conferences
jstemwedel | January 11, 2007At the AAS meeting in Seattle, Rob Knop risked his own well-being to get the details on a poster that was, shall we say, waaaay out of the mainstream. Quoth Rob:
Now, don't get me wrong. There will be a lot of posters with data or theory that turns out to be wrong, and there are a lot of posters that disagree with each other and debate and dispute the best interpretation of the data. That's the normal process of science. The nuts here... they think they're participating in the normal process of science, but they do not understand it well enough to realize that they are just cranks, nothing…
jstemwedel | January 11, 2007Hey, for those of you coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, don't forget to sign up for the dinners! There's one big group dinner on Friday, January 19, from 7 to 10 PM, and a bunch of group dinners on Saturday, January 20, right after the official conclusion of the conference.
You know you'll have fun sharing a meal with other conference attendees, some of whom you may only know through the screen. Make a date to meet them in the three-dimensional world.
For those of you who really like planning your trips, many of the restaurants in question have their menus…
jstemwedel | January 8, 2007As some of you will have noticed, I'm scheduled to give a talk at the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference in just under two weeks. This morning, I finished (kind of) working out that talk.
A few things worth noting:
This is not a completely drafted speech or anything like that. It's a talk, and one that's meant to set up a discussion among conference participants. However, given that it covers terrain I think about quite regularly, I have a very good sense of what I'm going to say.
Indeed, the real labor here wasn't in hammering out the logical structure of my remarks, but in…
jstemwedel | November 16, 2006If you're ready to admit that we're almost done with 2006 and that it might be OK to start making plans for 2007, check your calendar and think about coming to the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, a "free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web."
(more after the break)
The conference will be happening in Chapel Hill, and is mostly scheduled for Saturday, January 20, 2007. (There's also a Friday night dinner planned, and a Thursday aftenoon…
jstemwedel | November 7, 2006Chad Orzel has an excellent post up about good ways to use PowerPoint for a presentation. In a similar vein, I'd like to offer some reasons for academics in disciplines (like philosophy) in which it is the convention to read papers to each other at professional meetings to consider breaking with tradition and not just reading the papers they are presenting.
First, for those of you in science-y fields puzzling over that last sentence: Yes, a great many philosophers really do go places and read their papers to other philosophers. Yes, when I saw it the first time, coming to philosophy via…
jstemwedel | November 6, 2006
ScienceBloggers meet in the three-dimensional world: (from left) Janet Stemwedel, John Lynch, Prof. Steve Steve, John Wilkins, David Ng, Ben Cohen.
I managed to get back home last night from the PSA meeting in Vancouver, although just barely. My co-symposiasts got a rental car and headed off to see mountains, an expedition I'd have joined were it not for my plane-missing paranoia. ("You realize that flying home from Vancouver is essentially a domestic flight, so you probably don't need to check in until about 90 minutes before flight time," the field trip organizer assured me. But I…
jstemwedel | November 4, 2006Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve
My adventures with John Wilkins at the PSA meeting in Vancouver continue. Last evening, Wilkins brought me to a reception where I had the pleasure of mingling with a great many philosophers who have made philosophical studies of various aspects of evolutionary biology. Strangely, these minglings were punctuated with camera flashes. Here I am trying to have a word with Robert Brandon as the paparazzi close in on us.
Here I am trying to catch up with Roberta Millstein (who blogged at the much-missed Philosophy of Biology) about her recent move to UC Davis…
jstemwedel | November 3, 2006Guest Blogger: Prof. Steve Steve
My esteemed Panda's Thumb colleague John Wilkins invited me to attend the PSA meeting in Vancouver. It seemed like a good idea at the time, so I agreed.
Last evening started pleasantly enough. I met Wilkins, John Lynch, Ben Cohen and David Ng, and Janet Stemwedel (from whose blog I am writing to you now) for refreshments. Yes, there was a bit of confusion when it turned out that the hotel didn't have an ice machine on every floor. As well, there was the puzzle of how properly to utilize the fresh limes for beverages in the absence of a knife. (The…
jstemwedel | October 26, 2006So, I'm getting ready to go to Vancouver, BC, next week for the Philosophy of Science Association meeting (which coincides with the Society for Social Studies of Science meeting and the History of Science Society meeting). And I'm really jazzed that I'll get to meet John Lynch and John Wilkins and Ben Cohen and David Ng in the three-dimensional world.
But I'm also psyched that I'm going to be able to get rid of all the Canadian coinage that has found its way into my hands over the last several years.*
Naturally, this has led me to wonder whether there is a typical Canadian experience that is…
jstemwedel | August 7, 2006This is my first full day back post-BCCE (owing to a brief leisure-related detour through Santa Barbara). I am trying to dial down my coffee dependence (since I was getting my wireless where fine coffee was sold -- so I maybe overdid it a little), and my body doesn't really know what time zone it's in -- so this is probably as good a time as any for some reflections on the BCCE in particular, and on conferences in general.
One of the interesting features of the BCCE (to which I alluded in an earlier post) is that, while all its participants have some interest in chemical education (the final…
scientificactivist | August 7, 2006On the weekend of July 28th-30th, about 150 NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) scientists from the UK and Europe (and a few from the US) gathered in Ambleside for the Sixth Annual Collaborative Computing Project for NMR (CCPN) Meeting. The topic of the meeting was "Efficient and Rapid Structure Determination by NMR", and it included presentations by twelve NMR scientists, a demonstration of the CCPN software, and about thirty research posters on various NMR talks.
Note: for more background on NMR, check out my previous post on the topic.
Biomolecular NMR is a rapidly growing field, one that…
jstemwedel | August 2, 2006Another dispatch from the BCCE:
The Journal of Chemical Education (or J Chem Ed, as we call it in the biz), is, in fact, targeted to an audience of chemical educators. Its website has the online version of the journal, plus some resources for teachers of chemistry at the ChemEd Resource Shelf. If the full array is too overwhelming, you can check out Hal's Picks monthly recommendations for what to read. You may be surprised at how many of the picks are not officially chemistry (or even science) books, but each of them has some interesting, useful, or funny connection to matters scientific.…
jstemwedel | August 1, 2006It was another full day at the BCCE, starting with an excellent plenary address by Peter Atkins (who wrote my p-chem text, plus dozens of other books) and David Harpp (of the Office of Science and Society). Each of them spoke about the best ways to talk about science with people who are not scientists, science teachers, or science students. Some highlights after the jump.
Atkins, it turns out, is not just a scientist and author, but also an accomplished artist. So, it's probably not surprising that he sees the most promising route for spreading chemical understanding as a visual route. A…
jstemwedel | July 31, 2006I'm blogging again from the lovely Vienna Cafe in West Lafayette, Indiana, at the end of Day 2 of the BCCE. I gave my own talk this afternoon as part of symposium session on incorporating ethics in the chemistry curriculum (along with 5 other very interesting talks). I think it went well, but I always enjoy conferences more when I've finished my presenting and can be an undistracted audience for the other presentations.
Below the fold, some of the things I learned in today's various talks and events:
People who do their research in chemical education are often marginalized or ignored by…
jstemwedel | July 30, 2006Greetings from the BCCE! Well, actually from a cafe down the street from the BCCE, since the wireless accounts that were supposed to be set up for conference goers are not currently functional. (The lengths to which I'm willing to go to satisfy my readers!) The immediate result of this situation is it will take comments a bit longer to go up.
But, I have gathered (from the talks on how to convey the "nature of science" to students) some fun facts about famous chemists.
Mendeleev (who came up with the periodic table) liked cowboy novels and hated Dostoyevsky. He never believed in electrons…
jstemwedel | July 26, 2006This morning, I finished making the slides for a talk I'm giving at the BCCE at Purdue next week. (Any of you chemists or chemical educators in the audience planning on being there?) I feel very proud of myself for having the slides written and ready to use days before I even board the plane. I'm even sufficiently enthusiastic that I may just start writing a paper-version of the content I'll be giving in my talk.
That brings me to my question for academics and others who work in the media of "paper" and "presentation":
Which do you typically write first?
Do you write a paper first and…
jstemwedel | June 22, 2006Hey readers, I don't mean to be nosy, but are any of you planning to be at:
BlogHer 2006 in San José, California?
BCCE 2006 in West Lafayette, indiana?
PSA 2006 in Vancouver, British Columbia?
If not, what else is going on that we should know about?
evolgen | May 31, 2006...or how a learned to stop worrying and love evo-devo.
As my mind gets a chance to process some of the stuff I heard and talked about at the meeting I just returned from, I'll post some thoughts that will help me organize my ideas (hopefully better organized than that last sentence). This is the first (of perhaps few, perhaps many) of those (possibly incoherent) ramblings -- interrupted by as few paranthetical remarks as possible.
In this post, I'll try to tie together:
A talk by Sean Carrol on the evolution of wing pigmentation.
A talk by Peter Andolfatto on the evolution of Drosophila non…
evolgen | February 28, 2006There's a fun article in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology on what distinguishes a good scientific meeting from a not so good one. The author advocates attending small meetings or workshops (under 100 people), which is tough for a young scientist. Small workshops are usually either not well advertised or difficult to get to. The only small meetings that I attend are local meetings, and the only workshops I go to are the workshops that are hosted at larger meetings. For a young scientist, large nation/international meetings allow for the most interaction with the most people in your…
jstemwedel | February 27, 2006Student Pugwash USA, whose mission is to promote social responsibility in science and technology, is having the first of a series of regional conferences March 31 - April 1 at Purdue University. (Other conferences are planned at Rockeller University, Carnegie Mellon, and UC-Berkeley.) The conference is aimed at (and open to) science students of all disciplines (including policy and philosophy of science). The focus of the Purdue Pugwash Regional Conference is scientific integrity in the pharmaceutical industry, and the keynote speaker is Dr. Arden Bement, Director of the National Science…