Sci-Octopus

February 15th, 2013Blog0 comments

Ocean bloggers at Science Online 2013

Six years ago, on a cold January morning, I attended a cozy gathering on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill of scientists, journalists and educators interested in utilizing online tools to deepen our activities and promote collaborations. Over the years I have watched the conference grow exponentially, encouraging conversation, community, and connections at the intersection of science and the web. This January boasted the largest yet ScienceOnlineConference in Raleigh, NC, and I had the opportunity to meet up with old colleagues, make some new ones, and sing more than one sea shanty. The Ocean Bloggers were by far the biggest (and loudest) contingent at the conference, and will be holding their own spin off SciOnline: Oceans conference in October. In addition to headliner talks by the social media specialists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and discussion on topics ranging from managing your online persona, ‘doing’ outreach and citizen science, to rethinking peer review and science deficits and denials, along with blitz sessions on everything from mobile apps for the lab to dog cognition – there was something for everyone to get involved in. Looking forward to SciOnline 2014, although next year I may opt for the SciOnlineLIVE version and even further embrace employing online tools to engage with the wider science community.

The conference had some great book giveaways. A colleague and I received copies of the R Cookbook, which will undoubtedly be useful for analyzing all the ZEN data that keeps coming in!

Mascot for this year’s Sci-Online Conference? Sci-octopus!