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Blogging and social media on Rhode Island

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


If you closely follow my updates here and on social media, you may have caught that I gave a lecture and two workshops last week at the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting in Kingston, RI, organized in partnership with Rhode Island NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (RIEPSCoR) and Rhode Island Sea Grant. The event was on July 30 at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography.

I had a great time - the audience was active, inquisitive and asked great questions. My lecture was losely based on this post, providing more of a historical context for the two workshops (one on blogging, one on social media) which were much more practical (and for which this wiki is probably the best resource to start with, rather than a series of my fractured and over-involved blog posts on the topics which are more suited for people already deeply steeped in blogging and social media).

In the afternoon, John Murphy from Brown University talked about behaving professionally online, especially as a "face" of an organization, about legal aspects of online communication within an organization, and about best practices for balancing professional and personal in social media. The day ended with a panel on blogging during graduate school, with Daniel Blustein, Katie PhD and BiochemBelle, all three veteran active users of blogs and social media.


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Unfortunately, the audio of the video recording did not function well, so there will be no video posted online, but there are tweets and blog posts that can help you see what transpired on that day:

#riscweet! How to Effectively Communicate Science on the Web, a Storify of tweets by Viet Le

URI Sci Comms Day with Bora Zivkovic, sketchnotes by Katie PhD.

The art and craft of science blogging, blog post by Daniel Blustein.

Leading Science Blogger Shares Social Media Tools, summary article at URI's Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting website.

Science Communication in the Digital Age: #riscweet! How to Effectively Communicate Science on the Web, another summary article at URI's Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting website.

Thank you Sunshine Menezes and Sara MacSorley for inviting me and for excellent organization of the event. I had great fun.