It seems that word about our informal gatherings for Boston scientists is getting out. We had about 30 people (postdocs, grad students, several scientists from biotech, a couple of PIs) show up last night to our shindig, basically double the number we had when we first started doing these events in June. For some reason, there was a disproportionate number of structural biologists there, so I learned a lot about membrane proteins and the trials and tribulations of figuring out their structures (don’t worry, there’s not too much science/work talk at these events).

We also tried something a little different last night: we started off the evening with a short talk from someone at Nature about Nature Precedings, one of our newest websites where biologists can post pre-publication work. There was some good discussion about why people would or wouldn’t post to Precedings.

For those who went, do you have any feedback on the format of last night’s event? If so, please send me a message or post your comments here. Did you like the talk+mingling format?