Looks like this August is the center of my science related social life in 2008: starting with the bottom-up BioBarCamp unconference in Palo Alto followed by the top-down Sci Foo Camp unconference in Mountain View and now The Science Blogging Conference in London on the 30th. This conference is an interesting mix: on one hand it is organized solely by Nature Publishing Group and held at The Royal Institution of Great Britain (“the oldest independent research body in the world”), on the other hand it is about science blogging (one of the newest independent research body of the world) which today is affordable for almost everybody in the world with a broadband connection and already has an increasing equalizing effect on how science is done and how science is communicated. Secondly, although it started as conference with a schedule in advance the organizers later included 3 parallel unconference sessions that will be proposed at the beginning of the conf. I hope that later even the strictest, hardcore scientific conferences will include unconference sessions thereby introducing a random, surprising and entertaining element into the regularities of academic life.
What I am most interested in on The Science Blogging is the people, the bloggers behind and their case stories of successful or failed actions, communications, instigations via their blog posts.
From the programme I’d like to highlight Read the rest of this entry »
