Hello London!
As you may have gathered, I’m finally back in the UK, and more to the point, working in London. Sort of living here, sort of itinerant: but at least I’ve been in the office this week.
The doyenne of all things LabLiteral has been putting up with me for the past week (and foolishly has agreed to next week too — and host a birthday party for me) while I get to grips with the rather interesting creature known as the Faculty of 1000.
Essential stationery
My job title is ‘Information Architect’ (which is more appropriate and less, well, businessy than ’Business Development Manager). Essentially, that means I have been given responsibility for the F1000 product, in particular the website. And for the things that we have planned for it.
I’ve had a tiring but stimulating week and am finding my feet, gathering information and getting to know the team. They’re a good bunch at F1000 and I’m still rather excited, and am not missing the bench at all (which is, perhaps, a little bit surprising).
Ideas. We have lots of them. And I’m the proverbial new broom. Watch, as they say, this space.
\o/
wohoo… you’re back! :)
Welcome to London and good luck with the job! So I guess you’re not looking for a coffee cup as a birthday present…?
They gave me the mug before I got the computer. Which I think shows a fine sense of priorities.
Yay, the power of the new broom!
I’m glad it’s going well so far. Please can you explain exactly what Faculty of 1000 is/does? I’ve never entirely grasped the concept, to be completely honest…
Well done you. I am expecting Great Things™ as a result.
I still suggest barricading yourself in with boxes.
As uaual, full of good ideas, me.
*furiously thinking of reason to visit
& *I cant type as fusoual.
Richard, I currently have an entire bay to myself (although that won’t last long as they’re going to be re-furbishing the office following the leaving of BMC) and access to a pile of paper trays, monitor stands and three thousand seven hundred and ninety two discarded fans. Not to mention an unlimited supply of paperclips. So I could probably hold out for a while if I could catch and eat the
albatrossseagullspigeons that perch by my window.Cath, the concept is pretty simple. We have about 5,000 senior scientists around the world who read the biomedical literature and write short evaluations on what they consider to be the influential/important/exciting papers in their own field. These don’t always appear in the ‘first tier’ journals (I think about 85% of the evaluations are from ‘specialist’ journals) so what we’re doing is making it easier to find the nuggets among the dross (‘90% of everything is crud’). There are a number of reasons why this might be useful.
A new development is ‘Reports’, which are short reviews in biology and medicine concentrating on recent advantages and trends, future directions; and in medicine, changes in clinical practice. The first issue came out last month.
A little tip from someone who used to work in that office: don’t get rid of a single one of those fans. You are so going to need them.
Ha ha. Apparently we’re getting real air conditioning. Yeah.
Welcome back to the real world, Richard! Though I have to say I have my suspicions that your so-called Faculty of 1000 is really just a cover for Dan Brown’s Illuminati.
Ssh. Now I have to kill you.
Apparently we’re getting real air conditioning. Yeah.
Ha. They told me that 11 years ago. Instead we got useless water evaporators because the freeholder didn’t want Middlesex House messed with.
Word is they’re out and we’re getting the real thing. And the dev team have just relocated to the old BMC side of the building, so something is happening.
Mr Wintle is ‘*furiously thinking of reason to visit’
The beer and the Promenade Concerts.
Will we see you there, Charles?
Thanks Richard! I see their snippets on my BMC email updates, but my two forays onto the main F1000 site left me completely confused.
Yeah, that’s part of what I’m going to be fixing. It is very confusing, although if you figure it out and get the alerts working it’s pretty straightforward subsequently.
Can you arrange the website so it can do my experiments for me?
How much are you willing to pay?
Will it run MT4?
oh, it’s not that good.
I’m disappointed.
Nothing is as good as MT4. MT4 will cure cancer.
But will it cure the Daily Mail?
F1000 will cure the Daily Mail.
As long as it makes RSS go the way of the dodo, I’m supportive.
MT4, on the other hand, is rapidly going the way of the Gray Aliens, Loch Ness Monster, and Polkaroo.
What the hell is wrong with RSS?! I love it, it has changed my life (seriously)
RSS is the win.
It’s fine in concept, but has the unfortunate side effect of taking over your life.
Well, as Cath says, you need to change it, then.
Compared to checking all those sites1 manually, it saves so much time though.
I suppose it does make it a wee bit too easy to subscribe to hundreds of feeds.
1 blogs, grant competition announcements, journal TOCs, Craigslist searches, local concert announcements, etc.
I envision a world in which everything I need to know gets discussed at Nature Network, or curated via F1000.
Possibly, I am hallucinating.
Good work on getting the word Manager removed from your job title. Architecture eh? Does this mean you’ve switched from being a PhD to a B.Arch?
I envision a world in which everything I need to know gets discussed at Nature NetworkHow ’bout those Canucks, eh?
I don’t need to know about the Canucks.
These aren’t the canucks you’re looking for.