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ConvergeSouth: Carolina Bloggers Party in Greensboro

Rainbloggers Break North Carolina Drought! ConvergeSouth, Fifth Estate, Credited.

Help make NIH-funded research findings freely available to everyone!

Back in July, the House of Representatives passed a bill that requires all the NIH-funded research to be made freely available to the public within at most 12 months subsequent to publication.

The equivalent bill has passed the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this summer and will be up for vote in the Senate very soon! In advance of this important vote, The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has issued a Call for action:

As the Senate considers Appropriations measures for the 2008 fiscal year this fall, please take a moment to remind your Senators of your strong support for public access to publicly funded research and - specifically - ensuring the success of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy by making deposit mandatory for researchers.

Earlier this summer, the House of Representatives passed legislation with language that directs the NIH to make this change (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/release07-0720.html). The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a similar measure (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/release07-0628.html). Now, as the Appropriations process moves forward, it is critically important that our Senators are reminded of the breadth and depth of support for enhanced public access to the results of NIH-funded research. Please take a moment to weigh in with your Senator now.

Read the rest for talking points and the contact information of your Senators, then do your part and contact them! And spread the word - by e-mail, posting on your blog or website, on forums and mailing lists. Let's get this bill passed this month and thus ensure that taxpayer-funded research is freely available to its funders - the taxpayers.

This needs to be done no later than Friday, September 28, 2007, when the bill is slated to appear in the Senate.

Science Blogging Conference - Registration is now open!

Late last night we opened the registration for the 2nd Science Blogging Conference.

To register, go to the registration form and fill out the details.

To see who is already registered, go here.

If you will be here on Friday, January 18th and want to join us for dinner, add you name to this list.

If you are on Facebook, join the Conference Event and invite your friends. We will appreciate it if you could spread the word in whichever medium you are most comfortable - word of mouth, e-mail, online social networks, or your own blogs.

I know September 1st is a holiday, but opening the registration today will save our server as thousands of interested participants will spread themselves over a few days instead of all logging on at the same time ;-) This way, those of you who are perpetually online and get your information on blogs (and Facebook, etc.) will be able to get the first dibs, while the advertising for others will start on September 4th.

The wiki is ready for you to explore. The conference program is building up nicely - we secured some spectacular speakers and session leaders and are in negotiations with some others. Feel free to edit the bottom of that wiki page with your own ideas. Suggest a session and offer to lead it.

Of course, as the conference promises to be much bigger than last year (due to the media coverage after the first one - see this page for blog and media coverage) we need to cover the increased expenses (and provide food, swag, etc.), so if you and your organization are willing to be sponsors, please let us know.

And, we are planning to have the second Science Blogging Anthology released in time for the conference, so submit the best science posts written by you or by your favorite bloggers for our consideration.

Big Plans for NC (and Triangle) Blogging in the New Year

So, whats' cookin' in the local blogging world? Quite a lot, actually.

First, our little group, BlogTogether is growing, growing. Instead of being just a little Anton's sideproject, we are thinking of turning it into a non-profit organization - so if you have experience with founding non-profits please let us know ASAP.

Also, apart from Anton, several others (including myself) are now able to post there. This will make the blog much more active and interactive this year than it was ever before. We are also looking for a nice-looking logo for it so we can slap it on side-bars of all of our blogs. If you have talent, give it a try!

Second, we are much more ambitious with meet-ups this year. We plan on having, each month, one virtual meet-up (here). We'll continue with our regular two meet-ups (at Milltown at 6:30pm) where we sit down over coffee or beer and chat, usually starting with a particular topic (see here for some topics we are planning for February and March), before it becomes a free-for-all. Even if you are not a blogger - come by and within minutes you'll have a blog of your own as we'll help you set one up in minutes!

Once a month we'll have a more active meet-up, actually doing something fun for a change (and get our butts off the comfortable chairs). This month, we'll go bowling (hey, the place has wi-fi, so you can liveblog!). In the past, we've had between four and eight people normally showing up at meetups (unless a celebrity comes by - then everyone shows up). Let's try to have a greater attendance this year. After all, now that both Pandagon (with both Pam and Amanda living here) and Panda's Thumb are Triangle-based blogs (should our logo have a panda on it?!), the epicenter of power-blogging of the world is somewhere in the RTP area, I'd guess. So come by and meet the blogging stars!

We are already planning the second Science Blogging Conference (and the anthology to go with it) for early 2008!

In the meantime, think about joining us for the FoodBlogging series of events (if eating, drinking, eating, drinking and repeating it all over again can be called 'events') this summer. Sure, click on that link and salivate! What great places to eat and drink with fellow bloggers and blog about it!

Anton is hinting about some major activity on the StoryBlogging front this year as well.

And there are more ideas floating around (a design conference, perhaps an EduBlogging Conference, etc.)

Finally, and very importantly, the Tar Heel Tavern #102 will be hosted at Moomin Light this weekend. There is no theme, so send whatever you'd like to: songfinn AT yahoo DOT com by Saturday evening..

Once again, the Tavern was closed last weekend for the lack of a host. Will #102 be the last Tarheel Tavern? It's up to you - no one is signed up to host after this weekend. Do you want to host in the near future? Let us know. Do you want to get more involved in managing the carnival (as Laurie, Erin and I are both too busy with other stuff to do so full-time)? In any case, let us know at: coturnix AT gmail DOT com (me) or lponeill AT att DOT net (Laurie).

Science Blogging Anthology is here!

The first of its kind, phenomenal, unbelievable collection of the best science blogging in history has just been published!

Timed to coincide with the first Science Blogging Conference, this anthology of best 50 blog posts from science and medical blogs is now available for sale. You can find all the information about the book, including the blog-typical democratic process of choosing 50 best posts of all time, at this URL

I would really appreciate it if you could steer your readers towards it!

You can buy the book here.

Community Blog Catalogs: Drive More Traffic To Your Blog

Serious bloggers want readers and lots of them. If you're blogging only for family and friends as a way to stay in touch then you'll probably not want to bother with this but if that were the case you'd probably not be reading Carolina Blog Consultants.



What if you could build your own search engine and combine it with RSS as a means of driving traffic? What if I told you I've already done just that and I did it for free? What if I told you it worked.



What I'm talking about is using a blog as a data base of bloggers with alphabetical listings of all the bloggers listed there along with a search feature from Technorati, Yahoo, or another free site search. Check out BloggingPoet411.com to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Each blogger I list e-mails me their bio and if they like, pictures, and I post it all to the blog. Here's MyBloggingPoet411 so you'll know what it looks like. Also, there's an alphabetical listing of every blogger in the data base.



Another searchable data base I built is Blogsboro411, a listing of Bloggers from Greensboro, North Carolina and the North Carolina Piedmont Triad area.



And if that's not enough, to sweeten the pot for everyone I just put up BlogCommunity411 to catalog the catalogs. Since I've got my local blogging community and poetry bloggers already covered I thought why not catalog the catalogs to encourage others to build their own community data bases.



So there you have it, build a catalog of bloggers in your community, send an e-mail to idleblogs (AT) yahoo.com and I'll be more than happy to add your community catalog to BlogCommunity411 so that all of us can enjoy more traffic.



Billy Jones writes the sometimes zany poetry blog, BloggingPoet.com and is the author of three books with a fourth due to be published in early 2007.