Women and Science Blogging at the NC Science Blogging Conference

The 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference (organized by ScienceBlog's very own Bora Zivkovic) is fast approaching.

Karen Ventii and I will be co-chairing a 1 hour session tentatively called "Exploring Women in Science Blogging". (This announcement also appears on her blog here.)

We are interested to get your feedback and comments on what we are proposing and your suggestions for improving or making it better. Here are some details:

There will be a diverse panel of female science bloggers (we're thinking one graduate student, one professor, and a third in industry or in business for herself) to share their experiences as science bloggers and address specific topics such as:

  1. How I got into blogging,
  2. How I promoted my blog,
  3. Where it is today,
  4. What opportunities my blog has opened up for me,
  5. Juggling blog with career and family

The final 10-15 minutes will entertain questions from the audience.

We will also provide a video conference of the session and a comprehensive guide of women science bloggers.

So what do you think? Does this sound interesting to you? What would YOU like to see in a session on women science bloggers? Tell us your thoughts! We're particularly interested in finding ways to make this session available to and useful for women science bloggers who blog anonymously and/or who can't attend the conference (thus the video conference).

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I think it sounds very interesting, and I'd like to access the video of it. Your mention about anonymity at the end brings the one other thing I would like to hear a bit about at such a panel - whether each panelist is an anonymous blogger or not, and how that decision has affected them. If they are anonymous, have they ever been figured out, and what were the consequences, or what precautions do they take to not let that happen?

Hmm. My interests are more in the latter two, as well as the "what to do about weird stalkerish comments" topic that has been a recurring theme lately...

I'm glad this will be a session topic. in the beginning stages of science writing & starting a blog. I'd love to hear about challenges particular to women, from both the 'science' and 'blogging' aspects of science blogging. E.g., Do you run into roadblocks as a woman in fields still predominantly male? Do you write about things you think male colleagues might not, and has that affected your writing and/or your blog? Do you think there is a female style of blogging? Anything about juggling writing and family will also be useful to me.

Would be cool to hear from others about: what will the female science blog(ger) of ~2015 look like?