View on Storify.

View on Storify.

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Our map of Science Communicators based on utilization of the #scicomm hashtag was very popular and we’ve been asked to create maps for more hashtags. We decided that a map of Twitterers using #openaccess would be useful, as the movement to free research publication access is gaining momentum, with the associated #academicspring hashtag also being used. These maps show trends regarding the location and interests of the Twitterers, and perhaps more importantly they help people to connect with others in their geographic region.

Since May 30th 2011, when we started tracking the #openaccess hashtag 11 months ago, it has been used almost 43,000 times by 12,000 Twitterers. Google Maps limits the number of items on each map to 1,000, so we chose to show the top users, corresponding to those who have used the #openaccess hashtag 4 or more times in this 11 month period. We actually got flack from the last post as some people who didn’t use the #scicomm hashtag didn’t get mapped. These complaints are great because it shows people care and we want to make the maps better. Our suggestion? Find/create/use more hashtags in your posts if you are passionate about a topic, and make sure your Twitter profile lists your location in a way that is recognizable by software (e.g., London, UK). Adding people manually to these maps is incredibly laborious and unfortunately we can’t do it at this time.

We did a quick check of the overlap between the top 1000 #scicomm users and the top 1000 using #openaccess. We were surprised that the overlap is low, only 67/1000, or 6.7% use both hashtags regularly. We have still not perfected our method of geographic analysis so we will provide our initial thoughts on eyeball comparisons of the two maps (you can, too, by looking at each on Google in browser tabs: #openaccess #scicomm). There appear to be more people using the #openaccess in Japan and South America than #scicomm, and the reverse is true in Australia. Perhaps the topic is more important in these areas due to sensitivity to subscription costs? Again, we’d love it if a GIS expert wants to play with the KML files and provide more than an anecdotal analysis, both are accessible as a link found near the top of the Google Map.

We were curious as to the identity of these Twitterers, especially with the low overlap with #scicomm, so we did a word cloud based on their Twitter Bios (not their Tweets) and it is seen below. The top five words are research, university, science, access, and library. Not surprisingly, many work in these areas, and librarians are passionate about the topic. Some also use the hashtag #oa which we did not track as it is too short and will have a lot of noise from other topics.

This map is meant as a starting resource, not a complete list of everyone involved in the movement, and we hope it sparks more connections, analysis, and advancement of the initiative. While creating global maps of Twitterers using Google maps is limited, we can create maps restricted to a geographic area, or ones with more data which can be read by programs like Google Earth (or any program that can read XML files). Let us know what you’d like us to map, contact us or leave a comment below.

To share this post cut and paste: Who’s Passionate About #OpenAccess? Interactive Map of 1000+ Twitterers Using The Hashtag http://bit.ly/oa_map

We’ve been organizing life science events for more than 3 years now and we see the need more than ever to help biotech researchers and professionals network. Creating an engaging event with notoriously shy people isn’t always easy, and we’ve had both missteps and real winning ideas. We’d like to see more successful events being held and see a real opportunity for organizations and companies to get involved. Here are four ways we’ve found to get scientists to attend, engage, and get more out of events, which benefits all involved.

1. Speed Networking. If you’ve done speed dating, you’ll get this easily. Check out our post on the San Diego Biotechnology Network site for all the details, and here is the rundown. Arrange tables in a “U” shape and place chairs matched across the table on the inside and outside. Have everyone take a seat and make sure all have partners, then give them 4 minutes to talk. Prep them by telling them to bring lots of business cards and to craft a 30 second ‘elevator speech’ to describe who they are and what they’re looking for. Bring a timer and use a microphone to announce the 4 minute warning–you’ll get some people who are never finished after 4 minutes which you’ll have to manage, but most are well behaved. Scientists enjoy being ‘forced’ to interact and go home with a lot of new connections.
2. Introduce a Colleague. This activity helps attendees get to know each other and get exposure to the group. At the registration desk, ask guests if they want to participate to put their business card in a bowl and to draw one out. They will then need to find the person they drew and learn more about them. Wait at least 30 minutes after the last person has drawn a name to start the introductions. Person A introduces person B at the microphone, then person B introduces the person they drew, etc. You’ll invariably get some cards left in the bowl, so at the end offer to have people introduce themselves, even if they didn’t participate. We have found this activity to be very popular, and you can always tell people they don’t have to participate if they’re too shy (but we’ve found it a good excuse for them to come out of their shell).
3. Networking Bingo. We got this idea from our colleague Jessica Yingling at Little Dog Communications and have used it twice now at events in San Diego. You prepare a bingo grid and in each square put a quality that you know people in attendance will have and that will also spark some conversation. For example, for a recent science communication event, some of the squares were ‘Blogger,’ ‘Twitterer,’ ‘Public Relations.’ People then need to find people who fit the description and get their signature (bring lots of pens). You’ll need to give prizes for the first Bingo (a row), the first to fill out the whole page, then 5 or so (depending on the size of the group) prizes for the next people to fill out the whole page. Be prepared to have some more prizes if you run out, as you don’t want the bingo to stop (although people enjoy it so much they’ll likely continue). At one event, an attendee gave us a very sincere ‘thank you’ as they admitted how shy they are and that the activity helped them greatly to meet people.
4. Identity Stickers. I stole this concept from a local Barcamp I attended. The idea is to help people identify their interests and help them to start a conversation using small printed stickers. We bought the smallest address labels (1/2″ X 1 3/4″) we could find and printed them with qualities we knew the attendees would have. We did this activity at our science communication event, choosing items from the bingo squares (e.g., Blogger, Twitter handle), and we also added fun (e.g., Nobel Laureate), loosely related (e.g., Mac, PC) and more personal items (e.g., Parent). We found that almost every attendee wore at least one sticker, some 4-5! The activity worked well with networking bingo and it requires the least setup and could be done even at events where there are no nametags. See the this photo from a recent event in San Diego to see some sporting the stickers.

These four tactics will not only help you have a successful event, but they’ll help scientists network and refine their personal brand, both for which we are finding an increasing need. You don’t have to host a big event to try these activities out, add an extra 15 minutes for networking before or after your next seminar or practice them within your group (you may be surprised at how much you learn). Anyone who hosts such events will not only make more connections, but benefit from the fantastic karma of helping scientists network and grow.

Image courtesy Julie McClure showing researcher Nadejda Korneeva’s winning bingo card at our April 23rd networking event in San Diego. Nadejda said one of our event ‘regulars’ Marti Krane helped her to find people so she could fill the card, indicating the great ‘pay it forward’ culture that can be created at networking events.

To share this post easily cut and paste: Four Ways To Attract And Engage Life Scientists For Your Next Event http://bit.ly/Il8mf4

Here’s a presentation I gave at the University of Minnesota about networking, including audio. I got great rapport from the grad students and they are hungry to network! We thought it would be great if companies or organizations sponsored networking events, seems like a win-win for all, and we do it in San Diego successfully. Let us know if you’re interested in holding events in your region!

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In anticipation of our science communication event this month, we’ve been thinking about the topic which is discussed using the #SciComm hashtag on Twitter. We started looking at more than 5000 Twitter status updates tagged with #SciComm from the last nine months and found that the group is scientifically diverse but singular in their passion to improve the way information is exchanged. Because #SciComm is not a high volume hashtag, commercial tools to find users aren’t sufficient, so we looked to our own data and some publicly available tools. We created an interactive map of 1000+ Twitterers using the #SciComm hashtag and present the some of the data here.

We used the Google Maps API and Yahoo Pipes to create what’s called a KML (Keyhole Markup Language, a type of XML) file from the biographies of every Twitterer who has used the #SciComm hashtag since last June, and this was used to generate the interactive map. We’ve tried in the past to follow Twitterer locations using the geotags on the status updates, but only a small percentage of people use them, so they were not efficacious. The data needed to be manipulated a bit more to provide detailed and uniformly formatted place names, as Twitter’s field for ‘location’ is simply a text input. For an example, see Danielle Lee’s profile, her location could not be resolved presumably because she added ‘midwest’ between city and state and she was misplaced in Ohio.

We were able to automatically determine a location for 1066 of the 1335 science communicators, or about 80%. If you’d like to help improve these types of analyses, update your location in your Twitter profile. Additionally, if many Twitterers exist in one location, they are represented by one pin and you’ll need to use the popup window to scroll through the results, see the image below for more details. Also, if you’re trying to look up a Twitterer, look at the map on Google and use the alphabetized list on the left. Unfortunately, Google Maps has a limit of 1000 place marks, so it is missing about 60 Twitterers, but you can download the KML file and read it into Google Earth if you’d like.

Part of the reason we created this map is because we’ve had a feeling for a long while that Southern California, while it is a mecca for biotech, is behind other regions when it comes to scientists using social media to communicate. While the list of Twitterers using the #SciComm hashtag is not a complete list of science communicators, it certainly represents those who care deeply about it, and use new media to support it. We found a few new Twitterers in San Diego, but as we suspected, we’re well behind west coast cities such as Seattle, where there are 24 people who use the #SciComm hashtag. We did a brief analysis to find the top countries and the top US States, see the results in Table 1.

*States which are not in the top 10 of US in terms of population.

^Not a state but recognized by Google Maps.

We would have liked to do a more thorough analysis, but our initial tools need some polishing to give more accurate results (note: if you’re a coder and would like to help, contact us). For the top countries, it is not surprising that the top 5 are all English speaking, as that is the language of the hashtag. By looking at the map, you can see that the UK and Ireland are a mecca of science communication considering such a smaller population than the US and Canada, and Australia does well also.

For the US states, we also considered population, and marked the states/regions which are not in the top 10 in the US according to population, and this indicates the states or regions with the highest ‘concentration:’ Washington, District of Columbia (Washington, DC), Massachussetts and Maryland.

Hand waving aside, our ‘human analysis’ of the map seems to indicate that the US east coast and UK/Ireland are more rife with science communicators than the US west coast. Yes, California is #2, but we are a big state with 2 biotech clusters, to me the map and the data does not show the dominance we should have. What causes these geographic differences? ‘Instigators’ such as Bora Zivkovic and Lou Woodley and the ScienceOnline events in North Carolina, London, and New York City that they organize certainly have made a difference in these regions. However, the west coast has Liz Neeley in Seattle, events and proponents in San Francisco, SciFund and the San Diego Biotechnology Network. Am I being too critical of the west coast?

How should you use this map? Find science communicators in your region and connect! Meet informally or formally. We found a few new Twitterers in San Diego and I’m also traveling to Minneapolis soon to give a talk and have identified a few. Also, let us know which other hashtags for which you’d like a map, it’s all about connecting! We hope that this map, while it may point out the ‘deficiencies’ in our region, will stimulate discussions and more interest, our event will be a good opportunity. Also, if you’d like to try to do some more analyses of the data, feel free–the KML file can be loaded into excel.

To share this post easily, cut and paste: Where Are The Science Communicators? Interactive Map of 1000+ #SciComm Twitterers http://bit.ly/scicomm_map

We were thrilled when the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology asked us to host an event with them during the Experimental Biology (#EB2012) conference this month in San Diego, see descriptions of it on the SDBN blog and ASBMB website. The event will focus on improving science communication (#SciComm), and as you know we’re big proponents of using new media towards this end. We’ve seen some spectacular examples of scientists and organizations using new tools to reach their peers, the public, and even to get funding. Here, we highlight great examples of new media science communication, and invite those who will be attending the #EB2012 event (#EB2012Tweetup) to share their own stories.

1. #IAmScience. Kevin Zelnio, a freelance science writer who blogs for the DeepSeaNews and Scientific American, started a meme on Twitter around non-traditional paths to becoming a scientist. He found that many scientists described surprisingly diverse paths to becoming a scientist, fueled by passion more than genius (see the video of the Tweets). He thought that the collected stories would make a great resource to personalize scientists and encourage those who are intimidated because they see a scientific career as a ‘one size fits all’ endeavor. He ran a KickStarter project to raise funds, and he was very successful so the project is underway. The personal side of science is being communicated by those who have some extra time to tell their story and Kevin’s passion for the project, and the book will be in electronic form with some print copies for inner city schools.
2. #MyResearch. Great minds think alike, Vancouver professor Raul Pacheco-Vega started the #MyResearch hashtag on Twitter during the 2012 AAAS meeting in January to encourage scientists to describe their research. To date, more than 1700 status updates have resulted, and many tried to make their research understandable by laymen in 129 characters. In these first two examples, scientists have come up with easy ways that other researchers can take time out of their busy days to learn how to communicate and gain perspective, which is a big win.
3. SciFund. We’ve covered this fantastic initiative in which researchers raise money for their work in this blog post and Twitter chat. Through the help of passionate founder Jai Ranganathan and the crowdfunding application Rockethub, scientists pitched their research to the public last fall and raised $76,000! While raising money for science is cool, Jai admits he has a hidden agenda for the initiative, namely to help scientists learn how to communicate their research to the public. We’re soliciting questions about #SciComm from those registering for the #EB2012Tweetup, and several want to know how to achieve a balance between being accurate and capturing the attention of readers. Jai has done some analyses on which campaigns were the most successful, and sees that, perhaps not surprisingly, the number of pageviews correlates to the amount raised. Further, he finds that the size of network of the scientist directly relates to the amount of funding they raised, pointing to the importance of this facet of #SciComm. SciFund will begin again in May 2012 and we will watch its progress via their blog.
4. Great blogging networks. Where do we begin here? We scratched the surface on science blogs in a recent post about life science networks. They not only do a superb job of translating complex science for thousands of readers, but they also discuss the important issues surrounding science communication. Perhaps a good way to get a handle on them is to visit the website for their biggest IRL (in real life) gathering, ScienceOnline. Read the discourses on science communication on the blogs to get an overview of their role in advancing the topic, and follow the #scio12, #scio13, and #SciComm hashtags on Twitter as well. Also, it’s always a good bet to start from the source, and follow Bora Zivkovic aka the ‘BlogFather,’ and the Scientific American (#SciAm) blog network he helped develop.
5. Supporting life science organizations. We were not surprised when ASBMB approached us about the event at #eb2012 because we’ve been communicating with Angela Hopp, editor of ASBMB Today, on Twitter. ASBMB supports science communication through this publication, sometimes inviting bloggers and Twitterers to contribute. We’ve also had great experiences with the American Chemical Society, whose success with social media, including a great blog, encourages life scientists to participate in new media as well. We had a great time catching up with them at the latest ACS meeting in San Diego, and the number of Twitter status updates almost doubled in number compared to the last meeting (internal data). Great work guys! Equally impressive are the folks at Nature. They not only have great blogs and are active on Twitter, they support regional science online discussion groups in London, New York and they’re expanding to the US west coast as well.
6. Scientists using new media. We see great conversations happening on Twitter every day, from scientific discourses to daily encouragement. We see scientists who want to help their colleagues communicate better, a stellar example is this blog about creating better poster presentations by Zen Faulkes (the Comic Sans font used in the image is a hat tip to them, as they like to make fun of it). Clearly, new media tools make it easier for scientists to communicate with each other, and they’re doing a fantastic job. While it is hard to measure the benefit to the field, it is surely multiplied when more researchers and professionals decide to get involved with new media.

Our April 23^rd event will focus on helping scientists learn to use the new tools for science communication. We are polling them to find which area they feel as though they need it the most, here are the options:

• My career path and choices
• Funding my research
• Finding the right project
• Connecting with peers/networking

If you use new media for science communication and are attending the event at #EB2012, we want to hear your success stories! Please think about how your blog, Twitter discussions, or the use of other online tools have helped you in the areas above, and write about it. Leave a link in the comments below or tag a Tweet with the event hashtag #EB2012Tweetup. We’ll highlight the stories online and at the event. We’re also looking forward to meeting you all April 23^rd!

Special thanks to Geoff Hunt for helping organize this event and to New England BioLabs and Mendeley for sponsoring.

To share this post, cut and paste: New Media Science Communication, What’s Working? Our #EB2012 Event Will Highlight #SciComm Successes http://bit.ly/IclAWn

Believe it or not, we still run into life science companies who haven’t drunk the social media Kool-Aid. In other words, they don’t think their customers use the applications and are not ready to commit to spending resources on them. My answer to them? Everyone Googles. New media has a profound affect on the results from the tool that most of us use daily to get everything from news to recipes. Life scientists are no different, and find technical information, publications, and information about products using Google. Here, we’ll show you 5 ways to capitalize on the pervasiveness of Google drive more traffic to your website and to make broader improvements to your marketing process.

1. Simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There is a lot of low hanging fruit that we see many life science companies missing out of in terms of SEO. Surprisingly, it is left off of many web development projects. The web is full of quick guides, and here are our recommendations:
   • Do keyword research and find the top terms people are searching for.
   • Use the top keywords in the titles, content, and SEO summaries of each page. Always write for humans, not the search robots, as no robot will ever purchase a product from you.
   • Submit your website changes directly to Google so that it is always up to date on your content (this can be done automatically via programs that create and submit XML site maps).
2. Create a dynamic website. I like to think of Google as imitating a human in some ways. If you visit a website a few times, and it never changes, you assume you know everything that it contains, and there isn’t really a reason to keep returning. Google assumes the same, and that the converse is also true—it assumes sites with changing content are worth visiting and ranks them higher. Of course, there are many websites that try to game the SEO system, so random content is not acceptable, but as long as you’re writing real content for humans, you’ll do well. Examples include blogs, forums, and FAQs. We’ve also covered how making these changes won’t just improve SEO, they can also affect your bottom line. Running your website using a content management system (CMS) will help the marketing team make more regular updates.
3. Use Google Tools. The best things in life are (mostly) free, Google proves this with myriad applications available for improving your website and driving traffic to it. We could write a whole blog post on their tools, here is the short version of the applications we recommend:
   • Google Analytics. A no-brainer. Install a snippet of code on the pages you want to monitor, and get a wealth of information about traffic, keywords, conversions, and more.
   • Google Adwords. Drive traffic to your website and do research on keywords and Ad copy at the same time, and you can even look at what your competitors are doing. Get real time feedback on your customers’ interests with any size budget.
   • Google Webmaster Tools. This resource is a bit less well known and it is unclear to me why it is separate from Google Analytics. The two are intertwined, and by logging into Webmaster Tools, and installing the code on your website, you can access more features such as seeing how many/which websites link to your site (important for SEO). Also, you can set your site up to submit XML sitemaps to Google here as well.
4. Use Social Media. Google loves dynamic websites and it is becoming enamored with social media too. Why? Because with social media Google can take advantage of human brains to filter the increasing amount of information on the internet, much of it designed to fool search engines. Very few spammers can convince hundreds of people to ‘like’ or share their content, but a post that appeals to humans will be amplified in these ways. ‘Social search‘ is the term used to describe the augmentation of search engine results from a person’s online social network, it aims to give you suggestions based on what your friends and colleagues like. It is currently just a part of SEO algorithms, which we don’t have access to as they are proprietary, but this post shows some convincing data regarding its importance. Indeed, 60% of the results on the first page for a Google search of ‘Comprendia’ are from social media applications such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, showing the importance of content and activity on these applications. Google+, a social network from the search giant, launched in June 2011 and Search, Plus Your World was announced January 2012. Now, Google+ users will get Google search results that their contacts have recommended. We’ll admit that we haven’t taken to Google+ as much as we thought we would, but this change has big implications. As a company, you could directly influence the search results of everyone who has connected to your Google+ brand page (hint: get one now…). Now, while not everyone is sold on Google+, many have Gmail, and it is tempting to speculate that Google will someday leverage these 350 million users. Also, Google owns so much of our online lives that it is not inconceivable that they’ll find other ways to sneak into our search with acquisitions, etc.
5. Analyze and repeat. Here is the fun part. Everything mentioned in this post can be directly measured quickly, so you can track your progress and repeat what works. Here are analysis examples that also track ROI:
   • Track keyword performance and conversions, adjust and move into new keyword areas as necessary.
   • Determine how many people are clicking to your site and converting from social media.
   • Track the ranking of your site with keywords, your traffic, and determine whether it’s leading to more conversions.

   These are just a few possibilities, and in the process you’ll surely come up with new and relevant metrics to track and utilize.

There are many ways life science companies can leverage researchers’ online activities to help them and improve their bottom line. Also, we think you’ll find that by doing so you’ll get more feedback and ideas for directions to take with your product line and online activities. The costs for all the tactics we described are scalable and can be very modest. What are you waiting for? C’mon, everyone’s doing it…

The image for this blog post is based on a children’s book you may have heard of and it was created by my daughter, an aspiring graphic designer!

To share this post, cut and paste: Everyone Googles: How To Leverage The Tool All Life Scientists Use http://bit.ly/GJN718

A recent article from the Huffington Post states that social networks for scientists won’t work because there is no incentive from a career perspective. The piece focuses on ResearchGate and takes a stab at the Economist’s article about the community. Here at Comprendia, we’ve never advocated that Facebook should be recreated for scientists, as there are 700,000+ life science graduates in the US already using the application,* and they are likely already connected there to lab mates and colleagues. Rather, we should broaden our idea of the ‘social network’ to include any online community of scientists, not just those which are similar to Facebook. The value of social networks for scientists lies in faster access to information relevant to their research and the communities that are made more available by new tools. Here are 6 successful examples which can be used to understand scientific social communities.

1. Facebook Pages & LinkedIn Groups. Scientists have used mailing lists and forums for years. Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups are a ’2.0′ version of them with the benefits of centralization and easier access to participants. Life science companies, most notably Life Technologies, have fostered social networks in the form of Facebook pages centered on a topic. We discussed successful life science Facebook pages in the past, and encourage you to visit the Molecular Probes page and NEB’s Engaging Epigenetics Experts page (our client) to see vibrant networks on Facebook centered around a scientific topic. Life Technologies in itself has created a social network of 100K life scientists centered around about 10 product and brand Facebook pages. Additionally, many thriving life science and biotech LinkedIn groups exist, see our list on our partner San Diego Biotechnology Network site. Fantastic LinkedIn groups surrounding topics such as protein and antibody purification exist, but their discussions are closed to those that aren’t in the group (which we hope will change). You can check out the active discussions in this Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Discovery group (which was started by a company).
2. Twitter Hashtags. Scientists use Twitter to share scientific blog posts and news, to find friends and colleagues around a topic or event, and sometimes to vent about their situation. Hashtags, which are text identifiers for status updates on a topic, allow a Twitter social network to form around it, something we’ve covered in depth. Some that are ongoing are #iamscience, #phdchat, and #icanhazpdf, and you can see what conversations they follow by using our guide. Twitter status updates tagged with #scio12, the ScienceOnline2012 conference in January resulted from a ‘community’ of almost 4,500 Twitterers (10 times the attendance) who Tweeted more than 38,000 updates about the conference. Hashtag ‘communities’ can also communicate as a group to the public and affect change (see #5 below).
3. ScienceOnline. Speaking of which. The main conference takes place in January in North Carolina, and is growing by leaps and bounds. Another ScienceOnline event takes place in London in the fall each year, there are related events in New York monthly, and events are planned for the bay area and Seattle/Vancouver as well (Lou Woodley from Nature, personal communication). The IRL (in real life) events are full of hundreds of enthusiastic science communicators who advance the field exponentially, and the conversation takes place year round on Twitter.
4. True Social Networks. As we wrote about a year ago, some of the bona fide social networks have a great following. I’m not sure why Mark Drapeau (the author of the Huffington post article ) is not impressed by ResearchGate’s 1.4 million users, as we know that scientists don’t have time for frivolous endeavors, especially when they’re under the watchful eye of their Principal Investigator. As we noted in our post a year ago, there has to be a value for them to participate, and the successful ones center around research publications. BiomedExperts, CiteULike, ResearchBlogging, and ResearchGate had the highest traffic in our quick study, and they all rely heavily on publications. I like to say that PubMed was the first social network for scientists. Back in ‘my day,’ I learned about collaborators through PubMed, and I got paper copies of their publications when I had time for a trip to the library (yes, I’m old). I usually had to wait for a conference to talk at length with fellow scientists, although we did have email. Today, the conversation can take place all year long, with new connections being made with those who haven’t published in peer reviewed journals yet. These social networks, with access to information and advice from colleagues much more quickly, will have a definite impact on scientists’ careers, contrary to the claims in the Huffington Post article.
5. Publication Sharing/Open Access. Related to the last point is a subject that requires its own mention as it transverses from proper social networks to desktop applications, Twitter, and even a movement to make research publications more accessible. Mendeley is the rock star of the publication sharing/open access genre, boasting 1.77 million users who are sharing 169 million publications. When we speak with life scientists at conferences or client visits, we often hear about the application even from those who are not strong believers in social media. Additionally, these applications have whetted scientists’ appetites for more open access to publications. This thirst for more accessible knowledge was evidenced by the big backlash to the Research Works Act, which limited access to research findings and was brought down by a scientific social network distributed on Twitter (hashtag #RWA) and the blogosphere.
6. Blogs. Colleague William Gunn (at Mendeley) said in a presentation we made together in San Diego a few years ago “blogs were one of the first forms of social media for scientists.” Sometimes these social networks are a bit harder to get a comprehensive understanding of as an outsider, but check out the comments for popular blogs such as ‘In The Pipeline‘ where you’ll see that even drug discovery chemists, stalwarts of hard core life science, participate in blogging communities. A thriving ecosystem of science blogs is visualized in this Google document created by Brian Reid and maintained by the community. Blog aggregators such as ResearchBlogging or ScienceSeeker feature hundreds of blogs and likely a comparable number of communities focused around individual research topics.

The scientist that is described in the Huffington Post article is preoccupied only with the end result of publications, not improving the path towards them. When I was a bench scientist in the 90′s, my limited access to information and colleagues was imposed upon me by the era. I can see that I would have grown into my current career choice much more quickly if given greater access to them. At conferences and networking events today, we are seeing a transition, albeit slowly, to a new breed of scientists who understand the importance of scientific networks. We need to adjust our definition of scientific social networks to understand the next steps towards helping scientists use them to thrive.

What areas do you think the organizations named, or communities themselves should focus on to take scientific social networks to the next level?

*According to the Facebook advertising application.

To share this post easily cut and paste: What Is A Scientific Social Network? 6 Thriving and Inspiring Examples http://bit.ly/yNMcLY

I recently had head shots taken on a very hectic trip to Seattle, and I was not as prepared as I would have liked to have been. Thankfully, with the help of a great photographer and my sister helping me to prepare, I got some good shots which weren’t in the style I had intended. Head shots and other imagery associated with your brand, personal or corporate, should match your company’s position and messaging, which you should explicitly define internally. Choices made by your employees, including images for marketing materials and head shots, will then more clearly portray the value of your life science brand.

Larger companies may have a style or content guide which indicates the messaging, voice, and imagery that the company uses. For smaller companies like Comprendia, I’ll admit we don’t have a formal document because we are relatively small and I thought I understood and could communicate it clearly. However, when excellent photographer Connie Riggio asked me what I wanted the pictures to convey, I stumbled a bit. I know the mission and messaging of Comprendia, how we help companies communicate their value, yet I was struggling to explain it because I am too busy and perhaps too close to it.

We run into life science companies that also struggle with their messaging and value proposition. When they started their company, they had a clear vision of the niche that their products would fill (hopefully). After a few years of dealing with the details, they may lose sight or be so close to the issue to see it clearly. If you are in this position, perhaps an exercise where we look at Comprendia’s value proposition, and how my head shots fit with it, will help you to explore and refine your own.

When I started Comprendia in 2008, I knew a fair amount about the life science marketing agencies that existed, and was inspired by their success. I have a very science, computer, and web ‘heavy’ resume, and also began to see the burgeoning role that science communicators would play, using tools such as blogs and Twitter. I decided this would be our niche, to champion science communication between life science companies and researchers, using social media as our toolbox.

We want to challenge ‘business as usual’ for life science companies by encouraging engagement with researchers at every level. One aspect of our messaging is the images on our blog, which are all simple and illustrative, mostly isolated objects meant to serve as an analogy. This imagery conveys our modern viewpoint of communication, which is to be clear and to connect with the reader. For personal imagery, we want to appear as approachable communicators, and we practice what we preach by helping out scientists online by serving as champions for their blogs, etc. and IRL (in real life) with monthly life science networking events in San Diego.

In keeping with our mission of communication and engagement, we’re asking you which head shot I should choose! The photos are numbered, please leave your choice of #1, #2, or #3 below, based on your perception of Comprendia and the points raised in this post. Also, I encourage you to think about your company’s positioning and message (write it down!), and to consider whether your imagery accurately conveys it.

Special thanks to Connie Riggio Photography in Seattle, she is more than just a fantastically talented photographer, she knew how to lead me into the shots I needed. She’s willing to travel and would be an excellent choice when you decide to redo the head shots for your company.

Which head shot would you choose for me to communicate Comprendia’s messaging and why? Please leave your vote for #1, #2, or #3 as a comment below, along with the reason(s) behind your choice if you have time.