Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (The Serbs are coming!)

There are 83 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 109 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time.

Tatjana Jovanovic, better known to the readers of this blog by her online pseudonym 'tanjasova' was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where she received a Masters of Science in Biology in 2002. She started out in biochemistry and immunology, but later decided to completely change her focus and move on to the Great Outdoors and do ecological work. She was a Researcher at Ecology Department of Institute for Biological Research "Sinisa Stankovic" in Belgrade, Serbia, for a number of years, studying predator-prey relationships (mostly looking at avian predators and rodent prey) and discovering that some species previously not know to live in Serbia actually do live there. She was also a coauthor and trainer of Environment protection and Biodiversity & Sustainable Development programs for teachers in 2003-2004. She is a Research Associate of the Global Owl Project. And she is an artist. She recently moved from Arizona to North Carolina (see the links 2-4 in this paragraph for more information).

Danica Radovanovic is a Graduate of the University of Belgrade (Serbia), City University (UK) and UNC-Chapel Hill (USA), with a Masters from University of Belgrade. Danica Radovanovic is currently living in Belgrade and describes herself as the "open source ambassador and evangelist". She founded and was Editor-in-Chief of the first e-magazine when she moved to Chapel Hill and then at UCSD where she worked as information management professional and web activist on online databases for the UC campus. She is also member and active 'person' at Institute of Distributed Creativity listserv where and is a columnist for Global Voices Online (Harvard School of Law and Internet) writing on issues on blogs world wide and on east european blogosphere situation. She works on a volunteer basis for E-LIS (European consortium of science libraries). Danica is the tireless Serbian pioneer in all things online: blogging, open source, Linux, science blogging, open science, social networking software, online publishing, eZine editing, etc. She is the force behind putting Serbian science online and making it open. She has done research on Internet use in Serbia in comparison to the UK and the USA and has been a tireless advocate for the Internet, open source computing and Open Science, traveling around Serbia and the world talking about it. She is also a cybrarian and has experience working at the Library of Congress.

It is not finalized yet, but Tanja and Danica may lead a session on a topic titled somehwat like this: "Overcoming cultural barriers to Open Science in the developing world".

In order to meet them, you know what you have to do: register! Registration is free. Check the map for nearby hotels. And sign up for the Friday dinner.

If you are coming, exchange information about where you are staying, if you are offering a ride, need a ride, or want to carpool on the Ride Board - just edit the wiki page and add the query or information.

Some of our Friday lab tours are now in place, so you can start signing up to join one of them.

Get updates and get in touch with other participants via our Facebook Event group (I see that some who originally responded "Maybe attending" are now registered).

Please use 'scienceblogging.com' as your tag when writing blog posts about it or uploading pictures. You can also download and print out the flyers (PDF1 and PDF2) and post them on bulletin boards at your office, lab or school.