Some updates on #scio12, #NYCscitweetup, Story Collider and more.

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


You may remember that I told a story at The Story Collider last month. The podcast of my story is now online so you can listen - From Serbia with horses:

How do you get the right background to be blogs editor at Scientific American? For Bora Zivkovic it started with raising horses in Belgrade.

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Cristina Merrill went to last month's #NYCscitweetup and wrote up a nice article about it for the International Business Times - see Tweetups Provide Haven for Science Lovers:

The NYCSci Tweetup was born out of ScienceOnline, an annual conference that takes place in January in North Carolina. Another chapter also exists in Washington, D.C.

"We had this great kind of synergy," said Krystal D'Costa, a digital anthropologist, who was inspired by the North Carolina conference and started to organize the monthly Tweetups in New York City. New York has a diverse community of science enthusiasts who mostly know each other through online groups, she said. "How do we get them all offline?" she wondered.

The next #NYCscitweetup, the last one of the year, will be on December 1st at Peculier Pub. I'll do my best to be there. If you can come, please indicate so on the Facebook event page so we can get a rough head count in advance. If you "Like" the official #NYCscitweetup Facebook page you will be able to see updates, e.g., whenever a new event is set up.

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Organization of ScienceOnline2012 is in full swing. Hotel information is coming soon - with a larger number of people this year, we need to secure two hotels and this takes some time and effort. Once we do, we'll let you know in several spaces, including on this wiki page. If you are already registered, you can start organizing carpooling and room-sharing here.

Next two registration times will be on Tues, Nov 8th at 00:01 a.m. EST (yes, that is tonight at midnight) and on Wed, Nov 9th at 6 p.m. EST. As we already have over 300 registrants, and are capping at 450 maximum, these two openings we'll let in fewer than 100 people each time - we are still calculating how many. You can see who has registered so far here.

With the bad economy, many of our moderators and attendees are hurting for money and asking for some financial help for travel. If your organization is interested in sponsoring some of them with travel grants, or if you'd like to sponsor the event in other ways, please let us know ASAP.

The main Program is online (though exact scheduling and room assignments are still to come), but there will be much more: lab and museum tours, banquet, stand-up comedy, art gallery, film festival, book reading, Keynote address, demos+TechExpo, citizen science projects, and more. Stay tuned.

You can get updates on the official blog (RSS feed), the official Facebook page, official FriendFeed group and official Twitter account. Also follow the #scio12 hashtag, and see the collection of tweets so far. You can follow the attendees by checking out their Twitter list and Google Plus circle.

The first blog posts are coming up as well - here, our old friend David Warlick, expert in the use of technology in education, describes why educators, teachers and students should try to attend: Upcoming North Carolina Science Conference:

There’s not much that’s better, for this confirmed and long-time nerd, than being in a room filled with scientists. Teachers and students should feel this thrill as well.

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