I’m still recovering from this past week / weekend’s Science Online ’11 in the Research Triangle – the 5th annual event on science and the Web. A massive thanks again to the organisers, Bora and Anton, for putting together a marvelous and rich event from start to finish. It’s not an easy task (speaking from experience), and they did an absolute brilliant job.

Saturday was when the event kicked into high gear, with a day of truly thought provoking discussion sessions. I joined the fun, leading a discussion on technology and infrastructure in science. The slides below were meant to seed the conversation with a few starting points, as well as set some of the context about the science in the information age. Many thanks to the audience for their insightful commentary, questions and participation, especially Heather Piwowar, Jean-Claude Bradley, Jan and Jason from Mendeley, Carl Boettinger, Walter Jessen and Ana Nelson. I’m most certainly leaving people off that list, so my apologies in advance for that. More to come on that session in the coming days. But thank you all.

On to sameAs (see the video above) – we have 2 more weeks left in January for submissions, and are elated/excited/inspired by the ones we’ve received thus far. This month we’re turning the mic around and asking the community to tell us what you’re passionate about, just as a fun user-contribution, virtual exercise. We all have something that we’re passionate about, something that inspires us, gets us excited. Or, if nothing comes to mind, what better time than the start of a new year to reflect on what may drive you to do what you do. You can participate by sending us short video clips, images / audio files, or even tweets (do mark them with #sameAs so we can collate, please and thank you). We’ll be featuring the contributions on our shiny new sameAs blog, as well, so stay tuned. Help us spread the word and make this a truly global event. We want to hear from you (and #scio11 folks, note the friendly challenge posed in the video above 😉 )

Speaking of Science Online, I’m delighted to join Lou Woodley (of NPG) and Martin Fenner (Hannover Medical School) on the organising team for the London-based event this year (#solo11). Sponsored by Digital Science (my day-job) and NPG, Science Online London will be taking place at the British Library again this year, just after my birthday on Sept 2-3. Stay tuned for more in the coming months as planning progresses. We hope you all can make it.

And here are those slides, as promised. Off to Beyond the PDF in San Diego tomorrow – the next stop on the US tour. More to come.

I hope you all will help lend your voice to this month’s sameAs. Passion is something that can be a powerful driver in what we do, not only in keeping us inspired, but helping to inspire others. We hope to hear from you. 🙂