My plan to have webfolk give “lightning” talks for scientists ended up in the schedule as 9:30 a.m. “lighting” talks.”
Nevahtheless, as Katherine Hepburn would say, an overflow SciFoo crowd showed up in Google’s “Damascus” room (seats 22) to hear Tim O’Reilly’s own explanation of Web 2.0, followed by stellar short talks by Esther Dyson (EDventure), Chris Anderson (Wired), Barend Mons (WikiProfessional), and Victoria Stodden (Harvard’s Berkman Center).
What was the premise here? As posted in SciFoo’s wiki for session suggestions:
Science Outreach 2.0? I see proposed sessions to have science “heard” by politicians (Eric W, Adam Wishart), to get more young people to fall in love with science (Chris Riley), and to get non-scientists involved in “spectator science” or “citizen science” activities (Margaret Wertheim, Jack Stilgoe, Karen James, Brother Guy).
Web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, social networks, web services) are great ways to reach out to non-scientists. What I’m proposing is a session on this useful subset of HOW-TO (a fairly new set of useful tools), a session where Sci Foo’s webfolk (and web-savvy scientists) might give “lightning” talks about “Here is a great web tool useful for scientists doing outreach, here is a quick demo of how it works, here is a URL where you can learn more about it.” Betsy Devine
Here are links to some of the websites that were discussed there:
- What is Web 2.0?: Original (2005) essay by Tim O'Reilly
- Tim also recommends "Howtoons" for kids, especially their "infamous marshmallow shooter."
- Epernicus.com: Science networking site, mentioned by Esther Dyson.
- 23andMe.com: User-friendly online DNA comparison tools, explained by Esther Dyson.
- BookTour.com: Science authors can get book-tour information out to the "long tail", explained by Chris Anderson (Wired).
- Wikiprofessional.org: Wiki-like tool for Medline that combines language tools and authoritative sources with user input, explained by Barend Mons.
- Victoria Stodden discussed the misfit between what copyright does and what scientists want to have happen to content they put online. To come, I hope, a link to the web-based license that solves these issues.
- GalaxyZoo.org: Collaboration inspiration, or how people showed up from all over the internet to help Oxford astrophysicists classify millions of computer-photographed galaxies, and a Dutch teacher named Hanny discovered a unique new astronomy object, not explained by Betsy Devine, though I would have done so if we had time at the end of the session.
George Dyson, seen in this photo being attacked by a palm tree at the Wild Palms Hotel, did not speak at my session, so this photo is somewhat false advertising for this blogpost.
Update: Jack Stilgoe (Demos) was at this session and blogged it.