SBC - online participation

Through blog posts, via e-mail, and via our feedback form (have you filled it yet?) we are already getting tons of feedback on the way Conference ran, what was good about it, what not so much, and what can be done differently next time. We are carefully reading all of it and will certainly address all of your feedback as we start organizing the 3rd meeting (give us a week or so to rest, will ya, please?!).

One of the things that we get a lot is feedback from the people who were not able to attend in physical space and were very happy we made it possible to participate from the distance (see this comment thread for one example). A number of people, both those at the site and those far away, used the variety of online tools to participate.

Thanks to Tola Oguntoyinbo of Sonecast for building the conference Commons a one-stop shopping site for all things related to the Conference. Now that the meeting is over, do not delete that bookmark yet! The site will remain live over the next year, getting built more and more - definitely a place to go to keep up with the discussion on science blogging, on science in North Carolina and the blogging events in the Triangle.

While some of the audio, video and screencast recordings are being put online now (and see the growing number of photographs here and here and here), real Hit Of The Day was live streaming video with attached chatrooms which allowed the off-site participants to comment and ask questions in real time. Jason set up one of those for the Real-time blogging in Marine Sciences session. Karen did the same for the Gender and Race in science: online and offline session.

But, real kudos go to Wayne Sutton who provided real-time video streaming and chat for several sessions, handled the cameras (ably assisted by Brian Russell), made sure that at least some questions from the chatrooms got asked during the sessions and all sorts of other odds and ends on the technical aspects of hosting a conference and making sure everything went smoothly. Click on his name up there and visit his blog - he also interviewed several organizers and participants of the conference and posted the videos of the interviews (very, very cool interviews!). Say Hello and Thank you while there (image of Wayne from Flickr, by 'base10'):