Tag: reflections

Beyond Peer Review: Highlights from #Scio11

 

Science Online 2011 Badge

Overview:

After a whirlwind American Library Associations MidWinter and a couple vacation days with my family in California I headed across the United States to North Carolina for Science Online 2011, held in Research Triangle Park. For those of you not familiar with Science Online it bills itself as an un-conference, a place where the presenters are there to facilitate a discussion, but the audience is the real source information.

I’ve been to a few un-conferences and know that you’re probably thinking about how lots of un-conference sessions fail to deliver, but I have to say that all the un-conference discussions at #scio11 that I attended had extremely engaged presenters and audience members. ?Instead of wishing the session would just end at a certain point, sessions left you wishing that you had an extra hour or two to continue your discussion.

Un-conferences are often thought of as less professional, less rigorous, but #scio11 blows those preconceptions out of the water. Unlike a traditional conference where you may be speaking with your peers in a niche area attendees at #scio11 came from many backgrounds, just to give you a small idea of the types of people I met: industry researchers, university faculty, high school teachers & students, journal editors, journalists, programmers, and science bloggers, to see more check out the #scio11 attendee list. These attendees were not a passive audience but an active and vital force which provided insight and caused discussions to turn in exciting, if unexpected, directions.

In the interest of full disclosure, and so you don’t think I’m sugar coating things, there was one snafu during the workshops on Friday when we apparently overloaded the server because the Internet connections slowed to a crawl when a room full of people tried to load and use Prezi at the same time. As far as technical problems go I didn’t consider it that big of a deal, but I suspect with the proposed change in venue next year that it won’t be a problem in the future.

Bora's 2010

A great opening:

…by Bora & Anton (the main organizers of #scio11) followed by one of the most interesting opening speeches I’ve ever attended by Robert Krulwich. What was unique about Robert Krulwich’s speech was that instead of using slides he used audio clips to illustrate his talk and then surprised us with a video clip at the end. His talk has me seriously considering if that might not be an effective way to present in the future. Clearly a master of audio timing I’d highly recommend that you listen to Krulwich’s keynote speech!

SciO11 Video: Bora & Anton Opening (Part 1)
SciO11 Video: Bora & Anton Opening (Part 2)
SciO11 Video: Robert Krulwich Keynote (Part 1)
SciO11 Video: Robert Krulwich Keynote (Part 2)
SciO11 Video: Robert Krulwich Keynote (Part 3)

 

Biomanufacturing:

GoldenLeaf Biomanufacturing Facility

Thanks to Russ Campbell of the Burroughs Wellcome Trust without whom we would not have been able to tour the Golden LEAF Biomanufacturing Training & Education Center. I have to admit that initially I signed up for this tour because it was an area I needed to learn more about for work, however, thanks to Winnell Newman who provided the tour, Walter, Rhianna, and Russ I not only learned a lot about the biomanufacturing industry and training, but had a fun time while doing so.

Completely blown away:

Luckily I sat with Stacy Baker and some of the students from her class blog, Extreme Biology at the group dinners Friday night. Not only was I impressed with the maturity of Stacy’s students, but also with their intelligence and depth of thought. ?I honestly think Stacy’s students were the smartest people in the room and I had a great time chatting with them and finding out about their hopes and dreams for the future. Watch out, Stacy’s students are going to change the world, they’re already doing it!

Sigma Xi Wall of Nobel Prize Winners
Sigma Xi Wall of Nobel Prize Winners

Discussions:

Active participation was the key to the #Scio11 experience. I learned more about advances and issues in science, data curation, and science communication from the free-range discussion sessions and the individual conversations in the hall than I could ever have learned digging around the Internet.

If you’re a science librarian, scientist, science enthusiast, or journalist and want to know what the hot issues are, what people really want, #Scio12 will be the place to be next January. I’m really grateful to @2020Science for making me aware of the convention, it may have been the most useful information I’ve been passed all year.

Special Swag & Other Goodness:

1) The Beautiful Blue Crab DVD (Link to NCSU YouTube chanel versions)
2) Poisoner?s Handbook
3) Science of Kissing Promo Chapstick
4) Annoyatron
5) #ihuggedbora
6) Endangered Species Condoms
7) Canopy Meg <= This woman is my new science hero!

#1 Lesson Learned: Show up & participate to succeed!
Have lots of fun & make new friends & meet future collaborators at the same time! :-)

Remember it’s never too early to plan for next year so put #Scio12 on your calendar. I’m assured that the venue will be bigger next year, but I would register ASAP since #Scio11 sold out in 45 minutes!

Hope to see you there!

You Can Save The World!

Set of Multicultural Dolls
You can save the world!

People who dare to care are often put down by others for dreaming for daring to believe that they can make a difference, but anyone who has read about the butterfly effect or found their life headed in a different direction from a chance encounter knows that big changes can happen due to small forces. All of us can save the world.

Take Aways:

Show up! Volunteer! Work for what matters to you!
Act in a positive manner and you will become a more positive person!

The reasoning behind the takeaways is below for those interested. I’d like to stress that there’s no one right way to get things done, this post is based on what works for me and what I’ve observed as traits of those whom I consider to be both professionally successful and personally happy and fulfilled.

Special thanks to #scio11 and @LibRoy for inspiring this post!

How can you save the world?

  1. Be kind to others in all your dealings with them, don’t take out your frustrations on others. (People in service professions are often vilified or dehumanized on a whim. It is amazing how much the quality and thoughtfulness of the service you receive improves when you are kind and thoughtful person.)
  2. When others ask for advice make the time to give it. It can be very uncomfortable to give advice because you may not want to unduly influence someone else’s choice but advice doesn’t have to reflect a single point of view. One technique is to go through all the options and consequences you can think of with a person, tell them that they have a choice and that you know they will make the one which is right for them. You might also ask if you can refer them to an expert, the important part is that people have the information to make the choice that’s right for them.
  3. If you can do something for someone else why not do it? If we want the world to be a better place then we need to make it so with our own actions, waiting around for someone else to fix all of our problems isn’t going to work. Every act of kindness counts, you never know what effect you’ll have on someone’s life. The person you inspire or help may be the Nobel Prize Winner, or the future parent of the next President or Prime Minister.
  4. Be prepared to put in a lot of effort! Most people who succeed have a string of unshared not-quite successes or failures, this is normal. You won’t always reach your goals on the first try, or even the second, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t keep trying. Learn from your rejections, mistakes, and failures, take a few days to step back and really contemplate other people’s criticisms and your future efforts will dramatically improve. At Brick and Click by one speaker who was working on an education grant had 6 rejections before her team found a funding agency willing to support their efforts. Persistence pays off!

Changing the world is hard work!

Big changes take time and effort to implement. Some problems are so big that your efforts may not be successful in your life time but provide the stepping stones for others to succeed. Immediate gratification is nice, recognition is nice, but the reason you work toward a more positive future should be to improve life for those around us and those yet to come. Being negative (which is different from venting) makes it impossible to enjoy life. Doing things to help others feels good and improves your quality of life even if you don’t always see the results first hand.