SpotOn London 2014 – Fringe Events

To accompany this year’s SpotOn London conference, at the Wellcome Trust on Friday, 14 November and Saturday, 15 November, we have a number of exciting fringe events taking place around London.

Tickets are available for the main event and you can read about the workshops, panels and unconference here. This year’s theme looks at the challenges of balancing the public and the private in the digital age.

Here’s the run-down on fringe events taking place across the week.

 

Pint of Science Logo with GlassesPint of Science

When: Thursday 13th November 2014, 7pm – 11pm

Where: The Driver, Wharfdale Road, King’s Cross

Pint of Science have teamed up with SpotOn London to offer an evening of informal, fun science talks relating to science policy, communication and preventing fraud in science.

In between pints and talks we’ll gather around for some good old fashioned storytelling with a science theme.

Speakers so far include Professor Tony Segal (UCL), who will be talking about how we can prevent fraud in science and Dr Aeneas Wiener (Cytora), who will talk about how his company Cytora uses open data to assess real time political risk. A third speaker will be announced shortly.

The event will be held the evening before the SpotOn conference, in The Driver pub near King’s Cross, on Thursday 13th November at 7pm.

Tickets cost £3 and are available at https://www.wegottickets.com/event/295178.

 

science showoff 2014 logo

Science Showoff

When: Friday 14th November 2014, 7pm – 10pm

Where: Basement bar, The Star of Kings pub, London

Science Showoff is the anarchic science cabaret night that gives everyone the chance to share their love of science in whatever chaotic way they like.

The stage at the Star of Kings will be full of SpotOn conference delegates and the cream of London’s science communication scene, talking about science, telling jokes, doing demos, playing songs… hell, they can do an interpretive dance if they want to as long as it relates to science.

The whole thing is loosely held-together by our MC and super-nerd Steve Cross, who will be keeping our acts to time and getting science completely wrong for laughs.

Tickets cost £6 with all donations going to the Lightyear Foundation charity and are available at https://www.wegottickets.com/event/295387

Get involved: If you think you’ve got what it takes to showoff your science and you want to take part, we’re currently looking for five performers who are attending SpotOn London 2014 to perform 9-minute sets, communicating any kind of science in any way at all. You could:

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Let’s do an unconference

Guest Post by Martin Fenner.

Martin Fenner 
is the technical lead for the PLOS Article-Level Metrics project. Before taking this position in 2012 he worked as a medical oncologist at the Hannover Medical School Cancer Center in Germany. He has served on the ORCID Board from 2010 to 2012 and is a member of the ORCID Outreach Steering Group.

This year’s SpotOn London conference takes place November 14-15 and registration opened this Monday. I have been helping to organize this conference since 2009, and I again look forward to the sessions, and – more importantly – the discussions with people in and between sessions this year.

The name (ScienceBlogging London, ScienceOnline London, SpotOn London), the location (Royal Institution, British Library, Wellcome Conference Center), the people organizing (too many to mention, but Nature Publishing Group always at the core), and the fringe events (lots of cool things from science tours toStory Collider) and the format have always changed slightly over the years, and this year again is a bit different. The biggest change is obviously that Lou Woodley is no longer an organizer (as she announced at last year’s conference), but this is also the first SpotOn conference with a theme:

The challenges of balancing the public and the private in the digital age

This is obviously a very broad topic, but nicely encompasses many important issues that we are dealing with in scholarly communication today. The draft program is posted here, and I’m helping organize the sessions on sharing sensitive data and open peer review. More details will follow for all these sessions.

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SpotOn London 2014 Draft Programme

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We’re pleased to announce that the SpotOn London conference will take place at the Wellcome Trust on Friday, 14 November and Saturday, 15 November 2014.

This year’s theme will be on the challenges of balancing the public and the private in the digital age. Friday will see panels, workshops and keynotes on topics including: sharing sensitive data, measuring social impact, open peer review and the right to be forgotten. In an exciting change to our Saturday programme, SpotOn London will be hosting an unconference completely picked and run by the community within this year’s theme.

Find out more details about the event in our previous blog post.

Tickets go on sale today at noon (UK time) via our Eventbrite page.

This year there are two ticket types, a full two-day conference ticket (£60) and a Saturday only ticket (£35) – which includes breakfast, lunch and other refreshments.

As the conference has sold out every year, we recommend buying your ticket as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

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How to get a ticket for this year’s SpotOn London

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With a month to go, we’ve been busy behind the scenes planning for this year’s SpotOn London conference on 14th and 15th November. We are pleased to announce that we can now share some more details about how you can attend the event.

What is SpotOn London?

If you’ve not attended before, SpotOn London is an annual opportunity to meet other people interested in how science is carried out and communicated online. The two day event, which marks its sixth year, is hosted by Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, Digital Science and the Wellcome Trust.  We’re also delighted to have Martin Fenner of PLOS joining us as a co-organiser again this year.

The conference is taking place on Friday 14th and Saturday 15th November  Find out more details about the event in our blog post announcing the dates.

This year’s theme will be on the challenges of balancing the public and the private in the digital age. Friday will see panels, workshops and keynotes on topics including: sharing sensitive data, measuring social impact, open peer review and the right to be forgotten. In an exciting change to our Saturday programme, SpotOn London will be hosting an unconference completely picked and run by the community within this year’s theme.

How can I get a ticket?

This year we’re releasing tickets to attend the main conference in one batch which will go on sale at noon (UK time) on Monday 13th October via our Eventbrite page.

This year there are two ticket types, a full two-day conference ticket (£60) and a Saturday only ticket (£35) – which includes breakfast, lunch and other refreshments.

As the conference has sold out every year, we recommend buying your ticket as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

What if I want to run a session

On Saturday, the programme will be crafted by the delegates. There will be a Google doc before the conference for session suggestions. Saturday’s schedule will be formulated on the Friday at the conference. If you are only attending on the Saturday and want to run a session, do let us know in advance.

If we’ve already been in touch with you and you’ve agreed to coordinate a session on the Friday, please don’t purchase a ticket. If you’ve got any questions about organising sessions and joining in the unconference, please do get in touch.

What about attending fringe events?

We’ve also been busy coordinating plans for fringe events on the evenings of Thursday 13th and Friday 14th November. Tickets to these events will be offered to conference attendees first. We’ll announce details of the fringe events soon – so stay tuned!

Follow @SpotonLondon and the hashtag #solo14 for updates and if you’re not already on our mailing list, or if you have any questions, drop us a line at blogs@nature.com and we’ll happily add you!

SpotOn London: Public interest and privacy in the digital world – 14/15 November 2014

Screen Shot 2014-10-02 at 15.13.36The annual conference, SpotOn London, will be taking place at the Wellcome Trust on Friday, 14 November and Saturday, 15 November 2014. The two day event, which marks its sixth year, will be hosted by Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, Digital Science and the Wellcome Trust.  We’re also delighted to have Martin Fenner of PLOS joining us as a co-organiser again this year. SpotOn London is a dynamic, lively melting pot of scientists, science communicators, technologists, and those interested in science policy.

This year’s theme will be on the challenges of balancing the public and the private in the digital age. Friday will see panels, workshops and keynotes on topics including: sharing sensitive data, measuring social impact, open peer review and the right to be forgotten. In an exciting change to our Saturday programme, SpotOn London will be hosting an unconference completely picked and run by the community within this year’s theme. Issues explored will include:

  • Is our understanding of where the lines blur between private and public keeping pace with technology?
  • How do we balance public interest with the right to privacy when it comes to personal data?
  • How much are we prepared to share for our own interests, and do we really know how much we are sharing about ourselves?
  • How do we balance personal opinion and professional image on social media?
  • Has the right to be forgotten managed to strike a balance between the right of information and the individual’s right to privacy?
  • Does scientific peer review need to be open? And would this work?

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