Saturday
sb admin | January 24, 2010
People
You cannot see the feedback that many participants at ScienceOnline2010 have already provided to Anton and me (keep them coming - we take the responses very seriously), but the recurring theme for the "highlight of the conference" question was "Meeting the People"; and the main request for the future is "provide more time for informal conversations".
You will see even more of that kind of sentiment if you peruse the growing list of blog coverage. Or glean it from photographs posted on Flickr and Picasa here, here, here, here and here. Or on YouTube videos here and here....
While…
sb admin | January 15, 2010The history of science has never been more relevant. As we struggle with communicating science effectively and breaking down barriers to the open access of scientific knowledge it's essential to learn from the lessons of the past as we move forwards. Science relies on the open communication of ideas (and the open societies that foster it). However, this is a continuing battle and as communicators of science we need many tools in our toolbox to build the current open access movement.
John Mckay and I (the resident primate at ScienceBlogs) will be facilitating a discussion on the history of…
sb admin | January 12, 2010
Of course, our conferences always attract a nice contingent of physicians, nurses, medical journalists, biomedical researchers and med-bloggers, so it is not surprising that ScienceOnline2010 will also have sessions devoted to the world of medicine. Check them out:
Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0--where do they intersect? - Walter Jessen
Description: Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are defined as Web-based services for healthcare consumers/patients, health professionals and biomedical researchers that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual reality approaches to…
sb admin | January 12, 2010
There will be, at ScienceOnline2010, at least two sessions dedicated to books and book publishing - From Blog to Book: Using Blogs and Social Networks to Develop Your Professional Writing and Writing for more than glory: Proposals and Pitches that Pay - as well as several others that will at least mention books as vehicles for distributing scientific information, popularization of science, or science education.
This got me thinking....about ways that the Web is changing the world of the book. I can think of three aspects of this:
1) Changes in the process of writing a book
It may not be a…
sb admin | January 12, 2010
Every year, we pay special attention to sessions that explore the use of the Web in science education. This year is no different - there are several sessions to choose from:
Citizen Science and Students - Sandra Porter, Tara Richerson (science_goddess), and Antony Williams
Description: Students are a great resource for projects that require large numbers of volunteers. We will discuss examples of projects that combine student learning with authentic research and the power of blogs to connect students with projects. Discuss here.
Science Education: Adults - Darlene Cavalier
Description: "…
sb admin | January 12, 2010
Of course, this conference would not be itself if it was not full of Open Access evangelists and a lot of sessions about the world of publishing, the data, repositories, building a semantic web, networking and other things that scientists can now do in the age of WWW. This year, apart from journalists/writers, the largest cohort appear to be librarians and information scientists. So it is not surprising to see a number of sessions (and several demos) on these topics, for example:
Repositories for Fun and Profit - Dorothea Salo
Description: Why are my librarians bothering me with all this…
sb admin | January 12, 2010On Saturday afternoon, at ScienceOnline2010, the science goddess, the chemspider, and I (Sandra Porter) will be presenting a workshop on getting students involved in citizen science.
In preparation, I'm compiling a set of links to projects that involve students in citizen science. If you know of any good citizen science efforts, please share them here in the comments. And, you want to see a really interesting set of projects, be sure to check out the comment section on the original post.
Here we go!
Before I start listing links, I am limiting my list to projects that allow both students and…
sb admin | January 12, 2010
The year that just ended, 2009, was a year that saw huge changes in the world of media and the world of journalism. Science journalism has also been greatly affected, with many media outlets firing their science journalists first, then firing all the others afterwards. Much virtual ink has been spilled on the topics of "death of newspapers" and "bloggers vs. journalists is over" and "future of journalism", etc.
If you checked out everyone who's registered for the ScienceOnline2010 conference, or followed my posts introducing everyone, you have probably noticed that this, fourth meeting is…
sb admin | January 12, 2010
A number of sessions at the Conference are looking at sociological aspects of the Web and science. I have already pointed, in quite a lot of detail, to the session on civility and politeness, as well as several other sessions that touch on the topics of language and trust. Let's look at several others that approach the social aspects of science online (and offline) from different angles:
Casting a wider net: Promoting gender and ethnic diversity in STEM - D.N.Lee and Anne Jefferson
Description: We will introduce programs that attract wider audiences to science, math, and engineering at…
sb admin | January 12, 2010
Last year we had a session on Art And Science and a workshop How To Paint Your Own Blog Pictures. At this year's conference we have more sessions that explore the visual aspects of science. Click on links to see what discussions have already started on these pages and add your questions and thoughts:
Paint your blog images using a digital tablet led by Glendon Mellow
Description: Get a chance to test out a digital tablet, and see why it's like having an entire art supply store on your computer. Beginning with tutorials on Glendon's blog before the conference, we'll try using Gimp, ArtRage…
sb admin | January 11, 2010
The conference is only a couple of days away!!!!!
I have introduced the participants, and the Program over the past couple of months on my blog. 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…
sb admin | January 11, 2010(Cross posted from Christina's LIS Rant)
We're just about set for a fabulous session on citation/bibliographic/reference managers at the upcoming Science Online conference. The session wiki page is here, so you can hop over there an add questions or suggestions if you'd like.
John Dupuis and I are moderating and we'll have the following folks there talk about some of the most popular options:
Kevin Emamy (CiteULike)
Jason Hoyt (Mendeley)
Trevor Owens (Zotero)
Michael Habib (2Collab)
John has a lot of experience with EndNote and we both have a lot of experience with RefWorks.
The main point…
ddobbs | December 27, 2007
The best things I read this year, in no particular order:
"Falling Man: A Novel" (Don DeLillo)
"Tree of Smoke: A Novel" (Denis Johnson) This is almost cheating, as I'm still in the midst of reading it. But it'd have to dive a long way in the last few pages to not stay on the list. I'll be brave and leave it in. [Update: I fond this disappointing in the end; the last quarter did not sustain the apparent brilliance of the first half.
"The Goshawk (New York Review Books Classics)" (T. H. White). Before he wrote the incomparable <em>The Once and Future King</em>, T.H. White…