The Deeplings at Science Online 2011

The entire Deep Sea News team will be spending the next couple days at the Science Online 2011 conference in North Carolina. Along with copious doses of Kraken rum, lusty singing of sea shanties, and turning the hot tub into a mighty wave pool, we’ll be participating in the following sessions:

**Technology and the Wilderness** – Miriam Goldstein, Jason Robertshaw, Danielle Lee and Karen James
Hashtag: #techwild
Technology offers unparalleled opportunity for outdoor education – yet it is viewed as a cause of “Nature Deficit Disorder.” But little glowy screens can be amazing educational tools. Potential directions include tools (for example: a citizen science iPhone app from Mote Marine Laboratory), networking (e.g., Outdoor Afro bringing people of color outdoors together), and exploration (e.g., following up on the Blogging From the Field/Trash Gyre sessions from past years, citizen science, teenagers blogging their discoveries).

The First Line of Response – The BP Oil Spill: science, outrage, spin, and dead pelicans – Miriam Goldstein, Kevin Zelnio, Holly Bik, Craig McClain and Andrew Thaler. John Amos of SkyTruth will participate via Skype.
Hashtag: #oil
This session proposes an examination of the role of bloggers in exposing events, correcting mainstream media (MSM), offering expert analysis, and keeping important issues current after MSM interest wanes. How did BP, the government’s response, scientists, amateurs, bloggers, and MSM journalists use the web to communicate? Was the public outrage dependent only on dead charismatic megafauna photos, or can these methods be leveraged for other social/environmental issues? Outcomes from blogging the oil spill will also be discussed, such as funding opportunities for scientific research and outreach, collaborations, and media exposure.

Parenting with Science Online – Kevin Zelnio, Eric Michael Johnson and Carin Bondar

How do parents enrich the lives of their children with science using online tools and media. What are the good sites, how do we judge trustworthiness of information, how to deal with advertising targeted at our children when we are trying to educate them online? More importantly, as scientists and science communicators, parenting with science may come naturally to us so how can we as sci-parents influence non-sci parents to use online tools and media with their own children. This session will explore how we have grown to use educational tools over the internet, how our children will be born into an online world and the pros and cons of allowing use of the internet with or without parental guidance.

Blogging networks and the emerging science communications ecosystem – Arikia Millikan (Wired), Brian Mossop (PLoS), Bora Zivkovic (Scientific American and ScienceInTheTriangle), SciCurious (Scientopia), Amos Zeeberg (Discover), Lou Woodley (Nature Network), Martin Robbins (Guardian and Lay Scientist), Andrew Thaler (the Gam), Mark Hahnel (science3point0), Craig McClain (Deep Sea News), Brian Krueger (LabSpaces), Rachel Pepling (CENtral Science), Alok Jha (the Guardian), Leslie Taylor (Talking Science), Richard P. Grant (Occam’s Typewriter), Maria Jose Vinas (AGU network, via Skype), Eva Amsen (the Node, via Skype)….

A round-table with editors and community managers of blogging networks and big group-blogs in “hot seats”, audience asks questions, gives suggestions, criticisms, etc. What’s the (changing) role of an online editor on a site aggregating independent blogs? “Merely” a bloggers’ assistant for bug fixes and spam busting or a signposter to content, online marketer, creator of community or what? How closely do you monitor your community’s behaviour? Do you know visit times/bounce rates/preferred pages for all your archive and how easy is it to predict what will be “good” (high traffic?) content? Do you encourage “basics posts” and “explainers”? Do you worry if posts are not “newsy” enough?

Unfortunately I don’t think any of our sessions are among those being livestreamed, but you can follow the #scio11 tag on Twitter. Some of the sessions have unique hashtags such as the Technology and the Wilderness session (#techwild) and the BP Oil Spill session (#oil).