As I noted previously The Society for Neuroscience encouraged its members to blog and Twitt the annual meeting in Chicago (Oct 17-22, 2009). The experiment was far from a smashing success although I do believe that there were some hints of what could / should be for the future. The main problem* was, I wager, one of numbers. It was a meeting that registered some 30,000 attendees. I counted something maybe on the order of 30 people actively trying to Twitt or blog the meeting. I think you have to have a bit higher participation for the conversation to really take off, but that's just speculation.
At any rate, I had a thought today. The USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism is holding an event that provides an interesting contrast.
USC Annenberg's California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships program is holding a day-long brainstorming event aimed at helping Annenberg leaders launch a new, all-expenses-paid, professional seminar series to educate and encourage dialogue among health professional bloggers and Health 2.0 visionaries. The attendees, who include leading Health 2.0 professionals Matthew Holt of The Health Care Blog and Dr. Val Jones of BetterHealth.com, will discuss the best ways to promote transparency, credibility, accuracy and journalistic principles for the emerging health blogosphere, as well as exposure to larger public health and community health policy issues. This event is by invitation only.
Follow the Twittering on this meeting by the #uscblogcon hashtag. I think this may give you some ideas of what could be, if you are on the fence as to whether Twittering/blogging scientific meetings would have value.
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*apart from some technical difficulties with WiFi coverage and too many iPhoners loading up the AT&T network.
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I think tweeting a meeting or conference is a disaster. I've seen that in action. Waste of time. Give me a blog post of highlights at the end of the day and place a video on YouTube.
Posted by: Imants | November 22, 2009 3:30 AM