Like I mentioned last week, my advisor is always up for a challenge. After I told him about the senior scientist blogging challenge that came out of Science Blogging 2008, he immediately signed up for a WordPress blog and posted three entries. His blog is aptly named, Building confidence. :)
Unfortunately, it looks like we’ll have our work cut out for us. The “official” criteria include:
- The seniority and reputation of the blogger (both in absolute terms and in comparison to the person who convinced them to blog)
- Their previous lack of experience with blogging and other new-fangled online habits
- The quality and quantity of the posts, their relevance to science, and any demonstrable positive impact they might have already had
- Other criteria that will no doubt occur to us later
I think we’re ok on the first one, but the second one is trouble. He did have a pseudo-blog over at PharmGKBlog. And sometimes I think my advisor has more new-fangled online habits than I do, what with his obsession with his iPhone and my resistance to ever having a phone with any semblance of intelligence. So I think our best hope is to do a good job on the third criterion (and hope that the fourth-nth criteria are harmless).
Regardless of how the competition pans out, I’m very interested to see what other senior scientist blogs start up as a result! Has anyone else gotten their senior scientist off the ground blogging yet?