communication | Whizbang

Countdown to EB: 14 Days

Apr 06 2012 Published by whizbang under [Education&Careers]

Two weeks from today I board a plane and fly to San Diego for Experimental Biology. As one of the official bloggers for the American Physiological Society I find myself doing more prep work than any other year. The Online Itinerary Builder is now live, allowing attendees to search the program by track, presenter, society, keywords...or any combination of the above.

I have identified a few sessions, and some suggestions have been made by you, my loyal readers.

I will not be "live" blogging. I attempted that a couple of times, and I just do not have that skill set. Watch my twitter feed in the right column (or follow me on twitter; you really should, you know) for real-time updates on what I am attending. Some sessions will get full coverage a bit later; others may not.

Some sessions will be covered with twitter feeds via Storify. This web-based service will let me collect tweets, facebook updates, photos, videos, and other thoughts on various sessions to tell a more completes version. The first session I will use for this technique is on Saturday, April 21, at 3 pm in Room 25C of the San Diego Convention Center. The APS Communications Committee has convened a discussion about the use of social media to communicate about physiology. James Hicks will chair the symposium, while the panel is staffed by Dr. Isis, Jason Goldman, Danielle Lee, and yours truly. Since I am on the platform participating, I will look to the audience for thoughts and impressions.

So how can I track down your thoughts and impressions? Hashtags. On twitter, thoughts can be mapped to topics via #keyword. We can use those same hashtag/keywords on other platforms to mark relevant content. Here are the ones I will be following for Saturday events:

#apsACE Animal Research: A Toolkit for Investigators (Sat, Apr 21, 1pm, 25B)
#apsComm Using Social Media to Communicate About Physiology and You (Sat, Apr 21, 3pm, 25C)
#Navar Physiology in Perspective: The Walter B. Cannon Memorial Award Lecture (Sat, Apr 21, 5:45pm, Ballroom 20A)
#apsParty APS Beach Party (Sat, Apr 21, 7pm, North Embarcadero)

Since I cannot be everywhere at once, some sessions will not get my blog treatment. If anyone wants to see a session immortalized online, just let me know what hashtag you and your colleagues are using; I will be glad to assemble coverage here!

For photos and video, you can also add your stuff to a Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/eb2012/).

Don't be shy; consider this your scientific outreach!

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42 Days and Counting

Mar 09 2012 Published by whizbang under Societies and Meetings, [Biology&Environment]

In just over a month thousands of life scientists will gather in San Diego for Experimental Biology, the meeting formerly known as FASEB. In addition to being the annual gathering of the American Physiological Society, this year also celebrates the 125th anniversary of the APS.

Yes, I am proud to be a physiologist!

Of course, I am also honored to be one of the APS's official meeting bloggers! I have access to the press room (I don't suppose that includes a hot tub and wet bar?). This status means I am looking at the meeting in a whole new light. Instead of focusing on my own interests (and using the down-time to relax at the Marriott's poolside bar), I want to communicate things that my audience will appreciate as well.

What things will I definitely cover?

APS Communications Committee Symposium: Using Social Media to Communicate About Physiology and You (I'm on the panel, so I have to be there)
Physiology in Perspective: The Walter B. Cannon Memorial Award Lecture (Gabriel Navar, a renal physiologist, is the speaker at this opening event)
Renal Section Awards Banquet (Another I-have-to-be-there)

I will also likely attend and blog some of the teaching of physiology sessions. As I transition from physician-scientist to physician-educator-administrator (with physiology research as more of a hobby), these sessions have become important for me.

What would you, my loyal readers, like to hear about? I cannot guarantee that I will cover it, but you never know...

Use the links to the meeting sites above to explore the program and exhibits and activities. Provide suggestions in the comments, and I will see how it all fits together.

If you have a student presenting, let me know. I may want to blog their science!

One response so far

A Solution for the Twitterverse!

Feb 20 2012 Published by whizbang under [Information&Communication]

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Last summer I succumbed to the buzz and got on Google+. Hey, all the cool kids were doing it; why not me?

I must admit I still prefer Twitter to the other social media services. If you cannot say it in 140 characters, get a blog! However, I am not alone on the internet, and I have friends that prefer Facebook and other sites (although I have not yet knowingly met a person who prefers G+). I keep hoping someone will explain what makes Google's site "the one."

The bottom line is that any person or group that wants to communicate broadly must have a presence on all of the social media sites. Otherwise you will always be missing someone who prefers doing it another way. Solutions exist to connect Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and others. Software became available within a few weeks of the G+ debut to allow your posts there to go out to Twitter et al.

I love Twitter. Was there no solution to let my tweets feed into my G+ stream? Otherwise, I only think to post there about once a month.

Today I found a solution via Quora (posted on 14 January 2012), the internet Q&A site. I am giving you a direct link to the instructions. You will want to keep them open in a separate window, on another device, or (gasp) print them out.

Google+ allows you to post via SMS. That’s the trick.

Who exposed this method online? A whippersnapper the same age as my son (Timmer, you're slacking). His bio follows:

My name is Salavat Khanov. I'm 19-years-old blogger & developer based in Ufa, Russia. I'm currently studying at Ufa State Aviation Technical University (Software Engineering student) and working on my own projects.

I take keen interest in programming and development of Mac and iOSapplications, also Web development. Currently I am very much interested in the process of learning and making Mac OS X applications and working on websites.

Since 2009 I have been actively working in the web industry. I have worked with many different people on various projects and as a result I gained some unique and strong experience in the IT, English language and generally - life.

It took 15-20 minutes for me to set up the system, and it works great! Thank you, Salavat - you made my day!

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These Social Networks: Personality and Preference

Feb 15 2012 Published by whizbang under Uncategorized, [Information&Communication]

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On Valentine's Day, an online friend tweeted a link to a Wall Street Journal article about a study of personality and social media network usage. The article consisted of 118 words, but I had to know more. I pulled the paper for detail:

A tale of two sites: Twitter vs. Facebook and the personality predictors of social media usage. Hughes et al. Computers in Human Behavior 28:561-69, 2012

The authors want to know if users of Twitter and Facebook differ in their personalities. First, what aspects of personality do they want to consider? They study the
Big-Five:

Neuroticism: Measure of affect and emotional control. Low levels suggest emotional stability, and higher levels reflect sensitivity and nervousness (Drama Queens, if you please).
Extraversion: Measure of engagement with others. Extraverts tend to be outgoing and talkative. Intraverts get their energy from within themselves.
Openness-to-Experience: Measure of desire for novelty. High scores indicate broad interests for new experiences, with low scorers preferring familiarity.
Agreeableness: Measure of "friendliness." High scores general found for people who are kind, warm, and sympathetic.
Conscientiousness: Measure of work ethic, orderliness, and thoroughness. High scores belong to those who get it done on time. Low scores can indicate proscratination tendencies.

In addition they also assessed two personality facets that may also influence online interactions:

Sociability: Measure of need to belong. No distinction between this score and that for extraversion/intraversion is presented.
Need for Cognition: Measure of disposition toward novel cognitive stimulation.

They combined validated survey instruments for each of these factors, along with some questions about Twitter and Facebook use and basic demographics, and made a single online instrument to test the following hypotheses:

Neuroticism will be positively correlated with social use of both Facebook and Twitter
Extraversion will be positively correlated with use of Facebook
Extraversion will be negatively related to use of Twitter
Openness will be correlated with both social and informational use of both Facebook and Twitter
Agreeableness will be unrelated to social network use
Conscientiousness will be negatively correlated with social use of both Facebook and Twitter
Conscientiousness will be positively correlated with informational use of social network services
Need for cognition will be positively correlated with informational use of Facebook and Twitter, but will be unrelated to social use
Sociability will positively correlate with the social use of Facebook and Twitter, but will be unrelated to informational use

The investigators recruited participants through ads on both Twitter and Facebook; informed consent was obtained and a small donation made to charity on behalf of each person. No report is made on how many participants came from ads on which service. A total of 300 people (97 males, 207 females) completed the survey. Ages ranged from 18 to 63 (mean 27). Europeans accounted for 70%, 18% were from North America, 9% from Asia, and the remaining 3% from other continents. 55% of participants were employed, 41% were students, and only 4% had no job.

The first analysis classified participants by social network usage. Four factors generated included Twitter Information, Facebook Social, Twitter Social, and Facebook Information. The strongest correlation identified was Sociability with both Twitter Information and Facebook Information, completely refuting hypothesis #9. The pattern of correlations with Twitter Information and Facebook information were diametrically opposed; they conclude that personality may help determine which service one uses to consume or deliver information. The strongest correlation with Twitter Social was Conscientiousness, while Sociability showed the strongest relationship to Facebook Social.

The investigators also asked each participant which network they preferred, with 197 picking Facebook. Users with this preference rated higher in Sociability, Extraversion, and Neuroticism than those preferring Twitter. The latter group scored higher in Need for Cognition.

The authors discuss a boatload of correlations in these data, for what they are worth. Correlations do not prove causation, and this study population was small, self-selected, and not generalizable. Their findings provide support and lack-thereof for all nine of their hypotheses.

The bottom line for me is that most people who use social media have a preference for one site or another. For my personal interactions, I need to be where "my people" are. If I want to get the word out about a product or service or event or other news item, I need to be everywhere; otherwise I will miss people. Diversity issues also present themselves, not through the traditional race-gender-ethnicity lens but through a personality lens. When I restrict myself to one network, I may be preaching to a choir even more like myself than I imagined.

3 responses so far

Value Added

Feb 13 2012 Published by whizbang under [Science in Society]

A few years back I decided I needed some business training to pursue my administrative goals. A big piece of this education included financial materials. One problem involved valuing a business. Sure, you have the building and supplies and widgets, and usually some cash is on hand as well. However, businesses come with intangible assets. What is the name "Disney" worth, for example? How about "Enron," now versus 1998?

The only way to really find out the value of a business or other entity is to sell it. Like houses, they are worth whatever someone will pay.

In scientific publishing, someone has paid for the data before submission to the journal. What value does the journal add?

Peer-review - Yes, I realize most of this is done by volunteers, but there is infrastructure to maintain.
Editing - Do you put spaces on one or both sides of the "<" sign? Thanks to hired punctuation police, scientists do not have to think about this. Of course, most of us can get the message from the unedited manuscript (regardless of the quality of the grammar and kerning), so this function can be perceived as beautification with little true value.
Distribution - Costs are lower via the internet, but not yet zero. Even publishers have to buy servers and pay electric bills. We also expect the information to be maintained in perpetuity, no matter how few people access it.
Reputation - Each journal adds intangible value to the articles within, a value most difficult to quantify.

These are the things we pay for with subscriptions, page fees, and download prices. How do we judge what is fair? We can look to Open Access publications for an idea of the overall costs for the first three items. What we cannot learn as easily is the price of reputation. A publication in Nature may be worth $35 per download in perpetuity. Is a 5-year-old article in Pathophysiology (Impact Factor not available) really worth $22?

I am not certain what the solution will be. The internet has clearly disrupted publishing of all sorts, and scientific journals will not be exempt. Until that magical reputation factor drops lower in value, I doubt that the glamor rags will suffer.

2 responses so far

Female Blogging Manifesto: #Scio12 In Action

Jan 25 2012 Published by whizbang under [Information&Communication]

The Science Online 2012 session on the perils of blogging female generated discussion, both at the conference and on the internet. Comments to female bloggers are not merely sexist. Many are viscious, some are threatening, and some cross the line into criminal intent. If you don't believe me, search the #mencallmethings hashtag on twitter for examples. Kate Clancy blogged about the need for a posse, a group that gets it and can fight off these, well, douchecanoes when they materialize.

A number of us gathered later that evening, expressing our frustration that the session continues to remain necessary. We cannot believe that we have not moved beyond these blatant displays of sexism and misogyny and hate. We are ready to move forward; why isn't the discussion?

Yup, it's pink.

The answer came at the banquet Friday evening, when Janet Stemwedel took to the stage in The Monti Storytelling event. (This story will eventually be available as a podcast here). In the fall of 2011 the blogosphere exploded with a discussion of "gendered" science kits - you know, pink girl kits for bubble bath and cosmetics, while the boys get microscopes and chemistry sets that look like something an actual scientist might have in the lab. These kits reinforce the overwhelming value of girls' femininity while supposedly encouraging scientific endeavors. Dr. Free-ride, her "nom de blog", related how she heard about this topic and thought, "Not again." She felt tired; she wanted to let someone else fight the battle this time.

Eventually, she sucked it up and posted.

Then, a miracle occurred. Someone at this scientific toy company saw the virtual shitstorm on the internet. Multiple blogs, opinions on Facebook, updates on Google+, and a flood from the Twitterverse were not ignored. The company announced that they would no longer sell gendered science kits. They would simply sell science kits.

VICTORY!

Now, I cannot say that without Janet's post that this would not have occurred. Was she the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back? We will never know what the minimal unit of rant is for any given change.

As I look back on our musings in the bar that evening, I realize that we must continue having these same sessions. The conversation and complaints must continue until the appropriate parties notice and act. Yes, we get tired of it. Yes, it is repetitive. Yes, it sucks. But it must be done. If not for us, for our daughters. The real daughters, whether they be tomboys or pretty-pink-princesses, and our daughters in society, those younger than us who want to inquire and write and express their thoughts on an equal footing with the menfolk.

So we will continue to complain and rant and fight and whine and even bitch. Get over it, boys - only then will it stop.

I am in this battle for the long haul. And so is my posse.

5 responses so far

Advice for #Scio12 Noobs

Jan 09 2012 Published by whizbang under [Information&Communication]

Last year was my first to attend Science Online. Yes, I was a Noob! This year, as a seasoned veteran, I can provide some advice for those of you entering this wonderful group for the first time.

When it comes to electonic gizmos, more is more. This conference generates more bandwidth than anything else I attend. Find yourself in a session that's not what you expected? Pull up the live-feed of the others and change rooms. Some adventurous souls will try to live-blog sessions, while many of us settle for twitter-notes. Virtually everyone will be juggling laptops, tablets, and smart phones. That's who we are, for the most part. Don't have a smart phone? This is the place to get an overview (AKA knock-down, drag-out debate) on the relative merits of Android vs. iPhone platforms, especially if you get the right two people together in the bar. You have been warned.
You will feel welcomed. The group tends to be quite friendly, and your first task will be to hug Bora, the Godfather of Science Online (if you have had your flu shot, of course). I remember people running up to me, exclaiming how good it was to meet in real life! Since many bloggers use pseudonyms, I had NO IDEA who some of these folks were, at first. For some, I still don't know a real-life name, even though I feel like we have a great bond!
Try not to stare open-mouthed at your heroes. Meeting some of these writers can produce feelings of awe (yes, some of us are science groupies), but they are just as friendly and welcoming as the rest of the crowd (see #2). Want your books autographed? Bring them along!
Ocean bloggers are at least as welcoming as the rest of the crowd; however, they seem to have an alcohol tolerance well above the rest of us (and I have NEVER felt like a light-weight at any other meeting). Does this have something to do with time at sea? I don't know. Just be careful. You have been warned (and neuroscientists, don't get snitty; my experience is that the ocean crew can outdo you).
Be prepared to bring extra stuff home. Even with the new swag policy, I suspect we may need to check a bag and tote home an extra bag of new acquisitions. I still have my Sigma Life Science Magic 8 Ball on my desk. Yup, it made the cut for the move. Sometimes it provides the clearest, most logical solution to a daily conundrum.
Be prepared for an amazing experience. Science Online was like visiting the Mother Ship; nowhere else have I encountered this many people who, like me, love science, the written word, and online communication.

If you're a Science Online Veteran, feel free to leave your tips in the comments below. If you're a 2012 noob with a question, ask in the comments and you will get answers. I promise!

14 responses so far

Extra Credit

Dec 16 2011 Published by whizbang under [Education&Careers], [Information&Communication]

My favorite comic of all time

Last year at Science Online 2011, as we discussed the role of blogging in scientific outreach, the topic of academic "credit" for blogging arose. Mostly junior participants lamented that blogging would never be taken seriously until full professors had it on their CVs.

I went back and added a section of online activities to my own CV. As one of those full professors, I felt it was the least I could do.

Earlier this week Kate Clancy wrote about her upcoming 3-year review, including the difficulty the committee will have discussing her blog:

It doesn’t help that “blog” doesn’t sound very academic (oh, if only I had thought to call this the Context and Variation Monograph). And it doesn’t help that this writing isn’t just for scholars, but for everybody. That’s not because non-blogging academics don’t see the point of interacting with the public, but because this particular way of doing it is so strange to them. This isn’t a radio interview, or a book, or a talk at the local library, but a style of writing where the jargon is not academic but from the internet. We talk in ALL CAPS, we use emoticons and use extra exclamation points!!1!!1

WhizBANG! Letters...hmmmm...

She goes on to outline the virtues of blogging for a junior faculty member, including building networks, public outreach, improved writing skills, and even (gasp!) scholarship. I suspect a number of us bloggers do not really get our thoughts organized until we write them down (that's why there is a huge whiteboard in my office), and playing with a new idea in cyberspace can generate valuable feedback from a great audience. Blogging about academic works increases the audience substantially; I hope that mainstream journals can eventually embrace this robust discussion as part of the post-publication review of work.

So back to January. As a full prof, my CV did not really get examined by anyone last spring. This week I found out that I have to undergo tenure review for my new employer, and my CV must be completely rearranged. I prepared a draft, including my posts for Scientific American and Biocareers as non-refereed publications, complete with hyperlinks. I also listed my project, Academic Women for Equality Now, as an "Other" activity. [Yes, this blog got left off, mostly because it includes any shiny thing that catches my eye, especially shoes. I cannot classify my thoughts on fashion, including bottle sweaters, as any sort of academic activity.]

Our departmental reviewer got back to me with a bunch of red pixels, none of which landed on these posts. She told me to put AWEnow into my national service section. No comments about these being inappropriate activities for academic credit.

I still have work to do on my packet before it goes to full review. There is still a chance that someone will snub my online work, but so far, so good.

Anyone else out there counting their online efforts as academic work?

4 responses so far