Online science and Beyond Blogging

Posted by on Oct 22, 2010 in Communication, Daily Stuff, Online Culture | 8 comments

This past Wednesday was Beyond Blogging, a workshop/brainstorming session held at the Wellcome Trust and hosted by Shane McCracken and Sophia Collins of ‘I’m a Scientist – Get Me Out of Here’.

Some thoughts

It was an interesting day.  I don’t know all that many folk in the science communication world, so it was great to put names to faces.  The event also brought together people with very different backgrounds in engagement, including a number of people with hardcore geek credentials.

Overall, I found the discussion more useful than the eventual brainstorming, and I wish I’d managed to talk to even more people.

Some observations

  • Although we appear to operate in a similar online space, our web experiences are very, very different; we create our own webs around us, and the person at the other end of the table might have a totally different perspective.
  • Added to that, there is a lot of hobby and amateur stuff that can be difficult to talk about and easy to dismiss if you don’t know of it and aren’t involved.   Knitblogging, for example.   Mommyblogging (ew) and parenting networks.
  • -Twitter is so much the backbone of the broad network, but it’s not everything.  Jenny Rohn and Shane McCracken presented a fascinating piece on their experience of activism, the ScienceisVital campaign – a campaign that used Twitter certainly, but gained huge traction with Facebook and good old fashioned email. Plus, being a cause that many people could organise around.
  • Scepticism and activism together with the loose networking provided by Twitter are creating significant change, I think.   I don’t know if new people are coming in – my sense is that more scientists are getting involving with blogging.  It’s a little bit like putting veg in a blender.  There is stuff swooshing about in the centre while other stuff sticks to the sides and takes a little bit longer to fall in.
  • Brainstorming is damned difficult.  My table opted to develop an idea about brokering connections between scientists and schools using a website to match people up.  It felt churlish to point out that there have been a lot of initiatives exactly like that.  I wonder if there’s a tendency to migrate to the ‘website’ idea as first port of call?
  • No one really came up with anything that matched the ingenuity and commitment of ‘I’m a Scientist’ itself.   But then I’d argue, it’s actually difficult to do that within a general setting.   (IAS is run as a web-enabled event, with scientists doing live chats with schools and rounds of voting – there’s a huge amount of organisation, recruitment and choreographing behind the scenes. Also, it is good fun)
  • I’m left wondering about how to brainstorm and whether there’s a web role there.  Perhaps if we were set certain tasks, like an event or a theme.    Maybe it’s a small-group thing – I could see myself coming up with odd little ideas that could be developed a lot further, but almost need a couple of people or a group of people bashing through particular ideas.
  • There were some throwaway comments about gender and that seems an interesting area to pursue.  Can you use elements from female web culture to help build dialogue between girls and female scientists, say?

Anyway. Yes.  Interesting stuff.  Thanks very much to the organisers for inviting me, and I’m sorry if I scared any of the bloggers that I went and stalked fangirled afterwards.

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  • http://www.gallomanor.com Shane McCracken

    Excellent review. It didn’t quite work as I expected in terms of the intra-table dynamics. Possibly people being too polite like yourself. I guess I expect everyone to be as rude as I can be.

    I hope we still got people thinking beyond blogging and I think some of the ideas have development potential. Others like the Find a Scientist have been conceived before but obviously aren’t quite reaching enough people or doing the right things because people keep coming back to the idea.

    Glad you enjoyed the Science Is Vital presentation. It’s been a privilege to be involved. @rpg7twit was my main co-conspirator in pulling the facts together. It’s now up on the Gallomanor site.

  • http://alicerosebell.wordpress.com/ alice

    “Although we appear to operate in a similar online space, our web experiences are very, very different”

    I’m not going to add something more to this, simply underline that I think it’s VERY very, very true and runs through a host of the topics discussed that afternoon.

    Nice post!

  • Alison

    Thanks alice – apologies, I think you commented during an extending playing around with wordpress where the blog appearance changed every 10 seconds!

    Yeah, the different experiences really struck me, whether it’s open science, data geekery, blogging, you name it. The social and personal uses can also be really hard to talk about in a formal setting.

  • Alison

    Hi Shane! Thanks for commenting. I think these things are really tricky, especially between people new to each to other. :-)

    There was a speed-dating thing done at the BA Science Communication conference a couple of years ago that was a terrific way of uncovering people. Maybe some skills brokering would be useful, like the intros we were asked to post on the event site.

    One idea someone came up with was a sort of Freecycle for scientists or indeed science communicators.

    The story of Science Is Vital is terrific and makes me all teary about the power of broad networks to do great things.

  • http://patrickhadfield.wordpress.com/ Patrick

    I was at an unconference this week – very different and very similar! I wonder whether the unconference format might facilitate what you are looking for in brainstorming? Removing the barriers to discussion certainly worked for us – though brainstorming wasn’t the objective.

    Ps I miss the flame-haired avatar… ;)

  • http://www.growinginsights.co.uk Alison Clayton-Smith

    First – like the new site and the new photo.

    On brainstorming, lots of facilitaton tools to aid creative thinking. A website worth looking at is http://www.creatingminds.org. With basic brainstorming, ways to stop self-censorship are to spend time individually writing ideas down – anything and everything – then share. Also asking questions like ‘What if we could do this?’ and I particularly like the reversal technique ‘What would need to happen for this to be the worst possible x? (then you work out all the things to prevent/counteract those). Even simply doing the brainstorming sitting cross-legged on the floor, walking outside, can change the creative dynamic. I’d also suggest that if you want really different ideas, you bring in people from a completely different background/expertise. If you tend to look within your own field, you tend to get the same sort of thinking.

  • Alison

    Thanks Patrick – sorry, my new WordPress install seems flaky about sending me message alerts. What exactly is an unconference format?

  • Alison

    Thanks! I’m still in transit. Sorry, I missed your comment – I need to check my settings as WP doesn’t seem to be forwarding comments quite so nicely.

    Those are really good thoughts. Environment does make a difference, doesn’t it? As does priming and expectancy. I will have a look at that site. I know that personally I’ve found it very difficult to get people to brainstorm, even in a brainstorming session -such a lot of anxiety and social expectations that get in the way.