Community

Earlier today fellow OWW blogger Cameron Neylon gave a talk at the Institutional Web Managers Workshop in Aberdeen and did so, not only for those present at the venue, but also to anyone with internet access.

Cameron set out to stream the talk via webcast, have updates via FriendFeed and also microblogging via Twitter.

The presentation was viewed by quite a few folks and many participated on FriendFeed. Cameron even stated that he noticed 20 new followers on his twitter account!

Giving talks can be stressful as is, so this requires some congratulating for the effort. Great work Cameron!

As many of you may have noticed, we’ve been adding a few new features to OWW’s side bar over the last few days. Among them you’ll find the quick nav, the feedback box and invite box.

Let me go over some of these new features so that you can take full advantage of them. Keep in mind that some of these features are only available for OWW community members. If you are not yet an OWW member, feel free to join us.

The Quick Nav
The quick nav is a cool dropdown select menu that displays your last 15 or so moves around OWW. This comes in handy when you are bouncing between pages. Just click and you’re there.

Bookmarking tools
We’ve added a few little icons that link to bookmarking tools like Connotea, CiteULike and del.icio.us. This will allow you to quickly save the revision of the page you’re currently looking at with all the relevant content required by these bookmarking services.

The Feedback box
As a way to further interact with our visitors and community, we’ve set up a quick feedback box that allows anyone to let us know their opinion regarding a specific question we happen to display within that box. It’s just a matter of typing in your short comment and click! It’s that simple.

 

Invite a friend
We are always interested in having new and interesting people join OpenWetWare. Therefore, we’ve set up a quick invite box that allows current OWW community members to invite their friends/colleagues to join.

We are cooking up the next batch of cool features… Do you have any ideas or suggestions for features you’d like to see developed/implemented on OWW? Let us know!

Tomorrow, July 10th at noon EDT, we’ll be having another one of our open town hall meetings at OWW. Anyone is invited to take part in the meeting, either via conference call or online chat. Details to get connected can be found here.

This month’s meeting will be focused around Lab Notebooks. We’ll be discussing what has already been done at OpenWetWare and what features should be added (or removed!), among other things…

If you happen to be interested in this topic, feel free to join in on the conversation and share your thoughts. If you can’t make it to the meeting, you can either leave your comments on this blog post or on the wiki, here.

Jonathan over at Working the bench has just recently posted about how impressed he is by OpenWetWare and the available protocols:

It takes a little digging, but the website is really sweet simply because it gives you the feel that, for any given protocol, you are looking at something that works. It’s been tested, validated, and in many cases even commented on and modified by any number of additional people.

Jonathan makes a good point here where he mentions that you are looking at something that has been tested, validated and in many times worked on collaboratively by a group of OWW members.

What Jonathan doesn’t mention is that although OWW is a great resource for protocols, there are other great features like the materials section, indexed reference sources and above all, a large community of researchers from all over the world.

Every year since 2004, groups of students have been getting together to compete in what is now known as iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition.

Many of the groups set up camp on OpenWetWare to work collaboratively on their projects. Doing so allows others to follow their work from the early brainstorming process to the daily grind of lab work via lab notebooks.

Past and present projects can be found on the OWW iGEM page or at the official iGEM website.

Piotr Przanowski from the University of Warsaw’s 2008 team has produced a brilliant illustration that summarizes the iGEM spirit:

And… graduates with his PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT. Jason was joined by other OWW stallwarts including Dr. Reshma Shetty, Dr. Barry Canton, Dr. Ty Thomson, and Dr. Samantha Sutton as they completed their degrees.

Congratulations to all of them.

OWW recently joined The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS), a growing grassroots network of universities, scientific societies, science centers and museums, government agencies, advocacy groups, media, schools, educators, businesses, and industry — basically, anyone who cares about science and is concerned about national scientific literacy. COPUS and its participants lead the way in the celebration of the Year of Science 2009 (YoS09) — a national, year-long celebration of science to engage the public and improve public understanding about how science works, why it matters, and who scientists are. Read more about the Coalition’s activities here.

Natalie Kuldell, OWW member and an instructor in Biological Engineering at MIT, is coordinating the Boston-area COPUS hub. The hub is open to anyone who is interested in networking and partnering with great institutions around town (such as WGBH, Boston’s Museum of Science, and lots of others) to cross-promote activities like Science Cafes, DIY bio groups, and work on the Encyclopedia of Life/Encyclopedia of Species. If you’d like to see science moved from the fringe to center stage, COPUS is a great place to get involved.

Feel free to email Natalie (nkuldell at mit dot edu) for more information about the Boston hub. Participation is open to anyone in the science community in the Boston area (or anyone within driving distance), the more the merrier! After hosting a great kick-off meeting in early May, the Boston COPUS Hub will be holding its second mixer event on July 29th at the WGBH studios in Somerville to preview the summer NovaNOW series. In addition, the Boston folks have a third mixer and showcase planned for Sept 26th at the MIT Museum as part of its anniversary celebration. If you’re not in the Boston area, there may be a COPUS hub in your area.

Natalie writes, “My experiences with this group have been inspiring. There are so many incredible folks involved, doing exciting educational and engaging work. Hope you’ll consider joining the fun!”

NPR’s RadioWorkshop ran a segment on Tuesday’s Morning Edition on the MIT 2006 iGEM team’s work on a banana and mint scented E. coli (aka Eau d’Coli) … all done on OWW. The report featured a graduating senior, Stephen Payne, and OpenWetWare’s own (also soon to be graduating with her doctorate degree!) Reshma Shetty.

From the NPR page:

Even if you’re already familiar with the results, E. coli which has shed its rather distinctive scent in exchange for mint and banana, the RadioWorks report is well worth a listen.

In addition to the great report, a Biological Engineering “theme song” is sung at the end of the report in the style of a Gilbert and Sullivan ditty.

Here’s a link to the story and the downloadable audio:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90014997

From the report:

“…I’d rather be swapping jeans.
It’s mankind’s only fighting chance,
Designer genes, not denim pants.
We’ll stop disease and greenhouse gases,
Sequencing nucleic acids.

We’ve cracked the code, we’ve seen the light.
We’re building stuff, we’re building life…

The road ahead is clear,
Because we’re Bio-Engineers!

We’re building stuff!”

Check out the full list of all users at Special:Listusers

We also invite you to join our discussion or feedback mailing lists at OpenWetWare:Mailing_lists, or send us your comments by clicking the “contact” link in the left hand navigation bar.

Both Slashdot and Digg cover OpenWetWare and Mitch Waldrop’s Scientific American article.

Welcome Slashdotters and Diggers!