I’m back and recovering from the Science Online conference; recovering in the sense of being exhausted (but in a good way) and also because I discovered the frictionless surface section in my shower on the last day and went ass-over-teakettle. (Interesting phrase, which implies one’s normal configuration is ass-under-teakettle) That little event, coupled with a 4.5 hour drive, means my back is exceedingly stiff and sore at the moment. More on me later.

The octopus? That was the mascot for this year’s conference. I obtained a 3D printed version

I also got a picture with the mascot itself, @scioctopus, while it did an impersonation of Alien

In a still pic, no one can hear you scream

I enjoyed the conference, as I had the previous two, which explains why I keep coming back. The organizers, Karyn Traphagen, Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker, did a wonderful job and NC State provided a great venue. Last year there was a hiccup or two with the logistics as the conference transitioned to the new site and also expanded, but things ran pretty smoothly this year — our bus had to reboot its computer one evening, but that was no big deal. I got to see many people whom I met the past two years and meet some new folks (or re-meet a couple who didn’t remember meeting me before, but that happens)

It’s called an un-conference, meaning that most of the sessions are not simply people at a podium giving a powerpoint presentation on some subject — the sessions are moderated, but much of the time is spent with audience members asking and answering questions, and there is opportunity for further discussions during the breaks, if you wanted to follow up on some line of inquiry.

I took some notes and will have a few posts on sessions I attended. Recalling conversations will be more difficult — things have kind of blurred together. But I have some overall impressions of the conference:

Twitter was big. I was much more involved, mainly because last year I didn’t want to lug my heavy laptop around and was limited by using my iPod touch. This year I have a iPad which I used for taking notes and let me tweet as well. Wi-fi was fast and there were power strips everywhere, so one could plug in and not drain batteries too far. Each of the session had their own hashtag so that commentary can be aggregated — not only comments at the time, but anyone posting a link down the road. There were a few people who recognized me by my twitter handle rather than my name.

Dinner diffusion is still an issue. Fortunately there was a decision-maker who had a restaurant-finding app, which streamlined the whole process. Lunch was far easier, since you could sit down at pretty much any table and be able to have a good conversation. One day there was a sign-up for lunches; each table had a presenter (from either one of the “converge” or “blitz” sessions, which were not interactive) at it; I got to sit with Doug Ellison, who is a Visualization Producer at JPL and was one of the people behind the Curiosity / 7 Minutes of Terror animation. Incredible. Another day was a hastily-organized lunch with physics-types to discuss some possible science-communication-related collaborations.

Hanging out with smart people is incredible. I get to do this at work (I like my job) but at this conference there is the whole spectrum of science and people whose job and/or passion is to explain science to people who don’t work in that field. I don’t get tired of having people say “That’s cool” when I tell them that I build atomic clocks for a living, or hear about them tell me what their interesting job is.