The fourth annual conference on science and the Web is less than four months away. The free three-day event to explore science online will be held in the Research Park Triangle area (North Carolina) on January 15-17th, 2010. Conference sessions will be held in the Sigma Xi building.

The goal of the conference is to bring together scientists, physicians, educators, publishers, journalists, web developers and others to discuss, demonstrate and debate strategies and tools for doing science, publishing science, teaching science and promoting public understanding of science online.

Although the schedule is still in the planning stages, there will be hands-on workshops and tutorials, presentations, audience-inclusive session discussions (last year there were 33 sessions), good food and drink, and limitless networking opportunities.

The ~1 hour-long sessions will be held in unconference format, meaning that each will be highly participatory. A session moderator serves to break the ice and define the topic at the beginning, to set goals for the discussion, and to keep the discussion on topic.

Some of the potential session topics for this year include:

• Science teaching
• Open Acess, Science 2.0 and the new publishing models
• Science journalism, writing and outreach
• Social/behavioral aspects of online communication
• Medicine, healthcare and patients’ advocacy
• The blogosphere
• Microblogging and citizen science

For more information or to suggest an idea, visit the ScienceOnline2010 planning wiki

Hope and I will both be there. I’m hoping to moderate two sessions: one on the use of Web 2.0 in health and medicine, and one on Medical Journalism (what, you didn’t know? I’ve been reporting on advances in biomedical research for almost three years at Highlight HEALTH).

Attendance is capped at 250 participants and already, many more have expressed an interest in coming. Registration should be open in late October. Sign up here to receive notice about conference registration and other updates.

ScienceOnline2010 is looking for sponsors, so if you or your organization are interested in supporting an aspect of the conference, please contact the conference organizers.

More information

You can keep up with ScienceOnline2010 news and events a using a number of different sources:

• The ScienceOnline2010 planning wiki
• Twitter: @ScienceOnline2010 (also follow the #scio10 hashtag)
• FriendFeed: the ScienceOnline2010 room
• Facebook: the Facebook event page

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