Accept no substitutes

At the Science Bloggers Conference

Murphey Hall is full. Folks are struggling to get on the net. The biggest problem is the UNC set up. Once on, the room is fairly well provisioned.

We’re even on schedule.

Food and set up are all fine — except that the Open Eye dropped the ball on delivering coffee. We (Brian) had to run get some from another nearby coffee shop.

Badger has a picture up already.

Did I mention that the swag bags are full of great science publications?
Bora gets things going. It was his idea to have a science blogging conference.

Then Anton announce Dr. Hunt Willard who created to first artificial human chromosome who is talking about science communications. He has amusing stories about his adventures trying to get his stories covered sanely by the press (MSM that is) and about writing OpEd pieces. (see AskBig).
Badger is IMing me with stories of digital accordions in the middle of all of this.

Props given to the Public Library of Science and various F/LOSS journals in discussion with Dr. Willard. Great discussion of scientists speaking to the public. Now a guy from Lancet asking about blogging and peer-review publishing — specifically about timing. Worries about the credibility of blogging and of scientists in the face of peer-review and citation. Will that change? Willard says no change. But he thinks that our current students who are used to real time will be the ones who bridge the two worlds. Can Lancet provide that bridge? Time frame? Willard says within three years. That soon.

[break]

Janet Stemwedel leads a discussion about how to be a blogging scientist.
[still helping folks set up their wireless. I will have learned a lot about WinDoz once this conference is over.]

Badger is amongst the many liveblogging the event. Other liveblogs and pictures at Technorati

[lunch and break outs — I exercise my garbage removal skills which are awesome if I do say so myself]

Adnaan Wasey of Online NewsHour is talking about Teaching and Science. Lea Winerman shows a section on Pig Farm Politics which has a NC angle.

How can a science blogger convert their stuff for use in teaching — what is a lesson plan? is asked by a science blogger.

Adnaan is pretending to be a wiki sorta. he is refering to a page on the wiki (linked above as teaching and science)

Is science about accuracy (as one guy here says; i think he means classical empiricism) or about the process of science through falsification or Popper’s critical rationalism or from Kuhn‘s more complex vision of “paradigm shifts.” Basically a discussion of the role of accuracy. Is accuracy the end or one of the tools that help science progress by falsification. We’re not even touching on critical science theory.

Science resources being tossed out like Science House at NCSU and Moodle and BlackBoard (which I don’t personally like) and Google Earth.

Dave Warnick recommends reading teachers’ blogs; Ouida Meyers recommends LearnNC and Dave’s tool ClassBlogmeister.

At drinks and later at dinner, we were joined by elected officials, US Representative Brad Miller (NC-13) and Chapel Hill Town Council Member Sally Greene. Miller has an interesting announcement which I have been ask not to blog just yet.

Great conference! Thanks to Anton, Bora and Brian for all their hard and good work.

4 Comments

  1. Steve B

    Suggestion for next time: business card or index card size printed handouts for you or related staff with the acces point name, password, and maybe a short “how to config” – I noticed that while many people were those who didn’t prereg and didn’t send their MAC address before the meeting, several just needed the information and didn’t get it off of the video screens (mostly because they didn’t try until after sessions started).

    The simplest (access point name and password) could fit on a business card, or a short instruction howto might fit on 4×6 index or maybe a 1/2-page sheet of paper.

    Remind me about this longer version if you like: task-based procedural documentation is what I do for a living more often than not. (Yes, I’m volunteering to help write this the next time.)

  2. Paul

    Cool! next up is likely a second Podcastercon. Catch Brian and chat with him.

  3. David Warlick

    You can also learn more from this conference by hitchhiking there. I completely missed the session on illustrating blogs, but go to learn about three new sources of stock and creative commons images through Lab Cat’s blogging of that conversation.

  4. Paul

    And even more at The Conference wiki’s list of liveblogging bloggers.
    Thanks David.

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