p>ScienceOnline#8217;09, the third annual science communication conference (successor to the 2007 and 2008 a href=“http://scienceblogging.com”>North Carolina Science Blogging Conferences/a>), was another unqualified success #8212; wifi issues notwithstanding. A round 200 scientists, educators, students, journalists and bloggers gathered for three days of activities, meals, sessions and hallway conversations to explore ways to use online tools to promote the public understanding of, and engagement in, science./p>

p>Find a a href=“http://www.scienceonline09.com/index.php/wiki/Blog_and_Media_Coverage/”>comprehensive listing of links/a> (compiled by the tireless and eponymous a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/clock”>Bora/a>) to the many blog entries and video clips posted before, during and after the conference to learn about the conversations and networking at the conference./p> p>Like our first two conferences, ScienceOnline#8217;09 was a collective activity #8212; many organizations, companies and individuals pitched in, in ways large and small, to keep this conference free, attendees fed and the discussion lively. Please join us in thanking them #8212; read below, and click through to their websites to show your interest in what they do. (We thanked the sponsors of the second event a href=“http://www.blogtogether.org/index.php/site/thank_them_the_people_behind_scienceblogging/”>here/a> and the first event a href=“http://mistersugar.com/article/4259/conference-thank-you”>here/a>.)/p> p>So, a huge #8220;thank you#8221; to our sponsors for helping us to keep this event free:/p> p>strong>Our host/strong>br /> a href=“http://sigmaxi.org”>Sigma Xi/a> once again hosted the ScienceOnline#8217;09 conference, as well as the WiSE networking event #8212; for free #8212; in their beautiful center. strong>Meg Murphy/strong> kindly facilitated this #8212; she#8217;s the unsung hero of the conference! and Michael Heisel was on hand for tech support. Sigma Xi was founded in 1886 to honor excellence in scientific investigation and encourage a sense of companionship and cooperation among researchers in all fields of science and engineering./p> p>strong>Our institutional partner/strong>br /> The a href=“http://www.ncmls.org/”>NC Museum of Life and Science/a>, which last year arranged for the awesome grab bags, this year stepped up to be our institutional partner (to handle our funds). Debbie May, VP for Administration/CFO, was a delight to work with, and Troy Livingston, VP for Innovation Learning, continues to be one of our biggest boosters. The museum exists to create a place of lifelong learning where people, from young child to senior citizen, embrace science as a way of knowing about themselves, their community, and their world #8212; I#8217;m there many weekends with my daughters./p> p>strong>Our sponsors/strong>br /> a href=“http://www.bwfund.org/”>Burroughs Wellcome Fund/a> once again gave us a substantial grant to support the conference. Russ Campbell, communications officer, helped to make sure this funding was available to us. span class=“caps”>BWF/span>und is an independent private foundation dedicated to advancing the biomedical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities./p> p>a href=“http://ncbiotech.org/”>The North Carolina Biotechnology Center/a> repeated its support with a biotechnology event sponsorship grant; Ginny DeLuca and Chris Brodie there are our supporters. span class=“caps”>NCB/span>iotech seeks to provide long-term economic and societal benefits to North Carolina by supporting biotechnology research, business and education statewide./p> p>We used the grants from span class=“caps”>BWF/span>und and span class=“caps”>NCB/span>iotech to give small travel stipends to our many session discussion leaders./p> p>a href=“http://www.jmp.com/”>span class=“caps”>JMP/span> Software/a>, for the third year in a row, provided a cash grant to help pay for our delicious lunch. span class=“caps”>JMP/span> is a division of span class=“caps”>SAS/span>, the leader in business intelligence and analytics #8212; they#8217;ve also donated a copy of their span class=“caps”>JMP/span> 8 software (worth $1500), which we#8217;ll have as a drawing prize on Saturday./p> p>a href=“http://scienceinthetriangle.org/”>Science In the Triangle/a> was a new sponsor this year. This site is an evolving experiment in community science journalism and scientific-community organizing. If you are based here in the Triangle, think about how you might collaborate with the site to spread news of your organization or research #8212; Bora and I are looking forward to getting involved with the effort./p> p>a href=“http://rtp.org”>Research Triangle Foundation/a> helped us even our accounts with a last-minute grant. The Foundation just celebrated the 50th anniversary of Research Triangle Park, and will host the span class=“caps”>XXVI/span> International Association of Science Parks World Conference June 1-4, 2009./p> p>a href=“http://blogads.com”>Blogads/a> has sponsored many of our BlogTogether events over the last four years, and once again Henry Copeland and his crew made a donation to this conference. They pioneered blog advertising in 2002 and trail-blaze today./p> p>We used the donations from span class=“caps”>JMP/span>, Science In the Triangle, Research Triangle Foundation and Blogads to feed everyone, with good coffee in the morning and delicious sandwiches and Mediterranean salads at lunch./p> p>strong>Our donors/strong>br /> Enrico Maria Balli, Kim Gainer, Ryan Somma and Russ Campbell made personal cash donations, and David Kroll, our co-organizer, dipped into his own pocket to help make the conference unique./p> p>strong>Grab bag of science swag/strong>br /> This year, span class=“caps”>IBM/span> provided recycled reusable bags. Other organizations, companies and individuals donated materials, including: a href=“http://www.hhmi.org/bulletin/nov2008/features/revolution.html”>Howard Hughes Medical Institute/a>, a href=“http://seedmagazine.com/”>Seed Magazine/a>, a href=“http://plos.org”>Public Library of Science/a>, a href=“http://www.copusproject.org/”>span class=“caps”>COPUS/span> Year of Science/a>, a href=“http://www.harpercollins.com/book/index.aspx?isbn=9780061340413”>Harper Collins/a>, a href=“http://jmp.com”>span class=“caps”>JMP/span> Software/a>, a href=“http://www.ncseagrant.org/”>NC Sea Grant/a>, a href=“http://www.nescent.org/index.php”>National Evolutionary Synthesis Center/a> and others to be named later./p> p>strong>Friday events/strong>br /> a href=“http://www.counterculturecoffee.com/”>Counter Culture Coffee/a> invited us to attend their weekly coffee cupping. Mark Overbay, marketing communications manager, facilitated our group of 25 and gave a tour of the coffee roasting operation./p> p>Afternoon lab tours were hosted by span class=“caps”>NCCU/span>#8217;s a href=“http://brite.nccu.edu/”>Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise/a> (David Kroll, director), Duke#8217;s a href=“http://lemur.duke.edu/”>Lemur Center/a> and a href=“http://www.smarthome.duke.edu/”>Smart Home/a> (Karl Bates arranged these), and the a href=“http://www.naturalsciences.org/”>NC Museum of Natural Sciences/a> (Roy Campbell was host and tour leader)./p> p>a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/culturedish/”>Rebecca Skloot/a> couldn#8217;t join us last year, but with her book finally drafted and off to her publisher, she was game to come to span class=“caps”>RTP/span> this year to attend ScienceOnline#8217;09 and keynote the a href=“http://www.duke.edu/web/wise/jannetworkingevent.html”>Women in Science and Engineering networking event/a> Friday night at Sigma Xi. Erica Tsai, Phoebe Lee, Ana Sanchez, Amrika Deonarine and Rachel Witek put together a fantastic event, and Skloot#8217;s talk about the immortal contribution of a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks”>Henrietta Lacks/a> to science was riveting. (Abel Pharmboy hosted a rousing wine tasting, too.)/p> p>strong>Our discussion leaders/strong>br /> ScienceOnline#8217;09 was an unconference in which all attendees were encouraged to participate and share alike; we asked 69 of them to serve as session discussion leaders, to provide their experiences or perspectives as a way to spark the session conversations. See the a href=“http://www.scienceonline09.com/index.php/wiki/Conference_Program/”>conference agenda/a> to find out who facilitated which sessions./p> p>strong>Our volunteers/strong>br /> a href=“http://www.evoquelearning.com”>Elle Cayabyab Gitlin/a> and a href=“http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/people/staff/zuckerman.shtml”>Risha Zuckerman/a> demanded the opportunity to spend the conference sitting at our welcome/registration table #8212; they were awesome! a href=“http://mlsanimaldepartment.blogspot.com/”>Larry Boles/a> and a href=“http://www.sennoma.net/”>Bill Hooker/a> stuck around to help clean up. Lots of others helped out throughout the weekend, offering rides, organizing the swag table, keeping us on track and much more. a href=“http://other95.blogspot.com/”>Kevin Zelnio/a> designed awesome name badges that in the end, couldn#8217;t be completed due to some technical difficulties with our printer. Thank you to you all./p> p>strong>The Food/strong>br /> Meals were catered or ordered from a href=“http://www.fetzkocoffees.com/”>Fetzko Coffees/a>, a href=“http://www.weaverstreetmarket.coop/”>Weaver Street Market/a>, a href=“http://www.saladelia.com/home/index.aspx”>Saladelia Cafe/a>, and a href=“http://www.mediterraneandeli.com/”>Mediterranean Deli/a>. The Thursday Early Bird Dinner was held at a href=“http://www.thetownhallgrill.com/”>Town Hall Grill/a>. Many local attendees brought fruit to share./p> p>strong>The organizers/strong>br /> If you don#8217;t know by now, a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/clock”>Bora Zivkovic/a> is both the inspiration for the annual conference and the around-the-clock heart of the event#8217;s online and off-line activities; he organized the program after many months of brainstorming with our session discussion leaders. He#8217;s simply amazing. Meanwhile, #8220;Anton Zuiker#8220;http://mistersugar.com and a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig”>Abel Pharmboy/a> took care of the other details./p> p>Again, a huge #8216;thank you#8217; to all the individuals and organizations supporting our free, public-understanding-of-science conference./p>

After nearly four years of BlogTogether activities — meetups, happy hours, backyard BBQs and an annual conference — finally a logo:

The very talented and entrepreneurial Anthony DeLoso designed this for us, creatively capturing the spirit of our group — many individual voices connecting online and gathering offline.

The equally talented Beck Tench is busy coding new templates for BlogTogether.org, which we’ll unveil soon.

Last year, the Center for Environmental Farming Systems at NCSU brought in Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini for a fantastic farm-to-fork event.

This year, CEFS is bringing Judy Wicks, a national leader in the local, living economies movement, BALLE, and founder of Philadelphia’s famed White Dog Café. Wicks will give the 2008 Sustainable Agriculture Lecture on Tuesday, September 16 at the North Carolina Museum of History in downtown Raleigh at 7:00 p.m.

Our good friend, Brian Russell, had an idea a while back — to open a coworking space somewhere in the Triangle.

He’s done it.

Tonight, Brian held an open house at his new business, Carrboro Creative Coworking. It’s a fantastic space, and soon will be filling up with creative, talented, interesting individuals. If you need a space to work, contact Brian.

On Friday, BlogTogether was mentioned in the article Duke Bloggerhood, a good roundup of the Duke employees who are blogging about Durham. I’m hoping that many of them will join us as we reinvigorate our blogging group — in the next few weeks, we’ll have a food blogging event at Counter Culture Coffee (date to be announced soon), more meetups, and perhaps a Blogging 1010 session.

As for our major events, the faith blogging conference has been postponed to next summer. That means ScienceOnline’09 is next. ScienceOnline’09 is the follow up to our successful NC Science Blogging Conference this past January. We’re also considering a Fall 2009 story blogging conference to bring together oral historians, memoir writers and family storytellers who want to explore how online tools and community building strategies can facilitate more stories.

Want to volunteer for any of our activities or events? Send us a message.

The annual BlogTogether Backyard Barbecue is this Saturday, August 23 from 5pm on, at my home in Durham. I’ll provide a cold keg of Carolina Brewery suds, a hot grill and tasty pulled pork barbecue, and a deck perfect for conversing into the night. More details at http://blogtogether.org/index.php/wiki.

Join us (but let us know you’re coming, please).

Barry and Bull City Rising will kick off their “Shooting the Bull” radio talk show this Sunday at 7:30pm on WXDU 88.7.

We’re rebuilding the site — blog, wiki and all — using ExpressionEngine, and fumbling our way through the process.

Check back soon, and we should have a spiffy new site for our community of bloggers in North Carolina. We’ll also have information and planning wikis for our two upcoming conferences, the NC Faith Blogging Conference on Nov. 10 at Duke Divinity School, and the third annual science blogging conference next January.

A new job at the Museum of Life and Science, and working with our good friend Troy Livingston (he donated the science blogging grab bags this year):

Online Community Manager

This position supports the Museum’s mission by developing web-based opportunities for users to extend the Museum experience within and beyond the boundaries of our physical campus. This position is responsible for developing and supporting the http://www.lifeandscience.org and http://www.nisenet.org (sites) internal and external user communities, monitoring the discussion threads, expanding online participation and organically growing the site based on community feedback.

Additional duties include translation of online community requirements into business opportunities, working with the marketing team to develop traditional and e-marketing campaigns specific to the online community, update and maintain the sites and support other staff who contribute regularly to the sites, develop, monitor and report regularly on metrics that demonstrate satisfactory results from the sites, technical monitoring (keeping communities free from spam, perform statistical analysis, troubleshoot problems and work with technical support resources to create solutions) and maintain user/institutional profile data as needed.

The successful candidate will have:

• Broad understanding and enthusiasm for science and informal science education
• In-depth knowledge of modern online culture, including blogging, discussion forums, multimedia, and other web 2.0 vehicles
• Significant participation in online communities
• Ability to thrive with limited supervision while making progress on multiple goals that may be in conflict with one another
• Ability to work in a highly matrixed environment in which some team members live remotely and/or work at other institutions
• Strong verbal/written communication skills and the ability to translate scientific and technical jargon
• Proven ability to effectively analyze and communicate complicated technical and social issues to a management team
• Strong analytical/problem solving skills * Proven history of building consensus/collaboration across many diverse groups.
• Occasional travel is required A college degree, advanced education in science or science education, experience in a museum/non-profit setting, experience with Drupal and other open-source technology and good public speaking skills are preferred but not required.

This position is full-time exempt, 40 hours/week, with a hiring range of $32,000—$35,000/year plus full benefits.

At Fickle Creek Farm today, I looked over to see the executive director of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, sponsor of the 13th annual Piedmont Farm Tour. Here’s what Roland McReynolds had to say: Roland mentioned that the Eat Carolina Food Challenge, a week-long locavore activity that’s perfect for blogging.

It’s getting easier and easier to eat good local produce, meats and chef creations here in the Triangle. I’ll be monitoring the Slow Food Triangle site for food blogging opportunities. I may even try to make the April 5th event planning meeting to talk up food blogging and other online ways for celebrating this region’s agricultural bounty. Care to join me?

The Science Communicators of North Carolina has a happy hour this Wed, March 12th from 5-7pm at Tyler’s at the American Tobacco complex. Find details here. Let’s have a Durham bloggers meetup at the same time. Join us for talk of science, communication, blogging and anything else.

This afternoon, Bora and I met for coffee at Open Eye Cafe, the place where we previously hatched the idea to create the annual North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. We’ve spent the last month reviewing the feedback from the January event, and thinking about what we’d do differently a third time around. It’s time to start planning. We’ve already announced the date and location: January 16-18, 2009 at the Sigma Xi Center. The next piece to announce is that we’ll be broadening the conference to more than just science blogging. Our goal all along has been to promote the public understanding of science through online tools, so we’re renaming the conference to ScienceOnline’09 and inviting more of the Triangle’s science communicators to help us build a 3-day event to help scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and others share their strategies. Over the next few weeks, we’ll launch a new site at scienceonline09.com and create a new (more stable) wiki for the planning of this conference. Stay tuned …

With the second annual NC Science Blogging Conference successfully behind us, I gathered together today a handful of our group around my kitchen table to review the past few years of our blogging efforts and to brainstorm ideas for the next couple of years. The consensus was that we are a community of talented, smart, engaging individuals with much promise for more community-organizing success. I’ll post notes from the conversation to blogtogether.org later this week. Our group was small, but not meant to be exclusive, and we want to give everyone an opportunity to participate in the growth of BlogTogether. Please share your thoughts — either as comments to this post, or with me in confidence via email () – on the following: # What past BlogTogether events and activities have you most enjoyed? Why? # What do you think is the mission or purpose of BlogTogether? # How would you like to see BlogTogether grow or change? # How would you like to be involved in the organizing and planning of these events and activities: regular meetups in Carrboro/Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh; the annual science blogging conference; a faith blogging conference; an ongoing series of food blogging events; the storyblogging oral history initiative; or your own ideas for events and activities? # What else would you like to share, ask, or offer? Thanks for taking the time to contribute your feedback and ideas.

The second annual North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, held January 18 and 19, 2008, was an unqualified success. Find a comprehensive listing of links (compiled by the tireless Bora) to the many blog entries and video clips posted before, during and after the conference to learn about the conversations and networking at the conference.

Like our inaugural event, this second conference was a collective activity — many, many organizations, companies and individuals pitched in, in ways large and small, to keep this conference free, attendees fed and the discussion lively. Please join us in thanking them. (We thanked the sponsors of the first event here.)

Leaders
As before, Bora Zivkovic is the inspiration for the event, and his daily cheerleading in spreading the word was simply awesome. Brian Russell was behind the scenes all year, providing us important support and technical advice. Wayne Sutton, newly appointed to his job as online community organizer for NBC-17, crisscrossed the Triangle, all the while trying out every new online networking tool that came to his attention. Wayne and Brian streamed or recorded many of the conference sessions, broadening the audience of the conference. Tola Oguntoyinbo set up the Conference Commons that aggregated blogs posts, Flickr pics and other content tagged scienceblogging.com. Paul Jones was our institutional contact, offering ibiblio.org support; with his help, UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communication once again provided a home base for our finances and accounting (by Ken Hales), and the UNC Health Sciences Library allowed us the use of its fantastic computer lab for the blogging skills session.

Donors
Even before our 2007 event was over, Russ Campbell of Burroughs Wellcome Fund was urging us to think bigger, and helping us win the funds to do so. The substantial grant from Burroughs Wellcome anchored the rest of our fundraising. Roger Harris, Chris Brodie and Rosalind Reid of Sigma Xi also pledged their support at the first conference, and that led to Sigma Xi offering its beautiful building for the event. Interim Executive Director Linda Meadows gave us a nice welcome (and sent a touching congratulations note). Meg Murphy worked with us over many months to plan the best use of the space, and she calmly took in our mercurial program changes. JMP Software, was another repeat sponsor and cash donor. New donors this years were the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, The Hamner Institute for Health Sciences, CrossRef and WNCN NBC-17 — their generous gifts allowed us to guarantee an ample supply of coffee, good food throughout the day (including vegetarian options) and travel grants to many of our discussion leaders.

Science lab tours
This year, we introduced pre-conference activities including visits to local science labs. Karl Bates at Duke University (he’s just unveiled a cool new site, Research at Duke) helped to line up three popular lab tours. (Full disclosure: Duke is my employer.) Erin Knight at the Hamner Institutes, Cyndy Yu Robinson of the EPA, and Roy Campbell at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences also set up and facilitated tours of labs at their organizations.

Grab bag of science swag
Once again, we worked hard to put together a grab bag filled with useful, interesting and fun resources — not just stuff, but science-related materials that could inform conference attendees and then be shared with the libraries, schools and newsrooms in the communities of the attendees. The Museum of Life and Science (cool new website) and American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the instigation of Troy Livingston, VP for innovation & learning, stepped up to provide awesome canvas tote bags. And into those bags we stuffed materials from ACD Labs, American Scientist, The HMS Beagle Project, Campbell-Kibler Associates, Columbia University Press, Coral Reef Alliance, Discover, HarperCollins, Michigan State University, MSNBC, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, National Geographic Society, Nature, OpenHelix, Oregon Public Broadcasting, PLoS-One, Project Exploration, Science News, Scienceblogs, Scientific American, Seed Publishing, Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project, The Scientist, Wired and Wired Science.

Discussion Leaders
The conference offered 14 sessions in all, and each session was led by one or more individuals. See the program page to see who did what. Special thanks to Adnaan Wasey and Abel Pharmboy for very ably filling in as discussion moderators at the last moment. The rest: Dr.Hemai Parthasarathy, Janet Stemwedel, Adnaan Wasey, Kevin Zelnio, Karen James, Rick MacPherson, Peter Etnoyer, Jason Robertshaw, Vedran Vucic, Suzanne Franks, Karen Ventii, Patricia B. Campbell, ScienceWoman , David Warlick, Martin Rundkvist, Shelley Batts, Sarah Wallace, Anne-Marie Hodge, Anna Kushnir, Brian Switek, Xan Gregg, Jean-Claude Bradley, Tara Smith, Becky Oskin, Dave Munger, Chris Mooney, Jennifer Jacquet, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Jennifer Ouellette.

Volunteers
My mother, Cheryl Zuiker, wanted to see me in action, so she volunteered to work the registration table at the conference. Elle Cayabyab Gitlin and Abel Pharmboy also helped greet people, and Brian Switek and Martin Rundkvist passed out T-shirts and grab bags. Rob Zelt picked up the morning pastries and got them to the hall on time. Rob and Wayne and Brian and Bora assisted during the Friday skills session. All those heavy grab bags of science swag? It took a crew to pack those: Ernie Hood, John Rees, Wayne Sutton, Bora Zivkovic, Andrea Novicki, Troy Livingston, Brian Russell and Jonathan Tarr.

The Food
Meals were catered or ordered from Fetzko Coffees (Brian and Ruby suggested this), Weaver Street Market, Saladelia Cafe, Locopops and Bullocks Barbecue. The Friday dinner was held at Town Hall Grill. So, thanks again to all the individuals and organizations supporting our free, public-understanding-of-science conference.

If I’ve missed you, please tell me so that I can acknowledge your role in making this event so successful.