Science in the Triangle

@freesci: There are no sidewalks in RTP. How’s going collaboration here if you need to drive to meet other people? #scio10

The first thought that came to my mind after I read this Twitter post from ScienceOnline2010 was “This is the South. We don’t wander around outside socializing. We’re private and polite and our social events are productions. We stay inside, where we eat fried foods and drink sweat tea.”

My second thought was that those are, of course, crude generalizations. The Triangle is one of the fastest growing areas in the U.S., because people from all over the world move here. Southerners live next to Yankees (a term that is used by the local newspaper in page 1 headlines), Chinese, Indians, Europeans, Africans, you name it.

Still, public transportation, bike lanes and sidewalks aren’t on top of the priority list in large parts of the Triangle. So we have to come up with other ways to connect.

Since this area also has one of the highest concentrations of Ph.D.s in the U.S., science and technology come to the rescue. That makes this the perfect spot for ScienceOnline2010, doesn’t it? We’re tweeting, life-streaming, blogging, spending Linden dollars in Second Life.

My third thought was that after living here nearly 10 years I would still like to see more sidewalks.

A couple of last-minute cancellations allowed us to bring in a few more people from the (enormous!) waitlist. Here are the lucky, under-the-wire, last-day registrants:

Chris Mooney is a science journalist and writer. He blogs on The Intersection and tweets.

Anne Frances Johnson is a Freelance Science Writer, a graduate of the The Medical and Science Journalism Program at UNC.

Kevin Smith is the Scholarly Communications Officer at Perkins Library at Duke University and he blogs on Scholarly Communications @ Duke.

Jennifer Brock is a science teacher at Martin Middle School in Raleigh.

Susan Booker is the News Editor for Environmental Health Perspectives. And she is on Twitter.

ScienceOnline2010 is starting in three days! If you are not excited yet….well, I think you should be! And perhaps I can help you….with this post.

First, see the complete list of attendees, or, if you want more details about everyone, browse through these introductory posts. It is always good to know more about people you are about to spend two or three days with….

Then, check out the Program to see which session in each time-slot you want to participate in. Go to individual session pages right now and join in the discussions, or ask questions. Start shaping the discussion online before it even starts offline.

This is an Unconference, meant to be highly participatory. The point of the meeting is to have conversations. The sessions’ titles are meant to be topics for conversations, not lectures. The session moderators are supposed to keep the room engaged and on topic, not to drone on and on in a lecture. And then, there are all those informal conversations that happen in the hallways, and during additional events, and in the hotel lobby and at the hotel bar…..

What to do if you will not be physically present but want to follow? Graham Steel has some ideas, but there are plenty of ways to follow, and to some extent participate in the meeting:

Read more…

The conference is starting in just a few days. Overwhelmed yet? Here are some tips - what to do while at the conference, as well as what to do if not physically present but interested in following virtually.

Unless a few more waitlisters manage to squeeze in at the last moment, this post will be the last post introducing the participants - we expect as many as 275 people in one place during some events!

Morgan Giddings is a Systems Biology Professor at UNC Chapel Hill. She blogs on Morgan on Science and is writing a book on Marketing Your Science. She is also on Twitter.

Bill Cannon works at Krell Institute and the ASCR Discovery and he tweets.

Denise Young is the Director of Education Programs at the UNC Morehead Planetarium and Science Center in Chapel Hill.

William Saleu comes all the way from Papua New Guinea. He is currently a graduate student at the Duke Marine Lab. He blogs and tweets.

Lyndell Bade recently moved to Greenville NC to start graduate studies in the Biology Department at East Carolina University doing shark research. She blogs on SaveOurSharks and People, Policy, Planet and tweets.

As you know you can see everyone who’s registered for the conference, but I highlight 4-6 participants every day as this may be an easier way for you to digest the list. You can also look at the Program so see who is doing what.

Anna Kushnir is a veteran of our conferences. She is the Senior Analyst at Gryphon Scientific and she blogs on Lab Life. I interviewed Anna a couple of years ago.

Erik Martin is the Community manager at reddit.com. He blogs on Megazoa and he tweets.

Anna Lena Phillips is the Assistant Book-Review Editor at the American Scientist and the Poetry Editor at the Fringe magazine.

Amy Freitag is a graduate student in ecology and conservation at Duke University and is one of the co-bloggers on Southern Fried Science.

Maria-Jose Vinas is a freelance science writer and journalist (and a veterinarian). She is the public information coordinator and twitterer for the American Geophysical Union.

Larry Boles is an animal keeper at the Museum of Life+Science in Durham. He manages the department’s blog and works with the Innovation and Learning group on Adult Science Programs. He will be your leader for the Museum tour. Larry is also on Twitter.