As announced at the London Science Blogging Conference on August 30th 2008, we hereby challenge all scientists to get a senior scientist blogging. The ultimate aim is to help scientific blogging gain more momentum and credibility – and also to have some fun. Points will be awarded for:

• The seniority and reputation of the blogger (both in absolute terms and in comparison to the person who convinced them to blog)
• Their previous lack of experience with blogging and other new-fangled online habits
• The quality and quantity of the posts, their relevance to science, and any demonstrable positive impact they might have already had
• Other criteria that will no doubt occur to us later

Please submit nominations (including self-nominations) by email to ‘t dot hannay at nature dot com’ by January 5th 2009 using the subject line ‘I got a senior scientist to blog’. All formal judging will take place shortly after this date, but we encourage early nominations so that we can sign up for the RSS feeds. Please include:

• Your name and affiliation
• The name and affiliation of the blogger
• A link to the blog
• Any interesting anecdotes, or reasons why you think it deserves to win

The winning blog will earn the chance to be included in The Open Laboratory: The Best Science Writing on Blogs 2008. The blogger and instigator will also each earn expenses-paid trips to Science Foo Camp 2009, to be held in July or August (exact date still to be confirmed) at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA.

The decision of the judges (that’s us) will be announced in January 2009, will be final, and will probably be somewhat arbitrary.

Good luck!

Peter Murray-Rust

Cameron Neylon

Richard P Grant

Timo Hannay

As announced at the London Science Blogging Conference on August 30th 2008, we hereby challenge all scientists to get a senior scientist blogging. The ultimate aim is to help scientific blogging gain more momentum and credibility – and also to have some fun. Points will be awarded for:

• The seniority and reputation of the blogger (both in absolute terms and in comparison to the person who convinced them to blog)
• Their previous lack of experience with blogging and other new-fangled online habits
• The quality and quantity of the posts, their relevance to science, and any demonstrable positive impact they might have already had
• Other criteria that will no doubt occur to us later

Please submit nominations (including self-nominations) by email to ‘t dot hannay at nature dot com’ by January 5th 2009 using the subject line ‘I got a senior scientist to blog’. All formal judging will take place shortly after this date, but we encourage early nominations so that we can sign up for the RSS feeds. Please include:

• Your name and affiliation
• The name and affiliation of the blogger
• A link to the blog
• Any interesting anecdotes, or reasons why you think it deserves to win

The winning blog will earn the chance to be included in The Open Laboratory: The Best Science Writing on Blogs 2008. The blogger and instigator will also each earn expenses-paid trips to Science Foo Camp 2009, to be held in July or August (exact date still to be confirmed) at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA.

The decision of the judges (that’s us) will be announced in January 2009, will be final, and will probably be somewhat arbitrary.

Good luck!

Peter Murray-Rust

Cameron Neylon

Richard P Grant

Timo Hannay

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.

Keynote speaker Ben Goldacre is probably the most famous scientific blogger in the UK, tackling pseudoscience and quackery in his Bad Science blog and weekly Guardian column. His eloquent, entertaining and expletive-filled intro provided a strong set of examples in which the traditional press have been hoodwinked by claims of ‘miracle cures’, whereas specialised elements of the blogosphere successfully scrutinised, attacked and demolished such bogus assertions. Ben, and bloggers like him, are increasingly discrediting peddlers of dubious products, filling holes of accountability that mainstream media lacks the time or expertise to address.

Ben was followed by a broad-ranging panel discussion on the use of blogs to communicate the quirks and joys of scientific life. Jenny Rohn and Anna Kushnir, bloggers on Nature Network, were joined by Grrl Scientist from ScienceBlogs, with Mo Costandi introducing and chairing the session. The panellists gave many useful insights into the day-to-day running of a blog, the pros and cons of anonymity, and communicating with the public via blogs.

Then the delegates split into three parallel sessions. Matt Wood of the Sanger Institute gave a polished and informative introduction to microblogging and aggregation tools such as FriendFeed. The power of these tools becomes clear when you look at the FriendFeed discussion of the conference itself. Each session was reported in short snippets as events unfolded, allowing anyone in the world to follow the discussion. In an adjacent room, Maxine Clarke and Euan Adie of NPG presented tips for both novice and advanced bloggers on how to set up and improve your blog, covering subjects such as blogrolls, profiles, DOI citation tools, and time-stamping services. The third parallel session had the most intriguing title for the day: There’s a Giraffe on my Unicycle: Can Blogging Enhance Your Creativity? Nature’s Henry Gee, popular science author Brian Clegg and novelist Clare Dudman led an entertaining discussion. Brian got the room warmed up with a creativity exercise: he asked everyone to think of things that cannot be done with a coat hanger and elicited a wide range of interesting ideas. Clare described how she uses her blog to, for example, explore and free associate ideas and to write in a different character.

Continue reading →

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.

Keynote speaker Ben Goldacre is probably the most famous scientific blogger in the UK, tackling pseudoscience and quackery in his Bad Science blog and weekly Guardian column. His eloquent, entertaining and expletive-filled intro provided a strong set of examples in which the traditional press have been hoodwinked by claims of ‘miracle cures’, whereas specialised elements of the blogosphere successfully scrutinised, attacked and demolished such bogus assertions. Ben, and bloggers like him, are increasingly discrediting peddlers of dubious products, filling holes of accountability that mainstream media lacks the time or expertise to address.

Ben was followed by a broad-ranging panel discussion on the use of blogs to communicate the quirks and joys of scientific life. Jenny Rohn and Anna Kushnir, bloggers on Nature Network, were joined by Grrl Scientist from ScienceBlogs, with Mo Costandi introducing and chairing the session. The panellists gave many useful insights into the day-to-day running of a blog, the pros and cons of anonymity, and communicating with the public via blogs.

Then the delegates split into three parallel sessions. Matt Wood of the Sanger Institute gave a polished and informative introduction to microblogging and aggregation tools such as FriendFeed. The power of these tools becomes clear when you look at the FriendFeed discussion of the conference itself. Each session was reported in short snippets as events unfolded, allowing anyone in the world to follow the discussion. In an adjacent room, Maxine Clarke and Euan Adie of NPG presented tips for both novice and advanced bloggers on how to set up and improve your blog, covering subjects such as blogrolls, profiles, DOI citation tools, and time-stamping services. The third parallel session had the most intriguing title for the day: There’s a Giraffe on my Unicycle: Can Blogging Enhance Your Creativity? Nature’s Henry Gee, popular science author Brian Clegg and novelist Clare Dudman led an entertaining discussion. Brian got the room warmed up with a creativity exercise: he asked everyone to think of things that cannot be done with a coat hanger and elicited a wide range of interesting ideas. Clare described how she uses her blog to, for example, explore and free associate ideas and to write in a different character.

Continue reading →