Association of British Science Writers

On a cold weekend in January science bloggers, writers, journalists and scientists congregated at the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina to discuss skills, the future of online science journalism, and, of course, to network. Christine Ottery picks out the highlights and coverage from Science Online 2010.  

At Science Online 2010, now in its fourth year, 250 science bloggers, writers, journalists and scientists congregated at the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

The conference kicked off on 15 January with a Friday morning of workshops focused on skill-sets such as blogging, podcasting and filming science. Writer and cofounder of Research Blogging Dave Munger’s Blogging 102 presented a particularly useful session, introducing a variety of online tools – from surveys to analytics and social networking tools – to a room packed to the rafters with science bloggers.

The theme of skill-sharing ran through many of the sessions throughout the conference. These included: advice on turning your blog into a science book by authors Rebecca Skloot, David Dobbs and Brian Switek and a debate on to what extent science bloggers and writers should go to with fact-checking.

Other sessions of the informal conference were dedicated to chatting about the future of science writing online, most notably the Re-booting Science Journalism session with Carl Zimmer, David Dobbs, Ed Yong and John Timmer. The panelists spoke about their motivations for writing science online, the blurring boundaries between science journalism and blogging, and what makes laypeople read science online. Timmer provides some reflections here.

Innovative ways to communicate science were also explored, such as Second Life and the use of geospatial mapping to demonstrate earth sciences.

There were also some engaging debates on the ethical questions of science blogging, most significantly at a session on civility online, and how to deal with troublesome comments on your blog.

Aside from all of the co-operative workshops and the passionate debates, there were plenty of opportunities for science communicators to network. As one of the conference organizers Anton Zuiker says in an interview, one of the most important aspects of the conference was to connect with people in “meatspace”.

As expected from a conference of web-savvy science communicators, there was a plethora of tweeting and blogging that went on. You can find tweets tagged with #scio10 (of which there were over 700).

There were also discussion threads on FriendFeed, photos on Flickr, and YouTube clips, including official video footage.

[Editor’s note: You can read Christine’s own take on Science Online 2010 over on her blog.]