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My post last week considering options for a new science communication conference series got a pretty strong response, at least relative to most things on this blog. As it turns out, there already are some people in various stages of planning new (un)conferences in the style of Science Online, much like what I was thinking about. I won’t say anything about them here because those people haven’t revealed their plans yet, but I hope they will go public soon!

I also completely forgot that Science Online was not monolithic; it had regional branches around the US and around the world, which were largely separate from the main organization. At least two of them are still holding events: Science Online Leiden and Science Online DC. (There are also branches in Boston, Denver, and Vancouver, maybe others that I don’t know about, but they seem to be inactive.) These smaller groups could play a big role in the future of the science communication community, since as several people have pointed out, it’s a lot easier to organize events that involve fewer people. Perhaps …

For an organization with “Online” in its very name, you’d think Science Online would have no trouble putting the content of their flagship conference, well, online. Well, guess what: collating and summarizing all that information is hard! So if you weren’t at last week’s Science Online Together conference, and even if you were, it’s all too easy to go a little crazy searching through thousands of tweets, Storify sessions, and blog posts to pick out the parts you’d find useful.

With that in mind, I’ve spent far too much time over the past three days putting together the following non-attendee’s guide to Science Online Together 2014. Each of the individual sessions is listed, in chronological order (because no other order really makes sense), along with

• the session’s facilitator: the person who moderated the session, who is a good contact point for questions
• the session’s Twitter hashtag, where you can find (almost) all tweets about the session, including those from live-tweeters as well as questions contributed by others and further discussion taking place afterwards
• the session’s Storify page(s), if there is one or more than one, which consists of a …

Science Online in three words: BEST. CONFERENCE. EVER.

Okay so that sounds like I’m overselling, but I really am having a great time here. Even though it’s my first time attending a Science Online event, I came in immediately feeling welcomed by the community because the attendees cover such a broad spectrum — from journalists to PR specialists to science grad students — united only by a common passion for science communication. Unlike the physics conferences I’ve been to, there’s no pressure to prove myself to the “experts”; in fact, in some sense there are no experts. Sure, some people have more experience with science communication, or at previous Science Online conferences, but there’s definitely a sense that everyone has something to contribute. I had no qualms about speaking up at my very first discussion session. :-)

It has been an intense day though! I had substantive conversations with over 30 people who I had never met as of 24 hours ago. Some of them I already knew through Twitter, though, which was pretty cool — it’s exciting to recognize the faces in the profile pictures. I’ve been building a list of everyone I meet during the …

All the rest of this week I’ll be bringing you updates from the Science Online Together conference in beautiful (or at least not snowy) Raleigh. If you haven’t heard of it, Science Online Together is an annual conference that brings together all sorts of people involved in promoting and performing science on the internet: bloggers, journalists, creators of educational videos, online course instructors, science popularizers, public relations specialists, and researchers, ranging from grad students to tenured professors. I’m here in my capacity as a blogger, as a moderator of Physics Stack Exchange, and as a contributor to reddit’s /r/askscience.

Given the name of the conference, it probably comes as no surprise that it has a significant online presence, even for people who aren’t going to be attending. Each day begins with a CONVERGE session: this is like a plenary session in a normal conference, with a speaker addressing all the conference attendees in one room. You can actually watch these sessions live through the Science Online website, and follow along with that part of the conference from the comfort of your home.

The rest of the time is filled with discussion sessions, Q&A …