26 February 2014

#Scio14 : Science is awesome - AND SO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO DO IT

A while back Drs. Holly Bik and Miriam Goldstein had a great idea.  They developed An Introduction to Social Media for Scientists and, using that as a primer, proposed a session at ScienceOnline Together to discuss the difference between "getting noticed and GETTING NOTICED."

Drs. Bik and Goldstein are right - getting noticed in the right way and for the right reasons isn't easy. Everything from your own ego to cultural issues to the size of your professional network play a role in how you can promote your work, advance your career, and strengthen your reputation. It's even harder when you don't have someone like Matt Shipman working with you.

I don't think ScienceOnline could have better presenters on this topic than Drs. Bik and Goldstein because they've done the research, faced the challenges, and experienced success. In fact, they've been so successful that their work prevents them from being at the conference.

So as I mentioned earlier, the conference organizers have asked me to fill in.

I will do my best to stay true to the original intent of the session. Of course, as a PR professional, I come from a very different perspective.  What the original presenters call "promotion" I think of as "positioning" - that is, positioning yourself online and elsewhere as a thought leader or a resource to a particular community.
I will share some tools I've developed for clients that help people think strategically about how they present themselves and their work.  Then I'm going to open it up to the room to discuss the issues and challenges people face.

I expect I'll be doing more listening and learning than anything else.

You can watch the session online live on Thursday at 4pm ET and you can follow the hashtag #scioSelfPR to contribute.

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