I will attempt another live blog today, but it is a packed programme, so I will see how I get on…

See the programme

Interestingly this conference has sponsorship from match.com, not sure what this says about the delegates… Colin Mayer of the Said Business School provides the introduction, on the power of social media and the speed within which it has spread, from radio taking 38 years to reach a mass audience to Facebook reaching hundreds of millions within a few months. He went on to consider the potential power of social media in global conflict and political campaigns. But will the apparent democratisation of media come to be, or will we return to the dominant voices of the few in what we choose to read?

Continued…

I am preparing for the release of the latest Diamond podcast, which this month is on the topic of cultural heritage, and will coincide with some research from Diamond being promoted at this year’s British Science Festival.

The cultural heritage applications of synchrotrons are very interesting and herein lies the problem: whilst it makes up less than 5% of the research carried out at Diamond, and similar at fellow synchrotrons, it seems to be the area that gets all the media coverage. Mention the Dead Sea scrolls, the Mary Rose or Egyptian mummies and the story goes everywhere. It’s not just Diamond – our sister synchrotron ESRF has a resident palaeontologist who has graced the BBC News pages more than once.

Don’t get me wrong, these are good stories. It’s just frustrating when there are equally significant advances in materials science or solid state physics and no-one is interested. We see a certain amount of coverage of the life sciences, mainly potential cures for diseases, and environmental applications are also quite popular, but physical science, which makes up about 40% of synchrotron research, doesn’t seem to feature.

I am nervously fidgeting in my office here at Diamond. Today is a very important launch. Not the space rocket, but the new, shiny Diamond website, which should go live in about 13 minutes. This is the result of about two years endeavours and has involved a very steep learning curve for me, not just in learning HTML and CSS properly, but also so much about the synchrotron itself and the scientific applications.

I’ve been writing about science for about 8 years now, but until I joined Diamond it was all about physics, and not just physics but the specialised field of metrology. That gave me a head start when it came to understanding how a 560m particle accelerator actually works, but was of less use when it came to describing the myriad applications from structural biology to cultural heritage.

But Diamond is also a place where I have never been a practising scientist, which in some respects makes me quite sad. There is still the excitement of when a new beamline switches on, or when a new high impact paper is published. But I don’t feel a part of it as I used to, as observer rather than participant.

On the plus side though there is the sheer diversity of science to observe here. When I left science I knew more about my tiny field than all but a few people. But it was a very tiny field. Here I can be writing about Type 3 secretion systems, earthquakes, multi-ferroic materials, who knows. And perhaps this is what I do best, writing about science for scientists, but also for the general public, trying to demonstrate how exciting the scientific life can be. I am just a bit sad not to be a part of it any more…

I know, it’s been a long time since we spoke, I feel I have neglected you. But, I have been ridicuously busy, what with trying to finish the new Diamond website (launching in a week, yay!) and a few minor projects, such as a podcast (thanks Stephen!).

But, I have to confess, I have been unfaithful. There is another blog in my life. This year I have been getting up every Saturday at 7 and traipsing to London for a day of throwing myself about at increasing heights. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but whilst learning aerial acrobatics at 33 has been a bit of a challenge, I am getting there. It is taking up a considerable amount of time and it utterly exhausting, but it’s great to be doing something so totally different from my desk-based day job. Although I am dreading the fact that at some point I may actually be expected to perform in front of people…

But enough of that. Here is an Australian cricketer describing how synchrotrons actually work as part of an Australian comedy show. Anyone spot the (deliberate?) mistakes?

Today: a rare live blog!

This post is brought to you live from the Diamond control room, where one of our beamlines, I04-1 is preparing ro receive first beam.

When Diamond was built, the decision was made to build the beamlines in a phased construction programme, so we started with seven beamlines and are building more at the rate of about four a year. We currently have 13 operating in various stages of optimisation, and another 9 under construction. I04-1 is one of these, scheduled for operation in October 2009.

So today the beamline should be receiving X-rays into the front end, the very first stage of the beamline. It’s a bit unusual in that I04-1 is a side-station, so it shares part of it’s beam pipe with another beamline, which makes the whole thing a bit more complicated. Right now we are gathered in the control room, waiting for the machine to get up and running…

11:58 Health Physics are ready to go. Everyone in the control room is looking very intently at big screens. The control room monitors several hundred thousand components and nearly half a million parameters.

12:08 It’s a good reminder of what a team effort these things are. The beamline scientists are here, the diagnostics team who monitor the beam, the ID team, who look after the undulator that generates the very bright synchrotron light and accelerator physics are all gathered round. Health physics are communicating with the control room by walkie talkie, which seems a strangely outdated technology here… It’s also a reminder to me that whilst I have a good overview of how the machine works there is a huge amount that I don’t know.

12:11 and that’s it! The undulator narrows to the required gap, the beam enters and hits the slits before the monochromator, the first optical component. It is one small step, there is still a lot more to be done, but that’s how it is here. Next stage is taking beam into the optics hutch itself to test those components but that must wait for another day.

I always find it frustrating when people imply that science in any way diminish the beauty of the natural world. The current weather demonstrates exactly the opposite with the Science Photo Library hosting a bunch of snow-related images, starting with the image of the week:

That’s not cloud over the UK but snow on the ground. They also have some lovely images of snow flakes:

And finally it gives me another chance to look at one of my favourite websites, Atmospheric Optics, which does what it says on the tin, showing beautiful photos of weird optical phenomena in the atmosphere, such as ice haloes:

And then explains in some detail how they are formed, based the shapes of ice crystals in the atmosphere :

Brilliant!

So over the last few months, I have been looking at possibly developing a social media strategy for Diamond. To this end I have twittered, friendfed, dugg, stumbledupon, social bookmarked all over the place and got myself a second life. This is atop the social media I am already conversant with, Flickr, Youtube, various Wikis, Facebook etc and of course, blogging.

So, what have I found? Well, in the context of a strategy for Diamond, nothing I couldn’t have got (or indeed didn’t get) from googling “social media” and a few related terms and reading Wikipedia. For an organisation whose remit includes a strong emphasis on public engagement there are opportunities: we have a Youtube channel, we have blogs for a specific public engagement project and will soon be adding social booking marking tools and the ability to comment to our website.

I have also tried to promote social bookmarking tools as something that might benefit how we work internally, as a way of organising and sharing information within the team, but with limited success. The main constraint seems to be time. This is a valid point; whilst setting up a blog, twitter account, delicious etc is very quick, it takes time to build up enough momentum to be rewarding.

And then there is the nature of the reward. Since making a determined effort to engage with the various tools at my disposal, I have been rewarded with new friendships, re-established old friendships, become closer to people who were previously just acquaintances and (inevitably it seems) stalked Stephen Fry. I have, quite frankly, had a great time.

However, I’m still uncertain as to whether institutions can benefit from the wealth of tools around. Especially organisations like Diamond where public engagement is important but not our raison d’etre as it is, for example, a science centre.

But I’ve also become aware of how difficult it is to use social media as a corporate tool – its nature is social, and it works best when the content is from a “real” individual – regardless of tools used, people are very good at detecting corporate messages. And this does support the view that social media is not really new, it is just a different way to share, rant, discuss and connect as we have done throughout history.

I’m not sure I’ve explained this very well. But at the moment I feel that I’ve just scratched the surface and there is a lot more fun to be had, if only I have the time…

My nephew, age 4.5, is currently very interested in what people do for a living. My sister explained that I am a scientist, “like Nina in Nina and the Neurons.” Which is fairly accurate, Nina is more of a science communicator that a hardcore scientist.

However, he now has a question – he knows neurons don’t use words, but how do they talk to each other?

I’ve been trying to come up with an answer that doesn’t use words like synapse or electrochemical but it always seems a bit much for someone who thinks tying his own shoelaces makes him nearly a man :)

The Christmas season has so far, for several reasons, been a little quieter and a little sadder this year. Now it stands to get a bit surreal, as tomorrow I – an atheist for many years – head off to stay with my sister – just about to become a vicar. This year I know that I will be off to a Christingle service to look after my nephew, the first time I have been inside a church this decade. I’m not sure what other ceremonies are planned, hopefully nothing in which I will be expected to be an active participant!

But that leads me nicely to my New Year Resolutions. I, like Henry, have been considering ways to improve my life for 2009. So far I have come up with the following:

#I will learn a bit more about other religions, especially the points at which science and religion meet.
#I will continue my mission to try new things and join the circus
#I will write more fiction
#I will write more blog posts

That’s it so far. I’ll be interested to see what others bloggers are planning for this arbitrary tradition!

I’m really pleased to see on the BBC that the UK has got a new ESA space centre. Being on the Harwell site we’ve known this is in the offing for a while, and as a space geek, the thought of having it here is very exciting.

I am interested in this statement though: “How the climate element is incorporated into the centre is still to be defined.”

Seems to me a bit like, “We’ll say it will help climate change research as that will make it easier to get funding. We’ll figure out the details later…”