Communities Happenings is a weekly post with news of interest to NPG’s online communities. The aim is to provide this info in one handy summary. Listings include tweetups and conferences which we’re attending and/or organising as well as new online tools, products or cool videos. We also occasionally flag up NPG special offers and competitions plus updates about NPG social media activities such as new accounts you might want to follow. Do let us know what you find most useful!
Science Online London Tickets
This year’s Science Online London will take place on Sunday 11th and Monday 12th November and we’d love for you to join us! Now celebrating its fifth year, Science Online London is an annual two-day conference hosted by nature.com for anyone interested in how science is communicated and carried out online.The first batch of tickets went on sale on Friday and sold out in a matter of hours. The second batch was released last Wednesday and the third and final batch will be released via our Eventbrite page very soon. Stay tuned, as the programme will also be released soon.
Naturejobs Career Expo 2012 
The Naturejobs Career Expo 2012 will take place on 20 September 2012 at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London. A Question Time-style debate about metrics will take place and will be moderated by Nick Campbell, Executive Editor, Nature and Associate Director of Macmillan Science Communication:
Speakers from the Times Higher Education, Research Excellence Framework, Thomson Reuters and Digital Science will answer questions about assessing and ranking excellence of institutions, countries, researchers and articles and the types of metrics and data sources that are used. They will discuss how this is changing, in the context of amendments to the Research Excellence Framework, funder policies, social media and the rapid feedback enabled by online publishing.
The panel:
- Euan Adie, Founder, Altmetric and Product Manager, Digital Science.
- Phil Baty, Editor, Times Higher Education Rankings and Editor-at-Large of Times Higher Education.
- Simon Pratt, Product Manager, Institutional Research, Thomson Reuters.
- Vicky Jones, Deputy Manager, Research Excellence Framework (REF).
The debate will be live streamed. Questions can also be submitted in advance on Twitter or on the LinkedIn event using the hashtags #NJCE12 and #metrics. More information can be found in the official press release here.
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
The sixth annual anthology of The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will be released tomorrow, September 18th. Edited by Bora Zivkovic, blogs editor over at Scientific American, you can join him on an online chat at 12pm EDT to find out more.
As a part of the #NYCSciTweetup and to celebrate the release of the book, on Tuesday evening in New York City there will be an informal launch with readings and signings from a few of the authors. If you can’t join in person, make sure you join in online!
This month’s SoNYC – The $1,000 genome is here – are we ready?
Now onto another popular event in NYC, SoNYC. On September 20th, at Rockefeller University, this month’s SoNYC panel will discuss the trajectory of DNA sequencing technology, and look at other techniques that are in development, and might contribute to our big data glut. The panel will also consider whether we have the right tools to understand the information these technologies are generating, and what we might need to take full advantage of the era of cheap genomes.
ScienceOnline
ScienceOnline, organisers of an annual conference in the US of the same name and other monthly US-based events, now has a new homepage: https://scienceonline.com, do check it out. Registration for ScienceOnline2013 held in North Carolina opens today at 9am EDT. You can find out more information here and the programme here.