Reflections of a First Time ScienceOnline Attendee
Packing for ScienceOnline 2012 was fairly easy since I was only going to be there a day and a half. The conference is three days, but I had to condense my Unconference experience; my 21 year old brother-in-law passed away unexpectedly. The only difficult part about packing for the Unconference was deciding whether or not to bring the book Science Ink by Carl Zimmer.
My mother-in-law had given me a signed copy for Christmas with a note assuring me the author was ‘a pretty good science writer.’ I smiled at her thoughtfulness. I have endeavored to become a science writer and I admire Carl Zimmer’s work; I don’t think she was aware of the latter.
I quickly perused Science Ink Christmas morning, but hadn’t had a chance to read it. All packed and ready to go, I decided at the last minute to bring the book. I read it on the train to the airport and was blown away. The subject matter is fascinating, but what struck me was the diversity of the topics, all beautifully and intelligently described. The author talks about each tattoo and the meaning behind them as if they were on his own body; as if each one were as important to him as they are to those donning the ink. I marveled over the prose and closed the book thinking; I would give anything to write like that.
Although my trip would be cut short and I would miss three sessions and a banquet I was really looking forward to, I was grateful that I would not miss a tour of Dogstar Tattoo Company in Durham, NC that would end right before I needed to take off for the airport. Carl Zimmer would be in attendance and I hoped I would get the opportunity to meet him and maybe even have a moment to speak to him.
The conference was an unbelievable experience. I always dread conferences; I hate unknown surroundings and I never know what to say to people I haven’t met, so I am usually awkwardly sipping coffee in a corner trying hard not to make eye contact. This conference was different, as soon as I registered I had ten new Twitter friends, not followers, friends. I got messages from editors at major news organizations, like the “nice to tweet you” I got from Charles Duhigg (love that one, so want to use it, do not think it will be as cool coming from me). A lot of people reached out and let me know they were looking forward to meeting me at Science Online 2012.
When I got to the conference I greeted everyone with ‘Hi, I’m Rebecca,’ because the conference organizers made it so easy to do. Before I had even arrived I was assured that everyone was a friend, I just hadn’t met them yet. So it seemed to me all that was left to do was introduce myself.
Then Bora Zivkovic gave his open remarks and I feel in love with the conference for good. I wanted the world to work the way this conference worked. At most conferences you have the knowers and the want-to-knowers. The knowers stand behind podiums and espouse expound to the want-to-knowers. And the divide between them is so great it is rare that a want-to-knower will be brave enough to speak to a knower. But at an Unconference the hierarchy and structure is rolled away and you are left with people at different levels of experience in a common interest and the conversations had in that situation are endless. I talked to all kinds of people.
I also asked questions; I never ask questions at conferences. Mostly because the thought of it makes my arm pits pour with sweat and only the most basic of English words will formulate in my head and when they come out I hear them in an echo chamber and can’t tell if they made any sense. But I still asked questions.
I took advice I got on twitter and participated in sessions that I wasn’t sure I was interested in. Like the first session I attended on sketch notes, where you take notes in picture format. I am not a drawer, doodler or scribbler. I am so bad with spatial layout that I practice and fail at it regularly. I haven’t yet used the skills I learned in the session, as many others at the conference have, but the experience changed my way of thinking. It changed how I heard every other session and I learned something, even when I didn’t expect to.
On the second, my last, day of the conference I walked into a session whose program description I had misinterpreted. I thought I was going to learn how a journalist conducts an interview, which was true, but the lesson was for scientists who wanted training talking to the media. I considered walking out, but decided to stay and turn what was being said around to my perspective, as someone wanting to get better at interviewing.
Halfway through the session I was a bit stuck. The group was being broken up into journalists and scientists. The journalists were going to interview the scientists so they could get a feel for the process. I wasn’t sure what to do, I wasn’t a journalist, but I hadn’t conducted research for 4 years. I contemplated this problem as they counted off journalists. “Who in the room is a scientist?” I raised my hand. I was the eight scientist to be counted and when I gathered my belongings and turned around to find my match. I was met by an out stretched hand, “Hi, I’m Carl.”
‘Oh My God,’ my head said. I struggled to remain poised as I followed him back to where he was sitting. I got to talk to Carl Zimmer one-on-one for twenty minutes and I realized why his writing is so good. He is an incredibly genuine guy.
The tattoo parlor tour was icing on the cake after that. I had never been in one and loved it. The art work was incredible. While working on a tattoo of a lion fish, for Science Online attendant Christie Wilcox (aka @NerdyChritie), Kathryn Moore was gracious enough to describe her equipment to me. I can’t wait to write about it in a future blog post.
I said good-bye to new friends, returned my rental car and flew away from Raleigh up to New England for a funeral service the following day. As I lay in bed that night I took inventory of my belongings and realized I hadn’t seen my copy of Science Ink since putting it in the back seat of my rental car. Then it hit me; I lost the book. Oh, why did I bring it? I lost the chance to buy, and have Carl Zimmer sign, a new book.
I called the rental car company the next morning, but it was gone. I put my upset aside for the deeper distresses of the day.
Somewhere in the fog of the following hours a family member mentioned that my mother-in-law had Carl Zimmer sign two copies of Science Ink. I got one and my brother-in-law, who was interested in tattoos, got the other. I asked for his copy, it was given to me and I will cherish it on so many levels.
It will always remind me of my brother-in-law. It will remind me of the opportunity to have a conversation with someone I admire. And it will remind me of the only place I could have gotten that opportunity, the best Unconference I have ever attended, ScienceOnline 2012.
