What will the format of the conference be like?
Martin Fenner
Friday, 25 April 2008 18:02 UTC
Now that we have settled on location, time and name for the conference, we can start thinking about the format of the conference. I am very interested in the Barcamp/Unconference format, but I have no experience with it. What are the lessons learned from other similar conferences, e.g. the North Carolina Science Bloging Conference or SciBarCamp?
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Martin,
Me neither.
Whilst I did not attend in person, this was my 1st experience
of a hybrid meeting.What are the lessons learned from other similar conferences, e.g. the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference.
Bora did a ‘small’ round-up a few days later.
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You know, the Science Blogging Conference wasn’t all that un-conference-y. SciFoo was much more free-form. SciFoo began with a giant white board divided into hours and days. People went up and wrote in the sessions they wanted to lead/chair. And that was basically it – the conference, with many concurrent sessions.
The Science Blogging conference, on the other hand, had a pre-set agenda, with a couple of large sessions attended by all and a few smaller, concurrent sessions. I think depending on the size of the meeting, as in the number of attendants, one format might work better than the other. SciFoo was so successful because there were 2.5 days and 200 people. I can’t say how a truly unformatted conference would work for a smaller group. I think the best approach would be a hybrid of the two – have a couple of pre-planned large sessions and leave some time slots open for people to organize the sessions that they want to lead. Perhaps pre-poll the attendees to see what they would like to see on the agenda? That sounds like another forum topic waiting to happen…
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Anna, you make some very good points and suggestions. Given the size and length of the conference, I don’t think we’ll be doing too much of an unconference format.
We will, however, be asking for ideas for topics, sessions, speakers in this forum soon so everyone, stay tuned and start thinking about what you want to see talked about at the conference. Perhaps we’ll even have an informal vote here on some of the better ideas. We would use those votes to help us set the agenda. So the session topics would essentially come from the attendees, but we would set the agenda ahead of time, rather than on the first day of the conference like they do at Scifoo. How does that sound?
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Is the conference open to everyone with a scientific and/or blogging interest, or is it for professional scientists who also blog?
Another way of putting it: to come along, do you have to be a scientist, and do you have to have a blog?
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One topic I’m very much interested in would be Is Web 2.0 failing in Biology? In other words, are Web 2.0 tools, including science blogs, helping the typical scientist in his daily work? Or is it just a waste of time for most people and really just catching on with a small group of enthusiasts?
Maxine, my personal view is that anybody interested in blogging about science should be invited, and this includes journalists, patient advocates and probably a few other professions.
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SciBarCamp had 130 participants (about 100 at any given time) and we planned the schedule for Saturday on Friday night by having people put up their suggestions for talks, and walk around to look at all the proposals and meet people. There was a voting section on the proposal sheets, but all the talks were slotted in – the votes were used to allocate rooms. In the morning we had one big room, so everything was centralized. In the afternoon we had smaller rooms. (This division of space was the same at the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging conference. I didn’t go in 2008, so don’t know about that.)
However! In all the feedback we’ve received, the only thing that people commented on as needing improvement was the schedule... But they all had different comments about the schedule, so it’s very hard to even say exactly where it needed improvement. Well, everyone pretty much agreed that we should start and end later, that was the only thing that’s clear…
You can read some comments on our NN forum and I reply to a few others on my blog here (scroll down to “the schedule”). We also had a session at SciBarCamp to evaluate and get feedback, but I don’t have notes from that. (I think Jen Dodd does).Hope that helps!
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Maxine, Matt and I will soon be posting more information in this group’s profile about the overall aim of the conference and its intended audience. To answer your question though…the conference is open to anyone with an interest in science blogging, including science bloggers, readers of science blogs, people interested in learning more about the science blogosphere. So no, you don’t have to be a scientist and you don’t have to have a blog.
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Martin,
We will soon be starting a new forum topic here asking for session ideas, so please hold your thoughts for now. When we start that thread, can you repost your idea there? Sorry, we just want to keep things organized, rather than having session ideas scattered across different threads.You guys are so keen, we’re having trouble keeping up with you! :)
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I’m going for a look around the Royal Institution in a couple of weeks, to get a better idea of the new layout and to discuss the logistics.
This will give us a better idea of room sizes and therefore the different formats we can support.
So I suggest we hold off discussion of format and speakers until I’ve gathered the facts.
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Timothy Campbell posted his experience from PodCamp Toronto. One of the best suggestions in my opinion is to set up, perhaps in this forum, a “List of Sessions Offered and Sessions Wanted” as they did there.
From my limited experience with open lab notebooks and resistance from other members of my lab, both on principle and in execution, I’d advise against working this with a wiki. They are just not user-friendly enough, in my opinion. Although potential Science Bloggers attendees are perhaps a more savvy group of people.
Corie, Matt, perhaps open up a brainstorming thread and let us rip?
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