January 29, 2009

OLA2009: My session on Science 2.0 & community building

My presentation was this morning and I thought it went very well. The attendance was around 30-35, which is pretty good for a niche topic in a conference with so many parallel sessions. There were some good questions, the timing worked out ok (which is good for me as I can tend to run longer that planned), the audience seemed to be following and nodding in the appropriate ways at the appropriate time. Also, at the end a few people came up to the front and had some very kind things to say.

So, a success.

Here are the slides:



The non-embedded version is here.

For those that are interested, I'll include the references I read but didn't link in the presentation here:

http://del.icio.us/jdupuis/science2.0

http://del.icio.us/jdupuis/escience
http://jdupuis.blogspot.com/2008/09/science-in-21st-century-reading-list.html

Finally, I'd like to thank Alison Stirling for convening my session and for her very kind and generous introduction.

9 comments:

Jean-Claude Bradley said...

I like the slide about the usefulness learning Perl over the week-end - how true :)

Brian said...

Interesting material. xkcd. I wish I could have been there for the actual lecture!

Brian

Unknown said...

Thank you kindly for the slides. Though I really wish I could have attended the presentation...I hope you present at next year's conference.

Unknown said...

I was just thinking, as I read the slides, about this whole "push" towards Web 2.0....It just sometimes seems rather excessive. This is by no means a comment on your slides (which I think were well-done and informative!), but just on the topic of Web 2.0 in general.
I don't know about others, but I for one am not super keen on a hypersocial web environment. I prefer to do my connecting and collaborating the good old-fashioned way, and not under the eyes of an anonymous mob. I realize that might be hypocritical, given I'm posting to a blog; I'm sorry! :-) Maybe I'm nostalgic, but I don't think you even necessarily *need* a computer to do science or research.....or to do anything else for that matter! You don't even need a computer to do a lot of the tasks Web 2.0-proponents love to exalt. Funny thing is, I'm "supposed" to love all this Web 2.0-hype, because I'm from the "newer" generation (in my mid 20s). Pardon me, I guess I'm a Luddite :-) I admit to loving low-tech...and my love seems to increase as more and more (and more) technology tears past me, at mind-boggling speeds.

Anonymous said...

Great presentation. I loved the idea of an open science notebook. I'd never heard that one before.

John Dupuis said...

Thanks, everyone!

Jean-Claude, yes, very true. The point I made in the presentation was that what ends up being really important in building community and solid professional networks ain't the things that you studied in school. It's probably also not the things that appear in your official job description or that necessarily your boss thinks you should be doing.

Brenda_d, We'll see for next year. I've presented at OLA for three years in a row, so it might be time to let someone else have my slot. Unless I think of something really cool to present about, of course...

Also, I don't think forming communities using web 2.0 technologies precludes real world communities. In fact, in my experience they reinforce one another. My real world social network is far stronger and wider because of the connections I've made online. The online community allows me to better maintain and expand the face to face community.

Unknown said...

Hi John,

Thanks for the response. It was interesting to read your comment about your experience with Web 2.0 technologies.
The reason I'm so resistant to them is probably because I'm not familiar with them being used in a professional manner. When I think of social networking, I immediately think of sites like Facebook...which I've never found to be very appealing.

I'm also fairly new to the world of science and of libraries, and sometimes I can feel rather overwhelmed with how little I know...but I look forward to learning more. That's one thing I love; there are always opportunities to learn in both fields.

S.M. Forbes said...

Hi John,

I enjoyed attending your presentation last week - thanks for posting the final version of your slides.

Love the xkcd comics.

Some very interesting case studies...I spent yesterday morning viewing different experiments in JoVE and was pleasantly impressed by the high quality of the submissions. I'd love to see other scientific disciplines adopt something similar.

As someone with a science background who is just starting out in the world of academic librarianship, I am curious to know what type of headway the Steacie Library has made towards introducing any/more web 2.0 technologies to the science and engineering faculty and students.

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.

John Dupuis said...

Brenda,

I think the best thing to do is always to follow your own interests. Pick something and just enjoy getting to know it.

4Bes,

Thanks. As for Steacie, we're on Facebook and we make some pretty good use of blogs. The York library system has also experimented with blogs and now were just starting in with Twitter and Friendfeed. FF is still beta (or even alpha), so we're not public with that one yet.

We're experimenting and hoping some stuff sticks. We'll see.