This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
This is an invited guest post by Rik van der Kant and Ruud Wijdeven, PhD students at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. You can reach them at biomeeter@gmail.com, or on Twitter at @biomeettweet
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Presenting your data at conferences is key for doing good science. However, finding the right conference can be as challenging as the actual experiments. Especially when your work is interdisciplinary there is a lack of overview of what is organized and where. We scientists mostly rely on the occasional mail from our supervisor for our meeting ideas. Or on the few meeting posters hanging on the board, but who looks at them anyway.
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So we thought it was time to do it differently. At least in biology and medicine for now. With some other PhD students we’ve set up a new tool called Biomeeter.com, a website that provides an overview of conferences organized in the different fields of biology. Over 600 meetings can be found here, among which the meetings of large organizers like Gordon, Keystone and EMBO. And new meetings are added every day.
We want to get the database complete by keeping the website open source. This means everybody can freely add a meeting. We will then check and categorize it to ensure the quality of the website. You can easily search by category, as well as by keyword and location. So if you’ve always wanted to go to Singapore; here’s your chance to find a reason for it.
We’re still trying to optimize the usability so any feedback is more than welcome! And if you like it: spread the word to your friends. Because the more people know about it the more meetings will be in the database. We hope it can help you!
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Previously in this series:
What is: Science Online London
What is: Science Online New York City
What is: Journal of Science Communication
What is: ScienceOnline2012 - and it's coming soon!
What is: The Young Australian Skeptics’ Skeptical Blog Anthology
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What is: ScienceOnline Bay Area
What is: ScienceOnlineVancouver