ONS talks at the British Library, ACRL and a Slideshare feature

Update: the Columbia panel on Open Science video is now available.

This past week I gave two talks and participated in one panel discussion - with no jetlag or airport burn-out. Gotta love technology for allowing for that to happen.

My first talk was on Feb 11, 2009 at a session on Digital Lives at the British Library. This was a hybrid conference with a presence in the physical world as well as Second Life. I could see and hear the speakers in London from within Second Life and I'm assuming they saw my presentation just as clearly. Joanna Scott from Nature coordinated the SL session.

I then participated in a panel in Second Life on "Stepping into Science" on Feb 13, 2009. There was as good discussion about using Second Life for educational applications. The other panelists included:

• - Troy McConaghy (Scientist and Educator who has been involved with Second Life for over three years)
• - Dr. George Djorgovski (Caltech and Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA))
• - Joanna Scott (Writer for Nature and manages Second Nature on Second Life)
• - Adrienne J. Gauthier, M.Ed. (Instructional Technology Specialist, Steward Observatory)
• - Tony Crider (Elon University)

Then on Feb 17, 2009 I presented for the Association of College and Research Libraries using Acrobat Connect Pro. Hope Kandel from LearningTimes did a great job in coordinating the technology and people several weeks before the event. The attendees used chat to ask questions during my talk then John Howard moderated by summarizing some of the questions verbally at the end. It went well I think.

And I just heard that my ACRL presentation on Open Notebook Science is currently showcased on Slideshare under the Education category.

Now I'm on my way to a physical conference at Columbia with Bora: Open Science: Good For Research, Good For Researchers?

Back from ASIST Open Science Panel

Yesterday (Oct 23, 2007) I participated in a panel on Open Science and Science Blogging at the ASIST conference in Milwaukee.

The full three presentations are available here: streaming Flash. (63:44)

Following a brief introduction by Phil Edwards,

• Bora Zivkovic kicks off with his presentation "The Many Flavors of Science Blogging" ppt followed by mine
• Jean-Claude Bradley "UsefulChem: An Open Notebook Science Project" ppt (starts at 18:35)
• then Janet Stemwedel's "Social and Scientific Implications of Scientific Blogging" ppt (starts at 41:30).

Bora provided an overview of science blogging with plenty of good examples. I provided details of how we use blogs and wikis to do drug development and collaborate openly with the UsefulChem project. Janet wrapped up touching on the importance of blogs that chronicle the experiences of researchers and how the system works.

A few people took some really good notes:
Christina Pikas
Ken Varnum
Stephanie Willen Brown

This conference was a great opportunity to get together with Bora, Janet and Christina Pikas over sausages and sauerkraut. Hopefully we'll meet up again at Bora's NC Science Blogging conference in January.

The half-hour question session was also recorded and I'll provide a link when it is available.

Open Science at ASIST in Milwaukee

Well I'm off to Milwaukee tomorrow for the ASIST conference.

I am participating in a panel on Open Science on Tuesday October 22 at 8:30. Anyone can add questions for us to answer on the wiki. Here is an abstract with a few questions already posted:

Opening Science to All: Implications of Blogs and Wikis for Social and Scholarly Scientific Communication (SIG STI, SIG BWP)
Bora Zivkovic, Jean-Claude Bradley, Janet Stemwedel, Phillip Edwards and K.T. Vaughan

A growing number of scientists are turning to Web2.0 communication tools such as blogs and wikis to provide open channels for their social and scholarly discourse. Because of these tools, scientists are increasingly able to share data, results, and analysis of research (scholarly communication) with distant, and sometimes unknown peers, and are also able to enter the realm of scientific commentary (social communication) with the general public. While many science bloggers focus on purely social commentary on science, others include conference announcements and reports, book reviews, brief discussion of “failed” experiments, and non-publishable research findings. Within this environment there is a strong awareness that readers include – and may preferentially be – non-scientists, perhaps even nonspecialist skeptics about established theories. This session is not only concerned with presenting a state of the blog for science communication, but also with thinking about the impact of “plain English” science writing on both society and on science.

Question: Is it really a good thing to let anyone who thinks they have a scientific breakthrough have access to free, open, public, Googleable media?
Question: What if I make a mistake in my data, never fix it, no one catches it, and then someone dies because a medical decision was based on my "findings"? Isn't this exactly why we have formal peer review in formal publications?
Question: Who is the audience for science blogs and wikis anyway? Scientists or laypeople?
Question: Can you get published if you've already posted your results to your blog/wiki?

I hope to see some of you there!