To celebrate Science Online New York’s (SoNYC’s) first birthday, we have been reminiscing on past events by highlighting some of the key take home messages, linking out to pictures and hearing from the co-organisers. We recently summarised all of the past SoNYC events; you can read the recap of the events from the science communication and outreach strand here, online tools for scientists and digital publishing here and the implicational issues – legal, policy and community here.

SoNYC  encourages audience participation in the discussion of how science is carried out and communicated online. So in order to celebrate our first birthday in an “app-t” syle, we are handing the mic over to the audience; anyone who would like to participate will get five minutes to show off their favourite online tool, application or website that makes science online fun.

To complement the celebrations, over the last two weeks we hosted a series of guest posts on Soapbox Science where a range of scientists shared details about what’s in their online science toolkits.

Summary of the #ToolTales posts

• Mary Mangan’s Tool Tale – SciVee – Making Science Visible
• Dr Peter Etchells’s Tool Tale  – Science Writing Made Easy
• Alan Cann’s Tool Tale – Google+? It’s very simple
• Jerry Sheehan’s Tool Tale – The Calit2 Research Intelligence Project
• Boris Adryan’s Tool Tale – A computational biologist’s personal toolbox
• Anthony Salvagno’s Tool Tale – figshare & Open Science – Making Your Impact Remain
• Daniel Burgarth and Matt Leifer’s Tool Tale – Online Seminars – Making Physics Accessible
• Zen Faulkes’s Tool Tale – A sunny future for cloud collaboration?
• Jenn Cable’s Tool Tale – Using Science Tools in the Classroom
• Mike Biocchi’s Tool Tale – Can Games Help Learning?
• Susanna Speier’s Tool Tale – Don’t completely write off Pinterest!
• Derek Hennen’s Tool Tale – Project Noah – A Community for Nature Lovers
• Musa Akbari’s Tool Tale – Meritocracy – Cloud-Reviewed Science
• Benedict Noel’s Tool Tale – Zombal – Outsourcing for Science
• Chris Surridge’s Tool Tale – Antibodypedia – Searching for the Perfect Partner
• Gerd Moe-Behrens’s Tool Tale – Leukippos – Synthetic Biology Lab in the Cloud

You can follow the online conversation on Twitter with the #ToolTales hashtag. Why not let us know how they compare to the tools that you use in the comment threads?

Hearing from the SoNYC organisers 

To finish our warm-up to the party, we also heard from each of the SoNYC co-organisers.  First up was co-organiser Jeanne Garbarino from Rockefeller University. In her retrospective post, she detailed the birth of SoNYC and how the internet has enabled her to tap into a community she never knew existed.  Next up John Timmer, Science Editor at Ars Technica, explained how the organisers all met and how they decided on the SoNYC format. Finally, Lou Woodley, nature.com’s Communities Specialist, explained the importance of cultivating connections and why SoNYC-style events are important.

It has been a super-SoNYC year and we hope you have enjoyed the conversations, whether it has been in person, online, or via our write-ups and Storifys. SoNYC’s second year has a lot to live up to!

Source: Super-SoNYC cupcakes to celebrate!