#4 All Hands eScience Meeting ending Hello IEEE

This is a note about meeting organization. The All Hands meeting was (and I would guess the IEEE meeting will be) a standard meeting type (too many plenaries, breakouts are PPT frenzies, people trying to network in the 15 minute breaks). 300 e-science experts listening (emailing) while a panel of four experts talk about a ten-year plan for e-science. How much better it would have been to set up 40 tables and have ten times the discussion and perhaps a chance of 10 new ideas? This room is ripe for a charrette! Also... a twitter-stream on the two video panels would have livened up this place. The four panelists have a median age of (I guess) 69. Not that that’s bad, per se. However, there is a decided lack of young turks in this discussion. The moderator asked them another question... they are rolling through this exercise while the room nods off. It is 5:46 and we’ve been at this since 9 am.  Question to the panel: The incentive models for sharing are not there. How do we change the social/cultural ways of doing science?    Answer: we do need to change this culture. But there is a long road to get there. We have seen a rapid change to data sharing in the life sciences.  The implication is that other disciplines can follow the lead of the life sciences. Back to meeting notes. As we sit here, the Copenhagen climate meetings are happening, and we all need to be aware of the impacts of travel on our carbon footprints. At the same time, we need to remember the value of face-to-face interactions. Face-to-face meetings need to change to reflect and attain their real value. The ESIP Federation takes this very seriously, and has an opportunity to be a leader in meeting technologies.

Written by Bruce Caron