This afternoon, Bora and I met for coffee at Open Eye Cafe, the place where we previously hatched the idea to create the annual North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. We’ve spent the last month reviewing the feedback from the January event, and thinking about what we’d do differently a third time around. It’s time to start planning. We’ve already announced the date and location: January 16-18, 2009 at the Sigma Xi Center. The next piece to announce is that we’ll be broadening the conference to more than just science blogging. Our goal all along has been to promote the public understanding of science through online tools, so we’re renaming the conference to ScienceOnline’09 and inviting more of the Triangle’s science communicators to help us build a 3-day event to help scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and others share their strategies. Over the next few weeks, we’ll launch a new site at scienceonline09.com and create a new (more stable) wiki for the planning of this conference. Stay tuned …

With the second annual NC Science Blogging Conference successfully behind us, I gathered together today a handful of our group around my kitchen table to review the past few years of our blogging efforts and to brainstorm ideas for the next couple of years. The consensus was that we are a community of talented, smart, engaging individuals with much promise for more community-organizing success. I’ll post notes from the conversation to blogtogether.org later this week. Our group was small, but not meant to be exclusive, and we want to give everyone an opportunity to participate in the growth of BlogTogether. Please share your thoughts — either as comments to this post, or with me in confidence via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) – on the following: # What past BlogTogether events and activities have you most enjoyed? Why? # What do you think is the mission or purpose of BlogTogether? # How would you like to see BlogTogether grow or change? # How would you like to be involved in the organizing and planning of these events and activities: regular meetups in Carrboro/Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh; the annual science blogging conference; a faith blogging conference; an ongoing series of food blogging events; the storyblogging oral history initiative; or your own ideas for events and activities? # What else would you like to share, ask, or offer? Thanks for taking the time to contribute your feedback and ideas.

The second annual North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, held January 18 and 19, 2008, was an unqualified success. Find a comprehensive listing of links (compiled by the tireless Bora) to the many blog entries and video clips posted before, during and after the conference to learn about the conversations and networking at the conference.

Like our inaugural event, this second conference was a collective activity — many, many organizations, companies and individuals pitched in, in ways large and small, to keep this conference free, attendees fed and the discussion lively. Please join us in thanking them. (We thanked the sponsors of the first event here.)

Leaders
As before, Bora Zivkovic is the inspiration for the event, and his daily cheerleading in spreading the word was simply awesome. Brian Russell was behind the scenes all year, providing us important support and technical advice. Wayne Sutton, newly appointed to his job as online community organizer for NBC-17, crisscrossed the Triangle, all the while trying out every new online networking tool that came to his attention. Wayne and Brian streamed or recorded many of the conference sessions, broadening the audience of the conference. Tola Oguntoyinbo set up the Conference Commons that aggregated blogs posts, Flickr pics and other content tagged scienceblogging.com. Paul Jones was our institutional contact, offering ibiblio.org support; with his help, UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communication once again provided a home base for our finances and accounting (by Ken Hales), and the UNC Health Sciences Library allowed us the use of its fantastic computer lab for the blogging skills session.

Donors
Even before our 2007 event was over, Russ Campbell of Burroughs Wellcome Fund was urging us to think bigger, and helping us win the funds to do so. The substantial grant from Burroughs Wellcome anchored the rest of our fundraising. Roger Harris, Chris Brodie and Rosalind Reid of Sigma Xi also pledged their support at the first conference, and that led to Sigma Xi offering its beautiful building for the event. Interim Executive Director Linda Meadows gave us a nice welcome (and sent a touching congratulations note). Meg Murphy worked with us over many months to plan the best use of the space, and she calmly took in our mercurial program changes. JMP Software, was another repeat sponsor and cash donor. New donors this years were the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, The Hamner Institute for Health Sciences, CrossRef and WNCN NBC-17 — their generous gifts allowed us to guarantee an ample supply of coffee, good food throughout the day (including vegetarian options) and travel grants to many of our discussion leaders.

Science lab tours
This year, we introduced pre-conference activities including visits to local science labs. Karl Bates at Duke University (he’s just unveiled a cool new site, Research at Duke) helped to line up three popular lab tours. (Full disclosure: Duke is my employer.) Erin Knight at the Hamner Institutes, Cyndy Yu Robinson of the EPA, and Roy Campbell at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences also set up and facilitated tours of labs at their organizations.

Grab bag of science swag
Once again, we worked hard to put together a grab bag filled with useful, interesting and fun resources — not just stuff, but science-related materials that could inform conference attendees and then be shared with the libraries, schools and newsrooms in the communities of the attendees. The Museum of Life and Science (cool new website) and American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the instigation of Troy Livingston, VP for innovation & learning, stepped up to provide awesome canvas tote bags. And into those bags we stuffed materials from ACD Labs, American Scientist, The HMS Beagle Project, Campbell-Kibler Associates, Columbia University Press, Coral Reef Alliance, Discover, HarperCollins, Michigan State University, MSNBC, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, National Geographic Society, Nature, OpenHelix, Oregon Public Broadcasting, PLoS-One, Project Exploration, Science News, Scienceblogs, Scientific American, Seed Publishing, Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project, The Scientist, Wired and Wired Science.

Discussion Leaders
The conference offered 14 sessions in all, and each session was led by one or more individuals. See the program page to see who did what. Special thanks to Adnaan Wasey and Abel Pharmboy for very ably filling in as discussion moderators at the last moment. The rest: Dr.Hemai Parthasarathy, Janet Stemwedel, Adnaan Wasey, Kevin Zelnio, Karen James, Rick MacPherson, Peter Etnoyer, Jason Robertshaw, Vedran Vucic, Suzanne Franks, Karen Ventii, Patricia B. Campbell, ScienceWoman , David Warlick, Martin Rundkvist, Shelley Batts, Sarah Wallace, Anne-Marie Hodge, Anna Kushnir, Brian Switek, Xan Gregg, Jean-Claude Bradley, Tara Smith, Becky Oskin, Dave Munger, Chris Mooney, Jennifer Jacquet, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Jennifer Ouellette.

Volunteers
My mother, Cheryl Zuiker, wanted to see me in action, so she volunteered to work the registration table at the conference. Elle Cayabyab Gitlin and Abel Pharmboy also helped greet people, and Brian Switek and Martin Rundkvist passed out T-shirts and grab bags. Rob Zelt picked up the morning pastries and got them to the hall on time. Rob and Wayne and Brian and Bora assisted during the Friday skills session. All those heavy grab bags of science swag? It took a crew to pack those: Ernie Hood, John Rees, Wayne Sutton, Bora Zivkovic, Andrea Novicki, Troy Livingston, Brian Russell and Jonathan Tarr.

The Food
Meals were catered or ordered from Fetzko Coffees (Brian and Ruby suggested this), Weaver Street Market, Saladelia Cafe, Locopops and Bullocks Barbecue. The Friday dinner was held at Town Hall Grill. So, thanks again to all the individuals and organizations supporting our free, public-understanding-of-science conference.

If I’ve missed you, please tell me so that I can acknowledge your role in making this event so successful.

We kicked off the second annual NC Science Blogging Conference today with a blogging101 skills session and afternoon science lab tours. Tomorrow, amidst a winter weather advisory — SNOW — we’ll spend the day at the Sigma Xi Center for lots of discussion about science exploration and communication on the web. Thanks to all who have helped in the 10 months of planning, and thanks to our generous sponsors, donors, volunteers and supporters (full list to be posted here in a few days). Follow along at Twitter and in our aggregated Commons.

Congrats to Mojomom Amy Tieman for giving the Web a cool story about schoolkid creativity: Kids laptop designs.

Hope to see you at one or more of the following blogger meetups: * A Raleigh bloggers meetup hosted by WNCN NBC-17 Wed, Nov 7th at 7pm at New World Coffee House, 4112-124 Pleasant Valley Rd, Raleigh. Coffee, tea and pastries will be provided, and Texas TV-industry blogger Terry Heaton will be visiting. Send a message to Maryann if you plan to attend this. * The Durham bloggers meetup Wed, Nov 14th at 6pm at the newly opened Wine Authorities. The shop has a cool Enomatic machine with which you serve yourself a taste or glass of wine, and a nice big table around which to sit. Teetotalers can grab a coffee or tea next door at Sips. * The Chapel Hill/Carrboro bloggers meetup Wed, Nov 28th at 6:30pm at Milltown.

We have a couple of experts in here in the Triangle that you can contact for help with your podcasting — Brian Russell organized the 2006 podcastercon conference, and Ryan Irelan runs the Podcast Free America site — but if you’d like to attend a half-day conference, check out the Think Jose Cafe, led by the Eastern Tennessee-based Jose Castillo.

Thanks to all who participated in the food blogging dinner with Michael Ruhlman at Piedmont Restaurant last night. Wow, did we have a blast. I’ve posted at mistersugar this roundup of the meal, this picture of Bora and Michael (other pics here) and this tribute to Michael the writer. Other links and pics will get added to this post when we learn of them.

*9/24/07 UPDATE: No coffee at 3CUPS tomorrow. Michael has to get to the airport. Apologies for any inconveniences.* 9/23/07 UPDATE: The Tuesday coffee with chefs is up in the air. Please check back tomorrow for details about this. If you are a chef planning to attend the 3CUPS coffee with Michael, please send Anton a message ASAP, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) 9/21/07 UPDATE: We've filled the seats for the Piedmont dinner, but all are still welcome to attend the Sunday reading at The Regulator. Details below. BlogTogether, an association of bloggers and podcasters in the Triangle region of North Carolina, will host the Cleveland-based writer "Michael Ruhlman":http://ruhlman.com/ for a special food blogging event in Durham in late September. Ruhlman is the celebrated author of the books *Making of a Chef*, *The Soul of a Chef* and *The Reach of a Chef*, and "he writes a blog":http://blog.ruhlman.com/ (he started by guest blogging at "megnut.com":http://megnut.com). He also collaborated with celebrity chef "Thomas Keller":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Keller on *The French Laundry Cookbook*. Ruhlman's visit to the Triangle taps into a surge of interest in the importance of good, local food. Nationally, author Michael Pollan is leading the charge to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,":http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?ex=1327640400&en=a18a7f35515014c7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss while, locally, N.C. State has organized the "Farm-to-Fork celebration":http://www.cefs.ncsu.edu/petrini.htm featuring Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini. The "Carrboro Farmers Market":http://www.carrborofarmersmarket.com/ and the "Durham Farmers Market":http://www.durhamfarmersmarket.com/ continue to attract growing crowds. And hot new restaurants are opening every month across the region. The region's bloggers are getting in on the action and amplifying the call to support our local farmers, chefs and food entreprenurs. As an umbrella organization of local bloggers, "BlogTogether":http://blogtogether.org strives to bring online conversation into virtual dialogue and back again -- to get bloggers to meet face to face with other bloggers and other members of our community -- such as the farmers, market organizers and chefs. This food blogging event will be an opportunity to interact with a local chef, learn about where the ingredients come from, and pick up some pointers from a pro about how to write about all that. *Schedule of Events* *9/23 at 4:30pm: Reading and book signing* -- The "Regulator Bookshop":http://www.regbook.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=storeevents&eventId=355870 in Durham will host chef-author-blogger Michael Ruhlman for a reading from his celebrated books about the lives of American chefs. *9/24 at 7:30pm: A taste of food blogging at Piedmont Restaurant* -- BlogTogether will partner with Piedmont Restaurant chefs *Drew Brown* and *Andy Magowan* to host a five-course prix-fixe dinner based on local ingredients (featuring head-to-tail pig, perhaps). At dinner, chef-author-blogger Michael Ruhlman will share his insights about how to write about food. bq.. *When*: Monday, September 24th at 7:30pm *Where*: "Piedmont Restaurant":http://www.piedmontrestaurant.com/home.html, 401 Foster St., Durham, NC *What*: A ticketed five-course prix fixe dinner featuring local ingredients prepared by chef Brown and his kitchen. *How much*: $65 prepaid (this will cover dinner, wine, & tip). *Who*: Anyone who wants to enjoy a fabulous meal and learn about food blogging, a talented writer and a local chef. All dinner guests will be encouraged to write and talk about the meal and what they learn this night. SEATS ARE LIMITED *Get your seat at the table*: If you want to attend this dinner, send a message to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). p. *9/25 at 9am: Coffee with the Chefs* -- Chapel Hill's "3CUPS":http://3cups.net/ coffee shop will host a morning coffee klatch for Michael Ruhlman to meet local chefs. Others are invited to stop by at 10:15am to chat with Michael, the chefs and 3CUPS proprietor Lex Alexander.

Dan Barkin gave BlogTogether some nice kudos in his column today (Bloggers to talk science), and alerted his readers to the second annual NC Science Blogging Conference coming in January. If you are a blogger or blog-reader, please join our mailing list to find out about our other meetups, conferences and special events — like this weekend’s food blogging reading and dinner.

BlogTogether has a mailing list through which we post announcements of our meetups, conferences and special events. If you are a blogger in the Triangle (or farther afield), please subscribe to the list today.

Join us Sunday for a reading by chef-author-blogger Michael Ruhlman, 4pm at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham. The Monday food blogging dinner is filled, and we have a waiting list. If you’re still interested in attending, contact Anton (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).

Our first (of many to come) Durham Bloggers Meetup was tonight at Tyler’s Tap Room at the American Tobacco Campus — we had the Triangle Bloggers Bash there last year. Tonight, we grabbed the only empty outside table we could find — the Durham Bulls final game, a playoff match, was tonight — that just happened to be painfully close to a couple of grimy barrels of rancid cooking grease stashed in a corner of the courtyard. Good conversations nonetheless. Bora Zivkovic was there, along with Pam Spaulding, Eric Johnson, bc and Clinton Colmenares (where’s your blog, Clinton?). Pam told us she’s been invited to speak in Birmingham, Alabama at an event of Equality Alabama. She also mentioned she got 65,000 recently when her early post about Idaho Senator Larry Craig got a link from Perez Hilton. Then, a lot of science blogging talk. Eric mentioned that Brian Hare and Vanessa Wood will be moving to Duke in January, and that Vanessa is writing a blog about her research in the Congo, Bonobo Handshake. About that time, Clinton showed up and told us about his initiative to create a consortium of research universities. More on that in a few weeks, once he’s submitted a grant proposal for a cool project. Next blogger meetup is in Carrboro on Wednesday, Sept 26 at 6:30pm at Milltown. Then we’re back in Durham Wed, Oct 10 at 6pm at Tyler’s Tap Room. And don’t miss the food blogging event with Michael Ruhlman on Sept 24!

Our annual BlogTogether Backyard Barbecue Friday night was another successful social event gathering local bloggers. The beer was cold, the grill was hot, and the evening perfect for gabbing on the back deck. In attendance: Abel Pharmboy, Bora Zivkovic, Brian Russell, Eric Johnson, bc and Sonia, Mark Schreiner and Jennifer Gaspar, ae and db, Amy and Michael Tieman, Paul Jones and Sally Greene and Tucker=, Nneka Kelly, Jackson Fox and Erika Tsai, and a few of my neighbors. Bora will post has posted pictures.

The regular BlogTogether meetups for bloggers in Chapel Hill and Raleigh slowed down through the Spring and Summer, but we have a plan for the Fall: * The Durham bloggers meetup will be the second Wednesday of each month at 6pm at Tyler’s Tap Room in the American Tobacco Warehouse District. First meetup will be September 12th. Anton will coordinate. Duke is rapidly taking to blogging, and we’ve discovered some cool food bloggers in Durham — and Pam Spaulding has represented the city well — so we hope this meetup gets good attendance. * The Chapel Hill/Carrboro bloggers meetup will be the fourth Wednesday of each month at 6:30pm at Milltown Restaurant and Bar. First meetup will be September 26th. Bharat and Bora will coordinate. Bloggers have been meeting in Chapel Hill and Carrboro since Rob Zelt and Anton first shared coffee in 2002, so let’s keep the group active. These meetups will continue to be social in nature (read this essay to understand why), but we’ll also try to invite individual bloggers to lead discussions about various perspectives and techniques. Share your ideas with the meetup coordinators. See you at the meetups.