Birds of a Feather session: Beyond microblogging,... - ISMB/ECCB Stockholm 2009

Thanks for setting this up, @Roland! - Allyson Lister

Some thoughts I've had: Pre-annotation of papers and posters prior to the meeting, as is done by David Shotton in "Adventures in Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements of a Research Article" at http://dx.doi.org/10... . Don't think it's automated, but you get the idea - and David Shotton gave a talk here this week (http://ff.im/4xwI9) ; and also Reflect (http://ff.im/4yVO1) - Allyson Lister

Also, how should scientists start with microblogging and social networking? http://themindwobbles.wordpress.com/2009... - Allyson Lister

Let's meet for the 4.15 coffee break at the coffee bar in front of K1, @Allyson and other interested people. If you have ideas, it would be good to prepare them. - Roland Krause

sounds good :) - Allyson Lister

http://ff.im/4BEXJ might also be of interest (Utopia ) - Allyson Lister

I COMPLETELY forgot about the meetup at coffee today! I'm sooo sorry! Was anything decided? Can you put up any summary points that might be of interest tomorrow? My apologies! - Allyson Lister

@Allyson: Wednesday. It's Tuesday :o) - Oliver Hofmann

@Oliver - I missed the pre-BOF meetup today at 4:15 at coffee - see above... :( - Allyson Lister

Oh. I did not even SEE that comment. Sigh. - Oliver Hofmann

No problem, we can meet over nibbles at the reception now. I can tell you what I have in mind. - Roland Krause

@Roland - I'm afraid I'm not available this evening. Morning? Or just write your ideas here? I'm a dork - sorry! :) - Allyson Lister

This should not take long at all, but please leave your ideas here. This is going to be an interactive session anyway, so we don't have to be all that prepared. My slides are more of a moderation prop than a standalone presentation. - Roland Krause

I would like to have some meta-discussion: why are we live blogging? How is this useful and how can we make it more useful? Does it mainly benefit those not attending the meeting or is it also useful as an archive of what has been said? - Michael Kuhn from iPod

Which room the BoF takes place? - Peter Menzel

In addition to what Michael Kuhn (@biocs) said, meeting microblogging can also benefit the presenter - giving them valuable feedback. Also links posted to papers, websites, etc. are great, to easily view more info about what someone is/was talking about. - Fiona Brinkman

I'll miss this, due to my time difference (Can. west coast) but I look forward to all your thoughts and thank you for setting this BoF up! - Fiona Brinkman

@Fiona - we'll make sure to post (maybe microblog!) the BoF :) Thanks for your input - benefits to the presenter is a really good point. - Allyson Lister

Last year at ISMB, even though I was already on FF I took notes as I habitually do, with calligraphic fountain pen. During the course of the intervening year I would find myself trying to refer back to those notes while in conversation with others, but had difficulty finding what I wanted in time. - Ruchira S. Datta

Paradoxically, I perceive myself as being slower when taking notes electronically than by hand (I think I tend to spend more time formulating them). But since we're doing this cooperatively, if one of us doesn't catch something another will. The notes will be searchable any time on the web; I won't have to dig up a particular file on a particular computer. The same effort provides the same resource for others. - Ruchira S. Datta

I did revert to the fountain pen at various points this year though! It's more reliable than depending on the availability of power, wireless, and FriendFeed. - Ruchira S. Datta

@Peter - the ISMB website tells me we will be in C8 for this session - Allyson Lister

The BioSysBio 2009 conference report (http://genomebiology.com/2009...) just came out (disclaimer, I'm an author). Simon Cockell had a wordle used (http://www.flickr.com/photos...), and FF and Twitter get a mention, if a short one: "A new feature for BioSysBio 2009 to extend participation in the conference was to a wider audience by communicating live content through microblogging (using FriendFeed and Twitter; Figure 1) and live blogging (providing an immediate and permanent log)." - Allyson Lister

Roland, where is the BoF going to be? - Michael Kuhn

The location is still given as C8. - Roland Krause

Set up an Etherpad for collaborative note taking: http://etherpad.com/EOOgB1Y27Z - Oliver Hofmann

I will be there from 12:40 onwards, if you have left suggestions here, please be there a little earlier for a quick roundup. - Roland Krause

Getting started. Mini-overview of past/current/future - Oliver Hofmann

Disclaimer for presentations -- what is allowed and what isn't (mail, blogging, film...) - Oliver Hofmann

Reference to Cameron Neylon's logos for presenters: http://blog.openwetware.org/science... - Allyson Lister

A need to make presenters aware of what might be distributed how - Oliver Hofmann

Reference to CSHL and recent "controversy": http://scienceblogs.com/genetic... - Allyson Lister

Conference blogging ideas from nature: http://www.nature.com/news... - Allyson Lister

Brief discussion of CSHL controversy - Oliver Hofmann

Journalists and bloggers should abide by the same rules at a conference - whatever those rules are - Allyson Lister

Classical blog posts, twitter and friendfeed: surprising how effective friendfeed is given it's basic nature - Oliver Hofmann

Find it quite difficult to make sense out of Twitter (best - wordle aka Simon Cockell?) - Allyson Lister

Oliver says FF isn't perfect, but it does have a very low barrier to access and start using - Allyson Lister

Where do personal opinions come into it? In general at ISMB we are all being polite. What level is acceptable? - Allyson Lister

Roland: the discussion culture in science has changed a litle. He read that 50 years ago they were having much more open discussions - Allyson Lister

Maybe people might be away from the conference and following remotely, or at the conference and shy - such people could pose questions on friendfeed, and then chair (who is monitoring FF) could ask them at the end of the talk - Allyson Lister

Differences to last year: increased depth of coverage (due to ISCB support, raised awareness?) - Oliver Hofmann

We all thanked the organisers from this year - Allyson Lister

ISMB people (Reinhard?) will do some basic stats of the coverage of this conference - Allyson Lister

Many of us bloggers feel that the first to benefit are ourselves - Allyson Lister

First person to benefit from blogging: the blogger - Oliver Hofmann

Live blogging especially useful for keynotes - for recording the presenter's thoughts.. and not always an accompanying paper available.. ? - Peter Menzel

Andrew: heavily blogged talks are more useful for external people than delegates - Allyson Lister

liveblogging is complementary to webcast etc as it takes less time - if you like the liveblogging and the blog posts after scanning, then you go and look at webcast - Allyson Lister

Also, people liveblogging tends to pick out the key points quickly - Allyson Lister

webcasting also has many time and technical issues - Allyson Lister

oliver: Perhaps much of the commenting is too sober. Not enough meta-information, e.g. "here is X's main competitor's paper..." - Allyson Lister

it would be nice to have more background - yes - Jim Procter

Roland: can you have two streams - one light, one serious. Allyson: but it would be difficult in practice, if you have to look at two different things - Allyson Lister

Three levels: factual information/transcript. notes to self, public commentary / context - Oliver Hofmann

Feeds are important feedback for the presenter ? - Peter Menzel

technical issues: there can be issues with internet / wireless - Allyson Lister

(Like right now?) - Oliver Hofmann

@Oliver - yep! Back now, though :) - Allyson Lister

Should we have TLAs or abbrevs to indicate personal comments or uncertainty? Maybe not TLAs (makes barrier for newbies) - how about single symbol at the beginning, e.g. '#' for personal comments - Allyson Lister

We should write up a boilerplate: what it means to liveblog; if you don't want it, then... (e.g. logo from Cameron) ;why scientists should liveblog; *suggest* that your FF account should link to something that identifies you; you might want to consider only posting things that you would be happy saying to people's face. - Allyson Lister

no legislation, though - don't want to force people to do anything - Allyson Lister

ISMB will certainly do it next year - Allyson Lister

imho: Official Facebook group etc. should be more advertised.. - Peter Menzel

@Peter - I agree - the embedded FF threads within the ISMB site were advertised, but more should have been made of them - it's quite cool to see! - Allyson Lister

Some great points made here - thank you! - Fiona Brinkman

see here for the Google Doc to make a write-up out of this discussion: http://docs.google.com/Doc... - Michael Kuhn