Swarthmore Talk on Open Notebook Science

On Tuesday November 27, 2007 I had the pleasure of speaking at Swarthmore on our UsefulChem project and Open Notebook Science more generally.

Liz Evans and Cheryl Grood from the Swarthmore Sigma Xi Chapter did a wonderful job in rounding up people to have discussions both before and after my talk at dinner. This gave us an opportunity to share teaching experiences with new technologies (blogs, wikis, Second Life, etc.) - something I didn't really get into too deeply during my talk.

The timing was also quite fortunate because I was able to discuss an important new result from our lab (EXP148) obtained just a few days ago. (More on this shortly in a separate blog post).

I had some very thought-provoking conversations with both students and faculty. One of the recurring questions was what format Open Notebook Science would take in various scientific fields. Some disciplines, like mathematics, don't have formal laboratory notebooks like synthetic organic chemistry. But there are still ways of reporting daily progress.

The recording of the talk is now available here.