[open-science] Open Science at the British Ecological Society annual meeting

[Ross Mounce]

I gave this talk at the BES annual meeting on Tuesday:
http://prezi.com/jpr3ltvez2d8/on-the-importance-of-open-science-and-open-data/

(session info: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/meetings/current_future_meetings/2011_annual_meeting/other_events.php#online
)

I thought it might be worth writing a note on how it went...

Attendance (~interest?) was excellent. Despite there being many
parallel sessions on at the same time, the room was full-to-bursting,
every seat taken with 15+ standing around the edges of the room too.
Relative to attendance at an earlier session:
http://yfrog.com/ki4ughgj I think we did really well in getting this
many people interested in coming. The session organisers (excellent,
btw) had already 'upgraded' our session to a larger room than had been
previously assigned to us, and I think the level of attendance clearly
justified this move.

Despite the level of attendance, there weren't many tweeters. I've
made a storify of the tweets I could find here:
http://storify.com/rmounce/besdigital-workshop-panel-discussion-talks
I noted many of the audience were taking notes with pen & paper... bit
ironic for such a 'digital' session IMO.

Near the start of my talk, I asked how many people (in the audience)
had heard of the Panton Principles: I saw one or two hands raised in
the audience and some from the panel. Now perhaps some people were
shy, but still, I think this shows there's clearly still much to do
wrt to raising awareness in the wider research community. It's better
that they simply aren't aware, rather than aware but wilfully ignoring
the principles I suppose...?

Unfortunately, our talks over-ran quite a bit, so we had less time for
audience/panel discussion than anticipated, and I sense there were
certainly more questions out there in the audience by the time we had
to stop and leave. But overall I'd say it was a resounding success,
and I'm sure they'll repeat such 'digital science' sessions in future
meetings (hopefully in bigger capacity rooms too!).

Props too to the 'next-generation ecologists' (INNGE)
http://innge.net/?q=node/19
They're also promoting open data / data sharing principles in their
subject domain.


Finally, as I discussed with Jenny Molloy at the DryadUK workshop - I
think there's definitely scope for developing a nice pretty / slick /
presentable 'template' version of the Panton Principles for people to
present at other conferences / institutions  / labs  c.f. Mendeley's
promotion strategy. If anyone wants to remix / reuse / rehash my Prezi
please feel free to do so. (Although I'm aware it's perhaps slightly
ironic to use a Prezi as it requires Adobe Flash to be able to present
it...)

Best,

Ross


-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Ross Mounce
PhD Student
Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
University of Bath
4 South Building, Lab 1.07
http://www.bath.ac.uk/bio-sci/biodiversity-lab/mounce.html
-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-