As we announced last month, we’re pleased to be launching Science Online NYC (SoNYC) this Wednesday 20th April in New York. The is the first in a series of regular monthly discussion evenings hosted by nature.com and Ars Technica and held at Rockefeller University. It will begin by discussing how to successfully engage an online audience in complex or controversial topics.
In anticipation of the event, we thought we’d cover some key details to help everyone (even those not lucky enough to be in NYC) have a super-SoNYC experience.
If I want to attend, do I need to register?
While SoNYC is open to everyone from research scientists, to science bloggers and interested members of the public, we do have a limited capacity in the room that we are using. We’d also like to keep the number of attendees optimal for networking and engaging conversations. To help us to do this, we ask that you register for each of our events, via our Eventbrite page. This will also ensure you receive a name badge to help with the all-important networking aspect of the event 🙂 Please don’t be offended if you turn up to the event without registering to find that we don’t have room to fit you in.
OUR FIRST EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED
If you’d still like to attend, please register for the waiting list.
How can I find out who else is coming?
The Eventbrite page shows everyone who has registered for each SoNYC event. Everyone who supplies their Twitter handle will also be added to a list of SoNYC attendees on our Twitter account.
Will there be tweeting from the event?
We very much hope there’s going to be plenty of tweeting about SoNYC. The venue we’ve chosen does have wifi and we’re encouraging everyone to use the hashtag: #sonyc.We also hope to create "Storify ":https://storify.com/louwoodley archives of the twitter conversations – do let us know if you’d like to help with this.
What if I decide to blog about SoNYC?
We’d love the conversations around each SoNYC event to continue both on- and offline long after the original evening. If you do blog about SoNYC please tag your posts with the #sonyc hashtag and "let us know ":mailto:l.woodley@nature.com so that we can compile a list of all the coverage.
What if I can’t make it or don’t live in NYC?
While we think that the audience participation and opportunity for networking after the scheduled debate are what we hope will make SoNYC appealing, we also want to make the debates as widely available as we can. We will be livestreaming each event here as well as keeping an online archive of past events on our website once it’s ready.
Do you have a website?
We’re in the process of creating a website which will host the video archives of all the past events, as well as all the blog coverage plus Twitter conversations and more information about each event. More details soon.
Where else can I find out about SoNYC online?
We have a Twitter account, Facebook page and Livestream channel.
Can I propose a topic for a future SoNYC discussion?
We’d like to crowd-source the discussion topics for SoNYC as much as possible as this helps to keep the debates centred around topics of current interest. If you’d like to propose a topic, please send Lou Woodley an "email. ":mailto:l.woodley@nature.com
Can I financially support SoNYC?
Because we’d like to keep SoNYC free to all participants to attend, we will be actively looking for sponsors for future events. If you’d like to support the continuation of conversations around how science is carried out and communicated online, please do get in touch.