One swallow does not make a summer: My thoughts about Science Online London 2011

I was going out once with a girl who every time we were planing to go or do something new she was not thinking much about it because she did not want to have too much expectations about something that may not happen as thought.  I never understood her... maybe because I had not had such fiasco ever or, as someone told me the last night, "I'm a bloody Spanish conformist".  Either way, finally I got that feeling, and I think, for what I learnt, this deserves a post online, my first one ever in English.

A bit more than a year ago I heard about a conference that was going to be hold in London which with just its name hold my attention.  It was Science Online 2010 (#solo10).  Straight away I registered for the conference, I bought the fly tickets,  and I started the count down. The conference was AMAZING! It really was!  I come back to Dublin and first thing was to mark on the agenda the days for the next one, #solo11, and starting to tell everyone about it.  Now I'm back from that one... and I have somehow a bitter taste from it.  This taste makes me with the obligation of telling it so it creates discussion and next year it can be made better.

It seems funny that from last year I remember most of the sessions as it was yesterday, whereas for the one last weekend I have more difficulties to do so.  Some people have mentioned that last year was more about bloggers, but this year was more about ... I don't know.  Actually, I don't really think last year was more about bloggers. It's true that there were two sessions where bloggers were involved.  But that was it! I actually remember more about the sessions on how to use, connect, publish and visualize scientific data. I agree this is skew by the sessions one choose, and that what it makes me thing if this year I choose not the ones I could be more interested in.  This could happen, but choose wrongly 3 of 3, and try two of the workshop and being disappointed with them all means that I am very unlucky.  But just to be sure of my fortune, I asked to the people I met, and most of them agreed with me. Conclusion, most of the people I talked were as unlucky as I am.

So, what was the good bits? I liked the opening sesion by Michael Nielsen, telling the truth of failed projects. I liked the first discussion panel too, but mainly because Rosie and Ed Gerstner. Then that was it until next day, where MaryAnn Martone showed us how important is to be quick on science when there are lifes on the game.

What happened with the rest? I don't know, I think some needed a bit more of preparation, and others I think there were a bit in the air.  The processing one is the only one has an excuse because Jer Thorp was trapped in US.  Below are those sessions I participate and why I'm not happy with them:

• schema.org-like for science.  This one gave me the impression that we were doing someone else's job.  I would have preferred a practical example of how to use those ontologies,  that would have been more effective on telling to the audience how important and useful they could be on our lifes.  Just a small question, could anyone tell me what the second speaker did? Yes, the girl sit down under the screen.  Was she Alkyoni Baglatzi?
• The importance of offline communities in online networking. Hum... what was the importance? I just got the impression that tweet-up are good to discuss... but we could have talk about it on the pub, right? In here I would have suggested something more focus, which kind of activities the people does in the offline world using the most of the new technologies.  For example how to meetings, activities and even riots are organized using online networking, which tools have been shown more effectively to reach the people, how in certain countries have bypass the restrictions impossed (like voice-to-twitter).  Also, on the other side it could have been discussed how journal-clubs, P2PU, or other offline activities are being hold on the online world.
• Wikis to carry out and communicate science.  In this one I was expecting something more technical on how to set and configure a wiki for science communication, as for example how can they be improved to upload scientific material, and which tools for visualization and tagging data are available.  In contrast this session was about how to work in wikipedia and how Cancer Research UK is helping to improve the articles to a more scientific way. Daniel Mietchen part was closer to my original idea, but it was more like a list of examples.
• Incentives panel discussion. Funding is what everyone needs to work in research, and you cannot get it as an amateur or without papers. I may fall asleep and I don't remember any better bit from it.
• Panel about dealing with data.  Alastair Dant bit was good, showing nice examples of how they do things at The Guardian, but I don't think the different speakers matched together to discuss about data, when they had completely different problems. For me it looked as just three different talks with a common Q&A session.
• Beyond scholarly publication.  How to write and add material to a blog, and I don't know what else because I left 20 minutes after it started because it seemed too basic for me (and to my opinion this is quite basics for many of the people that goes to a science online conference). Maybe the second part could have been better for me, so I could have learnt a easy way to put references or export to epub (which is not just restricted to wordpress).
• Data visualisation. Because the problems that Jer Thorp was having in US no one was really leading this session.  When I arrived, 20 minutes after it started, everyone was lost trying to get something that someone show in the projector without going through the steps that were on the blog.  10 minutes later few people left, and in the second part we were not even 10 people there.  Good thing from there is that I learnt about other web visualization tools  (Raphaël, d3) while chatting with the other people in there.

So, to wrap up, I thing this year was considerably of less quality than previous year, and a proof of it was the number of people left at the closing of the conference. I would say less than a 20% of the people that started on Friday morning.   I paid this conference/trip from my own pocket and I still believe on it, so that's why I want to share my thoughts with everyone, and I will try to pass to a more active front and discuss when possible for the next one, which I hope to go! Which I'm sure it will be another swallow. So, for many of you, see you at the next solo ;-)