First up, thanks to Matt Brown, Corie Lok , Li Kim Lee , Anna Kushnir and Timo Hannay for organising such a fun and memorable event last weekend.
Thanks also to all the people who took the time to host interesting sessions and unconference topics.
I promise to post more content here at Nature Network, in the meantime, nature networkers might be interested in Famous for fifteen people (some notes from sciblog 2008).
(Marilyn Monroe picture by Andy Warhol and oddsock )
Until the next time…
Thanks Duncan for coming out. We look forward to reading more of your writing here!
That is a great blog post at the link, Duncan. I realise there is at least one more overlap in my list with one of yours, but time is short…I aimed to try to say hello to everyone at the meeting with whom I’d previously interacted online (scary, in a few cases), but it proved impossible. Great conference, though. The “contacts” list of my newtwork snapshot can attest to that.
@Maxine I wonder what Dunbar’s number for conferences is? Must be less that 120 I think? Depends what counts as “meeting” too?
Interesting question. For me as a blogger (ie my personal blog, not work blogs), the 15 is just great, suits me fine. I have made some true virtual and real-world friends via blogging (including Clare Dudman).
But for a conference? I have never met and had “proper” conversations with so many people at a one-day conference before, and the pre-knowledge of the web and NN had a lot to do with that. Dunbar’s number is higher if you do the “introductions” online pre-conference, in effect.
As you say, depends on how you define “meeting”. For a conference (real life) interaction to be effective, people have to talk for at least 15 (of course) minutes, so that will limit the total no. of interactions, as well as the number depending on the length of the conference. Plus how many people are in the group of “meeters”. Hmm, I can see a PhD thesis in all of this.
Andy Warhol is in my family (my father’s uncle). I never got my 15, but I am glad to have such nice blogging friends!
@Michael wow! A famous(-ish) person comments on my blog…
@Maxine yup. So who would be your PhD supervisor for such a subject
J K Rowling?
Oh alright then, if you insist on being serious, Tim Berners-Lee.
Re. Michael’s shock revelation (see next week’s Hello cover story), isn’t the sixth degree of separation looming here?
Hmmm, not sure about Tim. I reckon Steven Strogatz, Duncan Watts or Jon Kleinberg would be much better supervisors for the topic.
I’d have thought Derek de Solla Price, but I suspect he is dead? Maybe someone like Ben Martin or John Irvine from SPRU?
I may be among the extended list of people who you did not meet! It’s a shame that you had to pull out early. We were rather drunk later on.
Well if we are allowed dead people I’ll go for Carl Sagan. Or Alan Turing.
@Massimo hopefully we can meet up next time…
@Frank and @Maxine dead supervisors opens up interesting new possibilities, see the Dead Scientists Society a group I started on Flickr when I had too much time on my hands…
We were rather drunk later on
I only had one pint I have you know, at least according to the photographic evidence.
Oops, I appear to have
nursedhad another one (thanks Grrl Scientist) here:-It was (getting) all too much for some by now:-
despite the earlier efforts of a well behaved pint-sized panda:-
One for the road? According to this one, apparently so:-
That fellow with the white beard seems to be enjoying himself.