“Dark social” or “Who is afraid of email?”

Heathrow. Dark social? Threat? I’ll get back to that. I am writing this wrap-up post for the SpotOn 2013 meeting overlooking the British Airways planes on their way to take-off. In the last two days, we caught a glimpse of what online science communication is about. On Saturday, we had our own session #solo13blogs on using blogs for peer-to-peer science communication. As a science communication newbie, I am happy that our session was well received and stimulated quite some discussion. I have taken away three things from this meeting – a new understanding of our readership, an appreciation for Open Access and data sharing, and finally, a fear of the destructive power of dark social that also applies to epilepsy genetics research. But first things first. Continue reading

SpotOn London, Open Access and the Higgs boson

#solo13. Some strange symbols that made it onto our blog originate on Twitter. The “#” (hash) precedes a hashtag, which indicates a Twitter topic. “@” (at) is called a handle, a possibility to contact people. As you might remember from our previous announcements, Roland and me are currently participating in SpotOn 2013, a conference for online science communication. The meeting is held at the British Library in London. This is just a brief update on what #solo13 was about today. Continue reading