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Potential sessions for ScienceOnline’10
This is the page to suggest and discuss ideas for sessions. Try to put as much thought into it as possible: suggested title, topic, moderator, target audience, format (demo, workshop, panel, freewheeling discussion), etc.
Ignite talks – 5 minutes long, slides are forwarded automatically every 15 seconds. No Q&A;. Probably Saturday night.
Demos – 12 minutes of show-and-tell (usually using the Web, SecondLife or showing a video, not slides) + 3 minutes for Q&A;.
One Big Talk – 50 minutes + 15 minutes of Q&A;, speaker chosen and invited by organizers. Probably Friday night.
Workshops – 60 minutes. Probably on Friday morning this time around. Expert in front, participants need to prepare in advance, bring laptops if asked to.
Panels – 65 minutes – should be as participatory (inclusive of the audience) as possible.
Sessions – 65 minutes. An unconference format based on the understanding that the sum of the knowledge, wisdom and insight of the people in the room is greater than the knowledge, wisdom and insight of the person who is up on the podium. That person serves mainly as a moderator of the discussion, giving a brief intro, setting the tone, setting the goals and making sure the discussion does not get hijacked or veers off on a tangent. Most or almost all of the sessions at ScienceOnline2010 should be in this format.
Last year we had 33 sessions (about an hour each, mostly unconference-style discussions) and 12 demos (about 15 minutes each). Details may change, but this is the ballpark for next year as well. We’ll have an additional small room upstairs, so we can probably have a few more sessions/demos than last year. One talk, a couple of panels, perhaps. For the explanation of the concept as to how we build and conceive of the Program, read the first half of this post
Similarly to last year, we’ll have a small Early Bird Dinner for guests who arrive early on Thursday night. On Friday, we’ll organize Lab Tours (afternoon) and Food Tours (breakfast or lunch time) for small groups, and perhaps several hands-on workshops in the morning. Then, in the evening, we will have the first event where we all gather in one room to eat & drink, meet & greet and get to know each other, which will also include a talk by an invited speaker. Saturday will be full of sessions and demos all day, ending with a banquet-style event, possibly including an Ignite session (and maybe even a band of scientists/musicians providing musical entertainment). On Sunday, we’ll continue with the main program of sessions for half a day and end the Conference with lunch.
Science Teaching
In ’07 we had an education session led by Adnaan Wasey and Leah Winerman, in ’08 a teaching session led by David Warlick, and in ’09 we had three education sessions: for kids (Janet Stemwedel), for middle/high school students (Stacy Baker and 8 students) and college (Andrea Novicki and Brian Switek). How can we follow up on this, expand it, make it better? What special education topics should be covered? What would be most useful for the teachers and kids in the audience?
1. Reaching kids – Jessica Riccò edits a science magazine for kids and also does the online science pages for children for the “Deutsches Museum” (= biggest science museum in Germany, located in Munich). So maybe she could talk about how to get children interested in science blogs (and why that’s more effective than ex-cathedra teaching)? She is also a blogger on scienceblogs.de
2. Middle/high school – Stacy Baker has changed schools (moved from Maryland to Staten Island) and the use of the Web in teaching is now an even greater part of her teaching job. She is going to come again with a new set of students. See her site and her school’s site
3. Connections with mathematics and programming through modeling. – Maria Droujkova and Blake Stacey see discussion
4. College – There is a tragic lack of quality counseling in some large universities. Science courses should have a greater emphasis on current events. I teach a short course on science communication to science and engineering graduate students and would like to contribute to this topic (or this may fall under the science writing heading). ~Mary Spiro
5. I would like to see something about linking tertiary researchers/educators with primary/secondary educators. A gateway for primary/secondary teachers and students to have access to researchers for information eg., when doing science fairs, special projects, assistance with information/update filtering for teachers, etc. [-kubke]. (Potential angles on this – the NSF GK12 & Teacher at Seaprograms. – Miriam Goldstein) Yes, Miriam, those sorts of projects. I just sent in a proposal to try to identify community needs for science/health education in a local community in New Zealand. If we do get funded I might have some preliminary data to share (it will also apply to item 6 in this list) [-kubke]
6. How about a look at the adult science education efforts (and lack thereof) for the general population…the folks funding 50% of the basic science research; who are eager to debate topics like stem cell research but unable to describe what a stem cell is. We can’t leave the adults out of the science education/science literacy conversation any longer. Happy to participate if needed: sciencecheerleader.com. – I would like to help at the adult/senior citizen science education, and take pictures.- Evelyn Lynge.
7. About advising college students as to dos and dont’s of blogging in academic settings. Copied from below: “Tips and tricks to being part of the online science community” Idea from Bora’s interview with Erica Tsai (and a follow up here )- different ways of contributing, perhaps some guidelines for behavior (is this part of the Education section above?)
—As an add-on to this: perhaps a session about dealing with/discouraging plagiarism, encouraging understanding of intellectual property, “responsible” use of the web for research, etc., especially for younger students?
8. How about a session on the (increasing?) use of online courses and lessons in K-12 education (i.e., entire courses or lessons offered online with minimal face time, not just using online resources for in-class stuff). Good? Bad? Ugly? It seems to be becoming more common—but does it help students or hurt them (or neither)? I’d be interested in perspectives from students, parents, educators, and educational researchers.
9. At SciBarCamp Palo alto there was a discussion about ‘open textbook”. I have been playing with the idea and with some colleagues we are trying to build collaborative onlline teaching resources for teaching different areas, and where graduates can go back to stay updated (including current events as mentioned on item 4) and also so it is available for school teachers and general public. I am building over the next few monthsa ‘prototype’ based on what I learned on SBC-PA and discussions with colleagues here. It would be great to get feedback and see if we can scientists teaching similar classes to build ‘common collaborative and open’ resources that we could all tap into. [-kubke]
Open Access, Science 2.0 and the new publishing models
In 2007 we had a session on Open Science (Jean-Claude Bradley). In 2008 we had a session on Open Access (Hemai Parthasarathy), on Open Access in the developing world (Vedran Vucic), and on Open Notebook Science (Jean-Claude Bradley and Xan Gregg). In 2009 we had an intro session to Open Access (Bill Hooker and Bjoern Brembs), on OA in developing world (Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove and Danica Radovanovic), on OA and medical information (Martin Fenner), on the world after Impact Factor (Peter Binfield and Bjoern Brembs) on Open Notebook Science (Jean-Claude Bradley and Cameron Neylon), on Social Networks for scientists (Deepak Singh and Cameron Neylon), on becoming a journal editor (Peter Binfield and Henry Gee), on Semantic Web (John Wilbanks) and on Gene annotation on wikis (John Hogenesh and Andrew Su). How do we follow up on this, making sure there is something for newcomers and something for the experts?
1. Intro to Open Access: Jonathan & Michael Eisen, Pat Brown? Peter Suber or Stephan Harnad? Shirley Wu? Is the ‘scientific paper’ as a unit of scientific output an outdated concept? If so, what is a unit? (Maybe we could have someone from Elsevier talk about the article of the future project http://beta.cell.com/ http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_01279 (Hope Leman)) Perhaps something about the plurality and multitudes of science publishing methods and models emerging in the near future, supplanting the more-or-less uniform journal system of today.
2. Can we have a dialogue/debate between one of OA-evangelists and an intelligent critic (someone like David Crotty or Phil Campbell)? This can even done as a 5-minute skit in the Ignite session?
3. Follow-up on “Gene Annotation” session from last year: John Hogenesh and Andy Su. Perhaps “people annotation”, exploring connections and collaborations?
4. “Shakespeare wasn’t a semantic web guy” – John Wilbanks: That which we call a rose, by any other name, wouldn’t be identified by a computer as a rose. This talk will go through the Shared Name initiative which promotes community-wide use of shared names for records from public databases. The goal is to have a significant effect on the practice of bioinformatics by making it easier to share and link data sets and tools across projects. Selecting and maintaining names is a serious capacity building problem for moving the RDF world from the hacker and hobbyist community to the regular user. And a growing body of experience emphasizes that for any solution to be generally adopted, it must not only be technically sound, but also serve and empower the community of users.
5. Follow-up on “Open Notebook Science” session from last year: Jean-Claude Bradley and Rosie Redfield? Yes, please, on Jean-Claude Bradley. (Hope Leman). Again, so much happens within a year in this area, it never gets old. Yay on having Jean-Claude Bradley speak—neat! (Hope Leman)
6. Follow-up on “Developing world”: Tatjana Jovanovic-Grove and Jelka Crnobrnja
(OK, but what is the rest of the world doing?? Check out http://www.biomedcentral.com/developingcountries/resources/, lots of initiatives, lets get some input from Asia, Africa, S. America! Maybe Peter Suber would be appropriate for organizing – Kevin Z)
OA databases intitiative among developing countries, countries in transition and UN/EU science institutions. Session and discussion on possibilities and cooperation with actual examples – Danica Radovanovic Information management and semantic web specialist at UN.
7. Online Reference Managers – John Dupuis and Christina Pikas moderating, Kevin Emamy, Victor Henning, Michael Habib and/or Trevor Owens in the ‘hot seats’.
8. Science Librarian theme Focus on library in a way that’s relevant to the many diverse scientists who will be attending. That would include showing some free resources (DOAJ, e.g.), some publisher web sites, … as well as free resources available via public libraries & state libraries (NC Live, eg for those within NC IP range). Also Interlibrary Loan from the public library as an option for obtaining full-text of items. follow-up: Dorothea Salo, Stephanie Willen Brown, Hope Leman? ? Would you please provide specifics on what you would like us to do? Thank you. Hope Last year was Tips about Search, this year it may be something along the lines of “what a librarian can do for you?” It would definitely be good to have a session with librarians. I bet we could get both some medical and sci/tech librarians to come. I could ask around for some in the medical library world. It would be great to build those bridges. But they would need advance notice well ahead of time. (Hope Leman) I am at Medicine 2.0 this week and there was very good poster on e-science. Here is some of the wording:
9. Biomedical Information Evaluation fora Regional E-Science Portal to Support Learning and Collaboration among Health Information Professionals. Health/Medical Librarians have traditionally focused on the retrieval of information through paper journals and books and their electronic equivalents. However, due to the accessibility and evolvement of the Internet, global collaboration among biomedical researchers has increased and produced large data collections and data sets at an alarming rate. Some information professionals have developed tools for accessing these data. No one entity has taken the opportunity to identify these collections and tools in order to foster information sharing. The New England Region of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM, NER) recognizes the training and one-stop shopping access to resources that will help health/medical professionals support this global collaboration. As a result, a subcontract was awarded to Elaine Martin DA, Director of the Lamar Soutter Library of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA to create an e-Science portal to facilitate learning and collaboration among librarians….As the medical/health/molecular biology information field continues to rapidly evolve, traditional methods of identification and evaluation could potentially become more a liability than an asset for a librarian; therefore documenting and outlining innovative, unconventional, yet credible and valuable methods for identification and evaluation is a necessity. How librarians may use a resource that brings the variety of data sets, information seeking tools, and retrieval tools together will also be assessed. Maybe we could invite Dr. Martin to come talk. It is important to get librarians involved in Science 2.0. (Hope Leman)
9a. Technology to Represent Scientific Practice. This is a fascinating paper: Technology to Represent Scientific Practice: Data, Life Cycles, and Value Chains http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.2549v1 Perhaps we could invite some of the authors to come discuss it. It touches on a host of issues pertient to ScienceOnline2010. (Hope Leman)
10. The NIH, Open Data and Greater Openness to Outside Developers. I am at Medicine 2.0 this week:
http://www.medicine20congress.com/ocs/index.php/med/med2009
and heard here a very good presentation by David Hale:
http://www.medicine20congress.com/ocs/index.php/med/med2009/paper/view/311
He spoke very interestingly about the way the NIH is hoping to foster greater interest in innovative uses of the its data. Hale is active in many aspects of Health 2.0, Medicine 2.0 and Government 2.0 and would be an excellent speaker on such topics. Here is a blog posting about him:
David Hale, @lostonroute66, NIH Information Specialist
Hale’s work blew me away. He leads the National Library of Medicine’s effort to do semantic and national language processing of Twitter traffic to sift out the noise and find evidence of emerging public health concerns. They’re also looking for trends in misinformation.
* He’s also leading something called Pillbox, a tool that would identify drugs based only on their physical appearance.
http://2ohreally.com/2009/07/social-media-health-it-and-gov-20/
(Hope Leman)
11. Orphan Data. I am at Medicine 2.0 and heard an outstanding presentation by Kei Cheung, Yale Center for Medical Informatics entitled, “OrphanData.org: Enabling Transdisciplinary Scientific Collaboration Using Web 2.0.” Here is the abstract: http://www.medicine20congress.com/ocs/index.php/med/med2009/paper/view/308 I would say that we should definitely look into inviting him to talk about the project. The examples he gave of how orphan data could be usefully employed by researchers were impressive and fascinating. (Hope Leman)
Science journalism, writing and outreach
Last year we had a session helping bloggers become journalists and a session helping bloggers get book deals. With the world of media and journalism in upheaval, we should do some more on the topic. We can have one, two or three or more sessions about science journalism.
1. Science journalism – online vs. offline, professional vs. amateur. Potential moderators of various topics surrounding the issue of science journalism: Olivia Judson, Rebecca Skloot, Chris Mooney, Carl Zimmer, Ed Yong, John Timmer, Jonathan Gitlin, David Dobbs, James Hrynyshyn, Eric Roston, Michael Tobis, Mary Spiro, David Bradley, John Rennie, Ivan Oransky? Anyone else? A professional media watcher like Jay Rosen? Clay Shirky? Dan Gillmor?[I’ll throw my hat in the ring for moderator. The last year has seen enormous progress in the marriage of journalism and electronic media. There’s still plenty of marrying left to do, and this panel should be a productive venue for spirited discussion — Eric Roston] David Bradley seems an absolute must to me. http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/ (Hope Leman) What exactly is “investigative science journalism”? Is Futurity.org journalism? Is publishing a peer-reviewed paper an instance of journalism (to a narrow, expert audience, edited by experts, bypassing the pro journalists who would not have sufficient expertise anyway)? “How to move science from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ strategy”? How does a journalist figure out “which scientists to trust”:
2. How does a journalist figure out “which scientists to trust” – Christine Ottery and? – See this post as a starting point.
3. Using a blog (and/or social networks) to build and develop over time a bigger piece of writing – Tom Levenson and Brian Switek (e.g., a book, or perhaps something along the line of this)
4. Last year we had a session helping bloggers become journalists. Perhaps this year we need a session helping journalists become bloggers? (Deepak – Perhaps a session, not a panel, but perhaps with a initial talk and then a frank discussion about blogging, journalism, where they overlap, etc)
5. Radio and/or TV? – who would be appropriate for something like this? NPR ScienceFriday, PRI World Science? Helen Chickering, Ernie Hood,… I do both radio and tv, and bridge the gap into new media. -Dr. Kiki</i>
Inside Science News Service (ISNS) provides complete science news articles and content for use by national and local news organization. Discoveries & Breakthroughs Inside Science (DBIS) is a syndicated science and engineering video news service aired by television stations within their local newscasts.
6. Science media centres. bridge scientists and journalists. (http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/about/ see links to SMC in Oz and UK). I am sure hearing from them would be useful. [-kubke] Demo? I am not sure how this would fit a demo (other than browsing through pages). I have learned a lot from discussions with the people behind the SMC in New Zealand, they are primarily journalists, they can identify what we can do to contribute to science journalism oustide of the blogoshphre. I am hoping to go to the local Science communication meeting in November, should learn a lot. [-kubke]
7. The School of Web Journalism. – first one in Serbia supported by Harvard’s Global Voices. Creator of course syllabus and the lecturer for modules Web 2.0 intro and Social Networking for Web journos is Danica Radovanovic . Would be nice to hear challenges and experiences from the school and the dynamics within the students which age have been ranged 24-72. Demo?
8. Note: this year, at WCSJ, there were five Argentinian science journalists from different media (radio, tv, print), and they covered the event on a blog. In our country it was the first experience of different journalism expertises converging at a new media. We belong to the Argentine Network of Science Journalism and are teaching journalist to became bloggers and users of new media [Alejandro Tortolini – aletor] – do you have some links about this? It is an interesting perspective.
Social/behavioral aspects of online communication
Last year we had several sessions in this broad category: Gender in Science, Race in Science, Transitions, Pseudonymity, Rhetoric and You Cant’s Say That! The session on Blogging Networks turned out to be mainly about these issues as well. How can we develop these themes further?
1. Gender/race theme – D.N. Lee and? – Susanne Franks, Samia Ansari, Naomi MC, someone else? We could explore race and gender issues, but I think the topic and discussion should mature and focus on strategies being attempted, what works, ideas, etc. I wonder if blending it as “Engaging underrepresented groups in online science media“might best meet the objectives.
2. Rhetoric theme? The “civility” issue? The question of Power : Janet Stemwedel, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Dr.Isis. Title to be announced. (As someone trying to get scientists involved online, I am very interested in this – civility/language is a big barrier. – Miriam Goldstein).
3. Another on rhetoric: How rhetoric, facts and website design interact in sites used to disseminate science to the public. E.g., climate change sites, sites of various NGOs, etc. (I like this idea! What is propaganda vs. information. I’d vote for David Colquhuon, Ben Goldacre, James Hrynyshyn – Kevin Z)
4. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Session: Engaging underrepresented groups in online science media – David Kroll. DrugMonkey reminded me (Abel/David) that the conference timing may keep some attendees away in their hometowns participating in local MLK activities. Would like to take a different angle from the blogging about race theme below; how do we engage minority groups to promote networks that inform and encourage underrepresented groups about science and health disparity issues (i.e., diabetes, substance abuse, prostate cancer). Thinking of David Kroll, Damond Nollan, others? — there’s a group of LIS researchers at NC Central who study health communication with rural minority communities (or had a paper on that at a recent ASIST conference) – I could ask Deborah Swain – ckp (Great idea, Christina – I’m at NCCU and should see Deborah today but it would help if you contacted her too – David)
5. The Sociology of OA. There are a lot of issues about how scientists work in practice, and how OA impinges on this: how we use journals to measure credit, for example, and how OA changes this landscape. I would be happy to moderate a session, but am no expert – Bob O’H – I love the idea. Do you have any suggestions, e.g., people who study the ‘tribe of science’ for a living? Perhaps broaden it from sociology “of OA” to sociology/psychology/anthropology “of how the scientists respond to novel ways of doing things, including online”?
6. Social networking communicative practices and scientists. Session on social media for facilitation and communication/collaboration among the scientists. Potential issues with different social mediums. Communication practices (micro bloggging and social publics) in science 2.0. As PhD fellow of Oxford Internet Institute – Danica Radovanovic explores communication performances in the offline/online worlds among young professionals in the social networks, virtual communities, particularly on Facebook.
Bridging the Two Cultures
Last year we had a session on Science Fiction, a session on History of Science and two sessions on Art (one of those being a hands-on workshop). The year before, we had a session (Martin Rundkvist) on blogging in social sciences. Let’s do something similar and something more this year again.
1. Scientific visualization – April Bailey (can do a hands-on workshop!)
(Ben Fry would also be good for this.) – session or demo or Friday workshop?
2. How to develop art & science theme further? Try to get Carel Brest van Kempen and Carl Buell? Jessica Palmer, Glendon Mellow?
Possible themes for art & science:
“realm of the amateur, or is it a career?”
“What new ways could be and are being developed for visual art to push science forward?”
“How to bring scientific ideas into artistic expression, without necessarily being illustration” I think this last one could be an engaging discussion about visual metaphors. – Glendon Mellow
3. Consider Eva Amsen’s Scientists and Musicians project if the session goes toward music – Abel (How about a scientists and musicians jam session after the banquet! – Kevin Z; And some sea shanties too! – Miriam Goldstein) Rock Stars of Science
4. Cartoons: T.rex and XKCD? This would be great
(Maybe a session on humor in science in general, With XKCD guy and the Bleimans from Zooillgix. Science comedians? – Kevin Z; good idea, and explaining physics to your dog, showing pretty high-heel shoes….) Brian Malow, the Science Comedian ?
5. Film – Tamara Krinsky and Jennifer Ouellette
-Various Darwin bicentenary programmes/documentaries (e.g. Creation, or from the BBC Darwin season) (-kej)
US and UK documentaries about Darwinius massilae a.k.a. ‘Ida’ the fossil primate (you know, as one of those ‘teaching moments’) <-could/should just as well go in the journalism session? (-kej) [I like kej’s idea – there was some good blog/traditional media interaction during the ‘Ida’ rollout – probably would work best in the journalism session – Brian Switek]
Randy Olson? Jennifer Ouellette?
-I would love to do an American Premier of Darwin’s Lost Weekend if folks would be interested – a demo?
-Science in documentaries and science in fictional narrative = two very different things. May want to decide which the session will focus on. If we go the non-fiction route, potential topics could include gaining access to your subjects, how to make the science palatable to your audience/maintaining integrity of the topic and research without losing your audience, how much does the documentarian have to know about the science they are attempting to make a film about, etc (I had a very interesting conversation with one of the producers of HBO’s Alzheimer’s series about this). If we go the narrative sci-fi feature route, the discussion could focus more on the creative process in changing science to sci fi, the responsibility of the filmmaker in portraying scientific research, etc. Another possible route to go is the science biopic…(Tamara Krinsky)
This is a bit off the subject, but here is a grant that some of you might want to look at: 2010 Sundance Institute /Alfred P. Sloan Commissioning Grant for Science or Technology Related Project http://www.sundance.org/sloan/ Projects must be narrative features and not documentary in nature. The application deadline is Monday, September 8, 2009. (Hope Leman) They do several programs like this – including sponsoring a screenplay reading series at the Tribeca Film Fest. (Tamara Krinsky)
6. LabLit: Jennifer Rohn?
7. How to develop science fiction theme further? Henry Gee? Peggy Kolm? Chad Orzel? Stephanie Zvan? Try to bring in a big name (Vinge, Bear, Stephenson, Kessel, Sawyer, Joan Slonczewski)?
[Perhaps a panel going the other direction: using story in blogging about science. It’s a tactic used by journalists because it works. Well done, it makes the writing more accessible and uses narrative to provide a mental structure on which to hang the science. Poorly done…well, we’ve seen what happens. How do we make sure we do it well? What kinds of stories are there to tell? What elements of story pique reader interest? How do we find the story that’s already in the science rather than creating one at the expense of the science? -Stephanie Z]
8. How to develop history of science theme further? – John McKay and Eric Michael Johnson
[Last year we did not get to spend much time on online resources for people interested in the history of science. I would like to see some more of that. I know I could not have written my 1st history of science paper without finding resources on the web! – Brian Switek] [the librarians you have coming are STEM not history, but if you give us a heads up, we could come up with a whirlwind tour of useful resources for finding info online generally or like in internet archive, aluka, jstor, google books, biodiversity heritage library, etc – Christina]
Do not forget that 2009 is the Darwin Year – perhaps we should bring it to a close in January, with a session of some kind?
9. Effecting change in Washington DC? Sheril Kirshenbaum, Lawrence Krauss?
– can we instead talk about science policy? – more broad and maybe people who study it vs. actual legislators or authors of books on public communication of science (no offense meant). I can rattle off names, but I’ll have to look at who’s local or might be more likely to show – AAAS has a whole office on this that also blogs, maybe someone from there? – Christina – The title sounds very parochial, so I agree with Christina: make it more broad (and perhaps relevant to online discussions). But still a good idea. Bob O’H
Would be better if we stayed with online scientific communication. Policy should only come into the picture if it is somehow related to that
As a public policy grad student with an interest in science policy, I’d be interested in helping to shape a session around these topics. – J M Miller.
Multimedia: we had a session on videos in peer-reviewed literature last year. Should we have a session on audio or video again?
10. Podcasting in science – Dr. Kiki, Marc Pelletier, Vincent Racaniello, Hari Jayaram, Clifford Johnson, Darlene Cavalier
I’m happy to discuss communicating science through online multi-media formats (audio and video). I’d also like to suggest a live This Week in Science broadcast from the conference. Perhaps we can arrange for a running live broadcast through ustream or FORA.tv for certain hours of the day during the conference. Let’s take advantage of the media possibilities we have at our fingertips. – Dr. Kiki Also happy to participate and promote on sciencecheerleader.com – Could someone run a workshop the day before, getting interested people up and running? They could then practice by all podcasting the meeting – Friday? That may be arranged, I think – BZ.
How about people from Academic Earth http://academicearth.org/ and sciencestage.com http://sciencestage.com/ (Hope Leman)
11. Theater (there were a couple of interesting science-y productions recently – anyone know writers/producers/directors?) Perhaps these people ?
-Ensemble Studio Theater in NYC does a series of science plays and has a grant for them. The Fountain Theater in LA did the world premiere of PHOTOGRAPH 51 about Rosalind Franklin earlier this year. (Tamara Krinsky)
12. Photography. Alex Lee host a science and photography blog – www.AlexLey.com I think. | Alex Wild would be perfect, he mixes his photogaphy with peer reviewed science reporting and natural of insects (mostly ants). – Kevin Z | There is a Photoblog on scienceblogs.com with a different science photoblogger every month. – Grrlscientist might be intersting too. She has a stable of bird photographers she uses for her mystery birds, as well as taking her own photos. – Bob O’H
13. Trust and Critical Thinking – Stephanie Zvan, Pamela Gay?, other skeptics
Lay audiences often lack the resources (access to studies, background knowledge of fields and methods) to evaluate the trustworthiness of scientific information as another scientist or a journalist might. Are there ways to usefully promote critical thinking about sources and presentation as we provide information? Can we teach them to navigate competing claims? And can we do it without promoting a distrust of science itself? – I love this topic idea! would love to be involved… -Dr. Kiki
Medicine, Healthcare and Patients’ advocacy
Every year we have a session on medical/health blogging. Let’s expand this a bit this year?!
1. Medical blogging – Peter Lipson, and/or Val Jones (Dr. Val). How about some non-physician bloggers on medical topics like the medical librarian David Rothman http://davidrothman.net/ or the nurse blogger Phil Baumann http://philbaumann.com/ who wrote the seminal article 140 Healthcare Uses for Twitter http://philbaumann.com/2009/01/16/140-health-care-uses-for-twitter/(Hope Leman)
2. Ethical and legal implications of medblogging- PalMD -If there’s enough interest, i’d like a session that explicitly addresses ethical and legal implications of medblogging and health professionals being on line in general. (I like this idea, too – ckp) (me too and think it overlaps alot w/ my blogging activism suggestion below -kej) How about inviting the authors of this paper Ghostwriting: The Dirty Little Secret of Medical Publishing That Just Got Bigger http://bit.ly/bV1R0 to discuss this interesting project: Wyeth Ghostwriting Archive http://bit.ly/19i7Bd which leads to this http://dida.library.ucsf.edu/ . (Hope Leman)
If there’s one session i lead, i want to do this, so count me in —PalMD
3. Patients – Graham Steel? Elizabeth Edwards?
Graham Steel may know and know how to contact Sarah Ezekiel the person profiled in this incredibly powerful video http://www.sarahsstory.org.uk/ about ALS/Lou Gehrig’s Disease/Motor Neuron Disease. She has addressed conferences of neurologists, I believe, and is a powerful, eloquent voice for the rights of patients and the disabled. (Hope Leman) Hope, I went to meet her a few weeks ago. Is that you, Graham? Any further comments on that meeting? Perhaps we could have a screening and discussion of the powerful video clip http://www.mndassociation.org/news_and_events/awareness_campaigns/sarahs_story/index.html and the use of video in awareness campaigns for neurological illness. That clip is powerful. Perhaps the producers of it come if Sarah herself cannot. The clip raises some sensitive issues about how to portray disability and illness in order to raise awareness without presenting illness in such a devastating, downbeat way that people would prefer not to think about the subject at all and portraying disability as horrific instead of something to be dealt with calmly. (Hope Leman)
4. Medical journalism – Walter Jessen
Topics to discuss: what constitutes quality reporting, levels of evidence, addressing both evidence and plausibility, sources, discussing implications, balancing content and presentation, distinguishing results from opinion, and adding context and perspective.
Health Commons http://sciencecommons.org/projects/healthcommons/
4. Fighting against quackery? – Stephen Barrett and PalMD- Definitely! Orac and some of the UK bloggers that surround Ben Goldacre (e.g. Gimpy, le Canard Noir, Dr. Aust etc.) would be good here. – Bob O’H. Stephen Barrett is now local see Quackwatch.com and Insurance Reform Watch Definitely interested —PalMD
5. Medicine 2.0 and Science 2.0—where do they intersect? – Walter Jessen? Could we have a session on what is happening in Medicine 2.0 and how it relates to and differs from Science 2.0? That would be a great help to medical librarians, for instance and to medical educators and to clinical researchers who may not not know of the transformation in information dissemination that is starting to affect the behavior or private philanthropists when they make decisions about grants (i.e., in demanding Open Science approaches from grantees). Here is the program for this year’s conference: http://www.medicine20congress.com/ocs/index.php/med/med2009/schedConf/program Maybe we could invite Gunther Eysenbach to come to Science Online..
The Blogosphere
1. Blogging 101 – PalMD (should it be done on Friday before the meeting, or on Sunday once everyone’s excited about blogging after a day of sessions?). Who?
I’m still happy to do a 101 or 102, but it was tricky with the spotty WiFi —PalMD
Do we need Blogging 102 this year? A Friday morning workshop? – Wouldn’t we expect attendees to have passed Blogging 101? Hence 102 might be more suitable – Bob O’H Not necessarily – some have never written a word online, but know they need to learn how.
2. The perils of popularity
3. Copyright (including on blogs) is always an issue we touch in various sessions, but with no expert in the room. Should we try to get Stephana Patton and Kaitlin Thaney to do a session specifically on this? James Green? Even Larry Lessig! Or someone else? – one person who might be good is Kevin Smith, blogger about all legal aspects of academic communication. I would love to see this [-kubke]
4. Blogging/microblogging activism, e.g. lessons from BCA v. Simon Singh and the ‘intrepid ragged band of bloggers‘ -kej – Ben Goldacre, Petra Boynton?
Microblogging and Citizen Science
Last year, Jonathan Gitlin and Matt Ford introduced microblogging in a session Blogging Without A Blog. The session on Blogging From Strange Places also highlighted microblogging as more convenient than traditional blogging. As Twitter, FriendFeed and other services have become even more popular over the past year, let’s expand on that theme.
1. Citizen Science – Scott Baker (NC Sea Grant – twitter) – Would love to participate in this session to talk about our research projects and the potential for future applications – S Baker. Also perhaps: Ben MacNeill of Trixie Tracker and Katie London and/or Kate Hartman of Botanicalls?
GalaxyZoo, Natalie Villalobos (also), , someone from iNaturalist, Arfon Smith from Galaxy Zoo, etc? (I love this idea! Grrlscientist and I touched on it last year in the Nature Blogging session, this would be a nice further step. Also consider the computer projects like SETI Online, Project Folding, Climate Prediction.net, etc. – Kevin Z) (The Geological Society of America has a new set of citizen science projects: http://www.goearthtrek.com/ . Contact info: Contact@goearthtrek.com ) See more here
love, love, LOVE this idea. There are hundreds of projects and millions of citizen scientists. I’ve got demographics citizen scientists from a recent survey issued for the forthcoming ScienceforCitizens.net site —my partners and I will launch this in a few months. Sci4Citz will help volunteers learn about and get involved in existing formal research and recreational citizen science projects. Perhaps we can look at “what’s next” for citizen scientists? Exciting stuff here. (I second that – S Baker).
Cornell’s Citizen Science project (Caren Cooper? Janis L. Dickinson?)
2. What about some kind of citizen science or student annotation session? (Sandy/digitalbio) – something like ‘Citizen Science in the classroom’? – BZ (Sandy/digitalbio: I was thinking about both items – for example, students can participate in annotating genomes, and believe it or not, the general public can participate, too. Blogs can serve a role in this endeavor by connecting interested groups with resources and a means to contribute.)
3a. Blogging and microblogging fieldwork in the Pacific Garbage Patch – Miriam Goldstein, Lindsey Hoshaw, Annie Crawley and Bonnie Monteleone (‘In the field’? -kej)
3b – Blogging from the ship in Brazil: Darwin and the Adventure, a Beagle Project feasibility study on the Brazilian tall ship Tocorime – Karen James and Kevin Zelnio
Whatever ocean bloggers want to do – it will be fun. (HA! Nobody can entertain like drunken sea-shantying marine scientists! I’d like to propose a collaboration with geobloggers – a large and fantastic blogging contingent! – “Science Online from the Field” with particular attention to not only blogging, but microblogging, flickr/picasa collections, the short term “broader impacts” blogs, website design and promotion. Recent field bloggers that would be awesome include Miriam Goldstein (SEAPLEX), Me and Karen James (Darwin and the Adventure – coming soon!), Craig McClain (always blogging from sea), Chris Rowan (field blogging from South Africa and New Zealand), Brian from Clastic Detritus, any other geobloggers who have done science outreach from the field this year?) Perhaps also Lindsey Hoshaw and/or Annie Crawley and/or Bonnie Monteleone each also blogging/tweeting from Pacific Garbage Patch. Perhaps a session along the lines of something like this – Talkin’ Trash! Miriam Goldstein on SEAPLEX (-kej) (Would love to! -MG) Karen James/Kevin Zelnio on Darwin and the Adventure, a Beagle Project feasibility study on the Brazilian tall ship Tocorime (-kej) @Astro_Mike, the first human to tweet from space, or another of the growing number of astronaut tweeps (-kej) Cosmopithecus (-kej)
Antarctica bloggers? (LOL, great minds think alike, can definitely be consolidated with what I wrote above – Kevin Z)
4. Polar Blogs – Going beyond ‘field blogging’ – addressing the issues
The Arctic and Antarctic are curiously underrepresented and underblogged regions, considering the size of these fragile ecosystems. With climate change, both the Arctic and Antarctic environments are undergoing drastic changes that seriously affect the organisms that live there.
Since the Antarctic Treaty was signed, the Antarctic has been a continent reserved for science. This may change: for example, bioprospecting – the collection of natural substances with potential commercial applications – is becoming an issue to watch out for. This is also an issue in the Arctic – where, in addition to this, several nations are staking out claims. Polar issues are also very much issues of international politics and natural heritage.
Considering how difficult it is to get to the Antarctic for example – if you’re not a scientist who works there or have a job supporting science – is it still possible to think and (convincingly) blog about the polar regions?
(still wondering who could lead the session – steffi suhr) | For climate change in general, John Bruno is a professor at UNC Chapel Hill and blogs at Climate Shifts.
(Polar blogs that I read: http://www.usgs.gov/journals/arctic/2009/08/first-day-of-data-collection/ – The Arctic Chronicles from the USGS. Twitter: Christina Ravelo, on the Deep Sea Drilling Project in the Bering Sea – http://twitter.com/BeringSea . Not quite Arctic technically, because they’re south of the Arctic Circle. Also Ole Nielson http://my.opera.com/nielsol/blog/ geoblogger from Norway, blogs about polar issues from time to time. And a blog that’s unfortunately ended, I think: Sismordia http://sismordia.blogspot.com/, seismology in Antarctica.)
Antarctic conservation blog (NHM) is nice; more polictical The Antarctica Blog; an example for Antarctic field blogging from this year (sorry, only one, in a rush): Wolfpack in Antarctica
International Polar year has passed, but how many science/nature blogs connected to this learning theme or better yet any science intiative. see # 8.
Artctic wolf research Neil Hutt?
5. Liveblogging science conferences. A hot topic this year. Daniel MacArthur?
I’ve done this a few times – ISBE, AAAS, And IEC 2009 (DNLee). I think it is exciting, and certainly gives us – scientists who blog- a nw and important group to reach/evangelize/etc on science outreach and communication. At my discipline-specific conference I was the only science blogger I know in attendance. But at AAAS there were a few of us …plus AAAS has blogs and they blog about science, too. perhaps get some AAAS online editors to participate in this conference. AAAS does set the standard of tolerance of scientific behavior. If AAAS can help promote the idea of blogging as an important broader outreach tool to offline scientists, then it’s a win for science bloggers against the old guard. And maybe, just maybe if GrrlScientist or I win the Blog your way to Antarctica contest we could talk about this. (DNLee)
6. Scientists using blogs/twitter/friendfeed to do science: Most of the above are concentrating on scientists communicating with the public. How about more on using blogs within distributed collaboration projects? – Lars Juhl Jensen commented in a recent ff thread about how he’s really not writing his blog posts for public consumption, but for other scientists. There are also uses as journal clubs, etc. Maybe consider inviting Richard Wiseman for a session like this? He’s done some interesting psych experiments using Twitter to collect data. – Dr. Kiki (What about the NC Sea Grant project that used Twitter to monitor fish catch? – Miriam Goldstein) – see above: they are coming and presenting that study.
7. Introducing tools to make your microblogging more efficient. bit.ly and su.pr taken url shortening to the next level by allowing metric tracking. these tools and more can make you a more effective microblogger. – Dr. Kiki
8. Science Outreach Initiatives. Year of Science, International Polar Year, year of the Frog/Gorilla are examples of year long, multi-national science initiatives. Informal science institutions normally carry the torch for these public education and outreach initatives. Surely science/nature blogs can also be stake holders in these public education initiatives.
9.Twitter, Patients and Researchers This is a fascinating case of crossover between mainstream researchers and Twitter as a source of data acquisition straight from patients via Twitter: ALSUntangled (ALSU): A Scientific Approach to Off-Label Treatment Options for People with ALS Using Tweets and Twitters http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a911419844&fulltext=713240928 and here is the first update http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a914098568&fulltext=713240928#CIT0016
I think that this would be an excellent case study of the use of Web 2.0 and partially user-generated cornet in clinical research. Here we have Taylor and Francis, which is about as orthodox a scholarly publisher as can be, taking a daring dive into the world of Twitter along with researchers for whom such forays are new but imperative if their field is to advance. This would also be an opportunity to bring Medicine 2.0 people and Science 2.0 people into fruitful interaction. (Hope Leman)
The Importance of Meatspace
1. Science Motels, science freelancing, science coworking – Anthony Townsend and Pawel Csezny
Someone from RTP? Love this idea (I am very interested in attending a session on science freelancing – Kevin Z) ( You may want to contact Ilkka Kakko with Third Generation Science Parks. They are doing some very interesting stuff with flexible space for scientific collaboration – J M Miller) Perhaps this can be split into two sessions: 1) How to be a freelance scientist (e.g., Csezny, who else?) and 2) what would a Science Coworking Space need to have and look like (e.g., Townsend and Russell)? – Unfortunately, Garret Lisi cannot be here.
I can do “Being Freelance Scientist”. But since my experience concerning bureaucratic issues is limited only to Europe, is anyone else from US willing to co-moderate such session? Alternatively, I can do “From freelance scientists to virtual contract research organisation” – less details on technical side, more on exploring alternative paths of doing research. PSzczesny
Anthony says: I could lead or co-lead this session, or a separate one. I could present the “research cloud” scenario from the future of research parks study I did for RTP, and then engage the group in developing a forecast of what science motels and other small, flexible labs might look like 10, 20 or 50 years in the future. We could brainstorm using sticky notes on the wall, or create some kind of virtual map using LinoIt (http://www.linoit.com)
2. Science Museums: putting stuff online, bringing people into the building: Nina Simon, Beck Tench, Roy Campbell? How are museums using the Web: putting their collections online in searchable/browsable formats; providing educational materials; informing about events; using the Web on the exhibit itself; cultivating a community (mostly local) of regular visitors, donors and supporters.
3. The Zoo online: Russ Williams (NCZoo director), Heather Soja (biology teacher at Zoo School)? (Jeff Ives from New England Aquarium blogs for the aquarium at The New Blue and is Editor and Web Coordinator for them, would be great for this to get a major aquarium perspective as well. – Kevin Z)
4. Science Cafes online and offline: Elsa Younsgteadt? Karen Ahman? JJ Cohen, MD, PhD (Univ of Colorado)
I would add Kishore Hari to this list. He’s doing some great work in the Bay Area running the science cafes here. – Dr. Kiki
Here, here! I would love more info on Science Cafes. Ignites and PechaKuchas are also good alternatives to science cafes. I did both of them and got great feedback. Very different crowd from science cafes. Anyone else doing these? [-Kubke]
Social networking, community building and careers
1. Career development (Russ Campbell – ideas?)
2. How to develop nature blogging theme further? Carnivals?
3. A follow-up on last year’s session on ‘Social Networks For Scientists’? I am in favor of that—particularly given FaceBook’s acquisition of FriendFeed. Maybe we could have a panel discussion with people from ResearchGATE, BioCrowd, Nature Network, etc. (Hope Leman)
4. A follow-up on last year’s session on “Blogging Networks”? Cat Herding 101 by Arikia Millikan I’m in! – Erin Johnson, Corie Lok?
5. “Tips and tricks to being part of the online science community” Idea from Bora’s interview with Erica Tsai (and a follow up here )- different ways of contributing, perhaps some guidelines for behavior (is this part of the Education section above?)
6. Activating the community, once it is built (e.g., getting the community to do something: crash the polls, or write to senators, or post comments on papers, etc.)
7. Another idea is building a global science centered community, then empowering local action. How to take the online interest and pour it back into making a difference at the local level? This probably fits in with #6 as a sub-topic. – Dr. kiki
8, Online Tools for Science and Technology Entrepreneurship including discussion of such sites as the Innocentive program (see Innocentive, Innovation Exchange, Nine Sigma, perhaps even 2collab or even the Mechanical Turk! ) — J M Miller
Brain-computer interfaces
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/31/60minutes/main4560940.shtml
Could we invite Dr. Scott Mackler and the neuroscientists who design brain-computer interfaces for people like him (i.e. disabled scientists and others). -Hope Leman
Another option along this line would be miguel nicolelis (http://www.nicolelislab.net/) who’s just up the street @Duke – Kubke
What is the role of the Web in this? It is science and it uses computers, but what does the Web do here? Here is an answer to that:
Brain-Twitter project (Hope Leman) – yes, let’s see if Williams or Wilson can come
I like that idea, Kubke. I found this Web site a bit hard to use—it seemed to lock up FireFox. But he certainly seems like a brilliant guy. Here is another idea: : Prof. John Gardner, ViewPlus Technologies, “Gardner found that certain information required to communicate in the field of solid-state physics was difficult if not impossible to access, even with assistance from sighted helpers. In particular, he found there were very few tools available for blind people to convert visually-oriented information, like diagrams and structured mathematics, to a medium that could be fully comprehended through touch and sound.” http://www.viewplus.com/company/about-viewplus/ (Hope Leman)
Ignite Session
Ignite talks are intense 5 minute lectures in which the participants show 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds. They can be very exciting, and are often comical. The motto is, “Enlighten us. But make it quick.”
Several people like this idea (including Aaron, Anton and Bora). Mary Spiro likes this idea too and will be presenting at Ignite Baltimore on 10/22/09.
We could tape them and upload them to YouTube. we’ll definitely record everything
It could be a concluding event, so that we have lots of time to rehearse during the first night. either Friday night or Saturday night, as there are space/time limitations. Unless you are a professional stand-up comic, do not leave until the last day to prepare – pick a topic well in advance and practice at home until you reach perfection: this is very hard!
Possible topics: intense session summaries, stories from our labs or the field, experiences as a blogger remember that even serious topics are fun when done this way, due to sheer energy. Also, this can be done in pairs, if two people who work well off of each other do a dialogue, e.g., an OA-evangelist and a TA-evangelist duking it out, or one person reciting complex scientese from a paper and other translating into lay language (or poetry), or enacting some typical blogospheric comment threads invoking Poe, Godwin, “be polite”, etc….
“Blogging on the tenure track” – Janet Stemwedel
“Being mentored – not only for grad students” – Pawel Szczesny
(‘Why Triangle is better than Silicon Valley’ – Wayne Sutton?)
“Scientists I love and why” – Joanne Manaster
“Dive Into Your Imagination” – Annie Crawley
Demos
Place here ideas for demos (15 minutes long), screenings of movies, etc.
1. Topaz/Ambra Richard Cave (a demo).
2. Article-level metrics Peter Binfield again (demo?)
3. Nature online division – demos: Timo Hannay, Hilary Spencer, Euan Adie, Alf Eaton?
4. A demo of Google Wave for scientists? Martin Fenner, Cameron Neylon, developers of Google Wave? How about inviting a skeptic of Google Wave—see here: http://dashes.com/anil/2009/08/what-works-the-web-way-vs-the-wave-way.html (Hope Leman) – it would be great to have Anil Dash come as well, for various reasons (his MoveableType is a platform for many science blogs) This one probably requires a full hour, not just 15 minutes.
5. A demo of iPhone science apps Who? Christopher Perrien?
6. NESCent – online efforts, Craig McClain, Robin Ann Smith, Jory Weintraub?
7. ScienceBlogs Germany – Jessica Riccò, Paula Schramm?
8. PLoS Currents: Influenza – demo by one of the Google Knol developers (Cedric Dupont, Knol product manager?)
9. Scott Baker (NC Sea Grant – twitter and fishcatch ) – I would be happy to do a live demo here, perhaps using “audience” anglers to submit fisheries data from their cell phones… See how it works here (-S Baker)
10. Field Trip Earth – Mark MacAllister and Russ Williams
11. I could plug my beloved ScanGrants. It really does help scientists by cutting down the time they have to spend looking for grants. (Hope Leman) – yes, please do – BZ
12. KnowledgePlaza – Jenny Kindja Lwabandji ?
13. Doing science in Second Life (Jean-Claude Bradley again, chemical reactions testing ?)
14. Science communications plans for the next Lindau Nobel Laureates Meeting 2010 – some new ideas concerning science communication between generations – in real life and especially in online tools: Beatrice Lugger and Christian Rapp
15. RTP – how online and offline work together (Cara Rousseau?)
16. BL Digital Lives – archiving, more,
17. – screenings of short and/or feature length films/documentaries (-kej):
Naturally Obsessed (-kej)
Cromer: Darwin’s Lost Weekend (-kej)
18. Herbaria@Home
19. SciVee.tv Phil Bourne?
20. Google Scholar – anyone know a developer or manager there?
21. Enroweb – a French-language science blogging network – Antoine Blanchard?
22. Open Palaeontology Project
23. World-Science – radio+web – Elsa Youngstadt
24. Botanicalls
25. Trixie Tracker
26. Sciblogs, New Zealand – Fabiana Kubke
27. “Characteristics of Science Popularizers” – Joanne Manaster
28. “Dive Into Your Imagination” – Annie Crawley
Other ideas
Blogging on peer-reviewed and/or original research for both physical and virtual attendees. The event would be online only. It would happen only during the three days of the conference. The conference will promote the initiative heavily. And the bloggers would, in turn, promote the conference in some way (link, button, mention). It is likely that very few (or nobody!) would blog their own research, but many would be able to blog about peer-reviewed research, get the BPR3 icon and have their posts aggregated on researchblogging org. Someone (the conference-goers by voting, a committee?) would judge the entries and give out an award to the best one (or best three). The award would be announced at the close of the conference, around noon EST on Sunday 17th.
Workshops and Tutorials
Start your own Wordpress blog
A podcasting workshop, getting interested people up and running? They could then practice by podcasting the meeting.
How to use social networking sites
A hands-on class on how to build a social site with Drupal. (Sol Lederman) – Friday? Apropos of Sol Lederman, his brother Abe works on many of the most important science search engines (such as http://worldwidescience.org/ and http://www.scitopia.org/scitopia/). Maybe he could discuss science search. (Hope Leman). I (Sol) will be leading a Friday morning workshop on Drupal. I’m open to what participants would like to learn. Would you like a tour of Drupal? Would you like to build your own Drupal site? Is there some aspect of Drupal you’d like to learn more about in a hands-on way? Please leave your comments in the Friendfeed room or contact me (ledermans@osti.gov.)
Make good videos and upload them online (Mary Spiro would be happy to help with this demo)
I could do a tutorial about adding interactive elements to a blog (polls, surveys, demos, etc). I’d also be happy to help people get their posts registered with ResearchBlogging.org — Dave Munger
Paint your own blog pictures using Tablet (Glendon Mellow?) – Regarding a workshop, I’d be happy to help facilitate and bring my tablet. I would also suggest that one hour to “doctor” an image and help it along for online may be brief. In weeks leading up to it, I would like (with help from anyone interested) to go through some tips from images people volunteer to have blog-optimized. Then at session, we could focus on one example. Thoughts? – Glendon Mellow
