Science blogging and Web 2.0 "Birds of a Feather" session at ISMB 2008
Tuesday, Jul 22, 1-2:15pm, Room 718B
(Planning notes and proposed soft agenda. Discussion would be good. Collaborative activity would be good.)
(initially brainstormed by Shirley Wu, Pedro Beltrao, Neil Saunders, and Roland Krause)
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See how many people are there. Poll audience - familiar with any web 2.0 tools?
What is web 2.0? According to wikipedia, web 2.0 = use of web technology to enhance creativity, information sharing, and collaboration between users
- Wikis and wikipedia itself is an example
- social networking sites like Facebook
- user-generated content sites like Flickr, YouTube
- Blogs, feeds
- aggregators, lifestreaming (Google Reader, FriendFeed)
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Make list of what people know. Fill in some of the blanks.
EXAMPLES:
(demo some)
Online reference managers: Connotea, CiteULike, Zotero, LabMeeting
http://www.connotea.org - Pedro demo?
http://www.citeulike.org
http://www.zotero.org
http://www.labmeeting.com
WHy don't more people use these tools?
-Barriers to bioinformatics - territorial nature of scientists. Don't want people to know what you're thinking (indirectly, from what you're reading).
- hesitant to use the web as incubator for ideas
- circle of trust is small for scientists
- assumption that web 2.0 has to be public, but doesn't have to be. Can use for your own group or lab.
Why should people use these tools?
- valuable to get other people's perspectives, find more than you could on your own
- many people are experts in specific areas
Issues:
- who owns the IP for tagging documents, adding metadata? disclosing ideas.
- level below which amount of work doesn't qualify as "work"
- but when it's significant?
Feed aggregators: GoogleReader, Feedly, (Postgenomic), FriendFeed
http://reader.google.com
http://www.feedly.com
http://postgenomic.com
http://www.friendfeed.com
- http://friendfeed.com/rooms/the-life-scientists
- http://friendfeed.com/rooms/ismb-2008
- Science moves at a different time-scale
- tools that adapt to different time scales, filter streams
- FF: "best of X"
- critical mass is a problem. not yet enough people who are familiar enough to cover all areas of, say, a conference, in depth with good discussion
- limitations of micro-blogging: reliability decreases if bloggers aren't knowledgeable enough or vigilant enough. Also if bloggers are TOO familiar, they start making quips and asides which aren't useful either
- FF: can hide items or threads you don't find useful
ISMB - will they do a better job of making their content available? (video, slides, etc)
(apparently there is an ISCB blog but no one knew about it)
Cold Spring Harbor meetings do make their content available
Wikis: OpenWetWare, Wikipedia
http://www.openwetware.org
http://www.wikipedia.en
(OpenWetWare's article on Science 2.0 - http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Science_2.0)
Sharing: Slideshare, FriendFeed, del.icio.us
http://www.slideshare.net
http://del.icio.us
Video: JoVE, SciVee
http://www.jove.org
http://www.scivee.org
Social networks: NatureNetwork, Facebook, LinkedIn, Epernicus, SciLink, Laboratree
http://network.nature.com
http://www.epernicus.com
http://www.scilink.com
http://www.laboratree.org
Issues:
- "shallow" collaborations = turn off, you become a service?
- Roland: he got a paper out of a collaboration forged through a social network
- good way to connect biologists to bioinformaticians
- if info stream is too much, just ignore
- Pedro: problem is that _no_ connections are happening, not too many
- also example in FF
Open Notebook Science:
JC Bradley, UsefulChem
- your science gets better as it becomes more visible
Blogging:
- can get you authorship on papers!
- can get you jobs
- thousands of people could read your blog, many times more than will read your papers
Shannon asks: will micro-blogging be integrated into ISMB 2009?
Roland: best if don't have to invest a lot of time upfront. works now because we're typing while the talks are going on, saves time over jotting paper notes and then transcribing.
Shannon: easy way to get real-time info on schedule changes, who's attending what talk (for coverage)
- could use a wiki on the ISMB website
suggestion: offer free registration to official micro-bloggers
potential ISCB concern: random people editing the wiki
- not a reason not to talk to ISCB and try to work out a solution
- get some high profile folks to champion the proposal, e.g. Phil Bourne
suggestion: should be a way to encourage more spontaneous gatherings similar to BoFs at conferences. just mini groups of 20-ish people interested in the same topic.
- Like unconferences - no predefined agenda, program determined by participants.
(BarCamps, e.g. BioBarCamp in August)
Archives: arXiv, Nature Precedings, Pubmed Central
http://precedings.nature.com
http://arxiv.org
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov
Virtual worlds/remote interaction: SecondLife
ACS poster sessions, archaeology, Second Nature
For those who know very little about Web 2.0, good introductory talk series here:
http://van.embl.de/cb/web_20_talk_series.shtml
Cameron's FriendFeed for Scientists post:
http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/06/12/friendfeed-for-scientists-what-why-and-how/
Shannon's reflections on FriendFeed:
http://wildtype.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/friend-feeding-frenzy/
(good point made that FF makes a good alternative to mailing lists. instead of cluttering your inbox or others' mailboxes with messages that may or may not be useful, post on a website and people can check as desired.)
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Go through a few demos, get feedback - do people use any of these tools and why? If not, why not?
What tools would people like to see?
Positives:
- FriendFeed - there are 2 Nature editors that regularly contribute. There is at least one instance of someone asking for help on a problem, and getting help within hours, all conducted on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/e/9875b15c-7932-4714-aaba-2a15950219ec/Request-for-assistance/
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Some questions for discussion (with potential answers):
Why is blogging good?
- forces you to put things into writing
- gives you more perspectives (reading and having to write yourself)
- raises your profile for recruiting purposes (faculty)
Why is web 2.0 better than traditional networking?
- FASTER!
- more egalitarian - students on equal footing with established faculty and senior scientists
- you can be more proactive about seeking people to connect with
How are we compared to other scientific fields?
- far behind physics (preprint archives standard, considered pretty much the same as traditional publication) and economics (lots of blogging, even by nobel laureates) and others
How to deal with information overload?
- FriendFeed is good! built-in filter by your peers
- easy to find people with similar interests who can point you to relevant information or resources (just by them finding what's useful to them)
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"we don't know how it works, but it works, because we're all here!" - Neil
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Proposed collaborative task:
Report on ISMB 2008 drafted in Google Docs (is the spotty internet connection going to allow this?)
Roland suggests we come up with something creative, rather than a boring play by play of who presented what.
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Shameless plugs:
1. PSB open science workshop, Jan 5-9, Big Island Hawaii
http://psb.stanford.edu/cfp-opensci.html
(from website: The 3 hour workshop will consist of invited talks and demos, accepted proposals, and a panel discussion covering the following areas:
* Tools and resources for facilitating Open Science
* Approaches towards Open Science
* Socio-cultural aspects of Open Science
Accepted/invited talks include measuring the adoption of open science, Science commons, MyExperiment/Chemtools, bio-ontologies, building a scientific reputation on the internet, and community annotation. Plus a panel discussion. Potentially: informal sessions after the workshop during the rest of the conference.)
2. Bioinformatics career survey: http://www.bioinformaticszen.com/2008/07/creating-a-picture-of-different-careers-in-bioinformatics/
plus some stats from 1st two weeks: http://www.bioinformaticszen.com/2008/07/bioinformatics-career-survey-second-week/
2 more weeks left!
3. Hackathon at ISMB 2009? We can come up with ideas, and perhaps form a loose group of potential organizers (probably no-one knows if they'll come to ISMB next year). It would be possible to work on some open / collaborative science ideas.
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