Health News"You don't take away pens so employees don't write on the bathroom walls"
That gem came from Nicholas Charney at the ALI conference on social media and government this morning. The words were immediately tweeted. Re-tweeted. And re-tweeted some more. Clearly it was one (of many) points from the morning speakers that struck home. Nick is on Twitter as @nickcharney by the way.
During the breakout session, in the questions posed after the presentations, and informally over coffee, it was also clear this was a common problem. Either social media was simply blocked in an organization so that no one could access the sites, or social media use was considered off limits as an organizational communications tool.
In the biotech community the mistrust of social media is probably even more acute.
Mary Canady a San Diego based biotech consultant, estimates that of the many life science companies around the world there are very few ( she figures only 30 or so) active blogs and not much more in the way of Twitter accounts. Mary has both a blog and Twitter presence and has put together a pretty good listing of biotech-type blogs at http://comprendia.com/2009/07/13/to-blog-or-not-to-blog/
Social Media Challenges for Government
Today was the pre-conference workshop for the ALI social media for government conference in Ottawa where I'll be speaking on Thursday.
Maybe because social media isn't the same uncharted territory it was a few years ago but this group seemed to be a more sophisticated crowd than I often encounter. It could also be that as (mostly) government employees they are used to procedures that are cut and dried, and policy matters that are complex and where the answers often need vetting from 'higher up'. Social media for them has some obvious uses and other areas where it needs some careful consideration. They've already had to give this a lot of thought before they even attend a workshop or conference like this one.
Government or publicly supported organizations face some unique challenges:
- Everyone has a different view of how government should be run
- If it is public money, taxpayers often feel government employees work for them
- If the first 2 points hold true then keeping almost 34 million people happy even some of the time is a challenge
And aye, there's the rub Hamlet because the dream of social media could become a nightmare.
As Joe Thornley pointed out today in his workshop, social media is all about participation, influence as opposed to control, generosity and particpation.
Though it is a wildly overused term, social media is about the 'conversation'.
Science, Magic, Religion and How I Got to the Age of Personalized Genomics
Science, Magic, and Religion.
Eastern Religion.
Religious Studies 101.
Hey, I was growing up in the sixties and by the time I hit the University of Calgary in the seventies I wanted to learn more about different philosophies and I certainly wasn't sold on what science was teaching me. I was not doing well in Organic Chem either, and you know what that can do to a degree, so I decided to turn to some courses that held ( at the time ) some deeper meaning and dug down into things the sixties generation touched but never fully understood. Those 3 courses were part of that path.
And here I am at a conference on personal genomics and suddenly the crumbs put down to mark the path are showing up again.
This evening I was talking with the Chief Scientific Officer for Genome B.C. Pierre Meulien, when we were joined by Harold Coward who knew Pierre and was obviously connected to Genome B.C. in some way.
I looked at him closely, checked his name tag and finally asked.
"Are you the Harold Coward who taught Religious Studies at the University of Calgary?"
Score one for Mikenomics - because it was. And in an odd kind of way he may have had a role in me ending up at a conference like this and being one of Genome Alberta's representatives at discussions about GE3LS (Genetics and its Ethical, Economic, Environmental, Legal, and Societal Aspects ).
DNA Origami
Who knew! I certainly did not until I came across a press release from Brigham Young University which described the nanoelectronic techniques used to spell out their university’s iconic letters. How cool is that, BYU from AGCT!
Reading this made me curious about how wide-spread this technique is and what are the practical applications of this line of research. I was totally surprised to find that there were over 160,000 hits in a search on the topic, ‘DNA origami’.
Genetic Testing Information - Too Much or Too Little ?
Bright and early today for the first full day of the Age of Personalized Genomics and they are being brutal about keeping to the schedule as someone walks through the breakfast area ringing a bell to drag the caffeine junkies into the first plenary session still clinging to their coffee cups.
Stephen Sherer suggested that some of the key messages coming out of the Human Genome Project were:
- Lots of genetic variation
- Genome is information
- Society craves information
Think about the logic flow you learned about in Philosophy 101.
If society craves information and the genome is information then somewhere along the way we're going to be craving more information about our own genomes. Maybe a bit oversimplified I know, but we definitely know the appetite for direct-to-consumers testing is gaining steam. Judging by the number of blogs and the twitter traffic around genetics then we are indeed in a new age of personalized genomics, the conference is very relevant right now, and we need to worry about David Flockhart's ( Indiana University ) concern that "as genomes get cheaper, they get worse or less accurate".
Ouch.
Age of Personalize Genomics Underway - At Last !
I seem to have been uploading agendas, editing biographies, cropping photos, and sending out e-mail reminders about the Age of Personalized Genomics Conference forever. It has really only been since January, but you probably know what it is like when you get wrapped up in a project of this size. But thanks to Genome Alberta Project Manager Robyn Hyde-Lay who has done all the heavy lifting on the event, and BUKSA the conference management company taking care of the details, it got off to a great start tonight.
The opening Picard Lecture offered a bit of a twist to the usual opening fare.
Most conferences go through a couple of days of discussion looking at the current state of affairs and finish off with a grand look forward. Not here. Instead as Eric Meslin the moderator for the evening noted, the organizing committee made a very deliberate decision to kick things off by a look at the future of personal genomics.
Wylie Burke was the opening speaker and she offered a quote from David Eisenberg:
"Technology is rarely inherently good or bad, always, or never useful. The challenge is to evaluate when in the course of illness, it is effective, for whom it will enhance outcomes, and how it should be implemented or interpreted." (Eisenberg, JAMA 1999, 282:1865-1869 )
CAVEman at WorldSkills Calgary 2009
This past week WorldSkills Calgary 2009 was held in Calgary and I was there with Genome Alberta at a booth in Alberta House. We were helping the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine showcase their traveling exhibit of CAVEman. This is the world’s first complete object-oriented computer model of a human body. This significant development allows scientists to visualize their medical and genomic data as 4D images.
GenOmics
This is all about shamless self-promotion because we think we have a pretty good idea and want to show it off.
We call it GenOmics and it is a science news application on Facebook. Looking at the title you won't be surprised to know it will focus on genomics but it is more than that. It is biotech news for the Omics Generation.
Metabolomics, metagenomics, nutrigenomics, proteomics and a few more omics for good measure. These are the 'omics' that are likely to be leading the way in biotech in the 21st century and our new application will help you keep track of it all.
The idea is simple but the execution is complex and we couldn't have done it without the expertise of Jeff Reifman out of Seattle and his NewsCloud Social Media Toolkit.
With Jeff and the virtual team he assembled ( I still haven't met them all ) GenOmics came to life.