Cosyne 09, Or: How I learned to stop ignoring Web 2.0 and love the Twitter
I joined Nature Neuroscience in March, 2007 with little more experience in Web 2.0 technology than posting to my postdoctoral lab’s internal wiki page. A couple months into the job, I was asked by then Chief Editor Sandra Aamodt to try my hand at blogging. I had never done such a thing before, but said “Sure.”
Initially, I rekindled the flame at the Nature Neuroscience blog Action Potential with a number of posts, some of which I actually became quite fond of, and suddenly found myself thrust squarely into the Web 2.0 arena. My transformation into an advocate for whole-heartedly adopting a Web 2.0 mindset in science as well as into a social networking wannabe/poser was only complete following my collaboration with Hilary Spencer, in which we examined the relationship between immediate individual paper downloads and eventual citations (this culminated in an editorial written for Nature Neuroscience and a more-detailed blog post about the analysis). Hilary introduced me to such a broad range of technology, software, database relationships, and general Web 2.0 goodness that I became hooked.
I began to read more about this stuff. I joined the team at Nature in July, 2008 and started this blog on my own. I began to participate more beyond just this blog. I joined Facebook. I started a friend feed. I started sharing things via Google Reader, having them feed into the previous two sites. I was updating these feeds via my iPhone on the train to work. I clearly saw the awesome power that these integrated programs could have in disseminating science and facilitating serious technical dialogue. Then I read this. And the monster was cut loose for good.
I had known about Twitter, heard people discuss it, etc., but never had any interest in it. That is because I never really gave it much thought. Joerg Heber forced me to think about Twitter again and although having an information outlet like Nature Materials highlighting interesting content via tweets is not conceptually novel (geez, I sound like an editor…), my new mindset and having other NPG colleagues “tweeting” (Nature News, Timo Hannay, Brendan Maher and many others) inspired me to follow. I joined last weekend as @noahwilliamgray and plan to provide my own stream of neuroscience goodies and opinions.
I can’t promise that it will be “all neuroscience, all the time”, because that’s just not me. I reserve the right to indulge in tweets covering some of my other interests (ecology, environment, evolution, politics) and passions (soundz, bass, tunes, the beat). So there. But I’ll try to keep the value-added:self-indulgent tweet ratio high, even if you are desperate to follow the musical tastes of a neuroscience editor.
In addition, since joining Twitter and becoming an instantaneous convert, I now clearly see how monolithic and plodding Facebook is in comparison to the more nimble Twitter microblog as an information-rich dissemination missile. Experiencing Twitter also finally allowed me to put my finger on why I always felt less than satisfied by most “live blogging”. Live blogging can sometimes be a forced and painful affair, whereas using Twitter for live updates is more natural and interactive, with instant feedback perhaps even shaping the direction of coverage by the transmitter, allowing for the feed to become tailored to the live audience. And in Twitter, each thought is kept as a separate thread, held together by a common theme (#——-). This is how many live blog posts turn out anyway (i.e., a string of one-liner comments), but the thoughts all become mashed up in the single post, making it difficult to follow or organize the subsequent discussion in the comments.
I am currently in Salt Lake City, UT for the Cosyne 09 conference and will make my first attempt to “live-tweet” my conference highlights and impressions. If interested, follow along with this – #cosyne. If all goes well, I intend to do the same for the Keystone Symposium on the Epigenetic Basis of Neurodevelopmental Disorders.
‘information-rich dissemination missile’
Lick my love pump.
Yeah.
‘information-rich dissemination missile’
Okay, okay, so the wine consumption at the poster session produced cavalier word sequences…
Lick my love pump.
I don’t think I should respond to that. At least not right now.
Love-hate relationship with Twitter- information-rich dissemination missiles restricted to 140 characters.
Why is everybody up so early (HG) or late (SL)??? It is only 22:40 where I’m residing…
I just was consuming wine at the poster session (West coast).
Two of a kind!!!
I’ve had a twitter account for a few months now, but I’m ignoring it. I fear it would push me over the edge… good for you, though
I tweeted Jamie Oliver and got no reply. Twitter is therefore dead to me. But I’ll check out your neuroscience tweets anyway!
Noah – Nature never sleeps. You know this.
I get Boris Johnson’s tweets. Who cares about Jamie Oliver? Unlike Boris, posterity will not remember Jamie to have been the greatest stqatemsan of this or any other era.
Now, excuse me, I have to go to the lobby and wait for the limo.
@Steffi – I’m the same. Fear of drowning. I need to figure out a strategy that works for me, and I suspect that it will involve Twitter before too long.
Aha, Sarbjit: you are one of the 11%!
@Frank – yup, definitely drowning right now. I need tutoring in how to organize all my online stuff!!!
Thanks for the mention, Noah! Just for the record, I heard about twitter quite a long time ago and like it was for you it didn’t strike me as something I might be interested in – too timewasting I thought. But then, you always have to try these things for yourself, and like Noah, I was an instant convert. It’s simply the crowd that’s already there. You have to contribute what you think is interesting stuff as well, but if you take care who you “follow” the benefits you get in terms of receiving valuable information and interesting interactions are quite large. Although the value of twitter perhaps is still increasing as more and more interesting people join it.
The 140 character thing fits me quite well too, too busy to blog
@steffi Maybe I was talking to the 4% (same site- robots who twitter on behalf of celebraties)?
Just stumbled across (via twitter) an interesting take on twitter from a perhaps unlikely source, the FT
The Twitter is exciting and scary at the same time. I also recently got hooked after resisting for a long time. Noah, if you are at a meeting, you could also use the location feature of iPhone apps such as TwitterFon – you will see who is also twittering from there.
Noah, if you are at a meeting, you could also use the location feature of iPhone apps such as TwitterFon – you will see who is also twittering from there.
It’s weird!! Why would you want to know that? I mean, really?
Yes, Steffi – if they are at the same meeting, one could actually talk to them. In person. Or is that just too uncool?
I think that FriendFeed, Twitter and other microblogging tools are great for conference blogging. And they work even better if more than one person at the meeting uses them. But how do you find out who else is twittering from a large meeting? Using a common tag is one obvious solution, but the location feature could also be helpful.
I agree Martin, and actually got a couple people to adopt the tag I chose. I didn’t attend the second part of the meeting, but the person I met through Twitter at the conference carried on with updates, providing me with additional insider information. I wouldn’t have met this person otherwise.
Hmm. I’ll have to keep thinking about this more, but it still makes me nervous that we rely on technology to enhance our social interactions – although from that aspect, twitter is just a step further than blogging, I guess (more immediate). Which makes my point somewhat mute, since I blog…
But Noah, who didn’t you meet there because you were too busy twittering or talking to the other twitterer?
Of course, that would be a moot point. And thinking about it, my comment about who you didn’t meet was pretty daft. (must wake up more before commenting on twitter..)
it still makes me nervous that we rely on technology to enhance our social interactions
How is it different from using the telephone?
I agree there is a possibility of overuse. The delegate who sits on their own during breaks, Twittering into their laptop of iPhone is perhaps missing out on face-to-face interactions. Though we shouldn’t rush to judgement – for some people interacting through Twitter may be a richer or more productive experience than interacting face-to-face.
Perhaps I type fast on the iPhone, but when something struck me, I simply typed it in and sent it. The update didn’t take more than a minute. If an interesting question was raised, I simply passed that along in real-time. Even when I provided a link, the technology and applications on the iPhone are such that I did a quick Pubmed or Google search in the browser, found the link I wanted, and used a simple URL provider called Twitterlink to allow me to immediately post both the link and my comments. Again, it is almost too easy.
I never provided updates during the breaks, so for me, I have to say that the experience was very non-intrusive to my conference goings-on.
And what was the feedback you got on your tweets, Noah? I’m just worried about not remotely being able to ‘wrap something up’, not being able to follow leads thoroughly. To me, there seems to be a trend of increasingly one-sided communication mechanisms… but again, I’m probably just not getting it (yet). I have to add that I’m discovering all this pretty much on my own, without someone knowledgeable to help me get ‘set up’ and organized properly – trial and error, and feeling overwhelmed!!
Noah, thanks for the Twitterlink tip.
There is always the danger of technology overuse? But we wouldn’t have this discussion here without these Web 2.0 technologies.
we wouldn’t have this discussion here without these Web 2.0 technologies
Point taken… and made?