Wednesday 14 January 2009

Please join Science Online '09 - Online !





Nearly there now and Science Online '09 kicks off darn soon in North Carolina.

++UPDATE++ Bora's blog posts to date about this event are here.

The point of this particular blog post about the Conference is to encourage those interested but unable to attend in person to join the event, err, ONLINE !!!

McDawg was one of the dozen or so who did so last year and can therefore say with authority that whilst this doesn't beat being at any such event in person, it's a most excellent 'second best'.

McDawg's Match Reports from last year are here and here.

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A couple of days ago, Bora left a shout out for assistance in working on a live coverage page on the Conf. wiki. McDawg stepped in and page, Live Coverage is now up. Page is still work in progress but the main thing is, it now exists.

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The only similar conference McDawg has attended in person was Science Blogging 2008: London, last August. From memory, of the 100 or so present, about 8-10 of them live-blogged it, one live-streamed some of the sessions and with permission (thanks again Timo Hannay), one broadcast an MP3 recording of the Final Panel Discussion. Whilst almost all sessions were recorded on digital video by the organisers, at the time of writing, these recordings are not ONLINE. I don't know why this is, this is disappointing, but maybe someone can explain why this has yet to happen. (May I add, this is not a criticism, simply an observation).

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INSTANT REPLAY

Spinning back to events in North Carolina last January, and I might add that after a wee bit of encouragement from those participating virtually, around 9 of the sessions were live-streamed. I don't know if all of these were archived but at least 6 of them can be viewed here thanks to Top Dawg, Wayne-Sutton.com



The interest in these recordings was pretty much as soon as they were uploaded and then for about a week after. It was truly amazing to see the number of views increasing during this period and the tally at the end was in excess of 20,000.

As such, with around 200 participants at the event in person, within a week, virtual participation rose 100 fold.

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This year, I really do hope that there is a dramatic increase in those taking part via the interchoobes.

So, let's build on the past and with even better Live Coverage on the cards this time, be part of Science Online '09 wherever you may be !!

Conference wiki home

Conference Program

Conference Live Coverage

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