A Blog Around The Bay

I had the pleasure of sharing a ferry ride and a beer with Bora Zivkovic tonight. In case you live under a rock, Bora (AKA Coturnix) pens A Blog Around The Clock over on ScienceBlogs and, at three years and running, has the distinction of authoring one of the best and most consistent science blogs out there. A Blog Around The Clock is a self-described amalgam of science, politics, personal ruminations, blogging-about-blogging, chronobiology, academia and science education, and miscellaneous stuff.

Meeting up with me, I suppose, gets filed under miscellaneous stuff.

Bora is spending a month in San Francisco getting quickly up-to-speed on his new job at the Public Library of Science (PLoS). PLoS is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. It's all about open access, baby. With a proven knack for building and nurturing online communities, Bora recently was hired by PLoS to help drive users to log into PLoS to review scientific papers. A very cool job, made even cooler considering he applied for it through a post on his blog. I wanna be Bora! If his persuasive explanation of PLoS' potential is as effective online as it was in person, he should have no problem populating the site with reviews. Ten minutes with Bora and you too will feel like you drank the PLoS Kool Aid.

Bora met me at my office, then we headed for the Alameda-Oakland Ferry down at Embarcadero. I had plans to bring Bora over to Jack London Square in Oaktown. Turns out Bora is a big Jack London fan and I think he and Prof. Steve Steve were delighted to get the chance to pose with Jack on arrival.


Before you start to cast aspersions on Prof. Steve Steve, allow me to introduce you to my own international travel partner, Mr. Buns:

Here's Mr. Buns in Belize
Mr. Buns in Fiji
And Mr. Buns in Bali
But I digress. A tiny hole-in-the-wall of a bar on the waterfront, Heinhold's First and Last Chance, was our destination. Armed with a Guiness and a Hefeweizen, we parked ourselves outside on a warm evening and chatted all over the map. There are so many who are quick to write-off bloggers and the blogging community as insular and fragmented or a cohort of oddballs. Okay, the oddball category has some truth. But my short history with blogging has most certainly uncovered a collection of people more interested in connections than isolation. Maybe I've just been lucky in the other bloggers I've reached out to (and who have reached out to me). But it's very cool that blogs can create physical as well as intellectual connections. Thanks for spending some time, Bora!

Bora and Prof. Steve Steve share a beer