Category Archives: SO’11

Another installment in the series of posts introducing attendees/participants of ScienceOnline2011. You can find them all on the list, but it may help if you get them in smaller chunks, focusing on a few at a time.

David Dobbs is a science writer and journalist located in Vermont. He published several books, including The Northern Forest, Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral and The Great Gulf: Fishermen, Scientists, and the Struggle to Revive the World’s Greatest Fishery, and is currently writing a book about the “orchid hypothesis” of depression as adaptation. He blogs at Neuron Culture and is active on Twitter.

Joanne Manaster is an online course developer/lecturer of science courses for the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois. She used to teach histology in the department of Cell and Developmental Biology, and mammalian cell culture techniques and the concepts of stem cells and tissue engineering in the Bioengineering Department at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. You can learn much more about Joanne, her fascinating life story, and especially about her outreach activities, on her About page. Check out her blog, follow her on Twitter and check out her YouTube science channel. Joanne is a master of video and (together with Carin Bondar) will run a workshop on how to make good vides and a Movie Festival (yes, there will be awards for the best submitted and shown entries!).

Brian Malow is Earth’s Pre­mier Sci­ence Come­dian (self-proclaimed) and a free­lance sci­ence video cor­re­spon­dent for Time Magazine’s web­site. He blogs and tweets and puts his videos on YouTube. He will do a performance during the banquet on Friday night.

Jason Goldman is a graduate student in Developmental Psychology at the University of Southern California. He blogs about cognitive neuroscience in people and other animals at The Thoughtful Animal and Child’s Play and he tweets. He is this year’s editor of Open Laboratory anthology of the best writing on science blogs.

Allie Wilkinson is a scientist, environmentalist, journalist, a student of journalism at Hofstra University, a blogger and twitterer.

Gloria Lloyd is a freelance copywriter/editor, marketing writer, and journalist in Chapel Hill, NC. And she is on Twitter.

Sabine Vollmer, former science reporter for Raleigh News and Observer, now writes and tweets for Science in the Triangle. I interviewed Sabine last April.

Mike Lisieski is a student of Psychology and Pharmacology at the University at Buffalo. He blogs at Cephalove on the Gam network and he tweets.

Hannah Waters got her degree in biology, focusing on ecology, but now works as a laboratory technician in a cell and molecular biology lab in Philadelphia and is planning on going in that direction in grad school. She blogs on Culturing Science and Sleeping with the Fishes and is on Twitter.

Brian Mossop is the online community manager for PLoS Blogs and PLoS Hubs. He blogs at The Decision Tree and tweets.

As I do every year, I will do a series of posts introducing attendees/participants of ScienceOnline2011. You can find them all on the list, but it may help if you get them in smaller chunks, focusing on a few at a time.

Stacy Baker aka Miss Baker is the Biology Teacher at Staten Island Academy, as well as a graduate student in Teacher Education in Science at Columbia University. She blogs at Using Blogs in Science Education and tweets. Her Biology classroom blog is Extreme Biology. Together with Rachel Ward, Science Department Chair at the Staten Island Academy, Stacy will bring, for the third year in a row, eight of her students who will lead a session. I wrote about their 2009 session here and interviewed Miss Baker here. The students are always a hit at ScienceOnline, and they also have an entire category devoted to it on their blog.

Christie Wilcox is a Graduate Student in Cell and Molecular Biology at University of Hawaii in Honolulu studying fish population genetics and venom biochemistry, and a Graduate Assistant at Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. She blogs on Observations of a Nerd and is on Twitter. Back in April, I interviewed Christie for the blog – you can read it here.

Lisa Jarvis is the senior editor at Chemical & Engineering News. She blogs at Haystack and is on Twitter.

Dave Munger is a writer in Davidson, NC. He blogs on Word Munger, though his old blogs Cognitive Daily and Daily Monthly are probably better known, as they were pioneering what at the time was a new style of science blogging. Dave is also the founder of Researchblogging.org and one of the founders of Scienceblogging.org. And, of course, he can be also found on Twitter. My 2008 interview with Dave is here.

Virginia Hughes is a science writer in NYC, and a former Community Manager at Scienceblogs.com. She blogs at The Last Word On Nothing, at On SFARI Blog, at NOVA’s Secret Life of Scientists & Engineers blog and her own blog – Virginia Hughes. And she tweets as well. I interviewed Ginny back in February 2008.

Antony Williams, based in Raleigh NC, is the founder of ChemSpider and writes on the ChemSpiderBlog and The ChemConnector Blog (and tweets). I interviewed Antony back in May.

As I do every year, I will do a series of posts introducing attendees/participants of ScienceOnline2011. You can find them all on the list, but it may be helpful if you get them in smaller chunks, focusing on a few at a time. Today I will get “us” out of the way first, introducing people most involved in the organization and running of the event this year.

Anton Zuiker is the communications director for the Duke Department of Medicine, a veteran (10 years!) blogger and twitterer and has been, for years, the heart and soul of the local online community.

I guess you know about me – the new Blog Editor at Scientific American, blogger (you are on it) and twitterer.

The two of us, Anton and I, have concieved and organized this meeting for five years now, and are both involved in a number of other local online and offline communications projects, including Scienceblogging.org, SCONC, Science In The Triangle, BlogTogether, Open Laboratory and more still to come.

Catharine Zivkovic is my wife, and thus has had a lot of influence on me and on the conference over the years. She is a registered Intensive Care nurse, a UNC student, a bioethicist and a writer. She also tweets.

David Kroll is a Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at North Carolina Central University. He blogs on Terra Sigillata and Take as Directed and sometimes on the group blog Science-Based Medicine. And he tweets. His traditional involvement in ScienceOnline? Hotel, banquet and wine.

Karyn Traphagen has taught or is teaching a wide variety of things that only at first sight do not seem related: physics, violin, biblical Hebrew and art. She is an online adjunct faculty at University of Virginia (physics), and a PhD student at the University of Stellenbosch. She volunteers at the NC Museum of Life & Science in Durham. She blogs at Boulders 2 Bits and tweets. This year, Karyn is helping us organize volunteers and is in charge of the swag and the Book Fair.

Nancy Shepherd is the founder and CEO of Shepherd Research. She is also on Twitter. As she did masterfully last year, Nancy is in charge of organizing the Lab and Museum Tours this year as well.

Ross Maloney is a UNC student, reporter for Science In The Triangle and an intern at The Research Triangle Park Foundation. Ross blogs and tweets. He is a ‘jack of all trades’, doing whatever needs to be done to make sure the conference runs smoothly.

You may not see it very easily, but there is a lot of work behind the scenes making sure that ScienceOnline2011, our fifth meeting, will be bigger and better than ever.

Look around the wiki, check out the Program, see who is coming and join the chatter on Twitter.

If you are going to be here, get all your Accommodation and Transportation information and start organizing Carpooling and Room-sharing among yourselves. More updates coming soon….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What kind of information can you find on the wiki?

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

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

Promo materials and information about Sponsors will be up soon.

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

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

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

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

More updates soon….

Update: Registration has filled up in 45 minutes. You can add yourself to the waitlist.

Registration for ScienceOnline2011, the fifth annual conference on the intersection between science and the Web, is now open.

With only 300 seats, and so many people interested, I am sure registration will fill out in minutes! So hurry up and register right now then come back here afterwards….

Check out the conference official blog, planning wiki, Facebook event page, FriendFeed room, and Twitter account.

You can follow the discussions on Twitter, blogs, Flickr, Facebook, etc. by searching for the #scio11 hashtag in all those places. Please use that hashtag wherever you mention the meeting.

We will try to have all the sessions livestreamed on Ustream. Keep an eye on the website for updates.

If you are a blogger, and if you write a post with an evolutionary topic, you may be eligible to win one of the travel grants to come to ScienceOnline2011 from NESCent – National Evolutionary Synthesis Center:

Win a travel award for best evolution-themed blog

Application deadline: December 1, 2010

Are you a blogger who is interested in evolution? The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center is offering two travel awards to attend ScienceOnline2011, a science communication conference to be held January 13-15, 2011, in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park.

The awards offer the opportunity to travel to North Carolina to meet with several hundred researchers, writers, editors and educators to explore how online tools are changing the way science is done and communicated to the public. Each winner will receive $750 to cover travel and lodging expenses to attend the conference. For more information about ScienceOnline2011, visit http://scienceonline2011.com/.

To apply for an award, writers should submit a blog post that highlights current or emerging evolutionary research. In order to be valid, posts must deal with research appearing in the peer-reviewed literature within the last five years. Posts should be 500-1000 words, and must mention the NESCent contest. Two recipients will be chosen by a panel of judges from both NESCent and the science blogging community. Please send your name, contact information, the title and date of your blog post, and a URL to travel.award@nescent.org. Winners will be notified by December 15th, 2010.

For the results of last year’s contest, visit http://www-dev.nescent.org/news/TravelAward.php. For more information contact Craig McClain at cmcclain@nescent.org, or Robin Smith at rsmith@nescent.org.

ScienceOnline2011 is the fifth annual international meeting on Science and the Web. On January 13-15th, 2011 the Research Triangle area of North Carolina will once again host scientists, students, educators, physicians, journalists, librarians, bloggers, programmers and others interested in the way the World Wide Web is changing the way science is communicated, taught and done.

2010 has been an exciting year in science, in the developments of the Web, and in the media (including science journalism). The past year’s events, coupled with the growing reputation of our conference around the world, prompted us to make the conference bigger than last year: we expect as many as 500 participants to convene over the three full days of exciting discussions, conversations and events.

One of the most interesting developments in the second half of 2011 is the explosive growth of the science blogosphere, especially formation of new blogging networks (one of which will be developed by one of us). To help you navigate the new science blogging ecosystem, we started developing a website that aggregates it all in one place: Scienceblogging.org.

As in all the previous years, the meeting will be held in an ‘Unconference’ style – the Program is built beforehand with the help of participants on the wiki, and the sessions are designed to foster conversations and discussions rather than a more traditional lecture approach.

You can get prepared ahead of time and help us make the conference great by looking around the site, volunteering to help, or volunteering to lead sessions. You can also follow us on Twitter – either the hashtag #scio11 or our official account @scio11 – or join the discussion in our official FriendFeed room. You can help us get a feel for the number of people intending to attend by indicating your interest on our Facebook event page.

We’ll probably set up the new website and organizing wiki for ScienceOnline2011 at some point over the next couple of weeks. But in the meantime, I am having trouble keeping up with all the ideas people are sending me by e-mail or via Twitter. So I have started a new page on the last year’s wiki (thus old login will work for people who registered to edit the wiki over the past couple of years). Please log in and edit the page to add your ideas – sessions you’d volunteer to moderate: ScienceOnline2011 Program Suggestions.