Recently a cool app for visualizing your primary LinkedIn network has been the talk of Twitter. Mine looks like the ‘hand turkeys’ kids draw around Thanksgiving, what does it mean? I’m not sure how useful it is beyond a curiosity of how your network grows. You can click on users and see who they’re connected to and get a feeling for their expertise, but you likely already know this information. See my insights below the image.

My LinkedIn network visualization is labeled according to companies I’ve worked at or consulted with, and shows me things I was already aware of, and some new insights:

1. Related companies (the middle fingers) are grouped together because, well, they’re related, and there is cross talk between them as far as personnel. All of the work I do or did here represented here is directly related to my training as an X-ray crystallographer (in a galaxy far, far, away).
2. I’ve worked in the more general field of life science, and these companies are represented by the thumb and pinkie. My job at LIFE was in informatics, which is more related to the ‘finger’ companies closest to it, and my job at EMD was in signal transduction, more related to the drug discovery services ‘fingers’ closest to it. I am surprised that the thumb and pinkie aren’t closer together, because both companies have major offices in the San Diego area, and I know many that have worked at both. Hard to say and likely not worth thinking about too much.
3. The palm represents my current connections and business, and it shows I’ve been able to branch out well from the companies I’ve worked at or with. I was not able to find a ‘San Diego’ centric group, which bodes well for how we’re all connecting in this virtual life science economy. Interestingly, I’m able to see a great ‘life line’ in the palm of this diagram, indicating the long life of Comprendia ;).

Will you get actionable information from your LinkedIn Map? I could imagine situations in which you will realize connections to leverage or see gaps in your network which you could remedy as well. Check it out and link to yours below if you’d like, we’ll see how many more networking turkeys there are! William Gunn has posted his, and I’m happy that he considers me as someone who has helped to build his network, and that’s what it’s all about!

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Last weekend I attended the ScienceOnline 2011 conference in North Carolina and it was amazing. 250 Bloggers, authors, educators, and journalists, all with a passion for online science, getting together ‘unconference‘ style to discuss the status and the future of communication in this medium. While I had a fantastically fun time, I was there to help understand how to bridge life science companies and bloggers. My interview with Science in the Triangle and the slideshare presentation (with audio) from the session are both below and describe our goals and progress at the conference.

Brian Krueger from LabSpaces and Kristy Meyer from Sigma helped with planning and surveys we did in preparation for our Sunday session, and they led a related session on Saturday (their summaries of the Saturday session are linked to their names). Tricia Kenny from Life Technologies also helped with planning but was unable to attend. We had a small crowd, likely due to the fact that we were opposite a popular session about science blog networks. I was told by several bloggers and blog network managers that they really wanted to come and have a lot of interest in hearing the outcome, so I’m very optimistic about making these partnerships work. Feel free to watch/listen to the presentation and discussion below, and here is my summary:

1. Life science bloggers and companies have little communication outside of the researcher/supplier relationship. This may be due in part to ’1.0′ communications between the two, which invariably are focused on products.
2. Life science companies want to do more social media/web 2.0 advertising and want to control the content. However, it’s likely that they have not sufficiently budgeted staff resources to create the additional content. They are interested in supporting blogs and web 2.0 sites, but it will likely need to be done very carefully from both sides to prevent another PepsiGate (which was fresh in the minds of participants at the conference).
3. Several ideas for companies and bloggers working together were proposed:
   1. Career resources/alternative careers. Companies could help bridge the gap by helping researchers understand what different departments and individuals do at a company. Both C&EN and LabSpaces provide this now, but companies could step in and provide benefits for each. Moreover, hiring young scientists to write content for a corporate blog would also be a great way to introduce them to life science company culture and for the companies to get the content they need. A theme of our session was that if the companies give something back to the scientists, more bridges will be made. If you’ve been following this blog, we think that life science companies have been doing this for years through content-rich resources, and think that the transition to ’2.0′ should be straightforward.
   2. Separate areas. A completely separate section of a blog managed by a company. Life science companies thought that an ‘ask an expert’ forum managed by the company was particularly attractive, with more than 50% indicating they’d be interested. When we talked with one blogger during the session, she was very positive overall with the idea, but was uncomfortable when it seemed as though the company’s materials would be ‘mixed in’ with hers. I attended most of the sessions surrounding science blogging, and a theme was that blogs are different because they’re very personal.
   3. Underwriting. Similar to the support of our local PBS station by Life Technologies, and the business model of Xconomy, companies could show support without affecting the content of the publication. Another idea is to clearly designate posts similar to Xconomy’s ‘Xconomists’ section, which is clearly labeled as an editorial area, and likely self-promotional in some ways.

Another very interesting aspect of the conference is that groups were there that I hadn’t thought about, e.g., authors of ‘science non-fiction’ such as Carl Zimmer. These participants are naturally attracted to the conference as writers, and I’m sure they got a lot out of attending the conference personally. In addition, many of the other attendees are also influencers of their customers, namely scientists, and so the conference was also good for them from a business perspective.

My point? We’re forging new trails here and need to be creative in thinking about these new relationships–think outside the box, as trite as it may sound. It may not be easy, but the companies and blogs that succeed in this new genre will not only benefit by getting started now, but may also gain increased notoriety and positive PR, similar to the attention companies like Comcast and Zappos have achieved by blazing trails in customer service utilizing Twitter. Check out the presentation with full audio from our session below, or skip to the ‘Next Steps’ section at the end if you’re ready to get involved.

Note: We showed some of the results from our survey of life science companies at the session, and will publish the full results soon.

Next Steps. We’re ready to start formalizing discussions between bloggers, companies, and writers. Without further ado, here’s a form you can fill out to get started. If you’re not the form type, drop me a line, or call me, I’m easy to find. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts below on the subject, our session at ScienceOnline was just the beginning!

Let’s get this partnership started! (Patent is pending on that tagline, you know how marketers are ;)

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CC Loren Javier on Flickr

If you’ve been following Comprendia via our writing or actions, you know that one of our major goals is facilitating communication between life scientists and the companies that serve them. With today’s tools, and the media landscape, more communication and collaboration is not only possible, but necessary. We also hear interest from both sides in working together. What form will this take, and how can you set up your blog or web 2.0 site to help it grow?

We ran two surveys to help bridge the gap between life science companies and researchers and will present the results at the ScienceOnline conference this weekend. We’d like to focus on these questions, and we’ll also be asking you during discussions leading up to the session:

What is your ‘big dream’ for your blog or website, and could you achieve it with help from sponsors?

Would a matchmaking site that would allow bloggers and companies to find each other help, and if so what would it look like?

Per unconference ‘rules’, this session will be light on presentations and heavy on discussion and action after. We’d love to start a dialog that leads to the development of infrastructure that will help you achieve your website’s goals. We’ll have a representative from the bloggers, Brian Krueger (@labspaces), companies Kristy Meyer (@kristy3m) and myself (@comprendia) Sunday at 2 p.m. in session E! If you can’t make it, track us down and/or look for us to post more information on how you can get involved soon, even if you’re not at the conference. If you work at a company, look for us to publish the research report soon or contact us with questions.

Here is our latest collection of links and tips for life science marketing and social media:

1. Cool online biotech stuff.

   We can’t help but notice how many people are starting cool biotech websites. Check out BetterBio, a community-run organization that promises better biotech communication. I love this new spirit of the web where asking for donations is OK and even inspiring. Also check out ConnectingSF, a portal to help those traveling to San Francisco for the big JP Morgan Healthcare conference to connect. The conference is notorious for its large attendance and paucity of online resources, so the site is a welcome addition. Finally, we saw an article in Xconomy about Relay Technology Management, who have a cool app which facilitates partnering with a sophisticated database of drug-related scientific discoveries. It looks like it may be difficult to get a free test drive, but check out this video which shows some of the features. All these sites are harbingers of the next wave of what we’ll be able to do with ‘life science 2.0′ on the web.

2. Mind Maps.

   We think a lot about ways to organize content on the web and social media and our related strategies and tactics, because the format is often non-standard. One tool we’re using is Mind Maps, visualizations in which ideas are organized and expanded upon in a free form fashion. You begin with a core concept and attach ideas–it reminds me of the ‘post-its on the wall’ approaches to software development I’ve seen. A picture is worth a thousand words, so check out this kinase assay social media mind map we created, getting some inspiration from this blog post. As you can see, it’s a great way to organize ideas for areas in which your company might not have a template, including social media. Mind Map aficionados have all sorts of cool ideas for them. You can also embed them in sites, something useful for internal planning. The apps we’ve found most useful are MindMeister (web-based), FreeMind (standalone), and there’s even a droid app which can save files in a compatible format. Your management will likely love these types of diagrams, don’t you think?

3. ScienceOnline 2011.

   We’re really excited to attend the ScienceOnline 2011 conference next week in North Carolina. We get interest from both life science marketers and researchers in working together more in the web 2.0 environment. We’re doing two surveys, one for life science marketers and one for researchers, to help facilitate these interactions. We’ll present the results next week and those who participate will get the results sent to them, so please take the survey soon. Note that the conference will be live streamed, and we’ll post instructions here on how to view, and we’ll be tweeting from it as well.

The soundbytes tag on Delicious contains all links mentioned, as well as others we think are useful. Sign up for Comprendia blog email updates to get our mix tapes delivered to your inbox.
To share this post easily, cut and paste: Sound Bytes: Links and Tips For Life Science Marketing & Social Media 1/07/2010 http://bit.ly/soundbytes0107