A Blog Around The Clock

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.

----------------------

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....

--------------------------

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.....