Real-Time Blogging In The Marine Sciences

While the spirit was willing to post real-time during the 2008 Science Blogging Conference in North Carolina, apparently the server was weak. While I noticed a lot of bloggers with internet access, I couldn't seem to capture a millimeter of bandwidth until just now.

We've had cold rain all day here in Research Triangle Park, but you wouldn't know it from the volume of cheer at the conference. I'm told over 200 science bloggers are in attendance today, which is amazing. While I'm a relative newcomer to this community (MBSL&S turned one year old last summer) I recognized quite a few faces over coffee this morning. Of course I happily reconnected with Bora, one-half of the catalyst for this event, and he was his usual hyper-caffeinated/nicotined self. And while I haven't met others before face-to-face, I recognized a lot of names from favorite blogs.

It wasn't long before I bumped into my co-presenters, Peter of Deep Sea News, Kevin of The Other 95%, Karen of The Beagle Project, and Jason of Cephalopodcast. That's Peter and Karen (in black) in the image to the left. It was great to make the in-flesh connection with people I've interacted with for over a year, and it wasn't long before we got deep in conversation.

After a welcome and intro by Bora and Anton Zuiker, we immediately launched into our session Real-Time Blogging in the Ocean Sciences (affectionately referred to by Kevin as RTB). I'm not sure what to conclude from the relatively small turnout for our session (maybe 13 participants plus 5 presenters). Ocean blogging is niche blogging within the science blogging world, so that certainly self-selects. Perhaps the "real-time" focus was confusing or unclear? Maybe the other concurrent topics were far more compelling (but how could that be possible!). Whatever the case, we still had an engaged and active discussion. Keeping true to the spirit of the "unconference" format, we consciously steered away from being talking heads in favor of a more socratic method. I think it worked as we certainly had no lulls in the dialogue.

We discussed what "real-time" blogging means; does real-time blogging afford any unique offerings to the scientific enterprise--in other words, when we blog on the process of science as it's happening, what does the reader gain over reading scientific reports or scholarly/technical outcomes of scientific research. I've gotten into the habit of describing this as "showing people how we make the sausage." Based upon the consensus of our participants, blogging that shows readers more of the process and behind-the-scenes is very valuable and desirable.

We also discussed some real-time pitfalls that might occur. Jennifer Jacquet of Shifting Baselines made a good point that, for her, blogs where personality overshadows the content or message can be off-putting. While that's not just a pitfall reserved for real-time bloggers, I think it's certainly a balancing act between being engaging/entertaining while staying on-point with whatever it is we're hoping to convey. We also talked about the challenge of finding or referencing what is being written in ocean blogs as a true resource to both a scientific and general readership. Blog carnivals like Mark Powell's Carnival of the Blue certainly go a long way in this regard, but we also discussed how these carnivals aren't necessarily all that's being written... it's all that's being submitted for a carnival aggregation.

Sadly, we ran out of time long before we ran out of other topics to discuss. But I think my colleagues would agree it was a fun session and certainly gave me more ideas to ponder and explore in my blog. If you want to re-live our session (virtually), thanks to the amazing efforts of Jason and his technology dog and pony show, you can watch his streaming recording of the discussions by following the links for our session wiki page (near the bottom of the page). That's Jason setting-up in the pic to the right (sorry for the crappy pic). Thanks Jason!

I just finished a session on adding interactivity to blogs, which I hoped would inspire me to bump up the dialogue a bit over the next year. More about that later after I have some time to process. I'm awaiting the start of the final panel discussion on framing science in the world of blogs, so I hope to have something interesting to relay later today.

Finally, from the "Oh Shit!" department, it's snowing in earnest outside. I've come to understand this is rare for North Carolina. Lucky me! Anyway, stay tuned to find out if my entire weekend will be spent in beautiful, snowy Raleigh-Durham instead of my comfy home (I'm scheduled to fly out Sunday morning). If I'm stranded, perhaps I can figure out the controls on my SleepNumber bed at the hotel.