Seen at All Hands

The All Hands meeting exists so that those involved in one branch of e-Intrastructure / e-Science / e-Research / e-Social-Science / e-Whatever can see what those in the other e-*s are up to.

One project that particularly caught my eye was BlogMyData.

Much academic research takes place in corridors, pubs and even - occasionally - in the loo. Researchers will discuss their latest discoveries with colleagues when they bump into one another on the way to somewhere else - and get a new perspective or a new idea as they do so. Call it serendipity at work - or possibly serendipity in the bar of the Dog and Duck.

This is the kind of material that occasionally appears as `Bloggs, Fred (Personal Communcation)' in papers.

BlogMyData extends this chatter about the work to researchers who are in different institutions and so - unless they happen to be at All Hands - are very unlikely to be in the same coffee room, or pub, at the same time.

It allows researchers to post visualisations of the data they are working on blogs which can be read - and commented on - by collaborators. It combines two projects: the Godiva 2 visualisation package from Reading and the LabBlog blogging tool from platform.

This has the big advantage that the data and the conversation will be recorded for future reference unlike, say, a chat in the bar or an unexpected encounter in the gents...