Category Archives: Conference stories

State of the Octopus Address

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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.

SevenUpping, Episode IV

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Tying up the last few sessions I’m going to write about…

Understanding Audiences

Part of this seemed geared toward the journalism side of the house, since there was a fair amount of discussion on demographics and statistics, but some of it applied to the bloggers among the crowd. One of the main points was that comments don’t really tell you much about your audience — many people simply like to lurk and read, and have nothing to add or question. So commenters, as with volunteer surveys, do not give you a good sample; it’s not unusual for the commenters to be the people who are simply having a strong reaction to what was posted. And you may not even be getting a fair sample of the extrema, since there’s an adage from word-of-mouth-land that people who are happy with a service or product tell one or two people, but if you are angry you tell everyone (something for customer service folk to keep in mind).

However, if you do want people to comment, you have to make sure that there aren’t barriers. Many people find the requirement to register before you can comment as off-putting and a sign that you really aren’t interested. More applicable to commercial sites, I would think.

I Can Haz Context

Some important tidbits from this session. There was a focus on how annoying it can be to tune into a news broadcast, where you have no idea what’s going on, because the focus is on bringing you the latest details, and not giving you the background. Blogs aren’t going to bring breaking news, so it’s imperative to include material that gives background and context to whatever it is you are writing about. Depth is what we bloggers (and journalists) can give, so we need to take advantage of that.

Once again, there was a large swath of discussion pertaining to commercial sites and page views — the best way to get people to click through to supporting “explainer” links where you’ve gone into more depth. The consensus was that link at the beginning (A kind of “you must read this if you don’t understand X” link) or at the end, because readers are less likely to interrupt their reading to go to those links. (I really can’t corroborate this)

SevenUpping, Episode III

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One of the sessions that I really enjoyed at ScienceOnline 2012 was It’s Good to be the King, which was a discussion cast in the context of some Mel Brooks clips, which I thought was a clever way to shape the discussion.

The first clip was from Young Frankenstein, where Dr. Frankenstein meets Igor at the train station, and they go through the name pronunciation scene (FrankenSTEIN vs FRANKenstein, and EEgor vs EYEgor), and the upshot of this was that you get to choose your own identity in the blogohedron. How you blog and what you blog about is up to you. You can even be Frau Blücher, if what you want to do is elicit whinnying with everything you post.

Next up was a scene from Robin Hood: Men in Tights that involved some fumbling about with the language and ending with an allusion to the many incarnations of the movie. The idea that wordplay is good in posts and it’s okay to do something that’s been done before if you give it your own slant. Other items discussed were the use of pop-culture references and punny post titles (Gee, I should give that a try)

Blazing Saddles was next, with the scene where Bart says that it’s “getting pretty damn dull around here.” Obviously, you don’t want to fall into a blogging rut, for both your sake and that of your audience.

This was followed by Dracula, Dead and Loving It (which I have not seen, so I was not familiar with the scene) where one character drives a stake into the vampire and gallons of blood gush out with each blow. The premise here was that Mel Brooks liked to repeat a joke well past its peak, but with the over-repetition it would (usually) become funny again. The lesson was that you shouldn’t be afraid to re-blog content, if you have a new take on it.

Spaceballs followed, with the scene where president Skroob gets teleported with his head on backwards, and asks “Why didn’t somebody tell me my ass was so big?” The topic here was criticism, and how to solicit it. You need, and should want, honest feedback on your writing, and unsolicited feedback is usually not of the constructive sort, so you may have to specifically ask for it from select individuals.

The last segment was “It’s good to be the king” from History of the World, Part I. Don’t get too comfortable being the king — don’t get set in your ways, and remember that the content is really the king.

Intellectualism and Scientific Literacy

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Mastering complexity

[W]e live in a world where it’s de rigueur to know your Shakespeare, Molière or Goethe, but quite all right to be proudly ignorant of Faraday, Pasteur or Einstein. It hasn’t always been that way, and it doesn’t have to be that way. But right now, there’s a trend in society towards scientific apathy, and even antagonism. This is dangerous for us all and it’s incumbent on the scientific community to address the issue.

I think it’s de rigueur to know your Shakespeare, Molière or Goethe if you want to claim to be an intellectual (which, as I have said, I do not). But I think one must note that literacy is a term we associate with a minimum level of capability. One who is literate can read, but that does not mean that said person will be able to appreciate the works of Shakespeare (or Molière or Goethe). That next level is where we find interactional expertise, and we need to be clear whether we expect this, or simply literacy. But anyone claiming to be an intellectual cannot legitimately exclude math and science from their arsenal.

Somewhat related to this topic, I have to say that Howard Johnson Jennifer is right! in Meet Me Halfway

It’s frustrating. That frustration is often expressed in a renewed cracking of the whip, insisting that scientists just need to do better in communicating via public outreach. While I agree that the scientific community should (and is) working to improve in that area — heck, I do this for a living and still am constantly striving to improve! — what Hasson’s research clearly shows is that genuine communication is a two-way street. Scientists — a.k.a., the speakers — are only half of the equation, and thus they are only half of the problem.

The other half of the equation are the listeners; any type of communication will fail if it doesn’t have a receptive audience. And I’d go one step further. We tend to think of listening as a passive act, but it actually requires some effort in order to achieve that elusive connection. Particularly when it comes to bridging a gap, as with scientists and the general public, the listeners need to be more actively engaged, more invested in having a true conversation.

This is a view I’ve held for a long time. There are concepts that do require years of college to get a handle on, and reading a pop-sci book is not a substitute. You have to go out and expend some effort to have your interactional expertise if you want to be part of the conversation.

All of which ties in to a session I attended on scientific literacy (Is encouraging scientific literacy more than telling people what they need to know) at ScienceOnline 2012. We agreed that it’s important, because science appears in many places and people need to be able to make informed decisions, but in light of Jennifer’s post, I think one must add that people need to be motivated to want to make informed decisions, and take steps toward that end.

There was an interesting exercise in which the (Canadian) moderators gave a short dialogue about a curling result, and used the collective sports (il)literacy as an analogy for science (though it’s not the first time one might have thought of this). Since I lived in Canada for 2.5 years and am familiar with curling, though, I didn’t get the full benefit of the exercise.

The FTL neutrino experiment came up as well, and I wish I had better notes because I don’t recall exactly what the objection was — something about conflicting information being presented, but this is because most physicists are not neutrino experts and there’s a difference between literacy and expertise. I pointed out that in some ways, the issue actually raised scientific literacy, because it was a demonstration of the scientific process.

There was a very interesting example given by one of the moderators (Catherine Anderson, with whom I talked at length about this after the session) about some science-camp exercises that were modeled to be like a CSI investigation. Clues were given and the students had to gather evidence and make their case, but one of the driving lessons of the exercise was that there was no right answer, just as in any part of “real” science — you do your experiment and then have to interpret the results. There’s no “right answer” to compare it to, which is one of the tougher concepts I’ve had to try to convey in introductory physics labs back when I was doing that sort of thing. The students get the idea that experimental error was the difference between what they got and what the textbook said they should get. I occasionally try and think of ways one could do a lab where the “right” answer isn’t available, so the students would have to the chance to do something that compared to real science investigation, and understanding the process of science and how uncertainty/error fits in is a big part of scientific literacy

SevenUpping, Episode II

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The keynote presentation at the UnConference, ScienceOnline2012 was given by Mireya Mayor, an Anthropologist/Primatologist who has worked for National Geographic, entitled The Vain Girl’s Survival Guide to Science and The Media, and told (part of) her tale of her path to becoming a scientist and science communicator, and some of the obstacles on it. You can watch a video of an earlier, similar presentation and audio of the talk — the story of someone who chose to dive into the deep end of science in the field, and quickly learned to swim. Pretty awesome. I had the thought that if she had chosen to be an archaeologist, she would be a real-life, modern-day Indiana Jones. (Maybe with less shooting)

There were some strong messages I took away from the talk. Mireya spoke of expectations and also of a risk she took in showing emotion in a documentary (in a situation involving gorilla poachers, and gorilla parts on a barbecue pit), which is more of a risk because she’s a woman. It’s a risk because of the stereotype of a scientist: a man in a lab coat, probably with a test tube and bunsen burner, and coldly analytical. (The only emotion you can show is geeky enthusiasm) So that particular scene strikes at all three facets of the stereotype — not a man, not in a lab, and showing a forbidden emotion.

That led into a related question: what does a scientist look like? I think it’s great when scientists show they are not at all like the stereotype, though I’ve seen that this does not always happen — read The Sexing Up Of Science (I’m Coming Out! And So Can You!) for another perspective, and Things I Found Ponderable: #scio12 Report the First for some reactions to Mireya’s talk (including a response from her). The issue evokes some strong feelings, some surprising, some all too predictable. But the goal is getting people interested in science, so the approach seems to be working, as evidenced by feedback she gets, like I didn’t know I could become a scientist.

There’s some good science communication advice in the talk as well. Keep it simple, talk to a general audience as if you were talking to someone in a bar. Remember you may be dealing with people who don’t see the connection of the science to them — if they don’t see how it affects them, they don’t know why they should care about it.

SevenUpping, Episode I

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I’m still in recovery mode from my recent trip to ScienceOnline2012. It didn’t help at all that I had a nasty cold the week prior to it, except that having that cold during the conference would have been much worse, because I couldn’t have gone. The residual congestion and wrecked voice weren’t the biggest problem — it was not being at full strength and stamina, which made being “up” for the conference and after-conference activities that much harder.

And being “up” is a requirement. This is the Un-Conference, so unlike traditional gatherings where speaker after speaker drones on for 12 (or 15 or whatever minutes), delving deeper into material you may or may not understand very well, this gathering is very interactive. Even though I was tired, I was rarely in danger of falling asleep.

I find the ScienceOnline series to be an elevating experience. It had better be, because for me this is a vacation and all expenses are out-of-pocket, so I truly appreciate how far the organizers (Bora Zivkovic, Anton Zuiker and Karyn Traphagen, and many other volunteers — thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou) stretch my conference dollar to provide such an event. You have several hundred people whose passion is science communication (either by job or by hobby), many of whom are either well-reknowned science journalists or practicing scientists. Anyone you walk up to is going to be good at talking about some aspect of science at a level you (especially being scientifically literate) are going to be able to understand. As I did last year, I met a lot of people by simply sitting down at breakfast or lunch with some people I didn’t know, do the introductions and ask them what they did (also on the bus for one-on-one conversations). The other strategy was hanging out with DrSkyskull, because he knows everyone.

The un-conference style meant that most sessions were basically a large conversation on the topic at hand, albeit with only one person talking at a time. The session moderators contribute and keep the conversation moving and although they might have an outline of how the hour is supposed to go, they have to react to whatever comes up; some sessions are structured more than others.

Another aspect of this was that the break are — the café — was always open during the conference hours. There were scheduled breaks between sessions, which gave you an opportunity to follow up on a discussion if you wanted to, but the availability of beverages and food was not limited — there was no “you will mingle NOW and only now” structure imposed on us.

I’ll continue with the conference sessions I attended soon; I’ve already posted about the art and the eternal struggle between scientists and journalists, and won’t talk more about the session on history of science.

Finding a Common Enemy

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Still going with my general trend of reporting on ScienceOnline 2012 by working backwards, I’m going to quasi-summarize the panel discussion, The Sticky Wicket of the Scientist-Journalist Relationship, which closed out the conference. The panel members were David Kroll, Bora Zivkovic, Maggie Koerth-Baker and Seth Mnookin, which means it was slanted toward the journalist point of view, but it was indeed interesting to get that perspective.

Out of the gate, Maggie Koerth-Baker set the tone about the journalist perspective: I am not your goddam stenographer. I don’t trust you implicitly and I don’t want to be a fanboy. (That’s a paraphrase, but pretty close to a direct quote). And that’s fair, I think, especially with the recent and laughable query about being fact-vigilantes, one shouldn’t expect any journalists to simply repeat what they are told.

We were also cautioned that the journalist’s motivation for writing an article may not coincide with the scientist’s agenda — don’t assume it is and find out those details. This ties in to the concern of some about being misquoted; even though the journalist probably isn’t out to “get” a scientist, you won’t have a chance to backtrack on your comments. So you should correct yourself immediately if you mis-speak. There was also the suggestion that it’s OK to speak to a reporter off the record, and then agree afterward to allow some comments to be on the record. That gives the scientist some control over the issue.

What was interesting to me was a comment by Seth Mnookin about how scientists are surprised that journalists often don’t check back with the scientist they’ve interviewed and show them the story before it’s published. Some of this is motivated by not wanting to edit quotes, but from my perspective it’s about a concern to get the facts right. My own experience on this is mixed — I’ve been interviewed or involved in email exchanges, and been offered differing levels of opportunity to provide feedback. But I completely understand the scientist position — I think it’s a general desire in the science community that the science be understood correctly, and anyone who has taught knows how often it happens that complex concepts are misunderstood, especially without the feedback. So it is a surprise to me that a journalist would not double-check their story to make sure they got it right. Getting it wrong undermines the credibility of everyone involved, though my personal bias is that when I see obvious errors I am going to assume the scientist knows what s/he is talking about and the journalist screwed it up. That might not always be true, but it’s probably the way to bet.

One the other side of the coin, journalists can get burned by scientists pushing bad science and treating it like peer review, in that they figure a newer story can come along and correct any mistakes. I don’t think much of that approach — scientists have an obligation to make clear what is sound and what is speculation.

Having said all that, I have to agree with what Ed Yong has posted a few days back: Every scientists-versus-journalists debate ever, in one diagram

Basically, good journalists are going to complain about bad scientists and good scientists are going to complain about bad journalists. I know I do. And I don’t praise good science journalism often enough.

Which brings me to the point that I wish I has thought of before the panel discussion ended. Perhaps we have some common ground after all. Maybe we can agree on a problem we have in common: crap story titles. There’s something uniquely frustrating in reading the title of an article and then find out that the article itself doesn’t support the title, or (in some cases) completely contradicts it. It’s usually an editor that did it. I hope that journalists find this as annoying as this scientist does.

Rewriting History

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I won’t have to rewrite this history; over at Skulls in the Stars there is a summary of one of the sessions I attended — Science Online 2012: Weird and Wonderful Stories in the History of Science

When I was starting out as a student of physics, most of the stories I heard about the history of physics were anecdotes about the eccentric behaviors of various famous figures. There is so much more that we can learn from the history of science, however, and at the same time that we entertain people with stories from the past we can educate them about how science works.

There's Art in Science

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I promised to write up my trip to ScienceOnline 2012, and I’m going to start at (or near) the end. There was an art exhibit and a film festival at the conference; the art was displayed in a slideshow and the awards were announced at the closing, and the second-to-last session was the film festival.

Physics Sweeps the Online-scars

Winners of the Cyberscreen Science Film Festival at Science Online 2012

I watched the whole film festival and there were so many nice videos, to the point that I am intimidated by the thought of doing a video and entering it into competition (though I would most likely be saved by a screening process). But I still do well by association, because the three winners were all physics-related, showing how talented and good-looking we all are. I know Brian Malow from last year’s conference and got to meet Henry Reich of “Minute Physics” (even if I initially mistook him for someone else. Oops).

Smart Art. Not Schmart Art.

There were number of art entries, and winners in the categories of Most Innovative, Best able to convey complex ideas, and Best science art having to do with daily life, along with some special awards. (I had submitted two cartoons, one of which was accepted, but neither “snarkiest” nor “best cartoon” were on the judging list, so I was forced to compete on artistic merit, which doesn’t end well for me, prize-wise. Maybe next year.)

Here are the winners, and the slideshow of all the entries (my cartoon is at the 9:55 mark)
You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

 

There was also the work of Perrin Ireland, who not only had entries in the contest, but was live-scribing some of the sessions. There’s a Flickr page of the works and at least one other blog post that has pictures.

 

To finish this off, here are some pictures I took at the JC Raulston Arboretum on Friday afternoon, giving my camera more of a workout in macro-mode than I normally do. I hope that the other photographers and artists who made the trip put their work online. I saw some of the work the tablet-sketchers did, and they were really good.

Status Update

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I’m back from ScienceOnline 2012, which was great, and am now in detox recovery mode. Catching up on things, including sleep — being “up” all day and part of the night, because of all the interesting discussions, is tiring, but it’s a good kind of tired. I expect this will leave me energized in the way I was last year once I get my bearings again. I intend to write up my thoughts on the conference as I did last year. I also have photos to edit and upload from a visit to the JC Raulston Arboretum.