Mary Canady BarcampSD 7 ‘Crowdsourcing Cat Herding’ from Mary Canady on Vimeo.

I presented at a local ‘unconference’ called Barcamp recently in San Diego. The event is great because it is unscripted and interdisciplinary, and we’d like to extend the model to biotech and life science, with the goal of having a ‘BiotechCamp’ in San Diego soon. Check out the presentation, and if you have any ideas, please feel free to add them to the wiki we’ve set up at http://biotechcamp.org. We have a team of about ten now who will be planning this event. As always, tell us what you think and stay tuned!

At the recent Social Media for Scientists Event, we talked about the fact that the trends you are seeing in ‘everyday life’ such as increased utilization of the internet to communicate, are also finding their way into scientific research. This is also true for the ‘YouTube’ revolution–there are an increasing number of video sites and resources for scientists. They range from visualized experiments, to reviews of current research and events, to wacky and fun ‘kitchen science’ such as the nerdiest ways to slice butter.

The resources range from dedicated sites and communities to simple YouTube playlists (see also this resource which lists independent resources with an emphasis on medicine). UCSD/SDSC’s Phil Bourne has started SciVee, which is a website dedicated to “changing the pace at which science is conducted and communicated.” You can participate by joining the independent sites and/or creating an account in YouTube and subscribing to the channels. Also, as with all social media, you’ll get the most out of it by participating directly. You can create your own playlists or even create your own videos–small video cameras are inexpensive and take great videos. Also, we’d LOVE to see your videos of local events, and we’ll feature them here and on YouTube. As always, we welcome your comments/additions!

Special thanks to the folks at the friendfeed Life Scientists group for helping me compile this list, especially @BoraZ. Here is the original post, it illustrates the power of friendfeed!