Archive by category | Meetings

From Web 2.0 to the Global Database

From Web 2.0 to the Global Database

I’m on my way home having just attended the 2009 Microsoft eScience Workshop at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where Tony Hey and his team at Microsoft Research also launched a book called The Fourth Paradigm. It’s a collection of essays that provide relatively accessible accounts of the impact and potential of digital science, and has been published in memory of Jim Gray, a pioneer in this area.  Read more

ETech 2009

In these belt-tightening times I’m cutting back a lot on conferences. But not ETech — that’s the one event I have to attend each year if I’m to fully recharge my ideas battery. It’s also been a pleasure and privilege to once again act as a member of the program committee, helping to identify the right mix of speakers to enlighten and entertain.  Read more

The Future Is A Foreign Country

The Future Is A Foreign Country

Earlier this month I gave a talk at the ‘Science in the 21st Century’ meeting at the Perimeter Institute in Ontario and a couple of days later at the ALPSP International Conference 2008. They were basically the same talk, though one was tailored for scientists and the other for publishers. Some people were kind enough to say that they enjoyed it, so I’m posting my notes and slides here. This isn’t exactly what I said because I tend to deviate a bit from my script, but the gist of it is the same.  Read more

Science Blogging 2008: London

The internet spilled out into the real world last Saturday, when 130 science bloggers, communicators, and scientists assembled at the revamped Royal Institution on 30 August for Science Blogging 2008: London, organized by Nature Network. The conference had a unique hybrid format, in which part of the programme was left open for attendees to fill in that day with ‘unconference’ sessions proposed and voted on in the morning. Nine ideas were proposed before the conference got started and were voted on by the delegates during the first morning break. This was Europe’s first science blogging conference, and it couldn’t have found a better venue than the Royal Institution within whose laboratories 10 chemical elements were discovered and 14 Nobel Prizes earned. Speakers took to a stage previously occupied by such luminaries as Michael Faraday and William Bragg.  Read more

Stamen talk

Stamen talk

Stamen is a hip online design outfit based in San Francisco. They’re well known for working on data visualizations for Trulia and Digg, and their own high profile websites like Oakland Crime Map and Cabspotting. Last week we were lucky enough to get founder Eric Rodenbeck to come in to give us a talk, which I will now liveblog eight days after the fact…  … Read more