Science Alliance Meets Web 2.0

One of the main goals I have set for myself as Director is to strengthen the sense of community among the Science Alliance members through the internet and social media. At some point, I hope to have a platform for members to create profiles so that we can connect and share information virtually. In the meantime, I am aiming to make a majority of the Science Alliance events available as webinars so that anyone unable to attend the live event can still benefit from our programs.

I just watched my first webinar last week (ironically, on Developing a Social Strategy) and participated in a test run of a webinar this afternoon and I have to admit to being quite impressed with the technology. In addition to viewing the PowerPoint presentation and hearing the audio of the speakers in real time, there is also a little box for interacting with the event hosts- you can click a button to raise your hand and type in questions. You can also talk through your computer’s microphone. This type of interactivity is key to help the virtual attendee feel engaged. After all, the webinar has to fight against competing facebook and gmail chat windows, beeping lab timers, and snack breaks. Perhaps feeling like an active participant in the proceedings would help hold the viewer’s attention longer.

Speaking of audience interaction, at one point during our mock webinar the screen flashed to a poll that asked me how I was doing: Excellent, Good, Ok, and Not So Excellent. In case you’re curious, I’m fighting a cold so I selected the last option- but it had nothing to do with the experiment itself. Despite being fairly technologically savvy, I am practically giddy with delight discovering our capability to survey the audience throughout the broadcast. And no, it’s not just a surreptitious way to ensure you’re paying attention… the IT team tells me we have other “ways” of obtaining that information. But don’t worry, we can’t actually see you tuning in wearing your bathrobe… or can we?

Taking the webinar approach a step further, I also have the vision of streaming these broadcasts to remote auditoriums so that groups of students and postdocs can watch together rather than in isolation. I will have the opportunity to test this idea on Monday for the first event I am organizing for Science Alliance (more to come on that in a later post). The seminar is being webinar’d and I am collaborating with Joerg Schlatterer to project the event to a room at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine campus. The mock webinar we ran today was to prepare for this event and everything worked without a hitch.

Needless to say, I am looking forward to seeing how everything plays out next week. Register for the event and you can find out, too!