Today I am honored to be attending – and streaming – the Science Commons Symposium, held on the Microsoft campus. In the spirit of Creative Commons Salons – global, informal events focused on bringing together the community around a central topic or focus – Science Commons will be holding a day-long event today in Seattle. The event will aim to bring a broader understanding on the term “open” and all of its flavors when applied to science. From Open Access publishing and data sharing efforts, to more transparent ways to conduct bench science and the various “open”s (data, science, access) – the benefits of implementing “open” approaches to science are not only gaining visibility but also generating a buzz in the community.

There is an all-star list of experts and leading minds to shed some of their wisdom on these very topics with us — all united by a common passion for knowledge sharing in its various applications and definitions. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this.

I will be updating this post throughout the day to include links (both audio and video) to the various presentations. As soon as each one ends, my assistant will be pulling the video from Ustream and re-encoding it to get it onto our various channels as quickly as is possible. Keep checking back here so that you can watch the presentations that interest you the most!

• Cameron Nyelon is a biophysicist who has always worked in interdisciplinary areas and is a leading advocate of data availability.
• Jean-Claude Bradley is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and the E-Learning Coordinator at Drexel University. He leads the UsefulChem project, an initiative started in the summer of 2005 to make the scientific process as transparent as possible by publishing all research work in real time to a collection of public blogs, wikis and other web pages.
• Antony Williams is a leader in the domain of free access chemistry. He is the VP of Strategic Development for the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the founder of ChemZoo Inc., the original host of ChemSpider prior to acquisition by RSC.
• Peter Murray-Rust is an accomplished chemist, a faculty member of Churchill College at the University of Cambridge, a leader in the Open Data movement, and a founding member of the Blue Obelisk organization. Peter Murray-Rust brings an interdisciplinary approach to research in several interesting areas.
• Heather Joseph is the Executive Director at SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. She leads SPARC’s advocacy efforts to support widespread adoption of open access to scholarly research.
• Stephen Friend is the founder and president of Sage, a not-for-profit medical research organization designed to revolutionize how researchers approach the complexity of human biological information and the treatment of disease.
• Peter Binfield is the Publisher of the online academic journal PLoS ONE, one of seven titles from the not-for-profit publisher, the Public Library of Science (PLoS). He is a respected innovator and analyst in the fields of scholarly publishing (both Open Access and mainstream/subscription), and scientific communication, and has been with PLoS since March 2008.
• John Wilbanks is the VP of Science Commons. John and the Science Commons team help people and organizations from every part of the scientific ecosystem lift legal and technical barriers to research and discovery.

Science Commons Symposium

Well, I was preparing to tell you about what I’ll be up to tomorrow… but when I went to look up the information, Outlook 2007′s search index decided to give up the ghost. Two hours later, I’m left with a somewhat-crippled PIM (it tells me there’s an error, but that it’s checking the data file for integrity – with no progress meter, so there’s no telling where it is in the process).

I’m going to be in downtown Seattle tomorrow for a day-long event at the PI. Don’t worry, I hope to be streaming live the entire time (with the chat room taking show notes to be podcast in the near future for those of you who won’t be able to tune in for everything). I’ve requested a power outlet, so I should be good to go. I’ll likely take a few different options with me (the Macbook, iSight FireWire, my Canon GL-2, Windows laptop, and Logitech USB cam – just in case).

• Agenda: A day-long series of discussions exploring the latest developments in online publishing
• Invited: Professionals and students interested in digital media
• Sponsors: Online News Association, MSNBC.com, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tacoma News Tribune, Society of Professional Journalists

Session 1 — 10:15 – 11:15

• Discussion 1: Photo editing for the Web, slideshows, audio collection, video storytelling, video compression. Discussion leader is Robert Hood, director of multimedia at MSNBC.com.
• Discussion 2: Training and evangelizing for a legacy newsroom. Discussion leader is Mark Briggs, editor of thenewstribune.com.

Session 2 — 11:30 – 12:30

• Discussion 1: Ethical dilemmas with sales and advertising. Discussion leader is Tom Brew, Deputy Editor / Distribution, MSNBC.com.
• Discussion 2: Social media rules, best practices. Discussion leader is Michelle Nicolosi, Assistant Managing Editor, Seattle P-I.

Lunch — 12:30 – 1:15

• Speaker: Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine, on civility and social networking from an entrepreneurial point of view

Session 3 — 1:30 – 2:30

• Discussion 1: Search engine optimization. Discussion leader is Rand Fiskin of SeoMOZ.
• Discussion 2: Experience from two local online-only news/entertainment sites, what it means for the future of online only news. Discussion leaders are Chuck Taylor from Crosscut.com, editors Liz and Dana from Threeimaginarygirls.com.

Session 4 — 2:45 – 3:45

• Discussion 1: How to grow traffic on your site, from a technical and content viewpoint. Discussion leader is Danny DeFreitas, Deputy Editor / Sections of MSNBC.com.
• Discussion 2: How to be a better beat blogger. Discussion leaders are Todd Bishop and Monica Guzman of the Seattle P-I, David Postman of The Seattle Times.

Session 5 — 4:00 – 5:00

• Discussion 1: Beyond UGC: How new Web tools allow people to make the news more relevant to themselves. Discussion leader is Will Femia, Community Editor / Blogger for MSNBC.com.
• Discussion 2: What newspapers are doing wrong and how they can do it right. Discussion leader is pending.

Session 6 — 5:00 – 5:30

• Free for all. Some of the smartest local online publishing minds are all in one room. Throw out your burning questions. Maybe someone has an answer?

Tune in and be a part of the conversation! I believe we’re going to be using WriteWith to take collaborative “show notes” for archiving.

Online Publishing

I need to have some WordPress plugins developed, and I’m sure the rest of the world would love ‘em, too…

• Take a look at any given Vox blog – when you hover over any given tag, you can view the results for that tag in specific local indices. I’d like for someone to make a WP plugin that passes the tag to selected local AND external tag engines (Technorati, TagJag, Flickr, etc.).
• I’d also like to see a similar WP plugin for Bookmarking the post in the multitude of social engines (on hover, add to del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, etc.). I don’t wanna clutter my posts with hundreds of icons, and I believe this is plugin is also within the realm of possibility.
• I need someone to create an expanded version of the Kramer WordPress plugin, so that it might take in link data from other blog search indices – Yahoo!, Ask, Feedster, Windows Live, Google Blogs, etc. Kramer really beefs up the discussion for any given post, but I really wanna kick that into overdrive.
• What about a plugin that takes incoming search terms and auto-tags the post based on those terms (with or without moderation)? So, if a user searches for KeywordXYZ on Google and ultimately visits one of the blog entries, that blog entry will have the KeywordXYZ added to its tag list (via UTW or something).
• I also need a WP tool that recursively goes through my posts which have not already been tagged, then tag the posts with keywords it finds most appropriate (either through the Yahoo! API or internal logic) – almost like how the Related Posts plugin works against the posts database automatically?

And while we’re on the subject of WP, Automattic really needs to rename MUWP to something more human, like “WordPress: Community Edition.” Doesn’t that position it better?

WordPress Plugin Ideas