soloconf | O'Really?

July 26, 2010

Please Sir, I want some more Science!

Filed under: communication,publishing — Duncan Hull @ 5:27 pm
Tags: Aleks Krotoski, British Library, Evan Harris, London, Martin Fenner, Matthew Cockerill, Mendeley, Nature Network, Peter Murray-Rust, Sid Rodrigues, solo10, soloconf, Victor Henning

Science Online London (#solo10 September 3-4, 2010) is an annual gathering of people interested in the use of web technologies for scientific collaboration and communication. The organisers at Mendeley, Nature Network and The British Library continue to do a great job of hosting this important gathering, now in its third year:

I’ve been the last two years (2008 and 2009), and it has been worth attending because of the mix speakers, delegates and topics covered. This year includes talks from:

Matthew Cockerill publisher and blogger at BioMed Central
Peter Murray-Rust Chemist and blogger at the University of Cambridge
Aleks Krotoski Guardian/BBC journalist, blogger and academic
Evan Harris politician, Doctor, former MP for Oxford and blogger

See the impressive full programme here. Reading through the speaker list I wondered, where are all the scientists at science online this year? At the time of writing this, 12 of the 13 speakers are politicians, publishers or journalists with scientist Peter Murray-Rust the odd man out. I’ve nothing against politicians, publishers or journalists but it would be great to have a more balanced event this year. The UK is full of high-profile scientists with blogs who would probably jump at the opportunity to speak at this event. So:

Dear readers of this blog: this gathering is fun, sign up now for the last few tickets
Dear organisers: Please sir, I want some more Science!
Dear scientists: if you are the kind of PowerPoint jockey who does a killer keynote, please contact the organisers.

Or as the skeptical Sid Rodrigues said “this looks like fun, needs more nerds though“…

Comments (6)

August 24, 2009

I bet you think this blog is about you, don’t you?

Filed under: communication,conferences — Duncan Hull @ 5:07 pm
Tags: Alexander Griekspoor, Alright My Luvver, Arfon Smith, Arikia Millikan, cameron neylon, Carly Simon, Chris Thorpe, Daniel MacArthur, David Colquhoun, Euan Adie, F1000, Faraday Theatre, Fringe Frivolous, GalaxyZoo, Geoffrey Bilder, Google Wave, Gudmundur Thorisson, Ijad Madisch, Joe Dunckley, Kevin Emamy, London, Mark Henderson, Martin Fenner, Mekentosj, Mendeley, Michael Habib, openid, Renny Guida, researcherid, Royal Institution, solo09, soloconf, Stewart Wills, Theo Bloom, Vanity, Virgina Barbour

Last Saturday, The Royal Institution of Great Britain (R.I.) hosted a conference called Science Online London (#solo09) co-organised by mendeley.com and network.nature.com. The event centred around the fantastic Faraday Theatre which according to the R.I. is a “beautiful, historic theatre [which] has deeply raked seating that creates an intimate atmosphere, even when full to capacity”. Absolutely. Just like last year, this event attracted delegates and speakers from a wide range of backgrounds in science, publishing and communication from around the world. This post is an approximately alphabetically ordered link-fest of some of the people involved. People are, after all, the most interesting thing about any conference. If you’re not listed here it’s not because I don’t like you (honest!) it’s because we didn’t speak or I didn’t listen or (unlike many people) you’re not vain enough [1] to have a have a blog (yet) 🙂

Nico Adams, The University of Cambridge, is blogging for impact.
Euan Adie, Product Manager, Nature Publishing Group, see recent interview.
Dr. Aust, Cretacean Mud Slinger from the “University of Gloomingham”.
Enrico M. Balli speaker in the Just what the hell is a scientific paper after all? session.
Virginia Barbour, PLoS.org, speaker in the Real-time statistics in Science session
Rachel Cavill, Imperial College London, data miner
Katharine Barnes, Nature Protocols and speaker in the What is a Scientific Paper? session
Geoffrey Bilder, CrossRef.org, opening speaker in the author identity session [2]
Petra Boynton drpetra.co.uk speaker in The Legal and Ethical Aspects of Science Blogging. I’d love to blog more about this but they asked not too, because as they say, “This Is Not Legal Advice: (T.I.N.L.A.)“
Theo Bloom, Chief Editor PLoS Biology and speaker in the What is a Scientific Paper? session
Matt Brown, organiser of the Scientific Pub Crawl of London and author of a couple of interesting articles about the RI [3,4].
David Colquhoun, who loves the NHS but noted that this years conference was “more corporate” (too many publishers?) and had an unhealthy obsession with public relations (PR) – a form of “paid lying“.
Maxine Clark, Nature editor extraordinaire and one of the brains behind the Nautilus blog at Nature.
Mo Costandi, who blogs at Neurophilosophy
Martin Davies, Royal Institution, played host to the whole event
AJ Cann, University of Leicester see his report, unpacking solo09 at Science of the Invisible
Lee-Ann Coleman, Head of Scientific, Technical & Medical Information at British Library speaker in the What is a Scientific Paper? session
Joe Dunckley, BioMedCentral.com, nice to meet the face behind the great photos on flickr and I’m reet chuffed a fellow West Country bumpkin appreciated my “Alright My Luvver” T-shirt. See his solo report at Cotch.net and reflections on what is a scientific paper?
Alf Eaton, Nature Publishing Group, Ghostly Image Magician
Kevin Emamy of citeulike.org
Martin Fenner, University of Hannover Medical School, organiser and opening speaker who has written a nice conference summary here.
Paul Foeckler one of the founders of Mendeley.
Alexander Griekspoor, Mekentosj, was strongly agreeing with the “get rid of the journal” undercurrents at the conference this year
David Allen Green, aka Jack of Kent gave a talk on The Legal and Ethical Aspects of Science Blogging. I’d love to blog more about this but he asked people not too. As they sometimes say, “This Is Not Legal Advice: T.I.N.L.A.“
Reynold Guida, Thomson.com, talked about ResearcherID.com etc in the author identity session
John Gilbey, The University of Rural England, speculated about the future… quote “the difference between speculation and prediction is that you have to pay more for the latter….”
Richard P. Grant, F1000, Speaker in the Real-time statistics in Science session
Michael Habib, Elsevier, gave a talk on Scopus ID in the author identity session
Mark Henderson Science Editor, The Times (of London). Times science blog isn’t just a dumping ground for B-list material that isn’t good enough for the paper. The comments left on the blog are much higher quality than the rubbish that often gets posted in the main paper.
Victor Henning, Mendeley.com, co-organiser and speaker see his words and excellent pictures here
Brian Kelly, UKOLN, UK Web Focus see The Back Channels for Science Online 2009 conference
Li Kim Lee, dutifully staffed the front desk all day
Corie Lok, Nature Publishing Group, speaker in the Cat Herding: The Challenges and Rewards of Managing Online Scientific Communities session
Phil Lord, University of Newcastle, who gets very unhappy when he visits London. Grumpy Old Man? Very possibly – cheer up Phil!
Allyson Lister, University of Newcastle, the mind wobbles (some jokingly call her “Roboblogger” on account of the prolific blog output), keep our minds wobbling Ally!
Ijad Madisch, speaker in the Cat Herding: The Challenges and Rewards of Managing Online Scientific Communities session
Arikia Millikan, formerly scienceblogs.com, another speaker in the Cat Herding: The Challenges and Rewards of Managing Online Scientific Communities session
Ian Mulvany, Nature Publishing Group, speaker in the Google Wave sesssion.
Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge, A Scientist and the Web. He feels the force of Roboblogger (aka Allyson Lister)
Dave Munger, founder of researchblogging.org, gave a presentation with his “blogging optimist” hat on in the blogging for impact session. Dave pointed out that blogs don’t have to be controversial to have an impact, or time consuming, for example posting just once a month can be enough to have an impact. That’s part of the beauty of the pub-sub model of publishing. See Dave’s (telepresent) report.
Daniel MacArthur of The Sanger and Genetic Future. Daniel gave a great talk with his “blogging realist” hat on (to follow on from the blogging optimist talk) in the Blogging for Impact session. Daniel pointed out that there is never enough time to blog everything that is interesting and that time spent blogging is time not spent doing experiments, coding, analysis, grant-writing etc. In the blogosphere (as elsewhere) controversy sells (but this means you can annoy colleagues and peers off in your community). Inacurrate, exaggerated or even perfectly valid criticism can damage careers.
Cameron Neylon, Google Wave: Just Another Ripple or Science Communication Tsunami?
Mike Peel from Jodrell Bank Observatory and speaker in the Citizen science session I missed.
Cindy Rubbens, Mendeley.com, staffed the front desk
Graham Steel, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) Alliance , blogs at McBlawg, dammit Graham I didn’t get the chance to ask you about the CJD alliance. Maybe next year…
Arfon Smith University of Oxford, speaker in the Citizen science session about GalaxyZoo. Would have loved to have gone to this, but it was running parallel to our session on author identity.
Chris Thorpe, The Guardian, he’s busy riding the Google Wave.
Gudmundur Thorrison, aka “Mummi”, University of Leicester, Gen2phen project, see interesting stuff on digital identity at gen2phen.org
Stewart Wills, Online Editor at Science Magazine, AAAS.
Matt Wood, Mekentosj.com, wot no scibarcamb this year?

Now I’m told the presentations mentioned above will be on Nature Precedings in due course, which will be good. Thanks to all the organisers, speakers and participants this year that made Science Online London 2009 well worth attending. Hopefully see some more of you again next year!

References

Carly Simon (1972) You’re So Vain
Geoffrey Bilder (2006). In Google We Trust? Journal of Electronic Publishing, 9 (1) DOI: 10.3998/3336451.0009.101
Matt Brown (2008). Venerable institute gets a refit Nature, 453 (7195), 568-569 DOI: 10.1038/453568a
Matt Brown (2008). Reimagining the Royal Institution Nature, 453 (7195), 595-595 DOI: 10.1038/453595a
Duncan Hull (2009). Slides from the author identity session: Authenticating Scientists with OpenID
Jennifer Rohn and Richard P. Grant (2009). Pre-conference video: Live Roof Surfing at Mendeley Fringe Frivolous

Comments (9)

June 2, 2009

Who Are You? Digital Identity in Science

Filed under: conferences,data mining,lyrical — Duncan Hull @ 7:50 am
Tags: author-id, Bruno Harbulot, contributor-id, crossref, digital identity, FOAF, google scholar, Henry Story, LinkedIn, openid, pubmed, researcherid, sciblog, scopus, Simon Willison, soloconf, soloconf_09, SSL, SWOT, The Who, TLS

The organisers of the Science Online London 2009 conference are asking people to propose their own session ideas (see some examples here), so here is a proposal:

Title: Who Are You? Digital Identity in Science

Many important decisions in Science are based on identifying scientists and their contributions. From selecting reviewers for grants and publications, to attributing published data and deciding who is funded, hired or promoted, digital identity is at the heart of Science on the Web.

Despite the importance of digital identity, identifying scientists online is an unsolved problem [1]. Consequently, a significant amount of scientific and scholarly work is not easily cited or credited, especially digital contributions: from blogs and wikis, to source code, databases and traditional peer-reviewed publications on the Web. This (proposed) session will look at current mechanisms for identifying scientists digitally including contributor-id (CrossRef), researcher-id (Thomson), Scopus Author ID (Elsevier), OpenID, Google Scholar [2], Single Sign On, PubMed, Google Scholar [2], FOAF+SSL, LinkedIn, Shared Identifiers (URIs) and the rest. We will introduce and discuss each via a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). Is digital identity even possible and ethical? Beside the obvious benefits of persistent, reliable and unique identifiers, what are the privacy and security issues with personal digital identity?

If this is a successful proposal, I’ll need some help. Any offers? If you are interested in joining in the fun, more details are at scienceonlinelondon.org

References

Bourne, P., & Fink, J. (2008). I Am Not a Scientist, I Am a Number PLoS Computational Biology, 4 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000247
Various Publications about unique author identifiers bookmarked in citeulike
Yours Truly (2009) Google thinks I’m Maurice Wilkins
The Who (1978) Who Are You? Who, who, who, who? (Thanks to Jan Aerts for the reference!)

Comments (1)

Blogging For Profit: Costs and Benefits

Filed under: conferences,funding — Duncan Hull @ 7:40 am
Tags: AdSense, blogger, London, Mendeley, Nature Network, Nature Publishing Group, openwetware, sciblog, soloconf, soloconf_09, wordpress

The organisers of the Science Online London 2009 conference are asking people to propose their own session ideas (see some examples here), so here is proposal:

Title: Blogging For Profit: Costs and Benefits

What are the costs and benefits of blogging and how can you make sure the latter justifies the former?

This (proposed) session will look at two kinds of profit, and the costs associated with each.

Research profit (in science and academia), building digital reputations on the Web. Can blogging help your next grant proposal for research funding and if so, how? How can blogging be used to increase the visibility and impact of published research via the likes of ResearchBlogging.org, blogs.nature.com and other aggregators?

Financial profit (in business), making blogging pay the bills. What business models (and infrastructure) exist to support blogging? Including, but not limited to: Nature Network, ScienceBlogs, Google AdSense, “20% time“, “free” tools (WordPress, Blogger, OpenWetWare etc). Going solo vs. joining a club – which business models and tools are right for you?

This could be followed by a general discussion on these benefits. When do they justify their costs (and risks) and make for profitable blogging?

If this is a successful proposal, I’ll need some help. Any offers? If you are interested in joining in the fun, details are at scienceonlinelondon.org

[CC-licensed Business Graph picture by nDevilTV]

Comments (1)

September 4, 2008

Famous for fifteen people

Filed under: web of science — Duncan Hull @ 2:47 pm
Tags: Andrew Walkingshaw, Andy Warhol, axiope, badscience, barcamb, Ben Goldacre, BrainDuck, Brian Cox, cameron neylon, Clan Duncan, connotea, Coracle, DIUS, Egon Willighagen, Euan Adie, Gia Millinovich, Jean-Claude Bradley, London, Marilyn Monroe, Mekentosj, MOMA, momus, myexperiment, Nature Network, New York, nobel, NTK, penis, people, Peter Murray-Rust, sciblog, scifoo, soloconf, soloconf_09, Timo Hannay, Zoe Corbyn

The artist Andy Warhol once said:

“In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes”.

This well worn saying has been quoted and misquoted in hundreds of different ways in the forty years since Warhol first coined it [1].

Bad Scientist Ben Goldacre, in his keynote speech* at Science Blogging (sciblog) 2008, highlighted one of these deliberate misquotes, which he attributed to NTK.net (Need To Know: Britain’s most sarcastic high-tech weekly newsletter). It goes a little something like this:

“On the internet everybody can be world famous for fifteen people“.

This wonderful expression captures the nature and scale of science blogging on the internet today in a nutshell. Personally, I think it also sums up much of the spirit of the Science Blogging 2008 conference as well. In total, around eight groups of fifteen people, attended the conference. It was physically impossible to talk to all of them in one day, especially since I had to slink off early at 7pm, but I did manage to meet the following people: (more…)

Comments (17)

August 27, 2008

Science blogging at the Royal Institution, London

Filed under: web of science — Duncan Hull @ 8:02 am
Tags: Christmas lectures, London, NPG, Royal Institution, sciblog, soloconf, soloconf_09

Nature Publishing Group are organising a workshop on science blogging, this Saturday 30th August 2008 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. Why would you care? Because there are:

Lots of interesting people…
…talking about a range of interesting subjects …
.. in a distinguished venue that has recently been refurbished. It is also home to the fantastic Christmas lectures and much more besides.

To cap it all, I think it will be great fun too. So if you’re going, see you there. If you’re not, it is never too late to publish your fantasy science funding entry. Much of the conference will be televised and blogged, making it available online too.

O'Really?

July 26, 2010

Please Sir, I want some more Science!

August 24, 2009

I bet you think this blog is about you, don’t you?

References

June 2, 2009

Who Are You? Digital Identity in Science

References

September 4, 2008

Famous for fifteen people

August 27, 2008

Science blogging at the Royal Institution, London

Meta / μετά

Recently @dullhunk