I know that you have been asking that above question over and over again, anticipating the next nyc event with bated breath.

To partially explain the radio silence, I have been in transition (I am now at Nature) was traveling a bunch, but am solidly back in the city and missing the nyc science crew.

Now, I have to admit that the last happy hour produced a disappointing turnout, when compared to the expectation-crushing first and second events. I know that we can do better this time around.

NEXT EVENT on Thursday, Sept. 4 @19:00, M1-5 bar in TriBeCa. It is located here, as equidistant as one can get from the 1,2, A,C,E, N,Q,R,W, 4,6, and even the much beloved J,M,Z.

I talked to the owner and we should have plenty of space. Happy hour pricing is in effect from 16:00-20:00, so although I suggested 19:00 as a start time (just so I wouldn’t get yelled at for making it too early, like the first time), I suggest coming even earlier if you’d like. I promised him a good showing, and he promised me free entry to an event that is going on later in the evening at the bar (22:00 start time) . Although I don’t have all of the details, it involves a lot of people, fun and a DJ. Tickets at the door were going to be somewhere around $10-20, but if I give him names, those people will get on the “list” to get in free.

So, since it’s been a while, let’s have a roll call and see how many people we can get to come out to this event. When you signal your attendance by commenting, please let me know if you want to be on the list to get into the party later for free (plus number of guests, with guest names, if already known).

One final note, the nyc hub will be officially rolling out a little later than expected, probably within 2-3 months.

NYC will be one of the next ones! To get it launched, we are recruiting a small team of people from the NYC area to help us run it on a part-time, freelance basis. If you’re interested, see the job posting below and get in touch with me at c.lok at boston.nature.com.

Nature Network (http://network.nature.com) is the leading social networking website for scientists, developed and maintained by the publishers of Nature. It has profiles, groups, forums and blogs. It is a global site but also has local hubs where users from the same city or region can interact by reading and commenting on the local blog and participating in the local forum. They can also browse scientific jobs and events listings for their area and participate in local networking events.

We currently have hubs for Boston (http://network.nature.com/boston) and London (http://network.nature.com/london). We are expanding our site and launching new hubs later this year for New York City, Berlin and San Francisco (Bay area). We are seeking individuals based in these cities who will work on a part-time, freelance, contract basis as Nature Network Community Leaders to help run and promote the hub for their city.

As a Community Leader, you would:

• Produce content on a regular basis for your hub, in the form of blog posts, forum posts and event notices

• Moderate the hub’s blog and forum

• Promote and raise awareness of Nature Network and the local hub within your regional, scientific community

• Grow the user base from your area, identifying and recruiting local bloggers and groups of scientists to Nature Network

• Build and maintain relationships with key local users of Nature Network and connect them to each other

• Build and maintain relationships with key members of your local scientific community, particularly those with prominent online presence

• Build a network of events organizers and recruit them to input their events

• Organize and host regular meetups for local scientists

• Liaise with the Nature Network team and other Community Leaders

We are looking for:

• Demonstrated blogging and/or online community-building skills

• Strong connections with your local research community and a good understanding of the trends, culture and key players in science in your city

• Passion for scientific communication, sharing, community-building and networking

• A science background, preferably with research experience

For each hub, we are looking to recruit one to five Community Leaders.

Each position would be for six months, with an opportunity to renew after a six-month review.

To apply, please send us your resume, a sample blog post that you would post to the hub’s blog, and a brief description of how you would build a community of scientists in your city on Nature Network. Be sure to describe your online experience/activities/writing. Please email network@nature.com with the subject line “Community Leader”.

I missed the last one, but am looking forward to seeing everybody there. Thanks to Fred Palm from Columbia for helping to set this one up.

Wednesday, June 4 @ 8 pm

At the molecular level, Homo sapiens shares a common genetic heritage with all animals. Even a fly has more than one-third the same genes as a human being. Want to know more? Step into our miraculous shrinking machine and explore inner space as micronaut and genetic sleuth Rob DeSalle lectures on the incredible diversity of life, what molecular evolution tells us about disease, and how DNA research is helping save endangered species.

Serving “the genetically altered cocktail of the night, the Gene Fizz!” and a “special screening of Dr. Funque and His Petri Dish”

More details

In the basement @ Union Hall, 702 Union St. (at 5th Ave.) in Park Slope, Brooklyn

...

Subway: M,R to Union Street (closest); B,Q to 7th Avenue; 2,3 to Bergen Street; F to either 4th Ave/9th St or 7th Ave & 9th St (a bit of a walk)

Union Hall on Yelp, Google Map

In the meantime, you can effectively sign up for the local hub by following these steps:

• Log in, head to your profile page and click ‘edit your profile’.
• At the top, click ‘change your location’.
• Enter ‘New York’ as your home city.
• Nature Network will then suggest three potential ‘hubs’—regions (not necessarily cities) that may become full-fledged hubs like Boston and London once enough people from that area sign up. You’ll presumably want the New York City hub, so click that.

The hubs with most sign-ups are the most likely to be launched in the near future.

Just as a reminder, we have the Naturejobs Career Fair running in conjunction with annual meeting of the Long Island Life Sciences Initiative on June 5th. This would be a great spot to meet local companies- last year 300+ people attended the meeting.

Since effective networking is part of a great career, don’t miss out. You can get to the meeting on the LIRR and the venue is providing a shuttle- just call ahead or let me know what train you are coming in on and I can arrange it.

I hope to see you on the 5th.

PB

Pharma Karma Club

Thanks Matt for the information. Since administrators are necessary, it may be worth informing the powers that be of anyone interested in taking their nyc NN involvement to the next level. Almost certainly, one obstacle to becoming a hub would be a lack of personnel to curate and/or administrate…

Piggybacking on Matt’s last question, what would you want out of the nyc NN hub? If we generate good discussion on that topic here, I will collate the responses and post them to Matt’s suggestion forum from the group as a whole.

The event started out slow, with 4-5 people sipping beers when I showed up (late) at 17:30. For New York, I felt that being only 30 minutes late, I was actually running early. Regardless, a slow trickle of people rolled in relentlessly until about 20:00, when we most likely reached full capacity. In total, I think that more than 30 people showed up and at any given time, for a few hours, there must of been 20-25 nyc scientists drinking beer together.

Amazingly, almost 2/3 in attendance were from one Columbia campus or another, but we also counted attendees from NYU, Cornell, Princeton, Discover Magazine and NPG. The backgrounds of those toasting drinks were quite diverse, including graduate students, post-docs, post-doc office directors, science writers, editors and product managers; with such scientific fields as computational biology, computer science, neuroscience, and immunology represented. Looking around, I never saw anyone sitting alone, nor did anyone fail to find a good conversation, and quite a few drinks were consumed. In addition, the sharpies and promotional NN cards I had on display were put to good use, with several people exchanging email addresses, as one would expect from a networking forum.

I would provide explicit documentation of the night, but unfortunately, after the sun went down, Chris’ iPhone was not up to the task of capturing the antics being carried out in the dimly lit foyer of Lucky Jack’s. But there were enough witnesses to back up my stories, relegating pictures into obsolescence. In fact, for all those in attendance last night, please fill in your thoughts on the experience, or remind me of a funny story I neglected to mention.

Corie Lok, the senior Nature Network editor who issued a challenge to form a prominent nyc-based NN group during a visit to Columbia, emailed Natalie, Chris, and myself at around 18:45 asking:

How did the party go?

If you didn’t notice the past tense in that sentence, let me make sure that I bring it to your attention now. How did the nyc group respond? A lot later than 18:45, I can assure you. In fact, we only noticed the query because we were trying to take pictures with our phones.

We are still raging said Chris.

Puh-leez. We are NYC. Report pending, party in progress. added Natalie.

In fact, although I left near the end, apparently some small contingency lasted until past 22:00. Well-done my friends. Well-done.

Although we did quite well partying the night away in the LES, even the well-educated nyc scientist group on Nature Network can be taught a thing or two about serious partying. We shared the bar with another meeting of sorts, this one called the “Mommy Retreat” and was exactly that, although very few of them actually looked like mothers (well, I guess this IS Manhattan). These ladies definitely knew how to have fun after the kids were tucked into bed, and took their get-together to the next level when a delivery boy dropped off several boxes of pizza in the bar at just about the time when everyone in our group was about ready to gnosh on something (anything). Trust me, we learned our lesson from the ever-resourceful and forward-thinking mothers of New York City.

With the success of this gathering, we will definitely be having a follow-up, sometime within the first 2 weeks of May. To reward their willingness to travel, I propose that we plan the next nyc Happy Hour near Columbia, with The Heights standing out as a top choice. More to come on that…

In the meantime, those of you from Cornell and Rockefeller, start making your pitches for bars in your area, because the Upper East Side is next after Harlem. I have to warn you though, if you don’t come through with some good ideas, we’ll have to crash in TriBeCa or SoHo for June (closer to my neck of the woods…).

In parting, Corie has been trying to pit nyc and Berlin against one another in terms of who can rustle up more excitement and activity. Well, I read the write-up of their inaugural event as well as a challenge from the group administrators and I have my opinions on the current pecking order. But I’ll let you decide for yourselves.

There was an article about it in NYT today (in the Arts section, oddly) according to which the purpose is very much like the purpose of this group (except more muppets):

““The most exciting city in the world is going to be a little more exciting,” Mr. Alda said at a news conference at New York University.”

I propose a date of Wednesday, April 9 to christen this new group, perhaps at 17:00? Let the discussion/argument begin on the venue…

[Due to technical difficulties, this is a repost; give us a break, all new groups go through glitches!!]