Endless Possibilities v3.0

I’m a big fan of the idea of online identities.  Like it or not, our internet activities leave a trail that is intrinsically linked with our real world identities. Without buying into the hysteria of bloggers or facebook users being fired because of something they wrote on the internet (and it does happen), the tools to asses someones online identity exist and are easy to use.  Its called a search engine.

So what can contribute to your online identity?  Well anything you do on the internet under your own name or some simple variation thereof.  For example: Facebook, Amazon (wishlist, product reviews), forums or file sharing sites, Twitter, FriendFeed, personal websites.  The list is endless.  With a little care and attention to detail, it is possible to control the information available about you on the internet to the casual searcher.  The question may well be why should you bother?

Have a look at this article on Science Careers about employers searching the internet for job candidates information (H/T Lou @ A Scientist’s Life).  41% of hiring managers from the UK that were interviewed for this survey say that information they’ve found online has lead to potential candidates being disqualified from a job search.  There is no reason to think that this number will get any smaller in the future as more and more things happen online.    And if you’re not searching for a job, think of the impact on your current job or studies.  If you’ve added coworkers or line managers as friends on social networking sites, you’ve invited them into your community and allowed them to see what ever you post.  It starts when you’re a student: when you complain about classes or something a lecturer has done, it seems a little naive to do so in a forum such as Facebook where you’ve invited that lecturer to be your friend, where your lecturer can see it.  While it may not be a big deal to vent or blow off steam on the internet while you’re an undergrad, what happens if you do it in a job?  The answer is simply unpredictable, but I would assume that it would not have a good outcome on your career.

I’m not trying to scare people, but privacy settings exist for a reason.

So what can you do to sort out your online identity?

1. Learn about privacy settings for the websites you use.  Use them to protect yourself.  Remember that what passes as fun conversation between you and your friends, may be viewed as offensive or immature to a potential boss.  And not everyone needs to see the drunk showing off your underwear photos.

2. Consider using a pseudonym.  Do you really need to contribute to that forum as the ‘real you’?   Does your photosharing website have to identify everyone in each picture by their full name?  It doesn’t take much to divorce much of your internet activity from a search for your full name.

3. Consider the implications for other people of the things you put on the net.  If you upload photos of your friends, are they OK with the fact that you’ve identified them?

4.  Moderate what other people are writing to you.  If you read the Science Careers article, you’ll see that comments written by friends, family and colleagues of job candidates have been thought of as reasons to remove someone from an interview list.  Yes, they’re saying that how other people interact with you online may affect your chances at a job.  You can ask people to revise their comments, or delete them in most contexts.  You can also diffuse conflict rather than exacerbating it.

It isn’t about stopping people enjoying the internet, social networking or any of the activities available.  Its just about not letting those activities interfere with real life.

You could try calculating your online identity using this excellent calculator.  I’m digitally distinct – i.e. the first 3 pages of Google hits for my full name are things mainly about me, and things that I’m happy for people to read about me.

Polymers are fascinating molecules, of commercial and environmental significance.  Modern polymer chemistry reflects an incredible diversity of reactions, functions and structures, most of which defies traditional classification.  In their simplest form, polymers are molecules made up of many repeating units called monomers, similar to how a necklace might be made of different beads.   Polymers and plastics pervade our planet in an alarming way – as functional materials and polluting waste.  But it was not always that way – polymers are very much a 20th century phenomena.

Prior to the 1900s, polymers were thought to be aggregates of small molecules.  Actually, chemists believed that there was a finite size beyond which molecules would simply fall apart.  There was also the notion that a compound must have one formula, that a compound had to be pure.  For example water was H2O, not H4O2 or H8O4.   The notion that molecules had to be discrete small structures was perhaps an artifact of synthesis and characterization techniques that were used.    Small organic molecules (those containing carbon, hydrogen and a handful of other elements) were generally thought to be pure if crystallized.  That’s OK for things like aspirin that are solid at room temperature and can crystallize, but not universally adequate.

In 1838, a chemist called Gerardus Johannes Mulder  conducted elemental analysis of some biological molecules including albumin[1]. He managed to establish that the weight of a molecule of egg albumin had to be in excess of 55,000 because that was the mass necessary to have one whole phosphorus atom and one whole sulfur atom per molecule.  It is, of course, not possible to have fractions of atoms in molecules.  This was larger than any molecule considered, and was quite a controversial discovery.  In the mid 1800s, hemoglobin was discovered and crystallized, also a very large molecule.

Staudinger was a German chemist who worked on a variety of chemical projects before beginning study of rubber.  He proposed the idea the substances like starch, rubber and proteins were made up of repeating units, now called monomers and joined together with strong covalent bonds[2].  Again, this was controversial because other chemists at the time believed such substances to be aggregates of small molecules, held together by weaker intermolecular forces.  One implication of Staudinger’s work was the idea that a molecule could have many different formulae and still be essentially the same thing.  For example, it is difficult to distinguish a polymer molecule with 1000 monomer units joined together from one with 1001 units.

The first identified polymers were resins, gums and biopolymers, but eventually chemists worked out how to synthesise molecules and polymers such as neoprene rubber and nylon were created and exploited for a vast array of uses.

[1] Mulder, Journal für praktische Chemie 16, 129 (1839)

[2] Staudinger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Staudinger

Coming up: classifying polymers, polymers in medicine, food and the environment, in however many parts it takes!

The second semester is harder than the first.  The first semester is spent trying to get ‘back in’ to term time, teaching and the minor traumas that characterise the students being back.  With more time to prepare before the semester and the advantages of being well rested, the first semester is  a long hard slog till Christmas, but not half as hard as second semester.  The second semester goes off like a bomb in the post-Christmas exam marking frenzy, while everyone watches available free time be sucked into a whirlpool of meetings and marking.  There may only be 10 weeks until Easter then a couple of weeks of semester afterwards, but a lot happens in those 10 weeks, a lot more than in the same 10 weeks of the first semester.

For many students the second semester is their last semester at university and they are faced with the twin anxieties of planning for the future, and passing the present.  For staff that means that the typical teaching loads are supplemented with reading drafts of dissertations and project reports, finding more spare half-hours for a quick chat about this or that, opportunity or problem, and ultimately marking all the stuff that comes in as quickly as reasonable.  And once the second semester ends we deal with the remainder of the marking and meetings.  That takes a few weeks then before we know it we’re planning the next academic year, with barely time to catch our breath from the previous one.

My teaching continues in to August this year, fortunately not at the pace of the normal semester, but having any scheduled things over the summer is strange.    There is something about a few weeks of relatively unstructured time that just make things like grant writing and getting into the lab a little bit easier.  I’m sure I use up all my planning skills over the 2 semesters and need the summer to be a little disorganized (or at least a little less accountable for disorganization).  It isn’t that the summer is less productive (uninterrupted time counts for quite a bit in terms of ‘getting things done’), it’s different though, and necessary.  I would find it physically impossible to continue at the rate of term time throughout the whole year. This is largely where one of my concerns over the concept of 2 year degrees lies – I don’t disappear for a long summer vacation, I try to work steadily but perhaps more sustainably while I get the chance.  It is in my best interests to get as much teaching prep sorted in advance as possible.  If we had three trimesters, would that even be possible?  Every semester would start like the second semester does, and we’d flounder quickly without the time to plan and regroup.  I don’t really feel the need to defend the non-teaching period that is typical of the academic year, anyone who has worked in a university science department or lives with an academic understands that it isn’t an extended vacation.  Still, I’m looking forward to spring.

[Just for the record, last summer I moved house, submitted a 10,000 word dissertation for a teaching qualification, redesigned the lab course for a module, supervised a Nuffield student for 8 weeks, did the initial work for a teaching innovation project, and prepared some lectures for a new module, amongst other things.  With a week off to move house, and 4 days actual 'holiday' - complete with hotel and everything,  I didn't make too much impact on the annual leave.]

The depressing proliferation of reality tv shows continues, interspersed with the odd stunning documentary such as the BBC/Jim Al-Khalili’s ‘Chemistry – a Volatile History‘  or the BBC/Iain Stewart ‘How the Earth Made Us‘.  We’ll not read anything into the choice of channels for the two programs – BBC 4 for the former, BBC2 for the latter.  Anyway, they were both very good programs, diamonds in the reality rough.

The shows that really bug me at the moment are all the reality cooking shows – turn your living room into a restaurant for the evening and try not to give anyone food poisoning, or master-I really really really wanna be a chef-chef.  The thing that really gets me about Master Chef is you have young people who are doing career X, and probably doing fairly well at it.  But they’ve got a secret desire – they want to feed people, and the odd dinner party is not enough to fulfil their ambition.  Rather than taking a conventional route via college, training in kitchens and progressing through the profession from the bottom up, these people want to fast track to the top of the profession by way of Master Chef, or The Restaurant, or one of those other shows that hand out dreams as prizes.

Can we stop for a minute and consider what might happen if we had ‘Master Chemist’?  I can see it now: 18 contestants with A-level chemistry who really really believe they can –insert lofty research goal here (cure cancer/solve climate change/create clean energy from nothing/feed the world by yummy polymer products)–if they’re only just given the chance to demonstrate how awesome they are.  Perhaps they might start out with some basic tasks like building an infrared spectrometer from some washing up liquid bottles and sticky backed plastic, and progress through the complexities of the total synthesis of marine sponge extract ten billionth. I could see the chemistry equivalent of Greg Wallace bellowing ‘ow it’s a great vial of product’, in an ‘intellectual’ accent of course.  Instead of the trip to a professional kitchen, they could do a 6 hour stint in a real laboratory where they could take over a bench and run a column or something.

Or we might consider ‘The Restaurant’ where couples compete to win a restaurant franchise with Raymond Blanc and investors.  Would the equivalent be chemistry wannabes competing to win a professorship and large startup grant?  We could have tasks like grant writing, dealing with difficult students, navigating department politics, and how to micromanage postdocs into submission/depression/quitting.

It all sounds pretty daft for a science career though, but does it really take more training to become a top chemist over a top chef?  Once you’ve mastered the basic skills in each profession, you are limited only by inspiration and investment.  It would be silly to say that because you have A-level chemistry you are capable of being a chemistry professor with 6 weeks training, but isn’t it just as silly to say that because you cook yourself dinner each night you are capable of being a top chef?  Perhaps Big Brother is a better model for a science reality show – just a popularity contest with evictions at every stage…

I thought I’d follow up my two conference posts by talking briefly about a couple of conferences that I think get it right in terms of participation and keeping that ‘conference vibe’ going after the event itself.

These two conferences generally follow the ‘unconference format’ where some or all of the sessions are proposed at the conference or in advance.  At first I thought this was strange, thinking about the length of time I’d need to sort myself out for any conference session, then I realized that the spontaneity was the key point – with less time to prepare a stuffy powerpoint presentation, session leaders had to get audience participation.  (trust me, I’m working on an ‘un-lecture format for my lectures but that is another post).   A proper unconference is a risky undertaking because you don’t know what you are getting before you go.  I can’t see many people parting with the registration fee to go to a conference of unknown content. This is where I think Science Online 2010 got it so right.  They did it all – they had a keynote speaker, and they used the best tools the web has to offer to build up a conference program in advance.  Through wikis, blogs, twitter, facebook, email, and general arm twisting, a diverse and vibrant science communication program was created.  I’ll own up to having attended Science Online 2009 which was organized in a similar manner and found it fantastic.  This year I couldn’t go for a variety of reasons, but would love to go next year again.

It is about more than just letting the participants figure out the program for themselves.  I appreciate that when a bunch of exceptional communicators get together, pretty spectacular things are going to happen, but that isn’t possible for other subjects.  I can just imagine the difficulties involved with trying to get the old guard of chemistry academics into wikis enough to organise themselves into a conferenced.  It just isn’t going to happen.  The beautiful thing about Science Online 2010 is that the majority of the sessions were recorded, video and audio.  So anyone who was there and missed a parallel session, or anyone who wasn’t there can catch up and join in the conversation.  Issues about unpublished work aside, why aren’t we doing this more at conferences?  The technology exists, but not the initiative to actually do it.  It wouldn’t be unreasonable to charge a small fee for access to such materials either if thats the concern.

I’ve also been to two ScienceOnline London conferences in 2008 and2009.  The first was better because it was more unconferency, the second more diverse in content so there was less that specifically interested me.  One commonality between all of these conferences is the participants.  I read many of their blogs, and have corresponded through comments, facebook, twitter, email for years.  They are a most enthusiastic bunch, generally inclusive and happy to chatter.  I’ve followed some academics work for years, but at no point has there been an opportunity to interact directly with them in the same way, whether electronically or on the conference circuit.  Why on earth not?  I know part of the answer is to do with being too busy, but if I can make time to exchange a couple of tweets about some polymer chemistry lectures with the diverse bunch that follow me on twitter, I think I can make time to talk chemistry to someone in a different time zone.  The lack of prior interactions inhibit communication at conferences, just as much as the restrictive format does.  Where would be the harm to devote a couple of sessions in a conference to discussion like the Dalton or Faraday discussions of the RSC?  Where would be the harm in having a couple of sessions where participants discuss the recent developments in a field and consider more broadly the challenges that face the field?

So, I’d like more conferences to consider online elements to the programs, be it online chat sessions with a common topic, streaming/podcasts of talks, engaging more with web2.0, engaging more with the changing audience that participates, and finding ways to break free of the ‘traditional’ format.  More conference organizers should look at the precedent being set by Science Online 2010 – they could learn a lot from the model.

Update: if you want some idea of what it looks like when a lot of people engage with a conference before, during and after the fact, have a look at this list at A Blog Around The Clock – coverage of Science Online 2010.

Rob commented on the previous post:

“Provided you have a paper accepted, and the conference doesn’t clash with other commitments (e.g. teaching), what are the other barriers to participation apart from the registration fee and travel costs? These are the only obstacles that prevent me from attending far more conferences than I do! I’ll enlarge on this in a blog I’m working on.”

I look forward to reading his thoughts when he’s written his blog, but my response to this seemed too long to be a comment so I thought I’d make it a post.

I can’t grant the provision that a paper has been accepted for my response.  If I have got to the point of submitting something for a conference, I have to have overcome the majority of the barriers to participation before submitting the abstract.  Essentially, I have decided that I will go to the conference if my submission is accepted.

Travel costs are a significant consideration but others include ease of travel, suitability of location for a single female traveller and travel time versus conference duration.   Where is the accommodation going to be? How do I get from the conference venue to the accommodation? When will the latest session finish? Can I get back to my hotel safely after a social event that finishes at midnight?  Lets not even talk about the conference where I ended up wandering around a city in southern France on my own at 3 am (sheer dumb luck Mr Potter), or the conference in a major German city where all the restaurants around the hotel and conference venue closed before the final session of each day finished, or the conference in a major Canadian city based on a university campus where the first session of the day started so early that it was impossible to get the breakfast part of the bed-and-breakfast accommodation provided.

When considering the registration fee I will attempt to make some estimate of ‘value for money’ and look at the duration of the conference, included extras such as catering, social activities, outline program (because this is pre-abstract submission) and make some estimate of worth.   I have been to conferences with rather extensive social programs that were included in the registration fee, increasing it beyond a reasonable level (in my opinion) and with no option to opt-out of those activities.  Other than social networking opportunities, those events offered little in terms of scientific relevance to the meeting.  Some may well argue that this is the point of such activities; I would argue that they are a luxury that many of us cannot afford.

I will also think about how I perceive the field – is the conference going to be too ‘old boys network-y’ for my taste?  Is it going to present significant challenges for networking because of the closed ranks nature of the field?  Never underestimate the power of introduction by someone with reputation in the field.  I am more likely to consider a conference if people I know will be going as it will be more worthwhile.

When considering the timing of the conference, I will make an estimate of level of hassle.  Obviously the conference should not clash with teaching commitments but I have other considerations.   Weekend conferences are often a route around work/teaching clashes and 2009 I attended 7 weekend conferences or courses.  That’s 14 weeks where I worked without a day off (in reality I worked more than 14 weeks in 2009 without a day off due to open/visit days and other work related crises).  That’s quite a big quantity of neglect to my family and non-work commitments.  I do myself no favours at certain times of the academic year by not taking time off.  Conferences are tiring and stressful as mentioned in the previous post and therefore lead to a likely loss in productivity in the days after them.  Also, the act of preparing what ever submission I have chosen to make will take time – is the conference at a time of year when I can spend a couple of days preparing slides, or designing a poster?

Removing my personal situation from the equation for a moment – what about people with greater family commitments?  Participation at conferences is governed by child care arrangements for a great many academics.  Some fields seem to do better than others with regard to child care on site, but others refuse to acknowledge that academics may have children.  This barrier could be removed by offering bursaries to cover the additional child care costs that might be associated with being out of the family home for a few days.  And it isn’t just children – many academics are carers for dependents of one sort or another.

Ultimately a judgement has to be made prior to submitting an abstract on whether a conference represents value for time and money.  Barriers to conference participation are personal, and there will never be a ‘one size fits all’ answer to the issue, but we have to start somewhere and I think internet technologies are a good place to begin.

And I’ve not even started on the barriers to being able to submit an abstract…

I’m happy to own up to something: I don’t like going to conferences.  Out of the handful of conferences I have been to since starting my PhD I have found them frustrating, dull, stressful, too busy, too long, too short, too overloading, too expensive, too broad, too specific…really it was easier to please Goldilocks with porridge than me with a conference.  I can, however, rank my general distain for conferences in priority order.

Firstly I dislike conferences that are too broad, and those that are too specific.  This is partly due to the nature of my research – I fit in between a couple of large areas with related interests in several others.  It is extremely difficult to cultivate a reputation/network/whatever you want to call it in multiple areas at the same time, and it is probably a bit daft to try. Large conferences offer me the opportunity to hit on many areas of interest, small conferences offer me the opportunity to hit on one aspect in particular, neither represent value for money in terms of hits per registration fee.

That brings me on to the cost issue.  Conferences are expensive, in terms of fees, accommodation and travel costs, and in terms of time.  Is it really necessary in an online world to require people to travel half way around the globe to listen to professors pontificate about work already published because they are too worried about being scooped to talk about the work in progress?  Would it not be cheaper to have an online element where participants could listen to the talks and view the powerpoints from the comfort of their own office?  Would it not also encourage greater participation?  Simple fact: as a new academic I do not have the funding available to go to conferences.  Even if I did have some spare money in the budget, it would not be going anywhere near conferences whose registration fees are over £100, and which require expensive travel/accommodation arrangements.

Of course, someone will try to argue that watching presentations online defeats the purpose of a conference – to network.  Well, can we all be honest for a moment?  Are the networking opportunities presented at conferences actually useful or are they more use for a boozy night out courtesy of the boss?  Poster sessions – too big, too crowded, coffee breaks – down time needed, not chit chat and prof impressing, lunchtime – eating.  I do more networking via Twitter from my office than I ever have at a conference.

I don’t like conferences because they are difficult to get into if you are an outsider to the field, expensive and offer limited opportunities to network in an online world, and I think I’m going to give myself a break from feeling guilty about it.

July: was mostly quiet, my parents visited and, oh yeah, we bought a house and moved! July was therefor the true start of the BBQ summer as we had no cooker for 4 weeks.

I blogged about the Best American Science Writing 2008, and undergraduate laboratory adventures.

August: was a little more busy as I had a Nuffield project student start working on a synthetic project making new dendrimers. I was also trying frantically to complete my Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Portfolio for September 1st submission. I managed to fit in a quick trip to London to Science Online London 2009, and also saw the Carbon Rapture exhibition at Burlington House.  I blogged about this and little else in August!

September: was busy again. I submitted my TLHEP portfolio, my project student wrapped up his work with some good successes (sometimes figuring out which avenues are not worth pursuing is as good as any positive result), and the teaching prep started seriously.  I managed a pitiful single blog post in September which included one of the coolest bits of chemistry of 2009 – the AFM of pentacene.

October: was a blur of teaching, meetings, teaching and more teaching. Seriously, not much was done in October other than work. I had approx. 25 contact hours per week, and that included Monday and Tuesday 9 – 5pm with no break unless negotiated with colleagues.  There was no blogging in October!  I did make it to the third Nesta Crucible Laboratory however, in Devon, which was a nice break.

November: started much as October ended – drowning in work, but by week 7 of the semester things eased up and I got to have my life back.  I attended the Crucible Alumni event in London, submitted a couple of funding applications (one alone, the rest with collaborators) and blogged about science gadgets, the need to be polite on blogs so as not to alienate people, and social network overwhelm.

December: and the run up to Christmas is always a strange period.  I survived the work Christmas party, and blogged about lab skills and the first half of this year in review navel gazing.   I also discovered two half decent shows on TV – Paradox (BBC) and Defying Gravity (BBC).

2009 was pretty busy, not necessarily bloggy busy, but real life busy.  We’ll see what next year is like!

As all the cool bloggers are doing it, I thought I’d post a summary of 2009.  I’ve included what I blogged about in each month as I didn’t do that much blogging!

January: Last Christmas I was looking forward, somewhat nervously, of heading off to Science Online 2009 in North Carolina.  Travelling in January, particularly to the US, is not something to be happily anticipated but the conference was very good and it was fantastic meeting so many of the bloggers that I’ve read for the last few years.  Sadly I’m not off to Science Online 2010 but I’m sure it will be great. I blogged about Haggis, introducing faculty to science blogging, and talking about science, based on a book picked up in North Carolina that mentioned the UK parliament.

February: February was filled with work related things such as seminars and teaching.  I did manage to give an internal seminar at the university on science blogging called “Can Science Blogging Enhance Your Research Life“.  I blogged about socks, literature searching, my inability to remember passwords, and the aforementioned talk.

March: March was also filled with work related things, including a day at the Potteries Museum in Hanley with a Jack the Ripper, Forensic Science theme.  I spent an interesting day dressed vaguely like a Victorian woman, telling people all about fibre analysis (and being mistaken for a very life like wax work at one point). I blogged about the colour of Nature Chemistry, EPSRC peer review, treating organic animals with homeopathy, and GCSE science exam papers.

April: involved a trip to London – my first trip on the London Eye and a visit to Kew gardens to see the magnolias.

I was also lucky enough to be selected for the Nesta Crucible program so attended lab 1 near London a few weeks later.  I blogged a blog roll in three parts 1, 2 and 3, the duty of scientists to engage with the public, my Chemistry in its element podcast, asparagus, and called for posts for the May Scientiae carnival.

May: brought the end of the Easter vacation and a return to teaching.  I did fit in a quick conference trip though, up to Dunfermline to the Emerging Analytical Professional’s conference, giving a talk about managing your online identity, science blogging and the like.  I hosted the May Scientiae blog carnival in two parts 1 and 2, and blogged about confusing chemistry words, train rides, fireworks, and chemistry demonstrations.

June: was the end of term, Nesta Crucible Lab 2 in Lancaster, a short break to the Lake District and a work related trip to the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre which is a chemistry themed museum in Widnes. I also stopped blogging over at Nature Network with one last post, and took up blogging here on my own site.  Over here I blogged about Science Scouts badges, and keeping the libel laws out of science