking and performance evaluation in scientific centers – John Hogenesch
Description: Analysis of collaboration between scientists. Discuss here.
– ScanGrants – Hope Leman
Description: “ScanGrants”:http://www.scangrants.com/ is a free, subscribable (via email or RSS) online listing of grant opportunities, prizes and scholarships in the health and life sciences and community service fields. Discuss here.
– ChemSpider – Antony Williams
Description: Crowdsourced Curation of Online Chemistry Data – An Introduction to ChemSpider. Discuss here.

As you know you can see everyone who’s registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what.
Anne-Marie Hodge is a Biology graduate student at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. She blogs on Endless Forms and Pondering Pikaia and is on Twitter. I interviewed Anne-Marie last year.
Nancy Shute is a science and medical writer and the blogger for US News & World Report. She is currently the vice president of the National Association of Science Writers and she tweets.
Marie-Claire Shanahan is the Assistant Professor in Science Education at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where she studies the new ways of science communication and publishing and how those should be included in science classrooms. She is also on Twitter.
Catherine Clabby is the Associate Editor of American Scientist and is on Twitter.
Steve Gunn is the Editor for Innovative and New Products at The Charlotte Observer. And he is also on Twitter.
David Wescott is the vice president in the Raleigh-Durham office of APCO Worldwide. He blogs on It’s Not a Lecture and tweets.

Continuing with the introductions to the sessions on the Program, here is what will happen on Sunday, January 17 at 10:15 – 11:20am:
A. Article-level metrics – Peter Binfield
Description: In an attempt to measure the article, as opposed to the journal it is published in, PLoS has recently implemented a suite of article-level metrics on all PLoS Articles. These metrics include online usage, citations, social bookmarks, comments, notes, ratings, and blog coverage. This presentation will go into the motivation for this program; provide information on how it has been implemented; and cover plans for future enhancements. Discuss here.
B. Not too easy – how to make science blogging interesting (and yet stay challenging) for children under 10 – Jessica Riccò
Description: Jessica Riccò edits a science magazine for kids and also does the online science pages for children for the “Deutsches Museum” (= biggest science museum in Germany, located in Munich). She will lead a discussion about how to get children interested in science blogs (and why that’s more effective than ex-cathedra teaching). Discuss here.
C. Demos
– Characteristics of Science Popularizers – Joanne Manaster
Description: A video compilation of some of the most beloved science popularizers in the media including Mr. Wizard, Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Alan Alda and more. What characteristics do they display that entice viewers into the world of science? Are these the same characteristics required in today’s media climate to attract young people to science? Discuss here.
– Dive Into Your Imagination – Annie Crawley
Description: The future of our Ocean and the marine sciences are in our hands. Annie Crawley, founder of “Dive Into Your Imagination”:http://www.diveintoyourimagination.com/, is changing the way a new generation views the Ocean. As a filmmaker, photographer and writer combined with field biologist, boat captain and scuba instructor, she will share stories and videos from around the globe while you learn how you can use multi-media, create a program and reach out to your audience. Annie will share with you expedition footage from the SEAPLEX expedition to the North Pacific Gyre that Project Kaisei hired Dive Into Your Imagination to document, cuttlefish fornicating in Indonesia, Great White Sharks from Mexico and special archival footage that has never been broadcast before from the 1960’s. There is a balance that is needed for real science to be documented and shared with the world. This session will be sure to inspire and motivate you! Discuss here.
– National Geographic JASON project – Marjee Chmiel
Description: “Free K-12 Science Games”:http://www.jason.org/public/WhatIs/Games.aspx from the National Geographic JASON project. Discuss here.
– Darwin and the Adventure – The (i)Movie – Karen James and Kevin Zelnio
Description: In September, 2009, 20 marine research scientists from around South America, the UK and the USA, representatives from The HMS Beagle Project and NASA, and 60 local schoolchildren gathered in Paraty, Brazil for a three-day science, education and outreach program. This short film will include footage from our celebrations of Darwin’s bicentenary, our two sailing excursions aboard the Brazilian tall ship Tocorimé (Spirit of Adventure) and a live Q&A;session between Brazilian public schoolchildren and astronaut Mike Barratt aboard the International Space Station. Discuss here.
D. Getting the Science Right: The importance of fact checking mainstream science publications — an underappreciated and essential art — and the role scientists can and should (but often don’t) play in it. – Rebecca Skloot
Description: Much of the science that goes out to the general public through books, newspapers, blogs and many other sources is not professionally fact checked. As a result, much of the public’s understanding of science is based on factual errors. This discussion will focus on what scientists and journalists can do to fix that problem, and the importance of playing a pro-active role in the process. Discuss here.
E. Connections with mathematics and programming through modeling. – Maria Droujkova and Blake Stacey
Description: Computer models and simulations can make abstract mathematics concrete and explore idealizations we make of the real world. We’ll discuss how to use widely-available software to visualize mathematics, and how students can do what professional scientists do, like using computers to get numerical solutions when analytic tools are unavailable. Discuss here.

As you know you can see everyone who’s registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what.
Cameron Neylon is a Senior Scientist at the ISIS Pulsed Neutron Source, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford with a joint appointment as a Lecturer in Chemical Biology at the School of Chemistry at the University of Southampton. He blogs on Science in the open and tweets. At the conference Cameron will do a demo of Google Wave for scientists who are complete n00bs and co-moderate the session on Open Notebook Science.
Jessica Riccò works at the Deutsches Museum and edits their Lampenfieber kids’ science magazine. At the conference Jessica will do a demo of both. Check out the archives of her blog and her Twitter stream.
Katherine Porter is the Senior Science Editor for Words & Numbers, Inc. and a blogger.
Bonnie Swoger is the Science and Technology librarian at SUNY Geneseo. She blogs on the Undergraduate Science Librarian and tweets.
Jennifer Williams works at OpenHelix, LLC and blogs on the OpenHelix blog.
Natalie Villalobos is the Community Manager at Google for Sidewiki (formerly the same at Signtific, Digg and Yahoo) and she is on Twitter.