Monthly Archives: June 2009

Last year I bought a domain name AllTwoPointZero.com. Initially I had an idea to launch a huge portal around “2.0” meme – essentially tracking changes in communication methods across various areas. I wanted to quit science and start a consulting career in helping people to communicate more efficiently (new channels and tools, efficient visual communication, etc.). However, a market for such services in Poland is nonexistent, and I didn’t have a mood for relocation, so I’ve turned to other opportunities (and as effect, I’ve stayed in science). Neverthess, I still had a domain but no clear idea what to use it for.

So, with only a little time left, the next option I took was a tracker/aggregator. In theory, once done, it didn’t need much maintenance. There’s quite a lot of services for such purpose out there, but they didn’t necessarily allowed for certain things I wanted to have, so I had to code my own script. As I didn’t have much time, the resulting site is a little rough (it cannot compete with wonderful sites Euan is coding, such as recently released preview of Streamosphere). However, you should get an idea what I’m aiming for. Currently it tracks blog posts and conversations in areas of Science 2.0, Health 2.0 and Culture 2.0 (with Enterprise and Government to follow). Because within these types I sort all entries by date, I had to remove some bloggers from “Key People” list, as their high-speed blogging did not allow others to appear in the box at all. 🙂

At this stage, the set of sources is far from perfect – outside of science, conversations seem to be highly homogenous. When I improve the sources (maybe will use Twitter and custom FriendFeed searches), I plan to add some kind of visual summary to the tracked conversations to see if I can find some patterns that will let me establish a connection between disciplines. Let’s see…

While I was collecting links, I’ve found one interesting thing: you can find people interested in these three areas both over at FriendFeed and over at Twine. However, it seems that only scientists are actively talking with each other at these services – where are other groups storing their discussions?

It recently occured to me that maybe Open Science could be marketed more efficiently by simplyfying its messages and better targeting. I often find it difficult to convince scientists to support the idea, because Open Science idea does not seem to solve their problems. Western scientists have the main problem: not enough money – the rest are just details (I will be happy to be proven wrong, but I constantly notice that majority of scientists will happily play in the current academic system as long there’s enough money for their research). How about having the main message of OS movement along the lines of “Open Science = Cheaper Less Expensive Science”  (that’s something that Jean-Claude and Cameron say for some time)? I know that we don’t have enough evidence to say so, but on the other hand nobody seems to care that there are better measurements of scientific productivity than impact factor (and have some evidence for that).

Simple message – but also better targeting

Such message is not going to resonate at places that have much more significant problems than lack of money. To me, there are several places in the world that suffer from other issue – isolation. Thomas Erren in his short commentary on Phil’s Bourne “Ten simple rule for getting published” cites Rosalyn Yalow, a Nobel prize laureate:

… I am in full sympathy with rejecting papers from unknown authors working in unknown institutions. How does one know that the data are not fabricated? … on the average, the work of established investigators in good institutions is more likely to have had prior review from competent peers and associates even before reaching the journal.

And it’s just only one side of isolation – there are many more. So, maybe in such places the message of OS should be along the lines of “Open Science = Connected Science” (following one of Deepak’s blog themes), explaining that openness creates connection through which knowledge, experience and recognition can flow both ways?