Science Library Pad

Some Ideas on the Future of Government Science - May 14, 2009 - Armchair Discussion - Canada School of Public Service

This is just copied verbatim (with minor format changes) from the Facebook notice.

To register to attend in person:
http://www.csps-efpc.gc.ca/cat/det-eng.asp?courseno=S225

To register to attend the webcast:
http://www.csps-efpc.gc.ca/cat/det-eng.asp?courseno=E225

(It's for public servants, so if you don't have a PRI #, I don't think you can sign up.)

Host: Canada School of Public Service - École de la fonction publique
Type: Education - Workshop
Network: Global
Date: 14 May 2009
Time: 08:30 - 09:45
Location:
CSPS Headquarters
65 Guigues Street
Ottawa, ON

Phone: 6139435632
Email: Dean.Landry@csps-efpc.gc.ca

Description

Learn about the evolution of government science and the challenges facing science-based departments and agencies, and science managers, in the current environment. This discussion will focus primarily on public policy and will be especially beneficial to people working in science-based departments and agencies or who are involved in the management of science, policy and related programs in government.

After working as a university lecturer for many years, in 1978, Jim Mitchell began a government career where he had experience in the analysis and resolution of complex public policy issues. He was also a principal advisor on the 1993 reorganization of the federal government.

After leaving the public service, Jim Mitchell became a founding partner of the policy-consulting firm Sussex Circle. Now as a consultant, Mr. Mitchell provides policy and organizational advice in virtually every area of federal responsibility including defence, science and agriculture. In his lecture, Mr. Mitchell will be drawing from this experience to talk about the challenges and opportunities facing government science and the science community.

Speaker: Jim Mitchell, Founding Partner, Sussex Circle

Ottawa Tulip Fest 2009 - Celebridée events with science content

I don't have any details about these, but from my reading of the schedule, the science-y ones look to be

The Environment: Individuals Making A Difference (In English) 

Sunday, May 3 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

(free admission) 

The Perimeter Institute: The Physics of Innovation (In English)

Tuesday, May 5 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$18 (Adult)

$12 (Student)

$38 (Reserved Section)

UPDATE 2009-05-05: Andre sent me some descriptive text

With Dr. Richard Epp of the Perimeter Institute Outreach Team

Where does technology come from? Because computers, cell phones, DVD players and countless other innovations are completely integrated into our daily lives, few of us stop to think how such technological marvels are possible. The answer, of course, is physics! Since all technology is ultimately subject to the laws of physics – the “gears and wheels” of how our universe works – the better we understand those laws, the more powerful and beneficial the technologies we can create.

ENDUPDATE

For Physics event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

The Environment: What Should We be Doing? (In English)

with Elizabeth May

Wednesday, May 13 @ 2 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$10 (Adult)

$8 (Student)

$20 (Reserved Section)

For Elizabeth May event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

This is not at all to say there aren't many other interesting talks - as you might imagine, there are a few on the financial crisis, this one seems particularly apropos:

Tulipomania: The Dutch Tulip Bulb Crisis of 1637 (In English)

with Jules Muis and Mike Dash

Saturday, May 9 @ 10 a.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

(free admission)

The ubiquitous Michael Geist will also be speaking  

Surveillance (In English) 

with Michael Geist and/et David Lyons

Sunday, May 17 @ 7:30 p.m.

Tulip Festival Mirror Tent 

$18 (Adult)

$12 (Student)

$38 (Reserved Section)

For Surveillance event >> Click here to purchase tickets 

Mathew Ingram at Third Tuesday Ottawa

First to get some administrivia out of the way - yes, in words I think I can attribute to Douglas Adams, as his trilogy grew to four books and more - "there was a miscounting" and Third Tuesday was indeed on the 5th Monday.  But regardless... thanks to Joseph Thornley, CNW and everyone involved for bringing Mathew Ingram of the Globe to talk in Ottawa.

I think as part of his role of engaging the community Mathew has been giving this talk a lot, but it was still good - he covered a range of topics including the Public Policy Wiki and Twitter, with unexpected praise for CoverItLive (which I didn't know was Canadian) and TweetDeck as powerful tools.  I have to admit that while I had skimmed through the TweetDeck interface options, I hadn't tried them all - the Twitscoop tag cloud integration is a way to keep an eye on the realtime news topics streaming by - Mathew said he found out about the Mumbai attacks when he noticed Mumbai getting larger and larger in the word cloud and clicked through to see what was going on.  (See my posting on Twitter modes for a bit more about TweetDeck.)

There was time for a number of questions (it's always good to see a presentation that makes time for this) - I won't go over them all - you can see the--what are we supposed to call it--liveblogging? livetweeting? of the event under hashtag

#tto

He had a posting earlier this month The Guardian ups the ante on APIs and if you've been reading this blog, you know I'm all about the APIs, so I was glad to have an opportunity to ask him a question about it.  It would be great if the Globe could offer this kind of capability.  In my opinion the winners in the online space are going to be the ones who figure out how to be open, machine readable, and (somehow) monetized.  (Maybe we all buy tshirts that say "I love the Globe API", I don't know :)

UPDATE 2009-03-31: Brief summary with links to audio of presentation and Q&A now available.  Via Twitter/FF.  ENDUPDATE

SIDEBAR on the space and on technology: It was a good meeting space, although there's no free wifi.  I'm getting increasingly tempted to get a Rogers Rocket Stick 3G USB network stick, but I don't think I could justify the cost - I wish they had a pay-as-you-go version, I'd use it all the time.

Since my tiny netbook got attention again, I'll mention it's the Asus Eee PC 4G, it's a first-generation device and handy to throw in a backpack or shoulder bag, but it has a few issues: small screen, tiny keys (I'm lucky that my fingers are small), limited battery life (maybe 1.5 hours) and limited storage 4G "hard drive" - internal flash drive.  People asked if it was slow but it's actually not compute limited for basic web surfing tasks, even using WinXP - that's one of the lessons netbooks are teaching us - you can even play full motion video on it.  You can add an SD card in a built-in slot for more storage, it appears as a second drive.

I think you're probably better off with a second-generation device, say 9" to 10", with better keyboard, longer battery life, and 160GB internal HD, something like an Acer Aspire One.  There's a good comparison chart of netbooks in Wikipedia (although look at the raw weight numbers only, not the colours, since they've made an eccentric decision to colour the weight ranges differently depending whether it's measured in pounds of kilograms).  END SIDEBAR

Carleton Science Café talk on LHC is up

The Large Hadron Collider: A particle smasher designed to answer the fundamental question about our Universe

Listen to the Science Cafe podcast featuring Louise Heelan

View the powerpoint presentation by Louise Heelan

Speaker: Louise Heelan, PhD candidate
department of physics

Minor note: as is often the case, what is just an MP3 audio file is called a "podcast", although there doesn't seem to be any way to subscribe to it.

From Carleton Science Café archives.

A bunch more are coming up, including "Leonardo Da Vinci and his mathematics" on April 22, 2009.

Previously:
March 11, 2009  Large Hadron Collider at Carleton Science Cafe

Large Hadron Collider at Carleton Science Cafe

I didn't know Carleton had Science Cafe events.

There's one today (March 11) about mold.

The next one is

The Large Hadron Collider: A particle smasher designed to answer the fundamental question about our Universe
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Louise Heelan, PhD candidate, department of physics

Even better, it's at the Wild Oats Cafe at Bank and 4th (817 Bank), which is closer (to downtown) than the Carleton Campus itself. 6:30 - 7:30 PM.

View Larger Map

via Apartment 613

Brady Gilchrist - presentation notes - Social Media Breakfast Ottawa

Social Media Breakfast Ottawa #7
Brady Gilchrist

Summary of Presentation

I would say his message was: instead of marketing TO your customers, market WITH your customers.
In other words, instead of just repeating "Cos-tanza" over and over again, you'll have to actually be interesting and engaged (which is much harder).  Be a real person, not a faceless "brand".

My Thoughts

Brady is a very good speaker and I thought he made a compelling case for the transformation that is sweeping over the media landscape - and he understood that this has been coming for over a decade, and that it's about engagement, not particular technologies.  Also he gets bonus points for mentioning Battlestar Galactica and showing the Star Trek: The Next Generation PADDs as precursors to our modern mobile devices (I made this same point myself - using the same image - on slides 4-5 of the Trendspotting presentation I gave two years ago).

You can see the power of customer engagement just by following the #lost and #bsg hashtags as the shows are airing on old-fashioned television (and of course before and after as well) or by seeing all of the work that has gone into the Wikipedia Battlestar Galactica pages and the entire dedicated Battlestar Galactica wiki.  This is all work that consumers do for free, because they are engaged with the product.  They're not doing this because it's some obscure thing that geeks do, they're doing it because people will share what they're interested about.  That could be your thing they're talking about and creating content around and (implicitly) promoting - if your thing is interesting enough.

There were some good (thoughtful) questions from the audience.

On the Interweb

You can follow Social Media Breakfast Ottawa discussions using hashtag #smbottawa , they also have a blog.  Brady said the best way to connect with him is through his Twitter (bradygilchrist), he also has a website.

Raw Notes

he's talking - good speaker

* talking about challenge of getting people to understand the technology
* talking ab0ut Kurzweil - rate of change - things changing so quickly we need open minds

* blogger in 1999 accidentally
* digital life - wired sailboat
* Starship Millenium - "most expensive blog ever done"
* ISDN-B Inmarsat channel
* (lots of talk about) rate of change
* more voices and more knowledge
* Tim Berners-Lee (not recognized - photo)
* business models are based on scarcity - but we live in an age of abundance
* everything is coming out of its containers
- music
- starting to happen with books

World we live in
* Near Web (desktop)
* Mobile Web
- "there isn't anything that isn't connected"
- "digital snacks" - low price
- fundamental shifts - "unboxing of newspapers"
- newspapers are made more interesting by social media
- the community joins the media
* Far Web (broadcast + Internet) - (ed comment: more like video on demand web)
- (paraphrase) has anyone noticed that the people with money aren't watching commercials
- what do people talk about: Lost, BSG...
- Eee PC-in-a-keyboard
- social media are great tools for creating a revolution (ed comment: maybe)
- could have very rapid adoption curves, e.g. Twitter
* Not so new.  1991. - Third Wave - ubiquitous computing - ubicomp - Mark Weiser - "The Computer for the 21st Century"
- (paraphase) we are now surrounded by computer chips / computer technology

*** Star Trek PADDS
- in science fiction technology doesn't really matter for technology's sake
* William Gibson
- "The future has already arrived.  It's just not evenly distributed yet."

* when creating a business: work in the space between early adopters and early majority - GET OUT EARLY before it becomes commoditized

* discussion about whether lurking has negative impact - it's ok to be a watcher -
1. You need to pay attention to what's going on
2. even if there's a small amount of interaction it's still good
* Black Swan - changes all the rules

* (paraphrase) if you're a business you'll never see it coming - you're out of your mind if you're waiting for it to hit the mainstream media
* social media as early warning medium for business

* "social media makes people smarter" - "deeper connectors on subjects"

* Rome burns and few react
- no one is paying attention to PVRs
- just "digital" doesn't solve anything - "Understand how to create abundance, knowledge, trust and connection is (the solution)."
- The One Computer Theory - the Internet as one big computer
- don't silo yourself

- "all roads must lead to dialog" - Age of Connection - lateral connections

New Rules

1. Be Present
2. Connect to others
3. Participate in ways that enhance social capital (ed comment: "don't be a marketer, be a market")

* master ubiquity and engagement

* "Many decision makers have no clue"
- the idea of the media buy (or he's maybe saying media pie) (old thinking)

* (advertising) money is being spent in places where people aren't looking

* "Motivation is the new segmentation"
- (I think he said) by participating in the conversation you can help shape the motivation

END PRESENTATION

Q: What do you tell broadcasters, newspapers to do?
A: Understand your audience / Ask your audience - create a platform for dialog

Q: Is social media just the vocal majority
A: (paraphrase) well, mass media is all lurkers - so social media is "truer"

Q: Is what's working well companies creating their own social networks?
   e.g. some companies go awry on Facebook
A: What is participation - add value to existing dialog, or spark a new one

"semantic web for marketers" - (ed comment: ???)

Q: some industries are starting to adapt
how do we compete as a country if a lot of new technologies are not available here
(Kindle etc.)
A: (paraphase) CanCon is killing CanCon

... consumers find a way... (geoproxy)
"the more you deny it, the more bittorrents..."

Canada as a digital ghetto?

Q: how does the Globe continue to create... they have extraordinary content that makes their platform worthwhile... now what do they do in terms of costs and sustainability?

A: no one knows - engage with audience/... "I don't have the answer"

Comment on music industry - they tried to fight with DRM and are now giving up...
A: "information wants to be free" - but everyone spends money on things they find interesting

"DRM sucks!"

END QUESTIONS

People Promote Their Events

* (didn't catch name of event) Mark Evans April 2
"brandividual" ????

* cupcakecamp.ca
March 29

podcastersacrossborders - Kingston, Ontario - June 19-21

The usual sidebar about wifi

I was (as usual) the only person I saw with a laptop (my little Asus 7" Eee PC 4G) - this did make it easy to camp the power outlet.  Also the only person to ask about wifi (AFAIK) - result:
* tried to get online but no luck - user/pass doesn't work
"The User Name and Password combination you have entered is invalid. Please try again."

Sometimes I feel like I'm back at Internet Librarian 2004 all over again (where I was in a giant room full of people, and almost the only one have a laptop, open it up and start typing).

I think I probably annoyed people with my aggressive typing, I'm sorry (but welcome to the 21st Century).  In a way I feel on the outside as usual - I'm not in the "writing on paper about how technology is transforming our lives" crowd (which I could never understand - writing URLs and notes on paper?  so then to share it, you have to transcribe it to digital?  what?) - and I'm not in the 3G-erati, the iPhone crew who never have to worry about Wifi access.  (I refuse to pay for the iPhone which doesn't meet my needs, just so I can get 3G, and I'm not getting a 3G stick for the small amount of usage it would get - what I'd like is pay-as-you-go 3G - there's a market opportunity for you.)

I think they're going to work on getting wifi access for future events.

Us Now - presentation notes

Disclaimer: These are just raw presentation notes, with some editorial comments inserted.  I apologise it may not be clear whether something is a quote, or to whom exactly it should be attributed.

I should also mention that Paul Miller in this context is PaulMiller.org Paul Miller, not CloudOfData.com Paul Miller.

*** begin raw notes

Us Now
Canada School of Public Service

Thursday March 5, 2009

masslbp.com

US NOW - playing

more people can say more things to more people than ever in history

can we all govern? - we become part of the government

reconstituting what is a government

* couchsurfing

low barrier - all you need is desire to engage

Eric Tomczak

social status and interaction plays out online in ways that it couldn't do in the broadcast world

* netmums

"about loss of the community ... we have to find some other way of doing it - moms net

Clay Shirky
- "is couchsurfing a small organisation (staff)... or a huge organisation (users)"

- "The old model of social trust and anointed experts is only one of many patterns"

CouchSurfing - "it's not as dangerous as you might think"

if you show trust... you reduce the incentive to game the system...

You can use a number of mechanisms for trust and reputation - Shirky

can you trust google more than a doctor... the good rises to the top
(ed comment: a lot of trust in google rank)

you get advice from 25-30 people in minutes...
moms - you trust other moms more than traditional authorities - motivation to network peer to peer

directionless.info - sources questions to local area people
connect to people with local knowledge

gift economy has always been there... social media is bringing gift economy out into the open

not generic do-gooding, it's highly specific to individual interests and abilities

Shirky - "what's happened in the 20th century was really an anomaly" - we're returning to old,
empowered, gift economy ways

public service built on model of passive consumers - the problems and needs model

(paraphrase) these hugely centralised approaches have got huge problems - people can now work together to ask deeper questions about the role of government

we now have tools that are competitive with large institutions in terms of organising people

Shirky - "everyone is available for group action" (now)

Ebbsfleet FC United - co-op football team

Paul Miller - turn institutions upside down using the net (a different Paul Miller than the Talis one)

semi-final of FA Trophy

MS vs. Linux - (ed comment: a bit of "self-organisational" magic worship - it's not as easy as that)

you can no longer instruct and tell - you have to persuade
from manager to leader... people who are comfortable letting go (of direct control)

William Heath - Ideal Government - would Gordon Brown listen to the people directly

Shirky - "more and more people take it for granted that they can get involved, ... and that there is significant value (in doing this)"

Don Tapscott - "because the web drops collaboration costs, consumers can now produce"

zopa (UK microlending)

Don Tapscott - customers can cocreate, coinnovate value for organisations

zopa guy - banks have got themselves into trouble by focusing on optimising rather than their clients

"I fought the Lloyd's and the Lloyd's lost"

Slice the Pie is a financing tool for the music industry - fan financing

Don Tapscott - "the power of transparency" - "(the net) is becoming a new mode of production"

change in the relationship between customers and corporations... mirrored in change of relationship between citizens and their governments

Don Tapscott - (traditional model of government) "is inappropriate in the 21st century"

... participatory budgeting

citizens deciding how to spend L20,000 in ?poulton?

TheyWorkForYou.com

Tom Steinberg... "much greater transparency makes (politicians) much more electable"

George Osborne (ed note: I think this is the right guy) - Shadow Chancellor - "it will shake up British politics"

Don Tapscott - "vested interests fight against change"

Paul Miller - "representative democracy was based on the idea that people are thick" (ed comment: I don't think Canadian audience got this idiom)

the point - London Birmingham Rail Link

Green Party Canada - policy wiki (ed comment: it was called the Living Platform, I don't know the details)

Don Tapscott - "I call it Government 2.0" (ed comment: yeah, you and everybody Don)

Don Tapscott - "governments could more create a platform where citizens could self-organise to create better value than already exists"

some other guy - "we should be careful about being too utopian"

Paul Miller - "a politics where you can say how you can help"

*** end movie

Panel:

* David Hume (err, not that one)
* Maryantonett Flumian, University of Ottawa
* Mike Kujawski, Marketing Professional
* Anthony Williams - coauthor of Wikipedia

(ed note: notes are even more raw at this point because I'm trying to transcribe as they're talking)

David Hume:
- what they're doing in British Columbia
- 1/3 to 1/2 workforce retiring/not available in next 10 years
- focus on human resources "being the best"
- building a culture of innovation and collaboration - Web 2-y "ideas factory"
- how to bring in citizens

- how do you address climate change - you can only go so far in legislation
- need to "facilitate action"

Maryantonett
- how does government stay relevant
- fear (of)... disintermediation... government being replaced by other actors in society
- participants are across the age spectrum (not just a youth phenomenon)
- all based on trust and confidence
- (ed comments: some backhanded complements for this technology)
1 how do we manage accountability? (without hierarchy)
2 privacy and security issues
3 leadership skills are going to have to change
- what are the costs of not collaborating

Mike
- what is the cost of not collaborating
- this isn't about technology
- it's about the people
key concepts
- trust - people are inherently good
- people are talking anyway (you can't control it)
- Most of the time (if your offering is good) negative comments will be neutralised by positive commenters
- don't hide from discussion
- the Era of Free
- why should (your presentation etc.) sit and collect dust - let others do something with it
- CrimeReports (ed comment: I don't think it's live as Mike says)
- it's not everybody, but it can be tremendously leveraged
- mention of appsfordemocracy.com
- government 2.0 best practices wiki

Anthony
- we have an unprecedented fabric of connectivity now in society
- reach outside of traditional silos - tap into pockets of expertise that exist in society
issues:
- regulation (example: lack of financial transparency, corporate social responsibility - conflict diamonds)
- service delivery (netmoms, patientslikeme)

Q: There was a question about how to handle "information overload" - I was at the mike so I don't have it transcribed, but I blogged my thoughts about it - connecting with information and finding your community

Q (me): how to create positive engagement?  negative engagement
issue - YouTube comments, 90% lurkers

(ed comment: I don't have full notes on their answers since I was standing at the mike)

David
- engage your community - not about the size, it's about the impact

Mike -
* Understand your audience
* Remember you're human
* Be respectful
* A small number can be extremely meaningful

Maryantonett
Be careful how you engage - shouldn't just be playing with a tool, have a purpose

Q from the regions - what weight should online participation be given
A: - use it as appropriate for important topics
- the ultimate decisionmaking has to remain with the representatives
- use it to generate ideas
- design the consultations to include everyone you want to reach (online and offline)

David - remember that you're serving your minister by gathering MORE information
- realise that not everyone is connected - takes a broad practice of consultation - use both online and offline

Q: conflict between open consultation and people who won't even circulate drafts without approval - the risk averse
A: Maryantonett - change how we work - get the best value and decisionmaking - if you can't demonstrate value people won't adopt it
This is not just an add-on, this is a new way of doing business - this is not about a process, it's about an OUTCOME.
The nature of how we use information has CHANGED.

Q: ?Bruce Foresster? - Department of Defence - Question of Trust
Need to know vs. need to share...
Practical applications to gain, hold, spread trust
are their differences generationally?

A: David - be open and honest, do what you say you're going to do - continue to be open
By sharing (in New Zealand wiki consultation) - able to move fast - put responsibility onto the entire community

A: Maryantonett - 9/11 was a breakdown in sharing information
intellipedia
We can't assume that the smartest person in the organisation sits at the top.

A: Mike - find relevancy at a personal level (use these tools so you understand how they work)
usedottawa site
It works because if you put in a little bit, you're going to get tenfold in return.

Q from region: collaboration between different agencies - turf wars - how do you see collaborative technologies helping?

A: Anthony - look at the vision of what we could create together
e.g. if states could work together they could share common software

A: David - ircan.gc.ca (for Government of Canada)

A: Maryantonett - 1000 wikis is no better than 1000 siloed programs
Create panels of client groups and ask them what they expect and let that be a guide in what your collaboration does -
let's not just talk to each other, let's really engage citizens.

Q: Jan from Treasury Board - biggest challenge is culture of government
Sometimes the organisation doesn't care about outcomes.
How to create cultural change?
Her comment: It's important to separate the culture of collaboration from the technology - you can collaborate without using any technology at all.

A: Maryantonett - the biggest thing we need to do is culture change -
put the citizen first (Service Canada)

Spend way more time opening up to what people actually need and want from our organisation
- ask in a forum that you can partially control.
Constantly bring the outside in.

Understand: everyone has a vested interest in the current structure.

SERVE THE PUBLIC

Technology can be powerful if you find the right things to do at the beginning.

A: David - change starts with you

Q (comment): Came in with expectations of government use of social media... discovered there's not much yet.
A: We are the drivers of this culture change.
Get people internally to work together.
Cost of contributing is far less than the benefit that you get back.
Find the community of people who get it internally.  Find the people who help you.

Q: one of the challenges is the language barrier - discussions in realtime -
how to establish a discussion across the official languages (in government)

A: Anthony Williams thinks machine translation will fix this issue in 3 years (ed comment: I've heard that one before)

Questions I would have asked if there was more time:

Q: how to connect online to offline (not about technology)

That is, how to you connect between the online interactions and having meaningful discussions and making real change happen offline?

Q: sustainability of these tools

That is, what happens if we move the whole government to Twitter, and Twitter goes bust or everyone moves to using Twitter 2.0?  Also we're only a few years into Web 2.0, do we even know what we're talking about?

Q: spread of unauthoritative info (vaccination)

That is, it's all great for the netmums to be supporting one another, but what happens when they start reinforcing bad information, such as the ongoing scare about vaccination that is leading people to NOT vaccinate their children, based on unscientific information?

SIDEBAR: When I arrived and asked what the CSPS Wifi password was, I got a startled gaze that indicated to me that probably no one taking this kind of training had ever asked this question before.  Then seeing the rows of people in the audience dutifully writing down information about the the transformational power of the web and great URLs to check out... on paper, I was reminded of Internet Librarian 2004 where I snapped open my laptop and looked around to find myself alone in using technology in the audience.  While this doesn't bode well for technotransformation in the short term, there is a positive example in that many library conferences are now very tech-enabled, but I don't know if I have the patience to wait for an entire new culture (the government) to spend the next three years discovering the amazing 1999 world of blogs.  (For a discussion of the Web 2.0 timeline, see my presentation Web 2.0 history + lifestreaming.)

Darwin Week - February 2009 - Carleton University

Carleton University will present a series of public lectures during the week of February 12 [2009], celebrating the impact and legacy of Charles Darwin on western thought and culture.

Well, actually the first event is on February 9, when scientist and author Daniel C. Dennett (also see on LibraryThing) will speak.

"Darwin and the Evolution of Reasons"

Time and Place: 8 p.m., Kailash Mital Theatre (map), Southam Hall, Carleton Campus

Evolution by natural selection not only accounts for the apparent design of the biological world; it explains the emergence of intelligent designers like us, acting on reasons that we formulate and evaluate....

http://www.carleton.ca/fass/darwinweek/lectures/

Note: This venue is not to be confused with Southam Hall at the National Arts Centre.  The event is taking place on the Carleton Campus, not at the NAC.

Good news: This event will coincide with Winterlude, a winter festival in Ottawa.

Bad news: This event may coincide with the ongoing bus strike in Ottawa (as of Wednesday January 28, 2009, the strike is in its 50th day).  UPDATE 2009-01-31: Although the bus strike has now ended, February 9 is the first day that buses will be running, so there will be limited bus service.  END UPDATE

More info about the event at

http://www.carleton.ca/darwinweek

initial pointer via Ottawa International Writers Festival in Facebook

are your circulation stats a gold mine?

Chris Keene has an interesting posting about the ALT TILE meeting.

(TILE = Towards Implementation of Library 2.0 & the e-Framework)

(ALT TILE = Association for Learning Technology meeting 'Sitting on a gold mine' - improving provision and services for learners by aggregating and using 'learner behaviour data')

He says

This is one of those things that once you get discussing it you’re never quite sure why it already hasn’t been done before, especially with circulation data. There’s a wide scope, from local library services (book recommendation) to national systems which use data from VLEs, registry systems and library systems. A lot of potential functionality, both in terms of direct user services and informing HE (and others) to help them make decisions and tailor services for users.

Chris Keene - nostuff.org blog - sitting on a gold mine - December 12, 2008

via my FriendFeed and Twitter

I suggested to Chris that TILE should also have a look at all the information Johan Bollen is gathering in the MESUR project.

science book audio from Ottawa International Writers Festival

Lots of great audio of authors talking about their books, including

• Gwynne Dyer talking about Climate Wars
• Leonard Susskind on Black Holes, October 24, 2008

Web 2.0 history + lifestreaming

I completed a presentation about Web 2.0 at work, I would say overall it was about 60% successful.

First, here is a version I did at home, slides plus audio (SlideShare calls this SlideCasting).

Web 2.0 timeline and future

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2.0 ib2)

You can click through the slides as usual, but if you press the green play button (arrow) in the centre, you will also get audio.  (I will have a follow-up post about how to make a slidecast.)

If you have some background in Web 2.0 you may want to start on slide #46, "Social Netwhat?"

UPDATE 2008-12-15: Thanks to some great work by CISTI Communications, the video of my presentation is available.  The camera is only on me, so you may also want to bring up the slides to get an idea of what I'm talking about.  The lighting is not great so it's a bit murky, but good I think for a first attempt, the audio is clear.  It's about 50 minutes of me presenting, plus an additional 5 minutes or so of information from our head of communications about how government employees can use Web 2.0 appropriately for work.

Google Video: Web 2.0 timeline

In case you're wondering why GVideo and not YouTube, GVideo allows unlimited size and length of video (I think YouTube limits are 1GB and 10 minutes).

Note: I would really consider the SlideCast audio to be the "full" presentation, in the video I ran out of time at the end to fully cover the social networking and lifestreaming parts.

END UPDATE

UPDATE 2008-12-19: If you want just the 1.5 hours of audio narration (I'm not sure how much sense it makes without the slides), it's available as an audio stream or in various formats for download at

http://www.archive.org/details/Web2_December2008

ENDUPDATE

(Not) Fitting 1.5 Hours into 45 Minutes

When I ran through the slides at home, even with a big section of organisation-internal stuff taken out, it took an hour and a half, this should have been a warning to me.  I only was supposed to present for 40 minutes (40 minutes for me, 5 minutes of material from our communications department, and 15 minutes for questions in a one hour slot).

As a presenter it's really my duty to make sure I fall in that time constraint.  I'm there for the audience (otherwise they could just look at the slides online) and an important part of that is leaving time for questions and comments, because as we know from the Wisdom of Crowds, the audience is going to have more information and ideas collectively than even the best-informed presenter.

When I told my supervisor that my test run went an hour and a half, and that I had cut out 2.5 slides, leaving me with 45 slides (or 43 slides plus opening and closing title slides), he suggested that I cut ruthlessly but there wasn't any part I was prepared to lose.  I guess one of the consequences of picking a large topic and then spending time over a period of months preparing it is you grow quite attached to the form and content of your presentation.  I really did think that I could "just say less" for each slide to get under the time limit.

More realistically for my speaking style (which tends to be a bit detailed and digressive) I should have had about 30 slides for 40 minutes.  I was thinking about it and it really is two presentations, the first piece is reasonably general and takes you through the history of Internet and Web at CISTI and NRC, through a timeline of Web and Web 2.0, to the current situation with these technologies at the Government of Canada and CISTI.  The second part moves into more advanced topics, explaining the nature of social networking and finishing with the very recent development of lifestreaming.  (If there had been time beyond that, I would have talked a bit about how mobile devices are shaping web use, and how we appear to be moving into a more personal and real-time web.)

The logical cutting points for the presentation would have been to end on the slide just before the social networking section (Social Netwhat?), or end on the first slide of that section, or end with the first "Zero Degrees of Separation" slide.  Lifestreaming is a topic that really needs another 45 minutes of presentation all on its own.  I really should have done more runthroughs until I could get the material under 40 minutes, as it was, what happened was that I was watching my time carefully and made it through the first section of the material ok, and then looked at my watch at the start of the social networking section and realised I had another 30-45 minutes worth of material to present in 5 or 10 minutes before the absolute end of my time at 15:00.  I should have just stopped then in order to allow some questions.  Instead I gave a very rushed and probably neither very comprehensible nor useful sweep through the remaining slides down to "Web 2.0 Warnings".  (I should have realised when I was telling people online to *start* at slide 46 for the social networking section, that there was no way I would be able to reach and cover it fully in my presentation - anyway in the online version you can start there and hear me very unhurriedly go through the material.)

The Venue, Presentation Technology and the Perfect Storm

I had a good venue and great support from the technical staff and presentation committee, who agreed to all of my unreasonable presentation diva demands, including a wireless clip-on mike and using my Mac to present using Keynote.  This was an additional complication for them because we use Adobe Acrobat Connect so that people in our offices across the country can see the slides, fortunately it installed and ran fine.  For audio we use a separate voiceconferencing service and a Polycom speakerphone.  To add to the tech mix, I was trying out Salling Clicker on my Nokia N82, it worked quite well, just a couple issues, one (that I was aware of in advance) is that the N82 has a sensitive position sensor, so if you're swinging it around in your hands while presenting, the screen tends to rotate, which also rotates which buttons move the presentation forward and back (I always used the "down" button to advance, since it works in either screen orientation).  It would probably be good to lock the screen from rotating before presenting.  Another issues was that for some reason a couple times it got out of slide-turning mode and into the general presentation selection mode.  It has a nice feature of displaying slide notes on-screen, but I found I didn't actually use the on-screen notes, I always present without notes anyway.  (As a sidebar, I didn't know Salling was an actual person, until with zero degrees of separation he contacted me to answer a Tweet about how to see more than one phone-screen of notes for a slide.)

The presentation was also video-ed, they were concerned about the video camera's audio though.  In retrospect, there are a bunch of other audio recording options we could have added, including:

• recording the audio from my mike directly somehow
• recording the voice conference either through the service itself, or through channeling it to some recording software/service
• both of my phones (K790 and N82) I'm sure can record an hour of audio easily
• I actually have a dedicated audio recorder that I never remember to bring.  It can also store over an hour of audio, has reasonably good pickup (I could have placed it next to the speakerphone) and is easy to work with since you can just plug it into USB when you're done and download the standard-format file it creates (I think it makes a Windows audio file).  It's an Olympus WS-320M.

The logistics side was quite complicated due to a series of unforeseen events.  First the number of RSVPs for the presentation exceeded the firecode limitations for our usual room, so in the weeks before the presentation they had to arrange for an auditorium in another building, which of course means different setup, (somewhat) different network, sending out a room change notice etc. etc. all of which the committee handled very ably.  Then, with everything arranged, on the day of my presentation the entire transit service (mostly buses) for Ottawa went on strike, plus there was a fairly big snowstorm (snowfall from 15-25 cm, later upped to 30cm, with risk of freezing rain).  How did the day go?  Well here's how the Ottawa Citizen put it: Strike, storm lead to commuter chaos.  (My workplace is about 35 minute bus ride from the downtown core where I live, and Ottawa is a very widely distributed city, so people come to my workplace from many different directions with often long commutes.)

I was grateful that anyone showed up at all, I was worried there would be about 5 people in the audience.  I (as usual) forgot to take an audience photo despite having both of my cameraphones, but I would guess around 25 people.

Part 1: History of Web 2.0 - Some Key Messages

The messages that I wanted to convey included:

• libraries were a little slow in some cases to embrace Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, but around 2006 there was a tipping point and I would consider that now e.g. library conferences are leaders in web-enabling (what Lorcan Dempsey calls amplified conferences, a concept which Brian Kelly has, well, amplified and extended).
• That being said, the academic sector, including academic libraries and some large research and technology organisations were early to the Internet and to the Web.  In fact it's not an exaggeration to say these groups were the Internet, in the pre-Web days.  USENET newsgroups were filled with scientists and students asking questions and having conversations.  The Web itself came out of CERN, and so it's not surprising that scientists were also early to the Web.  So when we say scientists aren't using Web 2.0, to some extent it's because they already have well-established communities online, and because science has always been about your peers, they already know their networks and connect to them online and offline.
• My organisation in particular was (based on my amateur USENET sleuthing), posting to newgroups in 1988, talking about xmosaic in 1993, and putting up websites in 1994.  That's about as early as you could possibly adopt - so I don't think we can say that (academic) libraries are necessarily always late adopters.
• Many libraries unfortunately got "stuck" in the mental model of the browse-based web that existed from (very roughly) 1995 to 1998, the pre-Google Web.  It was a very compelling analogy:
  • physical address-> web address (URL)
  • front desk -> front page (home page)
  • browse through stacks -> browse through web pages
  • library -> digital library
• Unfortunately this model of the web, where users type in specific URLs and then browse for content usually within a single site, the Yahoo model of locating information, the model that is even embedded in our terminology of "web browser", is completely false in the post-search world, the post-Google Web.  In the post-search world what matters, the only thing that matters really, is rich content that gives you PageRank.  The page that shows up may be many layers deep within your website, and people may stop there only briefly, before jumping to another site in order to satisfy their need for photos of rabbits with pancakes on their heads (err, or whatever particular topic you provide expertise on).
• Web 2.0 is about many things, including this rather awkward term of "user-created content".  (I kind of messed up my message here, I was trying to say, with the Communications team in the audience, that Web 2.0 is typically personally-identifiable, amateur content, whereas organisational communications are typically more anonymous and professional - I think I may have unintentially given the impression that Web 2.0 communications are "cool", when I just want to say that they're different modes of presenting information, they both have their pluses and minuses.)
• I also didn't have time to cover some interesting work that Alison Ball and others are doing with delicious bookmarks and the Federal Library Web 2.0 Interest Group

Part 2: Social Networking and Lifestreaming

Skipping towards the end of the presentation (as this posting is getting as over-long as my presentation itself) there are some trends that we can see.  One is that we have many new options for making social connections online - but you have to keep in mind that the solution you choose is going to depend on where your network already exists.  If, like is often the case with librarians, your colleagues, your social network is already in mailing lists, then it's going to be very difficult to get much benefit from new social tools.  I give a very simple example, which is that my generation (I finished my undergrad in 1990) is primarily email-based.  If I want to reach my friends, I send them an email.  I can send them messages in Facebook until I'm Faceblue, but they'll never get them, because they never check Facebook.  So this kind of "build it and they will come" idea ONLY works if either people don't have good ways to connect to their social network, or if somehow you convince enough of them to move over (which is tremendously difficult to do).

That being said, IF your connections (friends, work colleagues, whatever) are using social, Web 2.0 tools, you can see their lifestreams, their patterns of activity.  This may be in Facebook (which really was just intended for university students to tell each other where they were, what parties they were going to, and to share drunken pictures of themselves), in Twitter, which I think of as a kind of digital watercooler, and in FriendFeed, which is a sort of meta-site for aggregating all your activity in other Web 2.0 sites.

So your choice of social network online will be shaped by where your current (or desired) community already participates.  Additionally (and I'm grateful to Owen Stephens for this insight), your choice of tool may depend on how you consume the information, in particular, mobile device versus computer screen.  Facebook and in particular Twitter have mobile versions that work very well on a small smartphone screen, their "short snippets of stuff" design takes this environment into consideration (and Twitter can even be used entirely just through SMS).  FriendFeed, with its longer message fields, extensive comment threads, and more complex content, is not at all as well suited to this environment.

Additionally, as we move past Google at 10 Years, we're starting to see a change in search and information exchange.  In the Before Time, because looking up information was expensive/timeconsuming, we often turned first to friends or to reference experts like librarians when we had questions.  Then we had the era of keyword search.  But with the rise of Instant Messaging, SMS, and other more real-time social network interaction, people are again turning back to asking questions first.  That is, they will post a question to their social network, and use keyword search only as a supplement to the information they get from their peers.  This may seem like we've actually gone back to an old way of doing things, but as with all historical cycles, it's both similar and different.  People are asking others questions again, but now they can ask many more people at once than ever before (in theory, you can ask the entire Internet world - sometimes called "crowdsourcing").  There is, I think, an opportunity for librarians to re-introduce themselves into this new real-time question-driven environment.

Conclusion

If you're looking for an overall conclusion, for me it's that as someone who is web-based (rather than mobile), with a widely-dispersed web presence, and whose community is fairly intensive web users, FriendFeed is the best Web 2.0 tool for me.  Facebook I didn't like much at all, it mixes work and personal together and neither my work nor my personal community are particularly active users of it, so it doesn't make any sense for me to spend much time there.  So you can catch me Web 2.0 lifestreaming at

http://friendfeed.com/scilib

As a presenter, there's always a risk of putting yourself forward as the Expert, and I want to say that I very much don't consider myself a Web 2.0 Expert of any kind, I'm not even in the right generation to be talking about Web 2.0 (although perhaps being an outsider to this environment gives me a chance to see things that the Digital Generation may take for granted).  I invite your questions, comments and corrections (and I wish I'd made time to do so in my presentation yesterday).  You collectively know much more than I do.

femtosecond measurements and quantum labs - upcoming lectures

A Passion for Precision  

Femtosecond laser optical frequency comb synthesizers have become the established tool for measuring the frequency of light with extreme precision. By permitting phase-coherent comparisons of optical and microwave frequencies, they can serve as the clockwork for ultraprecise optical atomic clocks....

A passion for precision will be presented in English by Professor Theodore W. Hänsch, Nobel Laureate in Physics.  Part of the University of Ottawa New Horizons Lecture Series.

Tuesday October 14, 2008 at 4 p.m.
University of Ottawa, Desmarais Hall,
4th Floor, 55 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa (Ontario)

I think registration is required.  I don't know if it's supposed to be by invitation only, but it's on the web, so whatever.

Towards a Quantum Laboratory on a Chip

Microfabricated atom chips provide an interface to the quantum world. Magnetic traps, waveguides, and other elements for the manipulation of ultracold atoms can be combined to form a quantum laboratory on a chip. ...

Presented as a Joint NRC – University of Ottawa Scientific Lecture

National Research Council Canada
Auditorium - 100 Sussex Drive, Ottawa
Wednesday, October 15 2008, at 2:00 PM

An informal reception with coffee and refreshments will follow in the library
(RSVP Not Required)

Talk Science at BL and in SL - Wednesday 24 September 2008

TalkScience@bl.uk is a series of events hosted by the British Library, providing opportunities to inform, engage, debate and network with scientists and all those who use scientific information.

Wednesday 24 September 2008

• Is Web2.0 all about attitudes or technologies?
• What can Web2.0 do for your research?
• As a scientist, are there good reasons for getting involved beyond social ‘not working’?
• Web3.0: another buzzword or a semantic revolution for science on the web?

Timo Hannay is the Publishing Director of Nature.com. ...

Timo will be speaking live in the British Library and the event will be simultaneously screened on Second Nature. Following Timo’s talk, attendees from both the British Library and Second Nature will have the chance to question Timo and discuss the topics raised.

Date: Wednesday 24th September [2008]

Time: 18:00 – 20:30 London time, 10:00 – 12:30 PDT [1300-1530 EDT]

Location: Second Nature Island

Scientific Researchers and Web 2.0: Social 'NotWorking'? - Joanna Scott's blog - September 16, 2008

via FriendFeed

Writers Festival New Science Series - October 2008

The Ottawa International Writers Festival has a jam-packed lineup, including a New Science Series.
As usual when these sort of things happen in Ottawa, I just discovered I will be away for all of it.

Friday October 24, 2008

6:00 PM

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES: Dan Falk on Understanding Time
Nature Network: Dan Falk

7:00 PM

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES: THE BLACK HOLE WAR:
      Leonard Susskind on Quantum Mechanics and Black Holes

Saturday October 25, 2008

NOON

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES:
      Stephen Pinker on Language as a Window into Human Nature

2:00 PM

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES: CLIMATE CHANGE
      With Jay Ingram and Andrew Weaver

Sunday October 26, 2008

NOON

* NEW SCIENCE SERIES:
      John W. Moffat on Reinventing Gravity

One Big Library Unconference - Toronto - June 27 2008

John Dupuis announces

the One Big Library Unconference

http://onebiglibrary.yorku.ca/

E-mail: onebig@yorku.ca

When: Friday 27 June 2008, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Where: The Centre for Social Innovation,
215 Spadina Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Areas of interest:

    * The future of libraries
    * Collaboration on building One Big Library collections and services
    * Uses of social software in libraries
    * Tools to support and extend the One Big Library

Looks really interesting, it's great to see more experimentation with the unconference format.

Second Nature: Science and Science Fiction

Title: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science
Speakers: Prof Mark Brake and Rev. Neil Hook, Glamorgan University

Date: Mon 28th April [2008]

Time: 9am SLT, Midday NY time, 4pm GMT, 5pm London time

Location: Second Nature Island

from Nature Network - Joanna Scott's blog

I certainly think a common background of consuming science fiction informs both physics and computer science (the only science areas I've worked in).

Celebridée – Ottawa - May 2 to 19, 2008 - Chris Anderson, Salman Rushdie, Kunstler...

As part of the tulip festival, a collection of thinkers and music and stuff.

In 2008, Celebridée will come into full bloom in the Tulip Festival Mirror Tent headlining Sir Salman Rushdie, one of the world's most celebrated and controversial novelists. Other headliners include Wired Magazine's Chris Anderson and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond.

...

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency. Yale University's Amy Chua will present World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, ..., the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics will present The Mystery of Dark Matter, and Richard Florida, author of Who's Your City, will discuss Creative Cities.

Celebridée will also feature several partner events including 1783 – Subject or Citizen? an event on the Treaty of Paris by Library and Archives Canada and musical concerts including two evenings with Angela Hewitt: The Well-Tempered Clavier and Janina Fialkowska & The Chamber Players of Canada, all at St. Andrew's Church.

from http://www.celebridee.com/

Richard Florida's blog is also mirrored at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/creativeclass

UPDATE: I see Ottawa's own Clive Doucet will also be speaking.  I liked his book Urban Meltdown.

UPDATE: Since Colin mentioned he had some trouble finding the actual schedule, it's hidden away at http://www.tulipfestival.ca/en/Celeb_Events/

Science Policies and Science Portals - registration open

Registration is now open for

IFLA 2008 Satellite meeting
Science Policies and Science Portals

Canada, Montreal, Polytechnique Montreal - Friday August 8th 2008

I also made an Upcoming.org event.

I've proposed a tag: ifla2008science

an end to health care waiting - CIHR Café Scientifique

I thought Café Scientifique was just a clever name from CIHR (we do this sometimes in the Federal Government to get around bilingualism issues) but it turns out it is a Movement.

Wikipedia comes through with the info as usual: Café Scientifique

CIHR has held and will hold events across Canada, the next one is

All I ever do is wait! Putting an end to health care wait times

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008, 6 p.m.
Mercury Lounge
56 Byward, Ottawa
Please RSVP: cafescientifique@cihr-irsc.gc.ca

Also LIVE on the Web at www.webcastcanada.ca/cihr-irsc

CIHR - Café scientifique - or in French, err... Cafés scientifiques des IRSC

Ottawa *Camp

There are various OttawaCamps

http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/OttawaCamps

specifically BarCamp (unconference), DemoCamp (lightweight, brief event where people do demos), and CaseCamp ("a marketing-oriented ad-hoc gathering")

Ottawa Demo Camp 7 was last month, Centretown News wrote about it (the URL will change when it goes into the CN archive unfortunately)

The room is packed with about 60 people, their attention focused on the speaker. His name is Luc Levesque and he’s the general manager of TravelPod, a blogging company. He’s showcasing the Traveller IQ Challenge, a website application that tests a person’s knowledge of geography.

...

Levesque is just one of the seven presenters at Ottawa’s DemoCamp. The event aims to connect entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in an informal setting where they can share ideas.

(TravelPod is more like an online site for sharing info about your travels, than just a blog.)

Previously:
May 23, 2006  Ottawa BarCamp - April 22, 2006
May 23, 2006  three stories of travel websites

future of academic libraries - presentations

Presentations from "The Future of Academic Libraries - the Road ahead" seminar held earlier this week in Oslo are available, including

The future of academic libraries - the road ahead - seen from Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF)

What are the challenges for the academic libraries in the near future?

• Become user oriented in all respects
    – Become digital
    – Develop user-friendly simple systems (“as well known daily systems”)
    – Push the systems to the users in all ways
    – Forget one stop shopping
    – Accept not all content will be used
    – Deliver extra value (content or service)
    – Implement resource sharing – nobody can do everything nationally or internationally

Which services do the academic libraries’ institutions (and users) expect them to deliver?

• Content acquisition (licensing)
• Integrated search and delivery
• Research registration
• Institutional repositories
• Information literacy support
• Study environments
• Virtual reference desk
• VLE support?
• E-science support?

presentation by Bo Öhrström, Deputy Director, Danish Library Agency and overall responsible for DEFF

The presentation also talks about the need for shared infrastructure

Integrated search as an architecture

• Not only a search engine – but a national architecture
• A university has only 5% of the relevant information resources for a user in its own holdings
• The user wants to search in all relevant quality research information independent of which institution provides them.
• The library needs cooperation with other libraries about
    – larger amount of data
    – more seamless document delivery systems
    – new technology access control systems

Denmark has two integrated library search systems, Summa (open source) and Primo (Ex Libris).

There are also presentations with the perspectives from Talis (UK), Finland, Sweden, and Norway.

Link via BiblioBabl.

Previously:
February 05, 2007  Danish library strategies
September 27, 2005  Info Grid 2005 - Tuesday 27th, 11:40 - Overview of DEFF SOA activities

Ingenta - Publishing Technology Trends

In December 2007, Ingenta held the first event in their new Publishing Technology Trends seminar series.
Topics:

• "Authoritative? What's that? And who says?"
  Leigh Dodds, Chief Technology Officer, Ingenta
• "Beyond articles"
  Toby Green, Head of Publishing, OECD
• "Adding value to visitors"
  Paul Goad, Managing Director, TACODA
• "Keeping pace with online challenges"
  Randy Petway, VP, Publishing Technology
• "Key issues in the development of publishing"
  David Worlock, Chief Research Fellow, Outsell

See their posting (part of their eye to eye February 2008 newsletter) for more information and links to the presentations.

New World of Open Access - Ottawa - Oct 10, 2007

The University of Ottawa Library, in association with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), hosted a public seminar entitled Open Access: the New World of Research Communication on Wednesday October 10, 2007.

Open Access: the New World of Research Communication

Speakers were Kathleen Shearer, CARL Research Associate; Stephen Choi, MD, FRCPC, Co-Editor, Open Medicine; Christian Sylvain, Policy, Planning and International Affairs Director, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC); and Professor Michael Geist.

The presentations are available along with audio

http://web20.uottawa.ca/academic/library/openaccess.mp3

(Note: Although the audio starts out in French, the main seminar is in English.)

There's a webcast as well but I couldn't get it to work.

via Resource Shelf

science in Second Life: CSIRO and Nature

CSIRO

Participate in this Second Life seminar as Dr Peter Clifton discusses anti-ageing and the prospect of human life extension.

3 September 2007, 2 AM Second Life Time (Pacific timezone)

Examining the prospect of human life extension

Dr Gautam Tendulkar will be discussing how CSIRO is using Second Life to research the limits of virtual worlds, data exchange between worlds and custom interfaces.

17 September 2007, 2 AM Second Life Time (Pacific timezone)

Researching the limits of virtual worlds

both at

ABC Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/ABC%20Island/130/137/43

Nature

a discussion with Phil Holliger from the Medical Research Council Molecular Biology Lab in Cambridge. Phil works with ancient DNA: DNA samples retrieved from specimens of forensic, paleontological or archaeological interest. DNA naturally degrades over time, making it very difficult to amplify and analyse, and Phil will be talking about a new way to more accurately repair the damage, which he recently tried out on a 60,000 year-old cave bear.

13 September 2007 at ?6 PM GMT?

Events on Second Nature and Events on Second Nature (2)

On one of Nature's Second Nature islands in Second Life, presumably.

my presentation on Internet community for Allen Press Emerging Trends

Here's my presentation "The Internet - A Scholarly Community?" from the 2007 Allen Press Emerging Trends seminar:

Download AllenPress.ppt (converted to PowerPoint)

Original Keynote format available upon request.

I have also posted it to Slideshare.net

There are supplementary bookmarks available at

http://www.connotea.org/user/scilib/tag/ap2007akerman

I thought the presentation went well.  A lot of the content is in me talking, so I don't know how much you'll get from just the slides.

Sidebar 1: Using K790 as Bluetooth Remote

I tried using my K790 phone as a remote control but that was not a big success for a couple reasons:
1) It kept going to sleep, so instead of just clicking to the next slide, I first had to hit a safe button to wake it up, then click to the next slide
2) Although Bluetooth should have good range (10 metres), I wasn't able to control from either end of the stage and at at least one point, I lost the connection altogether and had to re-establish it

So: not recommended unless you're going through your slides quickly (or know how to disable sleep mode) and you're fairly close to the podium.

Sidebar 2: Carbon Offset for Travel

I'm doing double carbon offset, on the theory that at least one of them might do some good:

Green My Flight Summary
Itinerary:
OTTAWA - YOW to WASHINGTON - IAD: 725.0 km

Total Distance: 1449.9 km
Total Emissions: 197.0 kg
Program Cost: $7.00

MyClimate

flight from: Ottawa, ON [Macdonald-Cartier International Airport], Canada, YOW
flight to: Washington, DC [Washington Dulles International Airport], USA, IAD
return, economy
flight distance: 1'448 km
flight passengers: 1
CO2 Emissions: 0,34 t
Total costs for compensation of your flight: SFr. 13.71
+ SFr. 5 "handling charge"
+ credit card foreign exchange fees

(Google says 18.71 Swiss francs = about 17.50 Canadian dollars)