As a fresh-faced 21 yr old, I did a one-year placement at a pharmaceutical company as a synthetic chemist – a position that involves a lot of what is remarkably like cooking but with ‘reagents’ (fancy word for chemicals) instead of ingredients, making potential drugs instead of cakes. I loved the placement, I loved the work and I loved the people so I set about on the pathway to getting back in to the industry. It’s eight years on, I have the qualifications to do the role, I’m applying for jobs and I’m starting to wonder ‘Is this what I want to do? and 'Can I use all the skills I've learnt elsewhere?’

This blog is going to cover my research into what scientists like me are qualified to do that’s not in the laboratory. I’ll do my best to reference websites and people that actually do these jobs and hopefully I can help some people out by sharing what I’m learning. It’ll probably be interspersed with anecdotes and rants from the lab so you can see why I'm leaving this ‘unique’ environment! If you read this, think it’s useful/funny/worth reading, pass on the link – I’d love to know if I’m any good at this writing lark.

Monday 25 November 2013

It's not just scientists who use 'jargon'

How often do you hear...

I'm in e-commerce...
I'm a web professional...
I work in emerging markets...
I'm in tax...
I'm in IT (urgh)

How are any of the above statements any more explanatory than:

'I'm a microbiologist' or 'I'm a solid-state chemist?'

As I've been looking at new careers, I've started to ask anyone (and everyone) what they do. They inevitably patter out three or four sentences that mean nothing unless you're already in their field. Then I ask them 'Ok, thanks, but what do you actually DO?' They ummm and aah, come out with a version of 'Well, it's difficult to explain...' or 'It's a really diverse role...' and then think I'm being a bit weird for asking again 'Sorry, I don't understand, what is it you DO?'

What I'd really like to hear is what people actually do with their day. Scientists are often told that we need to explain what we do and I do always try. For example, when people ask what I do, after telling them that I'm a research chemist (and then telling them that it's not the same as a pharmacist), I almost always tell them that what I do is very similar to cooking but instead of mixing food and producing a cake/lasagne/burnt useless blob, I mix 'chemicals' to produce bigger chemicals/a drug/the occasional burnt useless blob. However, I think most people are guilty of slipping into jargon rather than really explaining something, particularly (and frustratingly, for me) when it comes to their job.

I've just got back from a(nother) careers fair and left early. It was heavily populated with super keen undergraduates (so young!!!), edgy Novartis employees (for now) and me. Oh, yeah and that guy who won the Apprentice, you know, the other 'Ricky Martin'. He genuinely had a copy of Alan Sugar's novel as a prize if you submitted your details to his recruitment agency - you can see why he won with such high-end incentive schemes. Although to be fair, you could hand out barb-wire toothbrushes at these fairs and people would love it. You can see a selection of my swag below - yes, that is a stress ball shaped like an aeroplane. Natch. 


Whilst everyone there was very enthusiastic and very friendly, I'm not sure what I got out of it. I approached several stands to ask about what positions they had for more people-facing scientists, i.e. a job where I could talk to people. The exhibitors went on to describe jobs that they know aren't in the lab like 'Regulatory affairs', 'Supply chain manager' and 'Qualification technologist' (No clue). So when I asked, 'That's great' what do those people DO all day', I just got an awkward response and a 'Oh, that's not something I deal with, have you seen the website?' 

I completely appreciate that it's not their responsibility to coach me through this early mid-life crisis, but apart from titles, it would be really useful if people could start talking to job-seekers about their jobs in terms the 'uninitiated' could understand and not assume that the listener has prior knowledge - much like scientists are constantly encouraged to do. 

For example it took me four versions of the same question to get:

         'I decide what forms of media (radio/tv/print) are best to promote particular UK businesses', 

and pushed on to get:

         'I do this on the phone, by email, go and meet lots of different directors and then I tell my team what/how to broadcast/publish something in-line with what I've decided.' 

The first three attempts to get this information yielded "I work in promotion', ' I deal with UK businesses' and 'Well, it's hard to explain...'

What I'm saying is, next time someone asks you what you do, try actually telling them, who knows, they might actually be interested! There's a whole new lingo to understand when looking for a job, particularly if, like me, you might be considering an alternative career. I'm aware that job adverts aren't designed to cater for all and have their own agendas, but, when discussing what we do, could we all try to stop speaking in job-advert-ese, please?

I still don't really understand what my brothers do all day (one regulary sends me funny pictures by text), my friends are in tax, project management and e-commerce. I have no idea what most of these things mean and I'm going to start trying to find out. By force if necessary.

In the meanwhile, I'm off to apply for 'Evaluations Manager', 'Downstream Process Development Team Leader and 'Transdermal Manager

What do you mean 'What are they?' - Don't you know?




Sunday 17 November 2013

Forget alternative careers- a career in science can be fun, well paid and very rewarding.

Apparently. 
So yeah, I can see why you're reading this post- the title sound jazzy, kind of positive and well-informed. That's exactly why I got sucked into going to a presentation 30 minutes away from work at 5.30 pm on a cold Thursday night with this exact title recently. I'm now a bit (probably disproportionately) pissed off.

I should start by saying that the two professors that spoke at this seminar for postgraduates were really good speakers, they were engaging and positive and they were giving up their time after work to speak to mis-guided post docs who might (horror of horrors) be thinking about leaving research. Or as they called it 'science'. 

That was my first bug-bear really. The fact that for them 'science' is (exclusively) synonymous with 'academic research'. They didn't even mention industry, never mind all the people who work in science but around the periphery of research. When it was brought up by an audience member that perhaps not all scientists want to do research, the first speaker just assumed that the question was about technician jobs and said that there were less and less about as things are now mostly automated.

'Automated' - kind of how I felt during the presentations, actually - although it was no fault of the speakers who did their very best to paint a rosy picture of life in academic research. Maybe I'm being unfair and I'm definitely quite tired (read 'jaded') but, as a PostDoc who's being looking for a job for nearly two years, outside of academia, it's really frustrating to here 'there are jobs out there if you're willing to go after them'. I thought and hoped that the presentation was going to be about careers in science and not 'here's how I became an academic'. For most people in academia, there is not a scarcity of people to talk to about this - our bosses, colleagues and their bosses and colleagues, I was hoping for something different.

To be fair, this blog is supposed to be about careers for scientists outside of the lab and most academics are rarely seen in a lab, unless they are looking for someone they couldn't find in the office or they've forgotten to tell you about the immiment arrival of a new student (or six). So I suppose I have a duty to sum-up this career choice too. 

How do you start?
Once you've completed your PhD or Post-Doc, there may be an area of research that you'd like to investigate further - Something your boss isn't interested in researching or they don't have the funding to research. This is when you say to yourself 'Maybe I could research it?' 

From here you can go down the heady road of applying for (very competitive) academic positions at universities where you tell them what you'd like to research and they might give you a year or two of funding until you can prove to the funding bodies that you have the nous to pull this off and they give you some more money (usually for another couple of years) or, alternatively, you can apply for (even more competitive) fellowships where the situation is much the same but you get more autonomy and prestige. The pain in the arse here is that you will 'lather, rinse and repeat' this step for the rest of your career. One set of funding or another will always be running down, running out or running away from you. The upside is that you get to do the most important thing in the world to you, your ideal job - that of an academic researcher. All academics bemoan the funding system but I think they all (at least, the ones I know) really love what they do.

So, back to this presentation: Both talks had the common theme of the requirements of hard work and luck. T o ensure the science theme, one even quoted Pasteur with 'Chance favours the prepared mind'. In other words, you need to be bloody lucky in this game, but a bit of nose-to-the-grind-working-until-4am hard work won't do you any harm. What made all this hard work so worthwhile is that they don"t mind reading papers at the weekends and staying in the lab until 8 pm (or 10 pm) because they're so obsessed with the work, because they honestly love it so much. And they genuinely seemed to.

In the interest of completeness and giving this a 'fair test', I'll add their pros and cons of their career choices, I stress, these are 'lifted', with only a little rewording for clarity, from their presentations:

Downsides:
- You go into this job because of the science, but, increasingly, the job is administration.
- You end up getting worse at the technical stuff (see above)
 - You have increasingly little control over the experiments (see above the above)
- Frustrating negative results (regardless of the hours put in)
- Agonisingly slow progress (regardless of the hours put in)
- Endless rejections (regardless of the hours put in)
- Lack of grant funding (regardless of the hours put in)
- Career insecurity (regardless of the hours put in)
- The work never finishes (regardless of the hours put in)
- Are you really making a difference? (regardless of the hours put in)
- The constant, aforementioned, begging for money
- Due to the above, there are not always the resources to do what you want.
- The financial buck stops with you: YOU need to find the money!

For those for whom this is their correct career path, so many things can make it worthwhile...

Upsides:
- You get to do your hobby for a job
- You are fascinated by your work (genuinely - not just on your CV)
- You get to show off (what you've done and the fact that you did it)
- The field is rapidly evolving
- Getting things right and getting things to work is really satisfying
- A new discovery is thrilling
- You feel (however unlikely it might be) that there IS a chance you could make a difference
- A university is actually a pretty nice place to work - it's got a young, usually international atmosphere and people are pretty friendly (most of the time - not when grants have just been refused)]
- It's rewarding to teach and communicate your work to other people (not all researchers actually like this bit)
- There's a lot of opportunity to travel if you can fit it in to your schedule
- You get a lot of independence (eventually)
- You get paid well (eventually)
- SOMETHING is usually working, so the failures get 'diluted'
-You get pretty much all the glory and recognition for others' lab work (honestly not my words!)
- No career can compete with complete freedom for discovery

Perspective is important
One of the presenters was also a doctor, a 'real' one (the kind that is actually useful on a plane or as a relative to show a rash to. You can show a PhD a rash but generally all you're going to get is 'Urgh' or 'Oh, yeah, Mike in genetics had that once'). Anyway, I digress, she was a clinician, as we say, so she had a really good sense of perspective. She basically said that she could much more easily see the point of her reseach when she met patients struggling with a disease she was trying to understand, or, she didn't find herself too bogged down in depression when an experiment failed for the seventeenth time when she has to deal with someone terminally ill. I think this is something that is really hard to do. You need to care about your research enough to put in all your hard work, but not be completely depressed when your three weeks of work come to nothing.

The overall message from one of the professors was that you need to know what you want to do if you expect to get far. This was great advice for life in general, I suppose, but when someone from the floor asked 'What if we don't?' There was much shrugging of shoulders. Fundamentally I think if you want to be an academic researcher, you probably already know, you're probably already on your way to being one. In my opinion, which I've previuosly suggested may be completely wrong (but it's all I have) I don't think this is an area people need to be or should be convinced to do - if your not taking your research home (like I'm not) and you're not happy to be in the lab until 10 pm (which I'm not-more on that below) then becoming an academic is probably not for you. I'm certain, no more than ever, that it's not for me.

I feel like I should comment on the fact that I'm actually not happy to work on weekends and until 10 pm and the fact that I feel I need to justify that feeling tells you a lot about academia and a lot about me. I feel I work hard and I like to have that recognised (rightly or wrongly) and if not recognised, then at least not made to feel like a slacker if I want to leave after a meagre 9-10 hour day and this is how I feel academic research is. That's fine and admirable if you love it and it probably is those completely dedicated people who should go for (and get) these jobs, but I feel I paid my 'dues' during my PhD and now, whilst I'm happy to work hard, it should probably be on something I enjoy.

I'll try and wrap up with a positive and say that if you're passionate and if you're resilient, you'll probably make it in this field. There are support schemes and fellowships open to help early researchers but a mentor will help. Ask around, who in your department do you admire? They'll probably be really busy but everyone loves being told they're great and giving advice, so ask them for pointers. In academia, I think people can be afraid of asking for help because we're all supposed to be experts. I think we should be experts at asking questions. If that question is 'How do I get to be you?', then you're likely to at least get an answer! 
If you get a rejection, particularly for a grant or fellowship, follow up, call them or e-mail them, and tell them why they've made a terrible mistake. The worst they're going to do is think you're arrogant or a bit rude but they just refused to give you any money to further your career, so what do you care if they like you? You'll notice I haven't included links to the grants or funding bodies for academic reserach - this is because there are loads and they're often very field specific. If you don't know who best to speak to about this, ask your departmental secretary. Like most things, it's not really their job to help you with this, but they're so busy and over-worked that it's quicker to just tell you who you need to ask than to berate you for asking them in the first place.



Something you should probably be aware of in academias is the general trend towards men in this environment - particularly the higher up you go. One slide in particular that stood out depicted the number of female professors in the major London universities, as well as some places in the countryside - it was pretty obvious that professorships are mostly male-dominated but there is a drive to change this. I don't mean that you'll get a job if you're crap if you also happen to be a woman, but you might find that the consious or unconcious bias that has lead to such complete under-representation is starting to get better. Oh yeah, if you're a potential male academic, keep applying - the stats say you're much better at showing confidence on your CV so that you can shine in person at the intervew, so genuine kudos for that one.

The seminar started to get a bit lost towards the end with off-topic talk of open-access, peer-review and maternity leave for Post-Docs, which there simply wasn't time to get into. As we inevitably veered into the rights and wrongs of competition in science and the best way to combat this I'm honestly not paraphrasing (much) when I wrap up with a quote from one of the professors with:

                'There need to be sacrifices on the altar of science and to hell with everyone else'.
 

Tuesday 12 November 2013

Bloody hell, that was intense!

It’s Tuesday, I’m back in the day-job and people keep saying ‘How was the conference?’ and ‘What did you get out of it?’ The first answer is easy – ‘It was great, there were tappy-tap-tap badges!!’ The second answer is taking a bit more thought. 

I could now write a detailed description of all the sessions I went to, explaining the goals and motivations of the panel, the attendees and ending with profound ‘take home’ message from each session. But I won’t. Mainly because a lot of people are already doing this and also because I was told that all bloggers are basically narcissists and only really write from their point of view so I thought I’d add fuel to that flame. Realistically though, this blog is supposed to be my take on finding out about new careers, so I’ll try and keep it personal.

I went out the night before (not a great idea, but it was with a very good friend!) so I missed the StoryCollider (although I intend to catch up via Storify, blogs etc.) so I was a bit tired, but very enthusiastic, when I arrived with no idea what to expect. I received my Blendology badge, which you tap with each new person to share contact information, got a speedy cup of tea and entered the conference… 


The first session, I can say without fear of exaggeration was ‘brilliant’. Salvatore Mele from CERN discussing how they work at one of the most famous ‘labs’ in the world and how they publish their data. Might sound a bit ‘meh’– but he was an excellent raconteur! He was really enthusiastic about his work, comparing the attention around the recent Nobel prize announcement to a football match and commenting on publishing papers with so many contributors.

Some excellent moments/quotes were:

His précis of a paper with 3000 authors 


His take on an awful lot of data analysing their site usage...





Describing the previously baffling Higgs field with a cartoon video  – still a bit baffling but at least I have a cool link I can send to people now.






And the fact that you can make a Lego version of their particle accelerator!

Instructions here

If you're still a sceptic, you can watch the presentation here

Then I attended two sessions that have blurred together in my mind – one on open access journals and one about peer review. These are rather hot topics in the field with the general 'ScienceGist' being – when we are fundamentally funded by the public and then published, the material we write should then be physically and mentally accessible by the public. The peer review session was looking at organisations and newer publications such as F1000, Frontiers, Rubriq and Peerage of Science that are attempting to change peer review. This is the standard current process adopted by most journals by which our colleagues must ‘approve’ our work before it’s accessed by the rest of the world. Currently the system is under scrutiny due to a number of critiques ranging from misconduct, retractions, time-delays and ‘it’s simply not the best way to do this in a modern world’. I’m tempted to agree but, as with most things, I think it’ll take time to change the status quo. There is still a lot of prestige (and funding) tied in to publication in the high-end peer-reviewed journals.

After lunch there was talk of a revolution involving such choice life advice such as:



All interspersed with ponderings on just how Alok Jha keeps his hair so voluminous?

The afternoon went by in a blur of saying NO to PDFs and deciding on some do’s and don’ts of Twitter before trundling off to the pub.

Science Showoff showed us that scientists do have a personality, as well as a love of chocolate, guitars, clocks, juggling and of disproving ghosts (or should that say LENS FLARE!).

The  next morning we were thrown in to a session on procrastination, ahem, I mean science games. They were all pretty cool, especially the game that lets you build up neuronal connections by ‘connecting the dots' to a snazzy 80s sci-fi theme tune. I have to wonder though, how many game-players are learning  and how many are just  scientists playing the game as it has less of a guilt-burden than Candy-Crush. I should stress, I honestly never play games on my computer/phone, but, after this session I’ll probably start.

Then… it was time…I had to do my session….Well, there’s the narcissism again, not my session but the session on blogging...

I introduced myself as the newbie I am, got through without getting into hyper-speed speech (too much) and mostly ‘got away with it’. I did get shot down once or twice but that actually helped things move along. We discussed what we blog on and why, who to and if we care what they think.
The floor discussions were really useful for me to understand lots of emerging opinions in the area, as well as those I disagree with, such as ‘blog comments are dead’ (Thanks Roland Krause!). Personally, I would really appreciate someone leaving comments on this blog - this whole thing is a learning exercise so I’d love to know what people think about what I’ve said and how I’ve said it – I’ve been warned that the number of comments is usually inversely proportional to how useful they are though so keep it clean, people.

Here’s the video - Yes, I have watched it back (narcissists, remember?)


After our session there was a really interesting panel discussion about staying in research and doing scientific communication at the same time. I think I’ll add it to a full post when I ‘officially’ cover scientific communication careers but needless-to-say, it seems that you can ‘have your cake and eat it’ (although there was no cake) but you can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) expect your institution to understand/be supportive, especially at the start.

The final session I attended covered the idea behind the XKCD comic Up Goer Five project. In this, a rocket scientist described his rocket or (Up Goer) using the ‘top ten hundred words people use most often’. As ‘thousand’ wasn’t in it, you can see how they start to immediately rewrite their description using simpler words – ‘door’ instead of hatch,  ‘people-box’ instead of capsule or cockpit and (my personal favourite) for the helium store – 'things holding that kind of air that makes your voice funny.' It sounds a bit pointless until you realise it’s a good way to stop using unnecessary words as ‘standard’. I confess, I’m really guilty  of this – I’ve already used the word raconteur today, but it’s a good exercise to go to their website and try it out. Try describing your job without the words associate, manager, web, retail, engineer or project’ or spaghetti Bolognese without ‘cow’, ‘beef’ or ‘meat’

On the 'What did you get out of it' stream-of-consciousness, well, that's going to take some time but one thing that I found really interesting was the big idea of the conference: Impact. For those who don’t work in science and don’t have to write grants (lucky you, when you read 'grant' think ‘written begging for money’) nowadays scientists have to outline the ‘impact’ of their research. I write it like that because the impact of my research is often very limited at the start, but doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

For example, your average Joe isn’t ‘impacted’ by Bragg’s law, they couldn’t care less about X-ray diffraction, they don’t know who Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick or James Watson are, but they probably know what DNA is, and their lives and education will have been shaped by the early fundamental science that lead to Bragg’s law. How does your average physicist assert the impact of an equation that could, someday, have enormous uses and ramifications?

Answer: They could use scientific communication.

They could make people ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the seemingly magical function of a gyroscope. They could make chocolate mayonnaise to describe surfactants. They could enter schools and discuss the interesting facets of a career in science. They could blog about their research to the public. They could tweet from the lab or a conference. They could do all manner of things to show the funding bodies that they have IMPACT. They could go the extra mile to show that their research isn’t just a bunch of self-serving superiority-complexed people swanning around the corridors of their local institution. If we want, expect and need the government (i.e. taxpayers) to fund us then we need to be part of their lives as much as the local community centre, the playground, the museums and the art centres or, when it comes to chopping funding, who do you think will come first?

Wednesday 6 November 2013

Where two worlds collide…

I’ve recently started using social media to investigate science, rather than just as an outlet for the more gossipy side of my nature and I have to say, I felt a bit like Alice through the looking-glass. There’s a whole world of research and opinions going on that the large majority of researchers simply aren’t aware of.

The way it’s worked for me is that I’ve started following just a few people via Twitter and quickly been linked to blogs, articles (the difference is something of a contested issue) and research sites on a variety of topics. You get a constant (sometimes too constant) stream of suggestions and, from there, you decide what you want to read, watch or hear. 

The first thing that strikes you about the research promoted via Twitter is how concise you need to be. We’ve all pored over an abstract just to try and understand what a paper is about, only to come away none the wiser – Twitter gives you 140 characters (including your link) in which to get over a title that captures the readers’ attention enough for them to click on the link. This can be done with scientific language
or, more commonly, a quirky by-line that you can’t ignore
and, before you know it, you’re reading an article on an area of science that you never would have read had you merely used your list of usual suspects of reading matter. 

This leads me to my second ‘huh’ moment regarding Twitter - You get an insight into much more varied information than via other means, as well as more varied ways of writing about science. Recently, I’ve learnt about reindeer eyes and lion-fish amongst the occasional cute squirrel picture.
This has reassured me that I do indeed find science fascinating and awe-inspiring and that perhaps my recent slump is more to do with the repetitive nature of reading dry documents, mainly within your own field, rather than ‘falling-out-of-love’ with science in general. It’s really refreshing to read an article and then feel the need to explain it, share it and dissect it with someone else. I think as scientists we could learn from the way blogs are written. Generally, they aim to keep the readers’ interest and not just educate them – can we take this approach and apply it to the reporting of core science? I’m not suggesting that the mechanism of the Heck reaction should (or could) be rendered jargon-less, but we could try to make it, at least, interesting to a broader audience where possible. There will always be ‘niche’ research that can’t be made ‘friendly’ but I think it’s all too easy to get lost in the tiny field in which you work and forget that there are other things going on outside of your lab, your field and, dare I say it, your discipline. We’re supposed to be professional ‘learners’ – learn something.  

Finally, and fundamentally I think, a blog about particular research can be read before the original article is printed and distributed. A tweet about the same article can be written quicker than someone can read the blog and it can be re-tweeted faster than...you get the idea.

Communication is now fast and science needs to keep up. Research has always been a pain-staking process, and I think sometimes it needs to be, to ensure all the necessary controls are carried out and the research stands up (see retractionwatch), but we need to get better and quicker at communicating our goals, research and results and it looks like the internet is now providing a conduit for this. The unregulated nature of blogs and tweets could be both social media’s downfall and its saving grace for the communication of scientific research and ideas- You don’t need peer-review for Twitter, you don’t submit a grant for Google+, you put your idea down and you wait. If people like it, you find out immediately. Is using social media for research a bit self-satisfying and narcissistic? Probably. Is it a scary way to get often brutally honest critique? Definitely. Could it be the start of a new way of dynamic and responsive communication between scientists? I think so, watch this space.

I’d like to end with a ‘reader-beware’. Keeping an eye on Twitter and blogs is a time-consuming affair if, like me, you try to make sure that you read everything that looks enticing. As more people use this method of communication to give readers a ‘sneak-peak’ into their research and the research they find interesting, I’m afraid that the information might start to fade into the ‘noise’. If we become bombarded by this head-line and that research topic every 3-4 minutes then, a. how will we know what is worth reading and b. how will we ever find the time to carry out the research! As a lab-based scientist, I spend very little time in front of a computer screen, I've generally liked it that way. How in the world, then, can I possibly keep up?

I don’t know, to be honest, but I’m going to try!

In at the deep-end...

As part of my ongoing investigation into 'life-beyond-the-lab', I'm attending SpotOn London 2013 this week. Hell, I'm going to be a panellist. This is scary for several reasons:

                           1. I've been blogging for a grand total of 2 months
                           2. I've no idea if I know enough to even be going to this conference
                           and 
                           3. Who the hell cares what I think?

Some back story I think...

After deciding to look into the area of science communication, journalism, outreach, whatever you want to call it, I came upon recurrent tweets on some fancy-pants science communication conference. Then I looked closer at the people tweeting about said 'fancy-pants' conference and noticed genuine excitement
and enthusiasm
about the upcoming event. Then I noticed that the event is sold out every year and the tickets go out in batches (nod to Glastonbury there - I'm imagining shady characters in sports-coats selling and buying extra tickets in the Bloomsbury area) to ensure people get a chance to go. 

This was not your average 3 key-note speakers, old-boys-club-during-the-tea-break followed by one- awkward-glass-of-wine-before-I-leave conference - people seemed to actually want to go!

I ummed and aahed about buying my ticket during the first two ticket sales slots - at £100 I wasn't sure I should risk buying my ticket before asking my boss and I wasn't sure if he'd allow me to go during work hours (I'm currently trying to save my days off for potential interviews so was in a bit of a pickle). 

With each sales slot, the tension mounted due to the clever use of Twitter by the organisers to let us know that the tickets were dripping away...
then, I grew a pair (metaphorically, of course). I decided that I should buy a ticket, in fact, I needed to buy a ticket - who knows what I might learn! 

On my way to work the next day I was deciding on the best way to convince my boss that I should go to this, scanning the morning Twitter-feed, I stumbled upon a tweet that suggested that maybe I could get a ticket to this thing for free (and hopefully then know someone there!). 

Ticket cancelled with <6 minutes to go!

So, a hasty read of a blogpost,  an (hopefully not too desperate) email and a cancelled ticket reservation (I wasn't too hopeful I'd get a reply, so I hedged my bets) later I was rewarded with not just a place but a chance to help organise a session!

The generosity and helpfulness of this crowd really knows no bounds!


Now, here I am, looking forward to a new challenge, meeting new people and seeing just what people think about blogs and more 'casual' online communication between scientists. I think this is what we need to get past - the fact that because blogging, tweeting and the like are not peer-reviewed or mostly even regulated in any way, that they can't be 'valuable' or for 'proper' science.

We've had one Skype meeting, across three countries and come up with two GoogleDocs. I've realised that almost all people feel variations on my opening three points, about most things, particularly on blogging, science and speaking at conferences, so I'm going to throw myself into this! We're going to create a Storify of the event and I'm sure there'll be follow up blogposts.

I'm also attending the Science ShowOff 'cabaret' of science on the Friday night, although that may involve more gin and less learning.  Or more gin and more learning. Definitely more gin.

I'll probably have more questions than answers, but now I've realised that it's in the British Library and not the British Museum, I know I won't be all alone, next to the big lion statue thinking it's just me that has lots of questions about the value of science going all 'business-casual' online.

Wish me luck?