SciFoo Preview Area

Timo Hannay asked me to help with establishing a Second Life presence for the upcoming SciFoo meeting August 8-10, 2008. I think that a poster area in the style of SciFoo Lives On would work well.

To kick things off, 23andMe will be presenting tomorrow June 24, 2008 at 10:00 PDT / 13:00 EDT/ 17:00 GMT on Second Nature island. Berci Mesko had already made arrangements for them to speak - and since they will be at SciFoo this is a convenient way to get things started.

Other SciFoo presenters coming soon...

The presentation area is next door to the SciFoo Lives On section: SLURL

ChemBioFoo Lives

Ding dong - one of my bells emailed me today.


Someone was at the gate of the BioChemFoo area on Nature Island in Second Life and wanted assistance with setting up a poster.

When I logged on I found Lali Ewry (a researcher) and Bronwen Pizzicato (from Nature Protocols) still waiting there. Since there were no posters yet in the ChemBioFoo area I took them over to the adjacent SciFoo Lives On section to show them examples of what posters can look like in Second Life.

Lali had some slides available so I gave her one of Hiro's boards and showed her how to upload, re-size and move the poster. (By the way Hiro's boards have the nice feature that, as a presenter, you can go backwards in your presentation and the boards reset to the starting slides after a few minutes of inactivity)

We took her board to the ChemBioFoo area and Lali positioned it at poster #1. She also put a bell so others could summon her to discuss her work on "Transcription of Inflammatory Genes in Crohn's Disease". There are wonderful images in that presentation about the mechanics of the disease and Lali is still adding more. She had some animations that have to be converted to still images before posting.

Lali's real name is Laura Ferrero-Miliani and she is at Herlev Hospital, Medical-Gastroenterology Lab 54O3 in Denmark.

This is a perfect example of what I had in mind for ChemBioFoo. In keeping with the SciFoo un-conference, the SciFoo Lives On area has some great posters to promote and discuss Open Science and new Science Communication Technologies. However, I think there needs to be a place to host domain-specific scientific discussion as perpetual poster sessions in Second Life.

This is actually very much in keeping with the format of the Nature journal itself. The articles are typically high level and are collected from various scientific fields. I am starting with Chemistry and Biology because I feel that these areas have a strong potential for improving human lives directly (in terms of affecting disease processes for example). Also these areas are most closely related to my domain specific research of organic synthesis and drug design. (And we only have 36 booths in this area for now). Of course I would be happy to assist anyone in creating a poster area with another scientific focus.

I often tell people that they should only enter Second Life if they have a good reason for doing so. By putting posters that are similar in format and content to those that the typical researcher is likely to find at the physical conferences that they attend is probably a pretty good way to attract traditional scientists to media platforms like Second Life. If they see a poster that is interesting they can ring the bell, talk with the presenter then decide how that experience compares with a physical meeting.

So I am asking for anyone interested in contributing to let me know (or Lali - she is trained now to help the next presenters after all).

My presentation is coming up - I have a few more slides to put together. Tony Williams from ChemSpider also sent me a presentation that I'll put up shortly.

Ding Dong - Lets Talk SciFoo

If you wander around the SciFoo Lives On area, you will notice that some of the poster booths have bells.

If the text above them is green, it indicates that the presenter is somewhere in Second Life. The visitor can then just click on the bell to summon the presenter with a quick message.

If the text is red, the presenter is not in world. However, a message can still be sent and it will show up the next time they log in.

Now this can be problematic for users who created a Second Life account exclusively for the purpose of presenting or attending a SciFoo Lives On session since they are unlikely to login again and retrieve IM messages. There is a trick around that: in SL hit control-P and turn on the setting to forward IM to email.

This effectively transforms the SciFoo Lives On area into a perpetual session with the cumulative content of all prior sessions, which now include "Tools for Open Science" and "Medicine and Web 2.0". We are now getting ready for the "Definitions in Open Science" session on Tuesday Sept 4, 2007 at 16:00 GMT and there are still slots available to present.

The bells can be purchased for 150L (about 60 cents) on PixelTrix Island (SLURL) - thanks to Ron Comer for help in locating these!

The location and list of all upcoming SciFoo Lives On sessions can be found on the SFLO wiki.

SciFoo Lives On Upgrade and Wiki

There have been a few additions to the SciFoo Lives On area on Nature Island in Second Life.

The area has been divided into 36 numbered plots and most posters from the first two sessions have been moved to fill the first 10 spots. Posters for future sessions will be added sequentially as they are created. (Thanks to Eloise and Beth for help with this!)

This makes the area much more appealing and permits regular poster sessions where people can meet at any time to present and discuss. I have been a huge fan of the effectiveness of poster sessions in Second Life after my first experience. We will still do talks at the scheduled sessions but afterwards groups can break out to posters from any previous SciFoo Lives On session.

I have also created a wiki to keep track of dates and topics of past and future sessions. Presenters are welcome to record their names (Second Life and Real Life), affiliations and presentation titles next to their poster number.