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 that 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 #scio12
Last week scientists, teachers, librarians, students, journalists, bloggers and others interested in how the online world is changing the way science is communicated, gathered at the Research Triangle area of North Carolina for the annual Science Online conference.
The agenda was split thoughtfully into workshops, discussion sessions, fun events and museum tours. Regular readers will be aware that we attended the conference and Lou Woodley co-hosted two sessions, the first a workshop and the second a discussion group:
Next generation scientific society and conference.
This discussion, co-hosted by both Lou and Scicurious, looked at how adding online elements can complement a conference and how scientific societies can use this to reach out to wider audiences. A range of topics was discussed, such as how to encourage live blogging and tweeting, how societies might go about dealing with science bloggers and how to archive online coverage.
You can find a summary of this session, as well as a Storify collating the online conversation, here on Of Schemes and Memes and on Scicurious’s blog.
The Attention Economy: The currencies for social media influence and exchange rates for attention
The session was moderated by Lou and Adrian J. Ebsary and focused on the various tools which claim to measure user influence across social networks and how to analyse these values and understand their limitations. The conversation also delved into some of the issues and etiquette around the ways you can increase your influence, such as listing, favouriting, public shout-outs, awarding K+ or #ff.
A Storify collating the tweets from this session can be found on Adrian’s blog and on Of Schemes and Memes.
Feel free to let us know if we have left out any tweets from either of these sessions, or if you have subsequently blogged about this session.
Sweeeeet!!!
For those who attended Science Online 2012, one of the “sweetest” associated fringe events was the Scisweetup. Following a conversation on Twitter about bacon-flavoured chocolate, we decided to hold a tweet up with a twist! Attendees did not let us down and there was a huge collection of weird and wonderful sweets, providing a rare opportunity to taste some of the most unusual flavours of chocolate around.
Source: Seth Mnookin‘s picture
Options included pistachio & red pepper in dark chocolate, chocolate with chipotle and coconut curry chocolate. You can check the Scisweetup wiki for more pictures and blog posts about the event and a big thanks to everyone who participated.
Super SONYC!
Last Thursday, the eagerly awaited 8th SoNYC event took place. The topic of discussion was, “Thinking Digital: Giving your research more reach (and making sure others can find it)” and the panel included:
Mark Hahnel, the developer of Figshare
Carol Feltes, the head librarian at RockefellerUniversity
Veronique Kiermer, an Executive Editor and Head of Researcher Services at Nature, and a member of the ORCID steering committee
Cathy Nortion, the library scholar at the Biodiversity Heritage Library at Woods Hole’s Marine Biological Laboratory.
You can catch up on the discussion via the recording of the live stream or read our summary post which includes a Storify of the online conversations. Details of the next SoNYC will be released soon, so do keep an eye out on the SoNYC Twitter account for details and keep Thursday February 16th free!
Events Calendar
Today Nature Publishing Group (NPG) have launched an expanded online calendar of global scientific events. The calendar provides users with a new way to search for science events, which can also be personalized and synced to an online or mobile calendar. The calendar is hosted on nature.com and provides users with an innovative way to find important dates in science, as well as events that have been specifically selected by Nature editors. Content includes:
-Conferences
-Training courses
-Careers events
-Journal publication dates
-International observances
-Congress
-Historical anniversaries
-Astronomical events
-Webinars/virtual events
You can find our more about the calendar in the official press release, or check it out for yourself.
This week has seen the launch of more NPG Twitter accounts. So make sure you follow the latest accounts:
- NatureOutlook: @NatureOutlook
- Action Potential: @APB_Neuro
You can also find a full Twitter list of NPG journals and products here.
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