Skulls in the Stars

Well, I’m back!  I haven’t been posting much since heading off to the conference, in spite of my best intentions.  Conference activities, both official and not, were entirely too distracting to get much done.

The sessions were quite enjoyable and informative, and very different from events at a ‘real’ science conference.  Audience participation is encouraged and, in fact, essential to the success of the sessions. I co-moderated a session with Brian of Laelaps and scicurious on the web and history of science, which I’ll mention in more detail in a coming post.

For me, though, the charm of any conference is meeting up with old friends and making new ones, and participating in interesting and productive discussions.  I got a chance to see again those folks I met last year at the Scienceblogs millionth comment party in NC, namely Coturnix, scicurious, Dave and Greta Munger, Kevin Zelnio, and Sciencewoman. (Greta suggested a really neat idea for a course assignment that I’ll have to try sometime.)

I also got to meet a number of people who I’ve interacted with only online, such as Blake Stacey, Brian Switek (and Mrs. Laelaps), and Greg Laden.  (I got Blake to sign my copy of his recently released novel, but I forgot to ask him to sign it to “eBay”.)

Finally, I met  a number of folks whose work I was previously unaware of, but which I will now be following: PalMD, Tom Levenson, Björn Brembs (and Diana), Katherine Haxton, Janet Stemwedel and Henry Gee.  PalMD pointed me to a really nice post he wrote on early resistance to innoculation, which was, contrary to today’s resistance, based on reason.

I’m surely forgetting people in the rush of posting, but it was great seeing everyone at the meeting, and I hope to see you again there next year!  I’ll be updating my blogroll with a lot of new additions later in the week.

I’ll say a few more things about the meeting over the next few days, namely on the session I co-moderated and on the Duke Lemur Center that a few of us visited.  In the meantime, though, before I forget: thanks to sci and Janet for the drinks!