Next week, Nature is going to be covering the Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting which has been taking place every year for the past 61 years. Set on the idyllic island of Lindau on Lake Constance in Germany, it’s a chance for selected young scientists to meet with Nobel Laureates for a gathering of plenary discussions and informal conversations.
This year’s Meeting of Nobel Laureates is dedicated to Physiology/Medicine and there will be 24 Nobel Laureates ready to answer eagerly awaited questions from early career scientists. It’s an exceptional event with a unique atmosphere and we would certainly recommend checking out the programme.
For regular readers it may come as no surprise that throughout last year’s Lindau conference there was lots of blogging coverage on Nature Network. This year is no different as we intend to bring you a full week of Lindau coverage, linking out to all of the blogs, talks, discussions and even tweets surrounding the conference. Our blogging extravaganza will certainly transport you to the conference itself!
Furthermore, if you wish to reminisce, you can take a look at our coverage from last year’s meeting. We started our build-up by rounding up all previous Nature Network blog posts where people, science and culture behind the Nobel Prizes were discussed. We also had a map of Lindau as part of our Science City maps series and an amusing game (which never really caught on), “How many degrees of separation are there between you and a Nobel Prize winner?” Anyone fancy reviving it in the comments?
This year
This year we have even more ways to partcipate! There’s a brand new Lindau Nobel Community site which aggregates all online Lindau coverage, serving as the event’s interactive home. The site will include the official Lindau blogs in English, German, Spanish and Chinese, as well as gathering all Twitter, Flickr and any external blogging activity, eliminating the tiresome task of searching the ether for up-to-date coverage. So if you wish to share in the experience and even watch the videos from last year, make sure you add the site to your bookmarks!
The meeting commences on Sunday, but the blogging coverage has already got off to a flying start. Blogger Ashutosh Jogalekar, a postdoc at the University of North Carolina, has been discussing life after the Nobel Prize in his post, Society and Speculation:
Most of us know about the prize-winning work of this year’s Lindau Nobel Laureates, but how many of us keep track of what they did after winning the coveted honor? Scientists’ lives after the Nobel Prize change dramatically.
Lou Woodley has also been whetting our appetites with her Ode to the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. You can read a snippet from her creative poem below:
Every year Nobel Laureates make,
A week-long retreat by a beautiful lake.
They’re joined by researchers especially selected
To have their dreams discussed and perfected.
This is a chance no one expects to get twice;
Time to ask your hero for direct advice!
The latest post from biology editor and blogger, Lucas Brouwers, The treasures in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Mediatheque reveals why he became interested in the Lindau meetings:
To remedy this lack of familiarity with past Nobel laureates, I turned to the Lindau Meetings’ Mediatheque, which you can find here. This Mediatheque holds a selected set of recordings, chosen from six decades worth of Nobel Laureate Meetings. Most of the older lectures are available in audio only, but they still are well worth listening to.
You can hear more of his thoughts in the post.
Are you attending the conference? Then you must read the quick survival guide for Lindau at Lake Constance, a blog post imparting some of the best advice to those who are lucky enough to attend:
3. Get a twitter account
Allegedly there have been conference participants who were forced to raise a mortgage on their homes after the meeting due to ridiculously high phone bills. Even the quickest phone call will cost a fortune if you call other participants who might be on non-German phone networks. This year we expect 683 participants from more than 70 countries and it is recommended to stay in contact via wifi rather than mobile phone. At twitter.com/lindaunobel you will always be updated with the latest news.
Get involved yourself?
Sadly not everyone has the opportunity to attend this meeting, however do not be disheartened. Do you have a burning question that you want to ask a Nobel Laureate? Have you ever wondered what it takes to win a Nobel Prize, or are you interested in the future of Medicine? All you have to do is post your questions here. and the most popular ones will be featured in a special Nature Outlook supplement in the Autumn. Questions so far include:
Q. How do you think the public can be best convinced of the importance of doing fundamental research with no immediate applications in sight?
A. Martin Chalfie, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2008: The easiest way is to get people excited about their research so that you really have to explain what you do and have a very good understanding of yourself. Why are you spending your time on your research? There are lots of good reasons to investigate, many problems that don’t have a direct relevance to medicine or an application in industry, but which are fundamentally important questions that researchers are trying to dive into, because after all we are trying to understand the world.
There is also a competition on Flickr where you can upload your pictures onto our community page (#lnlm11). The photographers of the most brilliant, special, detailed or exciting pictures have the opportunity to win an Xbox Kinect.
Stay tuned…
Don’t forget that you can also watch the opening remarks, and lectures as they happen, over on the official web site. You can also find out more about the Stories and Pictures – plans for this year’s Nature Videos in Lou Woodley’s summary post.
Finally, science journalist Beatrice Lugger encourages those who are interested in being a guest blogger to get in touch:
You want to be a ‘Guest Blogger’ like Nobel Laureate Aaron Ciechanover, who told us why he comes to Lindau? As an attendee of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings you are welcome to join us and write about your personal expectations and experiences! You may do so before, during and after the meeting. You might blog in Chinese, English, German or Spanish. Just send us a short Email to get in contact with us and we will help you.
Now all you have to do is wait with bated breath until Sunday….