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.

I delivered a short talk summarising my essay, which was called “From Web 2.0 to the Global Database”. I’m reproducing the text below, together with some of the slides I used to illustrate my talk.

(Update 20/10/09: Added link to book website.)

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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.

I delivered a short talk summarising my essay, which was called “From Web 2.0 to the Global Database”. I’m reproducing the text below, together with some of the slides I used to illustrate my talk.

(Update 20/10/09: Added link to book website.)

Continue reading →

Last Friday Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons (and much else besides) visited our office in London and delivered a talk entitled ‘Innovation in Open Networks’. Here are my (incomplete and impressionistic) notes from the session:

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Last Friday Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons (and much else besides) visited our office in London and delivered a talk entitled ‘Innovation in Open Networks’. Here are my (incomplete and impressionistic) notes from the session:

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Last Thursday, Andrew Savikas, VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly Media and ebook expert, paid us a visit. We had some very interesting conversations about the future direction of publishing, and Andrew delivered a great talk on the topic. He kindly provided a copy of his slides (16MB PDF). My (partial and impressionistic) notes are below.

Continue reading →

Last Thursday, Andrew Savikas, VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly Media and ebook expert, paid us a visit. We had some very interesting conversations about the future direction of publishing, and Andrew delivered a great talk on the topic. He kindly provided a copy of his slides (16MB PDF). My (partial and impressionistic) notes are below.

Continue reading →

Stealing a format from Nat, here are some things on my radar that might interest Nascent readers:

1. Next week’s Science Online London meeting (co-produced by Nature Network) has been long sold out, but for those who missed getting a ticket, or who can’t travel to London, there will also be live video streaming of the conference into Second Life. Entrance is £10 or $15 and it is open to all. SL attendees will be able to see all the live video and ask questions of the speakers. Jo Scott (avatar name: Joanna Wombat) and colleagues will also be running free orientations sessions for newbies. To avoid missing this one too, register here now.
2. Nature Methods is seeking votes for its 2009 Method of the Year. The previous winners are next-generation sequencing (2007) and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy in (2008). (And if you haven’t seen the video on the latter then you should.) Check out the current 2009 nominees and vote tallies here.
3. This isn’t exactly new news (hey, it’s been busy round here), but for anyone who has seen it yet, Edge has some coverage of outcomes and experiences at Sci Foo ’09 (including a contribution from yours truly). We also have a short video from the event coming out soon – watch this space.
4. Meanwhile elsewhere on Edge, check out this report on another wonderful event (though sadly one I didn’t attend): a master class from George Church and Craig Venter on the brave new world of synthetic genomics.

Stealing a format from Nat, here are some things on my radar that might interest Nascent readers:

1. Next week’s Science Online London meeting (co-produced by Nature Network) has been long sold out, but for those who missed getting a ticket, or who can’t travel to London, there will also be live video streaming of the conference into Second Life. Entrance is £10 or $15 and it is open to all. SL attendees will be able to see all the live video and ask questions of the speakers. Jo Scott (avatar name: Joanna Wombat) and colleagues will also be running free orientations sessions for newbies. To avoid missing this one too, register here now.
2. Nature Methods is seeking votes for its 2009 Method of the Year. The previous winners are next-generation sequencing (2007) and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy in (2008). (And if you haven’t seen the video on the latter then you should.) Check out the current 2009 nominees and vote tallies here.
3. This isn’t exactly new news (hey, it’s been busy round here), but for anyone who has seen it yet, Edge has some coverage of outcomes and experiences at Sci Foo ’09 (including a contribution from yours truly). We also have a short video from the event coming out soon – watch this space.
4. Meanwhile elsewhere on Edge, check out this report on another wonderful event (though sadly one I didn’t attend): a master class from George Church and Craig Venter on the brave new world of synthetic genomics.

Interested in a senior position on the growing, hard-working, award-winning Nature.com team? If so, we have two vacancies that you should check out: Head of Online Communities and Assistant Publisher.

Enquiries and CVs to the contact address given in the ads, or to me via my Nature Network page.

Interested in a senior position on the growing, hard-working, award-winning Nature.com team? If so, we have two vacancies that you should check out: Head of Online Communities and Assistant Publisher.

Enquiries and CVs to the contact address given in the ads, or to me via my Nature Network page.