Tuesday at the BIO convention, I attended a session titled ‘Spreading the Word: New Technologies Mean Everyone is a Journalist,’ which covered how new media such as blogs and twitter are being used and are shaping communication in the biotechnology industry. The panelists were Brian Reid, Media Director, Weisscomm Partners, Ed Silverman, Bureau Editor, Elsevier Business Intelligence, Jen S. McCabe, Chief Patient Advocate at Organized Wisdom, Shwen Gwee, Lead Business Analyst, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Jerry Johnson, Executive Vice President, Brodeur Partners. Ed Silverman was the only ‘classical’ journalist in the panel (by training) and commented early in the session that although the canons of traditional media have legitimate reservations about this new class of ‘reporters,’ that they can be seen as ‘insects’ that are quicker and will likely take over when the ‘dinosaurs’ of old media crumble. Ed has watched the dynamics and power of new media as Pharmalot, the blog-style Pharma news website that he pioneered, rose to meteoric fame. Jen McCabe, who gave her presentation in clear ‘web 2.0′ style, walking through the audience, clarified that she sees herself as a ‘recorder, not a reporter.’ She proved this by twittering from her pink Mac throughout the event.
This meeting of old vs. new media is a familiar one in biotechnology, and was even evident in what I think was a poor name for the session, which Brian Reid indicated was due to the fact that he had to choose it almost a year ago–new media moves much more quickly than this. Shwen Gwee gave an excellent presentation on the foundations and benefits of social media (video excerpt), emphasizing that social media is more of a ‘pull’ than a ‘push’ of information, when done correctly. Shwen is a ‘rock star’ in the so-called ‘Med 2.0′ movement, a driving force between the Social Pharmer ‘unconference’ in April of this year. Jerry Johnson did a great job explaining that a corporate SM strategy needs to be more than just a vague idea that ‘our company needs a blog,’ and emphasized the power of face to face interactions and ‘self-organization’ in the growth of social networks. Jerry is passionate about using social media to involve and inform the community and scientists about biotechnology through IamBiotech, which you can learn more about at the BIO exhibit (#2200). Jen McCabe gave a dynamic, fact-filled presentation about the success in building communities and tracking metrics at Organized Wisdom. Jen has done the seemingly impossible and has come up with formulas for calculating ROI and predicting growth for SM initiatives. Throughout the event, Brian Reid gave his insights from his unique experience both using Social Media professionally for his clients at Weisscomm Partners, and personally, being interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek as the foremost stay-at-home dad. The panel members promised to upload their presentations to Slideshare tagged with ‘bio09′.
While most of the conversation centered around implementing social media at the corporate level, I was curious about the panel members’ thoughts on engaging scientists with social media, and how to encourage participation. This was definitely a topic they had considered, and indicated that as with corporate SM implementations, the value needs to be demonstrated up front. In other words, clearly answer the scientists’ innate questions ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘how will my career suffer if I don’t participate.’ From my own experience with the San Diego Biotechnology Network and with social media, I agree with this generality, and plan to motivate scientists during a ‘Social Media for Scientists‘ presentation I am giving with colleague William Gunn on May 28th. I plan to encourage scientists to ‘Just Do It’ and get involved with SM sooner rather than later, because it is highly experiential and the benefits are highly specific to the user. William Gunn will talk about the extraordinary advances that will result when scientists start sharing and discussing data in real time. This panel at BIO 2009, and the efforts of BIO in engaging SM (including this blog post) are truly exciting initiatives that deserve attention and support from the biotechnology community.

Sir Elton John gave an inspiring and eye-opening keynote speech yesterday about the success and shortcomings of HIV/AIDS research, and I know many of us are still thinking about how we can further the science and make the necessary improvements in education to make a difference. Today, BIO is featuring Sir Philip Cohen, another Knight of the British Empire, often seen as the ‘father’ of kinase biology/phosphorylation research, and one of the most cited scientists in Europe. Sir Cohen, Director of the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit, University of Dundee, and Director of the Scottish Institute for Cell Signaling, is speaking in a Breakout Session this morning titled ‘Where to Find the Drugs: The Ubiquitin Component Systems, Are They the Next Generation Kinases?’ He is cited as saying “I am very confident that the (Ubiquitin Proteasome System) market has the potential to become even bigger than Kinases.” The speaker lineup at this 10:00 a.m. session is impressive, including Dr. Frank Mercurio, CSO, BioTheryX, Dr. Mark Manfredi, Director of Cancer Pharmacology, Takeda/Millenium, Prof. Mike Tyers, CH Waddington Professor of Systems Biology at Univ. Edinburgh, Dr. Giovanni Ferrara, ITI Life Sciences Advisory Board, and Dr. Sheridan Snyder, Founder, BioCatalyst International.
This session was organized by the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit, the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling (SCILLS) and ITI Life Sciences, and is supported by Scottish Development International. I sat down with Neil Wilkie, Programme Manager at ITI Life Sciences on Tuesday, to discuss their involvement in the session and UPS in general. Neil said that ITI is literally an “Intermediary Technology Initiative” in which the Scottish government has earmarked 150M £ over a period of 10 years to promote the growth of biotechnology in the region. He explained that ITI did an exhaustive and highly analytical search of the scientific and patent literature a few years ago to determine the ‘next big thing’ in drug discovery. They found a ‘sweet spot’ with the UPS system, with mentions of it in the literature rapidly rising, but with room in the intellectual property space for them to start carving out a niche in the area, towards the goal of stimulating growth in Scotland Biotech. Perhaps coincidentally, Sir Cohen lives and works in Scotland and obviously thinks there is something behind their assessment. I think this session is a ‘must see’ and I will be there! It begins at 10:00 a.m. today in Room B304, and if you can’t be there you can look for live updates from me on Twitter at @comprendia.