Programme

Conference Programme 2010

Science Online London 2010 will bring together members of the scientific community who are interested in the use of web technologies for collaboration and communication. Our exciting programme includes sessions on:

  • Data: How is the internet changing the way we work with data?
  • Blogs and social networking: How are blogs and social networking facilitating scientific discussion? What challenges do we face?
  • Science Communication: What challenges and opportunities are there when engaging with the public?

Additionally, there will be two participatory "Unconference Sessions" where you can discuss anything that you feel is missing from the conference programme.


FRIDAY, 3 SEPT 2010

9.00
Registration and coffee
Suggestions for unconference sessions.
10.10
Opening remarks
10.15
Keynote 1: How the web is changing science: A reader and author's perspective
Martin Rees
10.45
Panel discussion 1: "Rebooting" (aka the future of) science journalism
David Dobbs, Ed Yong, Martin Robbins, Alice Bell
11.45
Lunch
Unconference nominations close.
13.15
Breakout Sessions 1

Breakout 1: Publishing primary research data
Matt Cockerill, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Adam Farquhar, Simon Hodson

Breakout 2: Students in the sandbox
A.J. Cann

Breakout 3: Science writing and the law after BCA v Singh
David Allen Green (aka Jack of Kent).

Breakout 4: From Galaxy Zoo to Zooniverse
Robert Simpson
14.15
Breakout Sessions 2

Breakout 5: I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here!
Sophia Collins, Shane McCracken

Breakout 6: The health conversation on the social web: laboratory or echo chamber?
Andrew Spong, Erik van der Zijden, Graham Steel, Justin Kerr-Stevens

Breakout 7: Recommendation tools for scientists
Kevin Emamy, Jason Hoyt

Breakout 8: Connecting Scientific Resources
Ian Mulvany, Michael Habib, Richard Wallis, Chris Taylor
15.15
Coffee and voting for Unconference Sessions
16.00
Panel discussion 2: The state of science blogging?
Andrew Jaffe (Chair), Grrl Scientist, Jennifer Rohn, Lou Woodley
17.00
Finish
18.30
Fringe-Frivolous Rooftop Debate
At Mendeley rooftop.

SATURDAY, 4 SEPT 2010

9.00
Registration and coffee
10.00
Keynote 2: Who are you? The little details to remember when gathering information about the people behind the screens
Aleks Krotoski
10.30
Keynote 3: Turning online science into real world policy change
Evan Harris
11.00
Breakout Sessions 3

Breakout 9: The Sci Vote movement
Alice Bell, Imran Khan, Evan Harris

Breakout 10: Data visualisation
David McCandless

Breakout 11: The Green Chain Reaction
Peter Murray Rust

Breakout 12: ORCID as unique author identifier: what is it good for and should we worry or be happy?
Geoff Bilder, Gudmundur Thorisson, Martin Fenner
12.00
Lunch
13.15
Unconference Sessions 1
Up to four separate sessions, topics as decided on by Friday's voting
14.15
Unconference Sessions 2
Up to four separate sessions, topics as decided on by Friday's voting
15.15
Coffee
16.00
Panel discussion 3: If you build it, will they come?
Michael Jubb, Bob O’Hara, Richard Grant, Rob Procter
Panel discussion based on the recent RIN report on how researchers are using social media tools. The focus will be on discussing reasons for the lack of adoption of Web 2.0 tools by most scientists.
17.00
Closing Remarks

Unconference Sessions

On Saturday afternoon starting at 1:15pm, we will hold a series of unconference sessions. These are sessions suggested by delegates during the conference. So if you feel that there’s something missing from the conference programme that you’d be happy to lead a discussion on, bring the idea to the conference. If you’d like to use slides to accompany the discussion, please bring them along on a USB stick. However, we can’t guarantee your idea will be picked. We will canvass for ideas on Friday morning, hold the vote in the afternoon, and then hold the sessions on Saturday afternoon.

Keynotes

Martin Rees Martin Rees
Widely acknowledged as one of the world’s preeminent cosmologists, Lord Martin Rees is Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society and Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at Trinity College, Cambridge – in addition to being a prolific author and speaker. He has received countless awards for his varied contributions to his field, and was this year elected to deliver the Reith Lectures for the BBC. Billed by TED as ‘one of our key thinkers on the future of humanity within the cosmos’, Lord Rees has also served on many bodies here in the UK and abroad, dealing with education and international collaboration in science.
www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~mjr/

Evan Harris Evan Harris
Evan Harris was a doctor before entering politics, eventually becoming the Liberal Democrats’ Shadow Minister in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and Shadow Minister for Science until May this year. He remains a strong voice for science within Parliament.
www.evanharris.org.uk
drevanharris.wordpress.com

Aleks Krotoski Aleks Krotoski
Aleks Krotoski is an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity. For her PhD in Social Psychology, she examined how information spreads around the social networks of the World Wide Web. She writes regularly for the Guardian and the Observer, and hosts a technology podcast called Tech Weekly. Just this February, she presented The Virtual Revolution for BBC Two – a documentary about the social history of the Web.
alekskrotoski.com

Sessions

Adam Farquhar
Head of Digital Technology at The British Library; major focus areas include digital data sets and digital preservation
A.J. Cann
University of Leicester, Learning and Teaching Research Group, Dept of Biology; interested in science education
scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com
www.microbiologybytes.com/blog
frogroom-podcast.blogspot.com
Alice Bell
Science Communication Lecturer at Imperial College London; Interests include science and public engagement, relationship of young people to science
doctoralicebell.blogspot.com
www3.imperial.ac.uk/people/alice.bell
Andrew Jaffe
Professor of Astrophysics at Imperial College London, and blogger
www.andrewjaffe.net/blog
Andrew Spong
Co-founder of Health Care Social Media Europe and founder of STweM: Social media for scientific, technical, and medical communities, Editorial Director, Nexus
stwem.com
www.hcsmeucamp.com
Bob O’Hara
Senior Researcher at BiK-F and Science Blogger
blogs.nature.com/boboh
Chris Taylor
Senior Software Engineer for Proteomics Service, EBI
David Allen Green
Head of media at City law firm Preiskel & Co. He is also the author of the Jack of Kent blog and convenor of Westminster Skeptics.
www.preiskel.com/people/david-allen-green
www.jackofkent.com
David Dobbs
Science writer (The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate and books including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral)
daviddobbs.net
David McCandless
Writer, author and creative director InformationIsbeautiful.net
Twitter @infobeautiful
Ed Yong
Author of the popular "Not Exactly Rocket Science" blog
blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience
Erik van der Zijden
Co-founder and New Media Architect of DigiRedo, helping organizations implement new media. Blogger on various blogs such as the biggest marketing blog in the Netherlands, and his own blog.
www.digiredo.nl
www.digiredo.wordpress.com
Geoff Bilder
Director of Strategic Initiatives at CrossRef, @gbilder on Twitter
Graham Steel
Patient advocate, co-founder of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease International Support Alliance (CJDISA), and science blogger
www.science3point0.com/mcblawg
Grrl Scientist
Evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, science blog writer for The Guardian and long-time science blog writer for Nature Network, ScienceBlogs and now, Scientopia.
grrlscientist.net
Gudmundur Thorisson
Bioinformatician at the University of Leicester
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz
Associate Publisher, BioMed Central; Particular interest in the best practices for data publication
Ian Mulvany
Interface of online technologies and digital publishing (formerly Nature Publishing Group, now Mendeley)
www.mendeley.com/profiles/ian-mulvany
Imran Khan
Director of CaSE, Campaign for Science and Engineering; Science Advocacy
www.sciencecampaign.org.uk
Jason Hoyt
Jason Hoyt is Vice-President, Research & Development and Chief Scientist at Mendeley
http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/jason-hoyt
Jennifer Rohn
Cell biologist at University College London, founder and editor of Lablit.com, novelist, science writer and Nature Network blogger.
lablit.com
blogs.nature.com/ue19877e8
Justin Kerr-Stevens
Strategic Advisor and Demos Associate UK Gov.
www.twitter.com/jkerrstevens
Kevin Emamy
Co-founder at citeulike.org
Lou Woodley
Product Manager for Nature Network and Nature Blogs
network.nature.com/profile/lou
Martin Fenner
Clinical Fellow in Oncology at Hannover Medical School, science blogger at blogs.nature.com/mfenner, @mfenner on Twitter.
Martin Robbins
Scientist, writer, blogger, advocate for evidence-based policy in government
www.layscience.net
www.mjrobbins.net
Matt Cockerill
Managing director BioMed Central, a pioneer in Open Access science publication
Michael Habib
Product Manager, Scopus UX + Workflow
Michael Jubb
Director of the Research Information Network
www.rin.ac.uk
Peter Murray Rust
University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry. Creator of Chemical Markup Language; interests also include text mining and digital publication
wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust
www.ch.cam.ac.uk/staff/pm.html
Richard Wallis
Technology Evangelist Talis
Rob Procter
Professor and Director of the Manchester e-Research Centre, responsible for leading the investigation of socio-technical factors influencing the adoption and wider take up of e-Research methods and technologies.
www.merc.ac.uk/?q=Rob
Robert Simpson
University of Oxford, Astrophysics; active Citizen Science advocate
orbitingfrog.com/blog
Shane McCracken
Director at Gallomanor
www.gallomanor.com
Simon Hodson
Programme Manager, E-Research, Managing Research Data, JISC
www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/mrd.aspx
Sophia Collins
Producer of “I’m a scientist, get me out of here!” a science dialogue event between scientists and schoolchildren
imascientist.org.uk

Abstracts

FRIDAY, 3 SEPT 2010

Keynote 1

Martin Rees

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 10:15
Auditorium

How the web is changing science: A reader and author's perspective

Panel discussion 1

David Dobbs (Chair)
Ed Yong
Martin Robbins
Alice Bell

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 10:45
Auditorium

"Rebooting" (aka the future of) science journalism

With many of journalism‟s institutions, traditions, and practices under fire, science journalists face a tough evolutionary challenge: How should we adapt if we‟re to take engaging, rigorous science writing into this changing environment? What traits and behaviours should we cultivate or keep, and which leave behind? What pressures and opportunities do new media forms and standards create, and how should we respond to them? How do we ensure accuracy and transparency while engaging readers? Finally, how can people who want to write well about science do all this ... and make a living? Can we be the same old animals, or must we take new forms?

Format Panel 2.0 style: After some brief framing remarks by the moderator, each panelist will speak for 5 to 8 minutes. Halfway through the session, we‟ll open it to what we expect to be a very lively give-and-take discussion.

Breakout 1

Matt Cockerill
Ian Hrynaszkiewitcz
Adam Farquhar
Simon Hodson

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 13:15
Auditorium

Publishing primary research data

Part 1: How can National Libraries support data sharing, citation, and (re)use? (Adam Farquhar)

Researchers, funders, publishers, data centres, and libraries now clearly recognize the need to support data sharing, citation, and (re)use. There is a growing sense of urgency as our scholarly communications infrastructure flexes to meet new ways of doing science. But action must take place across disciplines at a national and international scale to be effective.

The British Library is developing a strategic approach to supporting researchers who work with data. We‟ll discuss this strategy and how we are working together internationally through DataCite to provide new services that enable citation, encourage data sharing, and provide incentives to researchers.

Part 2: Exploring the role of journals, editors, and publishers in data sharing (Iain Hrynaszkiewicz)

Scientific data sharing has moved beyond the question of "why?", and on to the "what?", "where?" "how?" and "when?". Online journal publishing presents opportunities to publish raw data as supplementary material, and to link data deposited outside the journal to published articles. But how should we define a dataset in relation to an article, how should the two be linked, and in what format(s) should the data be made available?

Human subjects data present unique challenges of privacy and consent, especially when considering the release of historical data. Best practice for publishing human subjects data will be discussed along with alternatives to fully open access publication.

Furthermore, myriad domain-specific data standards are emerging, to enable machine readability, and there are calls for ownership of, and rights within, data to be waived, to ensure interoperability. To what extent should journals, editors and publishers be encouraging – or enforcing – data deposition, specific data standards, data formats and license agreements?

Participants are encouraged to share the perspective of their field(s) of scientific research in relation to these questions.

Part 3: Promoting an infrastructure and incentives to encourage datas haring: a JISC perspective (Simon Hodson)

The premise of the JISC Managing Research Data Programme is that it is a good thing to share data for verification and reuse. This premise is becoming less and less contentious and numerous examples can be cited for the benefits of more open approaches to sharing research data. A vision can be presented in which data management infrastructure, planning tools, institutional and national support combine to achieve this promise. Also necessary, however, are greater credit and attribution for the sharing of research data. This presentation will describe activities being taken forward by the JISCMRD Programme to put in place a supporting infrastructure and to encourage greater recognition for researchers who publish and share data. The initiatives include projects exploring means of citing complex data and analysis, as well as projects to put sharing data at the centre of publication. Initiatives in other countries will also be considered and in this context a number of open questions remain. Participants will be asked to contribute to a discussion of these and other questions:
What publication models will best contribute to greater levels of data sharing?
What relationships between researchers, data repositories and publications need to be established and what needs to be done to ensure they are sustainable?
Where are research data best curated for the long term, in institutional repositories or discipline specific data archives?

Breakout 2

A.J. Cann

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 13:15
Meeting Room 4

Students in the sandbox - developing professionals

Science education remains largely stuck in a didactic mode, where information is transmitted from qualified professionals to aspiring students. Ironically, because social tool adoption by practicing scientists has been slow, many people involved in delivering science education are visitors rather than residents in social spaces, and their expertise with these tools is outstripped by the students they teach. This session will start with a whistle-stop tour of the pedagogies of online education. Participants will then discuss the barriers to tool adoption, examples of best practice, and suggestions for institutional and individual advances.

Breakout 3

David Allen Green

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 13:15
Meeting Room 2

Science writing and the law after BCA v Singh

This talk will set out the current legal landscape for science writies and blogging. It follows on from a talk given by Green at Science Online London 2009, with updates on the famous case of the British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh.

Breakout 4

Robert Simpson

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 13:15
Meeting Room 3

From Galaxy Zoo to Zooniverse

The Zooniverse is a growing collection of online citizen science projects, which allow users to collaborate and contribute to real scientific research. The galaxies, the Moon and our nearest star, the Sun, are all being inspected and classified by an army of more than 300,000 members of the public. Future targets include not only astronomy, but also topics such as papyrology, climatology and even botany.

Breakout 5

Sophia Collins
Shane McCracken

Place and Time:
Fri, Sept 3, 14:15
Auditorium

I'm a scientist, Get me out of Here

I'm a Scientist is an innovative education programme that uses the internet to get school students talking to real live scientists. The June 2010 event was the biggest ever with 5,000 students interacting with 100 scientists. It's funded by a Society Award from the Wellcome Trust. Find out what works in the event, with live demos so you can really see how it feels to take part. We'll discuss what it is about doing it online that makes the event possible, and why, and how the things we‟ve learned could be applied to other settings.

The health conversation on the social web: laboratory or echo chamber?

A number of regular health conversations take place on Twitter under hashtags such as #hcsm #socpharm #RNchat and #hcsmeu which have been effective in connecting early adopters of social technologies who have an interest in the discussing health on the social web. However, is their utility plateauing? Are they managing to recruit sufficient members from all of the key stakeholder communities in the health conversation (patients, carers, healthcare professionals, providers, industry, policy makers) to merit the claim that they are truly inclusive? Are they talking to themselves, or making a substantive impact on the future of health communications? What else could they be doing?
Background viewing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXPJVwwEmiM

Breakout 7

Kevin Emamy
Jason Hoyt

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 14:15
Meeting Room 2

Recommendation tools for scientists

Part 1: From search to discovery: automated recommendation of scholarly papers on citeulike (Kevin Emamy)

Could scientist's personal paper collections be mined as a resource for others in their field? Citeulike has been running a collaborative-filter based scholarly paper recommendation system on the web for nearly a year. The system is blind to the contents of the papers it recommends and relies on the actions of the site's users to produce it's results. As a live system, it provides a unique opportunity to quantify the effectiveness of different approaches.

This talk describes the genesis of the system, the types of filters used, results so far and plans for future approaches.

Part 2: The role of tools in influencing behavior and policy (Jason Hoyt)

Many would argue that Open Access & Open Science is the ideal, but is it acceptable to build search and recommendation engines that promote this ideal? Should they instead remain agnostic, i.e. deliver based solely on the content? Open discussion to follow.

Breakout 8

Ian Mulvany
Michael Habib
Richard Wallis
Chris Taylor

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 14:15
Meeting Room 4

Connecting Scientific Resources

Do you have data? Have you decided that you want to publish that data in a friendly way? Then this session is for you. Allowing your data to be linked to other data sets is an obvious way to make your data more useful, and to contribute back to the data community that you are a part of, but the mechanics of how you do that is not always so clear cut. This session will discuss just that. With experts from the publishing world, the liked data community, and scientific data services, this is a unique opportunity to get an insight into how to create linked scientific data, and what you can do with it once you have created it.

Panel discussion 2

Andrew Jaffe (Chair)
Grrl Scientist
Jennifer Rohn
Lou Woodley

Place and Time:
Fri, 3 Sept, 16:00
Auditorium

The state of science blogging?

This conference has its roots in science blogging. The first Science Online London conference, in 2008, was devoted entirely to the medium. The panel will explore how science blogging has evolved over the years, what forms are currently most interesting, the pros and cons of blogging on your own versus blogging as part of a network, and the future for science blogging.


SATURDAY, 4 SEPT 2010

Keynote 2

Aleks Krotoski

Place and Time:
Sat, 4 Sept, 10:00
Auditorium

Who are you? The little details to remember when gathering information about the people behind the screens

The Web offers an unprecedented opportunity for social scientists to gather actual behavioural data about research participants, providing insight into and evidence for theory and practice; however, the computer-mediated medium also introduces practicalities that need to be considered when development studies. Ethical, methodological and design issues are implicated by the constraints of the so-called “lean” medium, as are the identity and influence processes that research questions seek to study.

What unique social information must we be cognizant of when seeking to understand online behaviour, and what is the real potential of the Web for social science?

Keynote 3

Evan Harris

Place and Time:
Sat, 4 Sept, 10:30
Auditorium

Turning online science into real world policy change

Evidence-based policy is a phrase more abused than adhered in many areas of life. The internet, the growth of science blogs and forums, the advent of twitter and facebook and the emergence of a skeptic movement have to certain extent flattered to deceive in terms of their influence on politicians and policy-makers. While big business, other grassroots causes and the promulgators of pseudoscience have been more successful in achieving or opposing favourable policy change. It is time for the science and skeptic community, both at large and on-line, to get serous about translating both published work and critical analysis into political change. I have some suggestions how.

Breakout 9

Alice Bell
Imran Khan
Evan Harris

Place and Time:
Sat, 4 Sept, 11:00
Meeting Room 2

The Sci Vote movement

Part 1: A hashtag isn't a campaign (?): On the tribes of online campaigning (Alice Bell)

It is often said that social media campaigns amount to little more than ranting in an echo-chamber; users sit in little self-constructed bubbles of agreement. Although this is a fair criticism, I want to start by arguing against such pessimism, to defend the role of niche movements and the possibilities provided by new media for developing them. Precisely because #scivote was a hashtag, it had a power to connect. It allowed nascent on and off-line political mumblings to feel less isolated, it connected people to events, information, ideas, debates and, quite simply, more people. It let individuals develop knowledge and interest and fostered community. I conclude however, by arguing that the science lobby must broaden their scope. Too much Sci Vote activity of the pre-election period, including that in mainstream press, was characterised by tribalism. Identifying “science friendly” MPs or labeling policy as “anti science” is a simplistic game of goodies and baddies which belies the subtitles of science in British society. To be taken seriously in policy and broader public discourse, the science lobby must accommodate a diversity of interests, actors and ideas and demonstrate how specific areas of expertise are meaningful to a range of issues. The scivote hashtag had its moment, now it‟s time to drop the science brand and go to work on a range of differently local levels.

Part 2: Science Vote; what's the goal? (Imran Khan)

The Science Vote" was a campaign kicked off by CaSE that then grew organically. The online campaign was a part of it; it included the twitter #scivote hashtag, and the Science Vote and S Word blogs. The goal of the entire campaign was to get the three main parties to take science seriously as an election issue so that they would strengthen their science manifestos and commitments. Was the online aspect of the campaign useful in doing that? Did it add value? How can the community express itself better next time around? What do you want the campaign to be?

Breakout 10

David McCandless

Place and Time:
Sat, 4 Sept, 11:00
Auditorium

Data visualisation

The use of infographics, data visualisations and information design is a rising trend across many disciplines: science, design, journalism and web. At the same time, daily exposure to the web is creating a incredibly design-literate population. Could this be a new language?

Breakout 11

Peter Murray Rust
Simon Hodson

Place and Time:
Sat, 4 Sept, 11:00
Meeting Room 3

The Green Chain Reaction

Science Online 2010 provides an opportunity for you to join an experiment - The Green Chain Reaction - involving people, machines, chemistry and – of course – the internet. GCR is open to anyone who is interested and you don‟t need to be a chemist to take part. The experiment is assessing the feasibility of extracting meaning from chemical reaction information and data online to create new knowledge from sources that would otherwise remain "dark" (mainly patents). The focus is on determining the "greeness" of chemical reactions in manufacturing and research, with an aim to increasing their acceptability. The results from this experiment will be explored and displayed with stunning new technology in this breakout session.

Take part in the Green Chain Reaction here scienceonlinelondon.wikidot.com/greenchem:how-can-i-get-involved.

Breakout 12

Geoff Bilder
Gudmundur Thorisson
Martin Fenner

Place and Time:
Sat, 4 Sept, 11:00
Meeting Room 4

ORCID as unique author identifier: what is it good for and should we worry or be happy?

The Open Researcher & Contributor ID (ORCID) initiative aims to create a central registry of unique identifiers for researchers. In this session we want to present and discuss two scenarios that would greatly benefit from a widely adopted unique author identifier: a) submission of a manuscript to a scientific journal and b) deposition of primary research data in a repository. We hope to have a lively discussion around the potential uses, but also dangers of the ORCID unique author identifier.

Panel discussion 3

Michael Jubb
Bob O'Hara
Richard Grant
Rob Procter

Place and Time:
Sat, 4 Sept, 16:00
Auditorium

If you build it, will they come?

Part 1: Dragging my colleagues online (Bob O’Hara)

Bob O’Hara will discuss his attempts to get his colleagues to use online tools - Wikis, blogs, and even Google Wave - to coordinate their work. He will explain why there have been successes and failures, and why none of the failures could possibly have been his fault.

Part 2: Adoption and use Web 2.0 in novel forms of scholarly communications (Rob Procter)

I will summarise findings from our recent RIN-funded study of how UK researchers are responding to the opportunities provided by Web 2.0 to engage in novel forms of scholarly communications. I will examine patterns of adoption of Web 2.0 and discuss some of the factors that might explain why some researchers are reluctant to adopt. I will conclude by considering steps that different stakeholders might take to facilitate greater experimentation and uptake.

Part 3: Build it and they don’t come (Richard P. Grant)

The last few years have seen a failure of scientists to flock to social media sites. The ‘Facebook for scientists’ has never materialized; despite new sites springing up at the rate of about one a week in 2008 and 2009. Relatively few people have engaged with these ventures, and they are mainly the same few ‘early adopters’ who will try anything at least once. Failure to bridge the gap to the scientific community at large is often blamed on scientists being ‘too busy’ to engage in these efforts. But the true reason is much more fundamental: there is no value, real or perceived, to the vast majority of scientists.

Community needs a focus. A site for social networking alone does not offer anything scientists can’t get elsewhere. Successful ventures spring from identifying and then fulfilling a real need, and/or by offering something unique and valuable. The community aspect of these sites can then grow around the service. Examples from my own experience include the Science Advisory Board and Nature Network. I will also be experimenting with ‘community’ on the new F1000 website. What lessons can we learn from these experiences, and from the failed experiments?

Pre-conference Pub crawl

Thursday 2 September, from 7:30pm

Synchrotron

For those interested in having a good pint of beer on the evening before the conference starts (Thursday September 2nd), we have picked a few good pubs in the Holborn area near the British Library. We start at 7.30 PM in the main (ground floor) bar of the Cittie of Yorke, which has a spacious main room and an ancient basement bar. We can later also visit the following pubs:

  • Ye Olde Mitre (the "hidden" pub, which was once frequented by Elizabeth I.
  • Princess Louise (Gorgeous Victorian pub with separate compartments and some "interesting" urinals)
  • The Lamb (another Victorian gem, and scene of many Nature Network London drinks).

For more information, and to give us a a rough idea of the number of people to join, please drop us a line on the Nature Networks Forum.

Free tour of the exhibition "The Royal Society: 350 Years of Science"

Thursday 2 September, 3:30-4:30pm, 5:00 - 6:00pm

The Royal Society

As part of the Royal Society's 350th Anniversary celebrations, the new exhibition "The Royal Society: 350 Years of Science" will take you on a journey through the Royal Society's beautiful buildings on Carlton House Terrace and through the varied and fascinating history of the Society, encountering major scientific personalities and discoveries along the way.

There will be two exclusive tours offered to the first 40 people who sign up here for the tour at 3:30pm and here for the tour at 5:00pm. Each tour lasts for about 1 hour and will take place at the Royal Society.


Diamond Light Source tour

Thursday 2 September, from 6pm

Synchrotron

On the evening before the conference, interested delegates are invited on a free tour of the Diamond Light Source Synchrotron near Oxford. A free coach will take delegates from London to the Synchrotron, where they will receive a short talk, a tour, tea and biscuits and perhaps even a glass of wine. The coach will return to London for approximately 10pm.

Places will be given to the first 50 people who sign up here.


Fringe-Frivolous Rooftop Debate

Friday 3 September, from 6:30pm

Synchrotron

Building on last year’s successful Fringe event which ran (wonkily but enthusiastically) alongside SOLO09, we’ve again secured the lovely Mendeley rooftop venue for a repeat roofterrace night! This freeform debate will have an emphasis on science blogging but we’re likely to stray all over the online board; as long as it’s quirky we won’t quibble.

Sign up and leave topic suggestions in the Nature Network forum. (Final choices will be made spontaneously on the night). For those of you who have no idea what this is all about, watch the official bootleg video from last year and see photos of last year's event on Flickr!

If you want to spread the word, the official hashtag is #fringefriv10.