Last week’s ScienceOnline2010, our fourth annual science communication conference in North Carolina, was our biggest, best and most successful event yet, and from the long list of blog and media coverage and the Flickr pictures, YouTube videos and Twitter mentions of the conference (all using the tag #scio10), it certainly seems the BlogTogether spirit was coursing through the 267 participants.

Bora and I can’t be happier, or more proud, of what this conference achieved. More than anything, we are astounded by the openness with which so many people came together to share, explore, question, listen and narrate in order to reflect the importance of science in their lives and how the Web can be used to share their passions for science. See Bora’s excellent post, Making it real: People and Books and Web and Science at ScienceOnline2010 (and please give us your feedback through this form).

Our gratitude goes to all who attended the conference and participated so energetically in the conversations there.

And special thanks goes to the following individuals and organizations that helped us grow and improve this conference. Please thank them for making ScienceOnline2010 possible — click through to their sites to learn more about each person or organization. (We thanked the sponsors of ScienceOnline’09 here, the second event here and the first event here.)

Our host
Sigma Xi was founded in 1886 to honor excellence in scientific investigation and encourage a sense of companionship and cooperation among researchers in all fields of science and engineering. For the third year in a row, Sigma Xi opened its beautiful center for our use, and Meg Murphy and Michael Heisel made sure we had everything we needed.

Our institutional partner
The Contemporary Science Center is a catalyst for transforming science education in North Carolina, using innovative models of teaching and learning to inspire teachers and students statewide to embrace scientific engagement. When we went looking for an organization to handle our accounting (as individuals, Bora and I can’t accept foundation grants and donations), CSC Executive Director Pamela Blizzard enthusiastically agreed to help. Her center is based in a hands-on learning lab in the building of our ScienceOnline’09 institutional partner, the Museum of Life and Science, and it’s a perfect place to encourage high school students to get the science bug.

Our sponsors
Even amid the economic bad times facing our country, we were able to attract repeat and new sponsors who dramatically helped us grow the conference. Sponsoring organizations included the following:

Burroughs Wellcome Fund, an independent private foundation dedicated to advancing the biomedical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities, not only repeated its support of our conference for the fourth year in a row, it increased its past generous grants by 50 percent this time around. Their substantial support helped us bring New Yorker science writer Michael Specter to the conference as keynote speaker. Russ Campbell, communications officer, has long been a friend to the conference, and we’re indebted to him for his cheerleading for our annual conference and his leadership in forming the Science Communicators of North Carolina (along with scientist and science writer Chris Brodie).

Last year, the Research Triangle Foundation, the granddaddy of science parks in the U.S., helped us even our accounts with a last-minute grant. This year, RTP stepped in as a major sponsor and host of our opening reception. Not only did they provide funding, logistical support and a welcoming opening-night party, but CEO Rick Weddle, Tina Valdecanas, Cara Rousseau and Jordan Mendys also offered important ideas and contacts that helped us make the conference run so smoothly. They also rolled up their sleeves Saturday and Sunday and took over important tasks at the registration table and video cameras.

Over the last year, RTP has also been an important supporter of Science In the Triangle, an evolving experiment in community science journalism and scientific-community organizing. The crew behind SITT was instrumental in helping us make ScienceOnline2010 a much more professional endeavor — witness the nice programs and donor poster designed by Tessa Perrien, the conference iPhone app programmed by Ben Schell and Seth Peterson, the video support by Ross Maloney, and of course the strategic consulting by Christopher Perrien. Sabine Vollmer and DeLene Beeland, contributors to the SITT blog, also provided some great coverage of the conference in addition to their posts about science in this region.

Tricia Kenny of Invitrogen pinged us late one night to ask if that life sciences company could sponsor the conference, and then offered to help us in some very creative ways. These included a cash grant to provide lunch on Saturday, as well as making the cool name badges, providing the tote bags and giving us a large sum to purchase Flip video cameras (through the Flip Spotlight program) that we gave out to video volunteers to record interviews at the conference and back at home.

Google Sidewiki similarly provided a cash grant and ways to win a chrome Flip Mino HD — Community manager Natalie Villalobos ran a contest during the conference to encourage posting to Sidewiki, and among the winners of the Google Flips were the eight high school students from Staten Island Academy, who each won a camera for their many and insightful comments.

RTI International, one of the world

The planning for ScienceOnline2010 is in full swing — the program is set, all our seats are taken, our waitlist is growing, and the sponsors are lining up to help make this fourth annual science blogging conference the best and biggest yet. Learn more at the planning wiki.

Bora is posting his daily Look Who’s Coming to the Conference introductions to both his Blog Around the Clock site and the Science in the Triangle blog.

Want to help us plan the fourth annual science blogging conference? ScienceOnline2010 will be bigger and bolder and cover more about science on the Web. See the planning wiki.

ScienceOnline’09, the third annual science communication conference (successor to the 2007 and 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conferences), was another unqualified success — wifi issues notwithstanding. A round 200 scientists, educators, students, journalists and bloggers gathered for three days of activities, meals, sessions and hallway conversations to explore ways to use online tools to promote the public understanding of, and engagement in, science.

Find a comprehensive listing of links (compiled by the tireless and eponymous 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 first two conferences, ScienceOnline’09 was a collective activity — 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 — read below, and click through to their websites to show your interest in what they do. (We thanked the sponsors of the second event here and the first event here.)

So, a huge “thank you” to our sponsors for helping us to keep this event free:

Our host
Sigma Xi once again hosted the ScienceOnline’09 conference, as well as the WiSE networking event — for free — in their beautiful center. Meg Murphy kindly facilitated this — she’s the unsung hero of the conference! and Michael Heisel was on hand for tech support. Sigma Xi was founded in 1886 to honor excellence in scientific investigation and encourage a sense of companionship and cooperation among researchers in all fields of science and engineering.

Our institutional partner
The NC Museum of Life and Science, which last year arranged for the awesome grab bags, this year stepped up to be our institutional partner (to handle our funds). Debbie May, VP for Administration/CFO, was a delight to work with, and Troy Livingston, VP for Innovation Learning, continues to be one of our biggest boosters. The museum exists to create a place of lifelong learning where people, from young child to senior citizen, embrace science as a way of knowing about themselves, their community, and their world — I’m there many weekends with my daughters.

Our sponsors
Burroughs Wellcome Fund once again gave us a substantial grant to support the conference. Russ Campbell, communications officer, helped to make sure this funding was available to us. BWFund is an independent private foundation dedicated to advancing the biomedical sciences by supporting research and other scientific and educational activities.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center repeated its support with a biotechnology event sponsorship grant; Ginny DeLuca and Chris Brodie there are our supporters. NCBiotech seeks to provide long-term economic and societal benefits to North Carolina by supporting biotechnology research, business and education statewide.

We used the grants from BWFund and NCBiotech to give small travel stipends to our many session discussion leaders.

JMP Software, for the third year in a row, provided a cash grant to help pay for our delicious lunch. JMP is a division of SAS, the leader in business intelligence and analytics — they’ve also donated a copy of their JMP 8 software (worth $1500), which we’ll have as a drawing prize on Saturday.

Science In the Triangle was a new sponsor this year. This site is an evolving experiment in community science journalism and scientific-community organizing. If you are based here in the Triangle, think about how you might collaborate with the site to spread news of your organization or research — Bora and I are looking forward to getting involved with the effort.

Research Triangle Foundation helped us even our accounts with a last-minute grant. The Foundation just celebrated the 50th anniversary of Research Triangle Park, and will host the XXVI International Association of Science Parks World Conference June 1-4, 2009.

Blogads has sponsored many of our BlogTogether events over the last four years, and once again Henry Copeland and his crew made a donation to this conference. They pioneered blog advertising in 2002 and trail-blaze today.

We used the donations from JMP, Science In the Triangle, Research Triangle Foundation and Blogads to feed everyone, with good coffee in the morning and delicious sandwiches and Mediterranean salads at lunch.

Our donors
Enrico Maria Balli, Kim Gainer, Ryan Somma and Russ Campbell made personal cash donations, and David Kroll, our co-organizer, dipped into his own pocket to help make the conference unique.

Grab bag of science swag
This year, IBM provided recycled reusable bags. Other organizations, companies and individuals donated materials, including: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Seed Magazine, Public Library of Science, COPUS Year of Science, Harper Collins, JMP Software, NC Sea Grant, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and others to be named later.

Friday events
Counter Culture Coffee invited us to attend their weekly coffee cupping. Mark Overbay, marketing communications manager, facilitated our group of 25 and gave a tour of the coffee roasting operation.

Afternoon lab tours were hosted by NCCU’s Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (David Kroll, director), Duke’s Lemur Center and Smart Home (Karl Bates arranged these), and the NC Museum of Natural Sciences (Roy Campbell was host and tour leader).

Rebecca Skloot couldn’t join us last year, but with her book finally drafted and off to her publisher, she was game to come to RTP this year to attend ScienceOnline’09 and keynote the Women in Science and Engineering networking event Friday night at Sigma Xi. Erica Tsai, Phoebe Lee, Ana Sanchez, Amrika Deonarine and Rachel Witek put together a fantastic event, and Skloot’s talk about the immortal contribution of Henrietta Lacks to science was riveting. (Abel Pharmboy hosted a rousing wine tasting, too.)

Our discussion leaders
ScienceOnline’09 was an unconference in which all attendees were encouraged to participate and share alike; we asked 69 of them to serve as session discussion leaders, to provide their experiences or perspectives as a way to spark the session conversations. See the conference agenda to find out who facilitated which sessions.

Our volunteers
Elle Cayabyab Gitlin and Risha Zuckerman demanded the opportunity to spend the conference sitting at our welcome/registration table — they were awesome! Larry Boles and Bill Hooker stuck around to help clean up. Lots of others helped out throughout the weekend, offering rides, organizing the swag table, keeping us on track and much more. Kevin Zelnio designed awesome name badges that in the end, couldn’t be completed due to some technical difficulties with our printer. Thank you to you all.

The Food
Meals were catered or ordered from Fetzko Coffees, Weaver Street Market, Saladelia Cafe, and Mediterranean Deli. The Thursday Early Bird Dinner was held at Town Hall Grill. Many local attendees brought fruit to share.

The organizers
If you don’t know by now, Bora Zivkovic is both the inspiration for the annual conference and the around-the-clock heart of the event’s online and off-line activities; he organized the program after many months of brainstorming with our session discussion leaders. He’s simply amazing. Meanwhile, “Anton Zuiker:“http://mistersugar.com and Abel Pharmboy took care of the other details.

Again, a huge ‘thank you’ to all the individuals and organizations supporting our free, public-understanding-of-science conference.

After nearly four years of BlogTogether activities — meetups, happy hours, backyard BBQs and an annual conference — finally a logo:

The very talented and entrepreneurial Anthony DeLoso designed this for us, creatively capturing the spirit of our group — many individual voices connecting online and gathering offline.

The equally talented Beck Tench is busy coding new templates for BlogTogether.org, which we’ll unveil soon.

Last year, the "Center for Environmental Farming Systems":http://www.cefs.ncsu.edu/ at NCSU brought in "Slow Food":http://www.slowfood.com/ founder "Carlo Petrini":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Petrini for a fantastic "farm-to-fork":http://flickr.com/photos/mistersugar/tags/farmtofork/ event.

This year, CEFS is bringing "Judy Wicks":http://www.judywicks.com/, a national leader in the local, living economies movement, BALLE, and founder of Philadelphia

Our good friend, "Brian Russell":http://yesh.com, had an idea a while back -- to open a coworking space somewhere in the Triangle.

He's done it.

Tonight, Brian held an open house at his new business, "Carrboro Creative Coworking":http://www.carrborocoworking.com/. It's a fantastic space, and soon will be filling up with creative, talented, interesting individuals. If you need a space to work, contact Brian.

On Friday, BlogTogether was mentioned in the article "Duke Bloggerhood":http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2008/08/bloggers.html, a good roundup of the Duke employees who are blogging about Durham. I'm hoping that many of them will join us as we reinvigorate our blogging group -- in the next few weeks, we'll have a food blogging event at Counter Culture Coffee (date to be announced soon), more meetups, and perhaps a Blogging 1010 session.

As for our major events, the faith blogging conference has been postponed to next summer. That means "ScienceOnline'09":http://scienceonline09.com is next. ScienceOnline'09 is the follow up to our successful NC Science Blogging Conference this past January. We're also considering a Fall 2009 story blogging conference to bring together oral historians, memoir writers and family storytellers who want to explore how online tools and community building strategies can facilitate more stories.

Want to volunteer for any of our activities or events? Send us a "message":mailto:zuiker@gmail.com.

The annual BlogTogether Backyard Barbecue is this Saturday, August 23 from 5pm on, at my home in Durham. I'll provide a cold keg of Carolina Brewery suds, a hot grill and tasty pulled pork barbecue, and a deck perfect for conversing into the night. More details at http://blogtogether.org/index.php/wiki.

Join us (but let us know you're coming, please).

Barry and Bull City Rising will kick off their "Shooting the Bull" radio talk show this Sunday at 7:30pm on WXDU 88.7.

We're rebuilding the site — blog, wiki and all — using ExpressionEngine, and fumbling our way through the process. Check back soon, and we should have a spiffy new site for our community of bloggers in North Carolina. We'll also have information and planning wikis for our two upcoming conferences, the *NC Faith Blogging Conference* on Nov. 10 at Duke Divinity School, and the third annual science blogging conference next January.

A new job at the "Museum of Life and Science":http://www.ncmls.org/, and working with our good friend Troy Livingston (he donated the "science blogging":http://scienceblogging.com grab bags this year): bq.. *Online Community Manager* This position supports the Museum's mission by developing web-based opportunities for users to extend the Museum experience within and beyond the boundaries of our physical campus. This position is responsible for developing and supporting the http://www.lifeandscience.org and http://www.nisenet.org (sites) internal and external user communities, monitoring the discussion threads, expanding online participation and organically growing the site based on community feedback. Additional duties include translation of online community requirements into business opportunities, working with the marketing team to develop traditional and e-marketing campaigns specific to the online community, update and maintain the sites and support other staff who contribute regularly to the sites, develop, monitor and report regularly on metrics that demonstrate satisfactory results from the sites, technical monitoring (keeping communities free from spam, perform statistical analysis, troubleshoot problems and work with technical support resources to create solutions) and maintain user/institutional profile data as needed. The successful candidate will have: * Broad understanding and enthusiasm for science and informal science education * In-depth knowledge of modern online culture, including blogging, discussion forums, multimedia, and other web 2.0 vehicles * Significant participation in online communities * Ability to thrive with limited supervision while making progress on multiple goals that may be in conflict with one another * Ability to work in a highly matrixed environment in which some team members live remotely and/or work at other institutions * Strong verbal/written communication skills and the ability to translate scientific and technical jargon * Proven ability to effectively analyze and communicate complicated technical and social issues to a management team * Strong analytical/problem solving skills * Proven history of building consensus/collaboration across many diverse groups. * Occasional travel is required A college degree, advanced education in science or science education, experience in a museum/non-profit setting, experience with Drupal and other open-source technology and good public speaking skills are preferred but not required. This position is full-time exempt, 40 hours/week, with a hiring range of $32,000--$35,000/year plus full benefits.

At Fickle Creek Farm today, I looked over to see the executive director of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, sponsor of the 13th annual Piedmont Farm Tour. Here’s what Roland McReynolds had to say: Roland mentioned that the Eat Carolina Food Challenge, a week-long locavore activity that’s perfect for blogging.

It’s getting easier and easier to eat good local produce, meats and chef creations here in the Triangle. I’ll be monitoring the Slow Food Triangle site for food blogging opportunities. I may even try to make the April 5th event planning meeting to talk up food blogging and other online ways for celebrating this region’s agricultural bounty. Care to join me?

The Science Communicators of North Carolina has a happy hour this Wed, March 12th from 5-7pm at Tyler’s at the American Tobacco complex. Find details here. Let’s have a Durham bloggers meetup at the same time. Join us for talk of science, communication, blogging and anything else.