nodalpoint.org - Web 2.0 and science video presentations from EMBL - Comments

lab collaboration

Neil — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 08:06:07 -0500

Our group uses Twiki as a collaborative platform. I was quite impressed to find this set up when I arrived, though I'm not sure Twiki would be my first software choice. It gets a reasonable amount of use for storing presentations, minutes of meetings, lab protocols and links. I use it as a "lab notebook" of sorts.

One problem is that people try to use it for everything - wikis work best as scratch pads for unstructured data, rather than say storing structural genomics data. Getting people to consider the right software for the right job is one of my main problems. I blame Microsoft, who've brainwashed people into thinking that Office is the solution to every computational problem.

Plone for lab collaboration

PedroBeltrao — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:11:33 -0500

It is not easy to get people to participate, specially if they tend to use the computer for little more than checking the email or the occasional blast. In the lab were I am working a postdoc put up a Plone site for us to share references, conference dates and data. The usage is growing slowly as people get used to it and see the advantages. So I would say that the best way to start would be with some functions that everyone would appreciate, like some way to share conference dates and bibliography. Maybe after that people might start using it as a lab book.

Very interesting

lbbros — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 02:52:07 -0500

I've skimmed through the presentations and they look extremely interesting, especially about collaborative editing, since in the past months I've run into *every* problem that presentation points out...
Wikis are a great idea, but I'm just wondering if I can make such things "palatable" for the lab bench staff... does anyone have any experiences to share?

Even more ...

konrad — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 13:54:01 -0500

Actually we will recycle some of the talks for the online symposium. The talks were given early this year, there was quite some evolution going on in that field and I personally learned a lot after the talks (there are some inexactnesses and simplifications in them). We will use the talks as a starting point for discussion about the future of publishing. But I guess for quite some people (the "clueless colleagues") in science it is a helpful introduction.

Web 2.0 and science video presentations from EMBL

Greg — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 10:59:57 -0500

I just saw this on Konrad Foerstner's projects page (Konrad is one of the organizers of the online PhD symposium mentioned bellow): a series of talks on Web 2.0 and its impact on science. I haven't had the opportunity to watch the videos yet, but the topics look good. They cover RSS, bookmarks and tags, even collaborative online editing of papers using wikis. Could be a great reference to point your clueless colleagues to.