BioJobBlogger Revealed

Ome Ogbru, Pharm. D, CEO and Founder of Rxeconsult, a new networking site for healthcare consulting and jobs, asked me if I would be interested in being interviewed about the companies and websites that I started.  Of course I could not refuse.  So here goes:

 

RxEconsult: What is BioInsights and why did you develop BioInsights?

BioJobBlogger:  BioInsights founded in 1998 was originally a bioscience training and education company.  The goal of the company was to help life scientists get the training that they need to get jobs at life sciences companies. Today, BioInsights, Inc is more of a career development company that provides individualized career development guidance and counseling for life scientists. This is because the life sciences job market has changed considerably since 1998 and jobs are harder to come by. However, we still offer bioscience training in drug development, regulatory affairs and biomanufacturing. Additionally, BioInsights also offer medical communications consulting services.

RxEconsult: How do you distinguish BioInsights from other Medical Communications companies? 

BioJobBlogger: Unlike traditional medical communications companies, BioInsights offers writing services that heavily focus on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and various blogging platforms.  We also offer medical writing, copywriter and website content development services.

RxEconsult: What are the main challenges in your business and how are you addressing them?

BioJobBlogger: Training and career development services are not high priorities for job candidates or life sciences companies until a scientist is looking for a job or a company needs to hire new employees.  Consequently, it is difficult to convince both companies and jobseekers to be proactive and engage us early in the process. We are beginning to address this problem by turning to various social media platforms to get the word out about our services. Paradoxically, the recent economic downturn has been good for our business activities!

RxEconsult: What attracted you to social media and blogging? How can professionals make a living or develop their career by blogging?

BioJobBlogger:  I enjoy writing and always have had a strong desire to share my ideas and opinions with others. Blogging seemed like a natural extension of what I like to do. So, about 6 years ago I launched BioJobBlog (www.biojobblog.com) which is focused on life sciences career development topics as well as opinion pieces and reports on the goings on in the life sciences industry. While blogging is exciting and extremely cathartic, it is difficult to make a living as a blogger. The days of individual bloggers selling their blogs for millions to large media outlets are over.   That said, blogging is useful in establishing yourself as a subject matter expert which can sometimes lead to paid opportunities.  At its peak last year, I was averaging between 65,000-70,000 unique visitors per month @ BioJobBlog.

I built traffic to the levels I mentioned by blogging 4-5 times per day and staying abreast of late breaking events in the life sciences industry.  I was able to maintain that pace for a couple of years but because I blog for free, I could not sustain the pace any longer. The original goal was to reach 100,000 unique visitors per month and then try to sell the blog or form an alliance with a media outlet. Obviously, that did not happen.  I am now happy to log between 30,000-45,000 unique visitors per month by blogging three times per week or whenever the urge strikes me.

As far as revenue is concerned, it has not been much.  It costs me about $2400 per year in hosting and management fees and I have been blogging for over 5 years.  In that timespan, I may have made several thousand dollars but not enough to break even or turn a profit.  Blogging is truly a personal medium that is driven more by desire and the need to be heard rather than a profitable enterprise; unless of course you can get a major media outlet and blog for them.  That is really my dream job right now!

RxEconsult: What are the top social media practices that professionals should use for developing their career?

BioJobBlogger: I think that LinkedIn, Twitter and a personal blog can really help in terms of career development for life scientists.  However, all of these platforms require daily monitoring and care. Sadly, most life sciences professional spend most of their time in the laboratory and fail to realize that career development is vital and cannot be ignored if one wants to find a job!

RxEconsult: What healthcare gaps can social media address? 

BioJobBlogger:  I believe that social media can be used in real time for adverse event reporting and educational outreach activities. Unfortunately, most drug makers view social media as means to bolster sales or look for specialized employees.  That said, these are early days for life sciences companies and social media and it will interesting to see how social media evolves in the life sciences industry.

RxEconsult: Why are biopharmaceutical companies struggling with leveraging social media and how can they best use social media? How can BioInsights help them?

BioJobBlogger:  The life sciences industry is very conservative and adverse to change.  Social media is clearly a game changing phenomenon and most life sciences companies don’t know what to make of it yet.  Over the past three years or so, more and more life sciences companies have experimented with various social media platforms and are beginning to realize their potential for their businesses.  

BioInsights can help companies navigate the social media jungle because of our experience using social media platforms and also developing life sciences websites and blog content.

RxEconsult: What feedback have you received and how are your websites performing?

BioJobBlogger: I recently redesigned the BioInsights website and traffic has been down. Most of my focus is on two other BioInsights web assets---BioJobBlog and BioCrowd (www.biocrowd.com) an online networking community for bioprofessionals.  

I frequently get comments @BioJobBlog about its content and how helpful it is to jobseekers and other bioprofessionals. BioCrowd was launched about three years ago and we are still growing the community. At present, joining BioCrowd is primarily through invitation only.  We are embarking on a mass membership drive early next spring.  At present there are 4,200 BioCrowd members.

RxEconsult: If you wrote a book about how to develop and run a business what pearls would you include?

BioJobBlogger: No matter how good the idea is, it is all about marketing! Good ideas with insufficient marketing power can easily fail whereas bad ideas with mega-advertising can succeed.  As a scientist myself, I failed to realize how important marketing and advertising are! In hindsight, I would have invested much more money and effort in marketing my business rather developing content and building sleek looking websites!

RxEconsult:BioJobBlogger, thank you for sharing your views and discussing your ventures. Hopefully, you can return to give us an update. I wish you success and I hope you find that dream job!

 To comment on this article or ask questions  join the RxEconsult community, a free business network for healthcare consulting, jobs, and more.

 

Twitter: What Is It Good For?

Vincent Racaniello, PhD podcaster extraordinaire and a BioCrowd co-founder, has long contended that Twitter is an ideal medium to conduct scholarly research especially in the life sciences. Unfortunately, many scientists, who have yet to try Twitter, steadfastly disagree with Vincent. To that end, I received a message from the folks over at Onlinecollege.org alerting me to an article that they published entitled “15 Fascinating Academic Studies Done on Twitter."

While none of the studies mentioned in the post were conducted in the life sciences, they run the gamut from computer science to sociology, music and science education. Twitter, which is still in its formative stages, is clearly emerging as the social medium of choice to track real time events and to stay informed about current events. As the platform matures and more people sign up as users, it is likely that it will become a player for online scholarly research studies in the life sciences and an ideal medium for science education.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Tweeting!!!!!!!!!!

 

Conference Update: Mobile Healthcare Communications

 

  

Date:Thursday, January 26, 2012
Time: 8:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Place:The Graduate Center of The City University of NY; 365 5th Ave; NY, NY 10016 
Registration Fee: $195.00
Website: http://www.bdionline.com/mobilehealthcare2012.html

Mobile Healthcare Communications News
Five Reasons Why Physicians Need to Use Social Media, 12/12/11 HealthWorks Collective
Hospital sends heart failure patients home with smartphones.
12/15/11 Fierce Mobile Healthcare
Educate your hospital staff to protect against text-related mistakes,
12/19/11 Fierce Mobile Healthcare 

About the Event:
Consumers and professionals are increasingly using their mobile devices for healthcare information. They are also interacting with healthcare providers and colleagues on their mobile phones. This conference will demonstrate the best case studies of how major healthcare brands are connecting with consumers and professionals through mobile communications. 

Speakers and Roundtable Moderators:
Meighan Berberich, Vice President, Marketing, BlogTalkRadio
Lance Hill, CEO, Within3
Scott Hopkins, Executive Vice President, Anderson Direct Marketing
Monique Levy, Senior Director, Research, Manhattan Research
Dr. Katherine Malbon, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Adolescent Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital
Talya Miron-Shatz, PhD, Marketing Department, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania
Jenna Mons, Consumer Product Manager for LAP-BAND®, Allergan 
Mario Nacinovich, Jr., Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Communication in Healthcare; Managing Director, AXON
Xavier Petit, Shire 
John Vieira,Daiichi-Sankyo

Hotel Sponsor:Hotel 373 is the official hotel of BDI's events.Click here to receive a discounted rate.

Sponsors:
PR NewswireWithin3Anderson Direct MarketingBioCrowd ; CinchcastJournal of Communication in HealthcareManhattan ResearchNew York UniversityPixels and PillsPublic Relations Society of America - New York ChapterSociety for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development

For event related questions and registration, please contact Maria Feola-Magro at mfeola@bdionline.com or 212.765.8043.
For sponsorship/speaking opportunities, including pricing, please click here or contact Jennifer Brous at jbrous@bdionline.com or 212-765-8358.

For additional information, including registration, please click here to visit the event website. Use promo code BC for a discounted rate of $175.

 

 

Improve Your Job Prospects By Using LinkedIn

Last week, financial analysts and social media enthusiast were all a twitter (sorry I couldn’t resist) about LinkedIn’s multibillion dollar IPO. There is little doubt that LinkedIn has emerged as the preeminent job search social media platform. However, there are a few “tricks” that jobseekers ought to consider to improve their job prospects and subsequent employment.

To that end, Paul Boutin wrote a great piece in the Gadgetwise section of the NY Time yesterday entitled “Three Things All LinkedIn Users Should Do.” It was so well written that I reproduced much of the post below.

“Post a photo – A few years ago, people who posted photos of themselves to the Internet seemed self centered. In the Facebook, era, though, an account page without a picture seems like the work of someone who didn’t put much effort into it. It doesn’t need to be a professional headshot. Just stand against a white wall in business attire (or, if you’re a software engineer, a Rush t-shirt) and have someone take a cellphone photo of your face and shoulders. To upload your photo, choose the option Profile -> Edit Profile at the top of your LinkedIn page, and look for the Add Photo link.

Think keywords – On the same Edit Profile page, take a good look at your resume. If your past employers gave you odd titles like “gatorbox wrangler” or vague ones like “senior administrator,” replace them with industry standard terms like “sales engineer” and “accounts payable specialist.” Otherwise, you’ll never be found, because no one will type those terms into LinkedIn’s search box.

Search experts call this problem “discovery.” Other people won’t find you if they aren’t searching for words that match your entry. Pack your LinkedIn profile with as many popular job terms as you can think of related to what you do. If you can honestly change a past job title from something like “Web producer,” to something more senior like “product manager,” it’s better to put it  in your profile, so you can at least get found and get an interview.

Ask a question – A LinkedIn spokeswoman told me that sending a question to your LinkedIn network is one of the best ways to remind people that you still exist, and are still looking for work. Click the menu option More -> Answers at the upper right of the LinkedIn home page, and look for the box that says “Ask a Question.” Get to the point: “Does anyone know of an office administrator position with a full-time salary and benefits?” These days that might get you a part-time contract, but it’s probably better than blindly sending out resumes and watching your inbox in vain.”

If LinkedIn is too overwhelming or more time consuming than you are willing to invest, check out BioCrowd, an online networking site designed EXCLUSIVELY for life scientists and other bioprofessionals.

Hat tip to Paul Boutin and the NY Times!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting  (check out the BioJobCenter)

 

The 25 Best Biomedicine And Healthcare Informatics Blogs

William Hooper author of the HealthTechTopia blog which focuses on biomedicine and healthcare informatics compiled a top 25 list of the best biomedicine blogs on the web. 

While BioJobBlog failed to make the list, BioCrowd was listed at number 14. This is what the HealthTechTopia blog had to say about BioCrowd, the online networking site created by Vincent Racaniello and me.

“So where can you get blog entries from tons of biomedicine enthusiasts? With a stop here. The site was built to help bioscience professionals build relationships, exchange ideas, find jobs, and identify exciting new career opportunities.”

Best Blogs on Biomedicine by an Individual

These experts in biomedicine take it on at all angles.

  1. Biotech/ Biomedical
    Join Dr. Theresa Phillips as she uses her experience to provide her readers with tools, tips, strategies, and information about the industry. She has a broad background in a number of different areas of biotechnology and biomedical research, including having worked for two biotech companies in the environmental remediation industry. Must reads include a career in biotech and six approaches to phytoremediation.
  2. Terry Etherton Blog on Biotechnology
    Dr. Etherton is a Distinguished Professor of Animal Nutrition and Head of the Department of Dairy and Animal Science at Penn State University. His research specialty is the area of endocrine regulation of animal growth and nutrient metabolism. Genetically modified crops and cloned livestock are the latest blog topics.
  3. Eye on DNA
    Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei is a PhD-trained epidemiologist and biotech consultant, as well as a Stanford and JohnHopkinsUniversity graduate. One of her focuses is on how both genome and internet technology are going to change the world. Popular articles include DNA toys and “100 Facts About DNA.”
  4. Gary Rabin
    He is the Chairman of Advanced Cell Technology. They are a biotechnology company that specializes in the development of cellular therapies for the treatment of rare and common diseases that impact millions of people worldwide. The blog often lists their accomplishments as well as related items in biotech.
  5. Building Confidence
    Blogger Russ Altman is also a professor at StanfordUniversity. His writings are a way to share commentary on issues related to his professional expertise, which is biomedical informatics, genetics, medicine, and bioengineering. He also has a quick tutorial on the subject of bioinformatics.
  6. Gene Expression
    Razib Khan’s degrees are in biochemistry and biology. He has blogged about genetics since 2002, previously worked in software development, and is an Unz Foundation Junior Fellow. A standout choice for often integrating pop culture and news items into bio-learning.
  7. Biotech Blog
    Yali Friedman lives in Washington, DC and is the author of “Building Biotechnology” and other books. He is also the founder of DrugPatentWatch and chief editor of the “Journal of Commercial Biotechnology.” Check out his blog for thoughts and news on the commercial, legal, political, and scientific aspects of biotech.
  8. Expression Patterns
    Proving again that biomedicine isn’t just for men is Eva Amsen. She recently moved from research to editing and from biochemistry to developmental biology. In addition to science, she also blogs about the arts.
  9. Public Rambling
    What sounds like a blog for the latest commentary on the latest scandal is actually a scientific one. Pedro Beltrao stops here to write about what he thinks on bioinformatics, science, and technology. Omics was the topic of a recent post.
  10. Science Roll
    Bertalan Meskó graduated from the University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science Center in 2009 and started PhD studies in the field of personalized genomics. His blog is now a journey through genetics and medicine. Biomedicine in the news and his reaction are often the topic of posts.

Best Blogs on Biomedicine by a Group

Check out these groups and sites for a collective view of biomedicine and related areas.

  1. The Daily Scan
    Part of Genome Web, there are several blogs on biomedicine to choose from. They include entries on cancer and informatics. The main site has more for those interested in biomedicine such as news, careers, and a magazine.
  2. ISAAA
    Click here for the official blog from the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications. They have a newsfeed that is constantly updated and divided by crop biotech, biofuels supplement, and more. There are also other learning resources offered.
  3. Fierce Biotech
    Get just the news with a visit here. Several stories a day are on all the advancements and announcements in the field. You can also choose by biomarkers, events, whitepapers, and much more.
  4. BioCrowd
    So where can you get blog entries from tons of biomedicine enthusiasts? With a stop here. The site was built to help bioscience professionals build relationships, exchange ideas, find jobs, and identify exciting new career opportunities.
  5. Growers for Biotechnology
    Their mission is to promote and facilitate the research, development and acceptance of biotechnology in agriculture. The news stream has the latest in developments in biology for food. You can also get other biotech info such as why growers use biotech and reports.
  6. BMC Biotechnology
    This is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed articles on the manipulation of biological macromolecules or organisms. Use in experimental procedures, cellular, and tissue engineering, as well as in the pharmaceutical, agricultural biotechnology, and allied industries are also shared. Current featured articles are on glucosinolate engineering and cytokine inhibition.
  7. Biotechnology Journal
    Can’t make it to the library to read the latest issue or shell out a subscription fee? Then click here to get many issues offering free articles as a PDF. There are also other biomedicine items available.
  8. Colorado Bioscience Association
    The CBSA is a not-for-profit corporation providing services and support for Colorado’s growing biosciences industry. Their blog contains news releases, links to articles, and other related information of interest. Maggie Chamberlin Holben of their marketing department has more.
  9. Biomedicine on Display
    This is the blog of Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen. They focus on the display of visual and material culture in museums, laboratories, and clinics with a goal of promoting contemporary biomedicine. Materialism was the subject of the latest post.
  10. BioSpace
    Finally, stop here to get items on life, science, and the community with the biologist in mind. Top breaking news and featured stories are often included. You can also search by biotech, medical, clinical research, and academic entries.

Best Blogs on Specific Biomedicine

Learn more about a specific area of biomedicine below.

  1. The Spittoon
    Get the writings from the pro’s at 23 and Me here. They specialize in using saliva to analyze the nearly one million locations in a person’s genome. Readers of the blog are given a deeper understanding of DNA and related areas.
  2. Genetic Future
    So how will all this biomedicine and such affect us in the future? That is the very question that genome researcher Daniel MacArthur strives to answer. Part of Wired Blogs, he focuses on the fast moving world of human genetics and why companies will sell you info on your own DNA.
  3. OnBioVC
    But can all this biomedicine talk be used to turn a profit? With a visit to this blog, the answer can be “yes.” They specialize in reporting on bioscience venture capital data.
  4. Blog,Bioethics.net
    As with any science, ethics is going to come into play. Get a blog especially for the ethics surrounding biology here. The editors of “The American Journal of Bioethics” use it to inform and discuss more on the subject with the public.
  5. Bioethics Discussion Blog
    Because one view on anything ethical isn’t enough, click here. Dr. Maurice Bernstein is a physician and medical school teacher who moderates the discussion. With entries dating back to 2004, make time for tons of bioethics.

No matter if you are a student studying for a PhD or just a fan of science, there is loads to learn on the above 25 best blogs on biomedicine.

 

This Week In Microbiology (TWIM) #7: Cycles Of Life and Death and Light and Dark

 On episode #7 of the podcast This Week in Microbiology, Vincent, Cliff, Elio, Margaret, and Michael discuss programmed cell death in E. coli, and the daily synthesis and degradation of enzymes needed for photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation by cyanobacteria.

 

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Margaret McFall-Ngai, Cliff Mintz, Elio Schaecter, and Michael Schmidt.

 

Right click to download TWiM #7 (44.5 MB, .mp3, 64 minutes).

 

Subscribe to TWiM (free) on iTunesZune Marketplace, via RSS feed, by email or listen on your mobile device with the Microbeworld app.

 

Links for this episode:

Image of Cyanobacteria in Lake Littoistenjärvi by Stefe via flickr

Send your microbiology questions and comments (email or mp3 file) to twim@twiv.tv , or call them in to 908-312-0760. You can also post articles that you would like us to discuss at microbeworld.org and tag them with twim.

 

How NOT To Answer Tough Interview Questions

One of the more popular seminars that I present at national meetings is “Interviewing Tips and Insights.” The material that I present has been gleaned from over 25 years of interviewing for jobs. And, not surprisingly, many interview mistakes and guffaws that I point out to participant were made by me during actual job interviews. 

As part of the presentation, I put together a list entitled “The Top 10 Interview Questions That You Hate To Answer.” The list is composed entirely of questions that I have been asked during job interviews. I review the list and offer suggestions about crafting answers to those seemingly mindless and irrelevant questions. However, it is important to note, that while they may seem mindless and meaningless to you, they do offer insights into a person’s personality, ability to think on their feet and problem solving abilities. Consequently, it is vital to consider some the questions that you may be asked and to craft potential answers to them before your next face-to-face.  

To that end, I found a YouTube video produced by Careerbuilder.com that offers examples of frequently-asked interview questions and how NOT to answer them. While the video is hilarious (and a bit over-the-top at times) it offers some good insights and ideas on how to better prepare yourself for those difficult-to-answer interview questions.

 

 Until next time..

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

 

What Exactly Is LinkedIn?

By now, many of you have received an invitation by e-mail to join someone’s LinkedIn network. While some of you may have heard of LinkedIn, you may not exactly be sure what it is and whether or not you ought to accept the invitation to join your colleague’s network. To that end, watching the video below (sponsored by LinkedIn) may help to answer some questions about the network and whether or not it may be right for you.

 

It is becoming increasingly obvious that participation at online social networking at sites like LinkedIn, BioCrowd, Twitter and others are necessary to land jobs in today’s competitive job market. Unfortunately, many scientists are still reluctant to join these networks to help to find jobs or advance their careers. Hopefully, this will change in the future as scientists begin to recognize the career benefits of online networking sites.

BTW, LinkedIn, which has 100 million users* and a presence in over 140 countries, is going public. It latest IPO price was today announced at $45 per share; the top of its expected price range! Other social media companies like GroupOn and Facebook are expected to issue IPOs later this year.

* In a previous iteration of this post, I mistakenly published that LinkedIn had over 200 million members. The actual number is about 100 million....Mea Culpa!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

Addendum: LinkedIN successfully completed its IPO on Thursday. After opening at at $83 — up from its I.P.O. price of $45 — and rose as high as $122.70. The shares closed at $94.25, giving the company a market value of roughly $9 billion

 

Healthcare and Lifes Sciences Social Communications Leadership Forum

BioJobBlog and BioCrowd co-sponsoring the Business Development Institute and PR Newswire's Healthcare and LIfe Sciences Communications Leadership Forum that will be held on June 9, 2011 in San Diego CA

The forum is comprised of a group of senior marketing and communications executives from prominent biotechnology, pharmaceutical, hospital groups, medical device, and managed care companies. The forum focuses on how healthcare and life sciences brands achieve business objectives with social media and social technologies. The event consists of case study examples from well respected organizations in an intimate setting at AMN Healthcare in San Diego, CA.


The event will cover the following questions:

  • What are the best examples of how to connect with consumers and healthcare professionals through social approaches?
  • What are the best case studies of how healthcare brands create and execute content strategies and content based marketing?
  • How do you integrate social with your traditional customer service and marketing platforms?
  • How are leading brands organizing themselves to best deliver results across the enterprise?
  • How have others overcome the compliance and legal challenges with social communications?
  • How do you plan, manage, integrate, and leverage data from social, online, and offline programs?
  • How are mobile and location-based technologies being applied in healthcare?
  • What are the tools, technologies, and best practices for monitoring and measuring social communications?

Speakers:

Carol Burke, Senior Director of Marketing & Communications, AMN Healthcare

Becky Carroll, Founder, Customers ROCK!/Petra Consulting

Olga Hays, Special Events Coordinator, Scripps Health Foundation
Michael Pranikoff, Global Director, Emerging Media, PR Newswire Association LLC
Monique Ramsey, Principal, Cosmetic Social Media

For additional information, including registration, please click here to visit the event website.

 

BioCareers: Online Networking Tips

I recently wrote a professional development article that appeared in the May edition of the American Society of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) monthly publication entitled “Why Online Networking Can Make a Difference in Your Job Search.” The reason I wrote the piece was because an increasing number of social medial-savvy, younger scientists have been successfully generating job leads by belonging to online social networking sites. Some of the more useful online networking sites for bioscience jobseekers include BioCrowd, LinkedIn (join groups), Twitter (follow scientists and other life sciences professionals) and others. 

Unfortunately, many scientists do not see any value in belonging to online social networks and a few have even derided them! I suspect that those are the folks who are having trouble getting responses or interview offers from prospective employers. In any event, for those of you who are intrepid enough to give online networking a try, there are five tips that I can offer before you take the plunge.

  1. Choose the online networking sites that are appropriate for you (hint:  Facebook doesn't count)
  2. Create a professional user profile devoid of personal information but replete with scientific accomplishments
  3. Connect with others on the site who share your interests and may be helpful to you in a job search
  4. Expand your network by inviting colleagues and professional friend to join (remember, it is the quality not the size of your network that matters)
  5. Google yourself occasionally to manage (edit, delete, retract, add) the information on the web that is available to prospective employers.

For those of you who may be interested in reading the entire article please click here.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

 

Social Media: Is the Demise of Online Video Viewing Drawing Near?

According to a blurb in  today's NY Times, a recent Nielsen survey found that over the past year online video gained fewer viewers. More specifically, survey results showed that the number of people who watched online videos increased only 3.1 percent from Jan. 31, 2010 to Jan. 31, 2011. While the number of viewers showed only a slight increase, the amount of time individuals spent viewing video increased almost 45 percent to 4 hours 39 minutes during the same period.

The increase in online video viewing time was attributed to the growing popularity of websites like Netflix and Hulu that offer viewers access to long-form video streaming. This shift may signal the beginning of the end of the popularity of short-form videos offered by sites like YouTube. To that end, in recent months, YouTube (owned by Google) has signaled its intent to focus more on long-form video content.

Although there may be a shift taking place in online video viewing behavior, I think that rumors about the death of online video viewing have been greatly exaggerated. In my opinion, video is here to stay but it may no longer represent a “stand alone” web destination. In the future, video and other rich media assets will likely be bundled with text and other written content as part of the online viewed experience. A good example of this is being pioneered by companies like Atavist—a publisher of long-form journalism and fiction.

Interestingly, the popularity of short form videos is just beginning to take off in the life sciences and related industries. As usual, it appears that lay consumers are way ahead of the scientific community when it comes to cultural trends....go figure!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Viewing!!!!!!!

 

Networking and BioJob Searching: How to Harness the Power of LinkedIn

Despite what you may have been told, managing a career and finding new job opportunities is all about networking. Yes, I know that scientists and many other bioprofessionals loathe networking, but that is the way the game is played and if you want to win you have to play by the rules (written or otherwise).

 

Thankfully, the advent of professional social networking sites like LinkedIn and BioCrowd helps to take some of imagined or real discomfort associated with “in real life” networking where face-to-face communication is required. Despite the growing popularity of professional networking sites, many scientists and other bioprofessional have little idea about what they are and how they ought to be used! Because of this, Laura Hales, PhD, put together a mini-primer on how to use LinkedIn to maximize exposure to promote a business, find a job or advance a career.

 

Laura is the Founder and President of The Isis Group, a scientific communications company. She regularly blogs on tips for writing scientific manuscripts and grants at www.isis-editing.com/blog. Mention BioCrowd and receive a 10% discount on an overhaul of your CV or LinkedIn profile!

 

Five Strategies To Advance Your Career Using LinkedIn

By Laura Hales

OK, so you posted your profile on LinkedIn, connected with some colleagues, got a few recommendations … now what?

  

Tip 1: It’s your profile; here’s how to make it feel that way in five easy steps.

  • Upload a good headshot. Crop out the background so that your face survives the shrinkage in quality and size required by LinkedIn.
  • Accurately define yourself in your professional headline — along with your headshot, these shows up in LinkedIn whenever you do.
  • Update your status frequently with a tweet, a new blog post, an interesting article you read, or a seminar you’re thinking of attending. This will keep you appearing in the digest of network activity that is sent to your connections every week.
  • Fill your “Specialties” section with industry-related keywords so that people can find you in a targeted search.
  • Customize your profile’s URL. This makes it easy for people to find you quickly (hit the “Edit” button next to “Public Profile” on your homepage and choose your own URL. Mine is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lauramhales). Add it to your email signature.

Tip 2: You can join up to 50 groups. Max yourself out!

 

Use keywords to search for groups to join that can help you accomplish your goals, whether that’s finding a job or your next client. To avoid looking like a LinkedIn Groups “Junkie” (or to keep that job search under wraps), you can choose to hide a group on your profile. You can either do this when you join the group (by unclicking “Display the Group Logo on My Profile”) or at a later date (go to your Edit Profile page, hit “Change Visibility” next to the group’s name). If you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night, you could even start your own group! Spam all your connections and see who joins.

 

Tip 3: Now that you’ve joined these groups, participate

 

There are so many ways to do this. Here are a few I’ve tried that really work:

  • Start a new discussion asking for thoughts on a current trend in your field.
  • Post interesting articles and include your opinion, or a thought-provoking question to the group about the article.
  • Publish a link to your latest blog post, including an attention-grabbing headline about it (use bit.ly to shorten the blog post’s URL, and go back to bit.ly later to get analytics and see how many people clicked on your link).
  • Subscribe to a digest of the activity in your groups and post comments on others’ discussions. This is a great way to gain exposure in your field and showcase your knowledge about various topics.

A related tip: To share a network update such as a blog post or article with multiple groups at once, hit the “Share” button after the update appears on your profile, then check the “Post to Groups” box. This allows you to enter in multiple group names to post your update.

 

Tip 4: Add applications to your profile (found under the “More” tab on your profile page)

 

LinkedIn users can incorporate a multitude of add-ons into their profile, with more being added all the time. These applications include:

  • Reading List by Amazon: Not so much for the book you’re reading about potty training your two-year-old, but more about books relevant to your field or profession. Include your opinion about the book in a few sentences.
  • WordPress/BlogLink: This automatically posts the title and the first few sentences of your latest blog entries.
  • Tweets: Get on Twitter!
  • Events: Let your network know what seminars, conferences and other events you’re planning to attend.
  • Box.net/SlideShare: This application lets you share files such as your résumé or a recent presentation you gave. 

Tip 5: Use LinkedIn Answers (also under the “More” tab)

 

Subscribe to an RSS feed of the discussion groups you want to follow. Post answers to questions in your field of expertise, and if the asker of the question indicates your answer is the “best,” you’re on your way to gaining “expert” status in the community.

 

LinkedIn boasts that a new member joins every second of every day, making it a powerful networking tool. Good luck using these tips to help advance your career using LinkedIn!

 

This blog post originally appeared on the HiredPens Blog

 Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

 

BioCrowd Co-Founder, Cliff Mintz, Talks About Building Online Networks for Life Scientists and Physicians

Believe it or not, I was interviewed by Karl Schmieder of Bridge 6, a digital healthcare marketing firm about the genesis of BioCrowd and why online networking is important for bioprofessionals and healthcare providers. This is a first for me and it signals that online networking for life scientists and other bioprofessionals may actually be starting to catch on. You can read the entire interview by clicking here.

While most other sites like Benchfly, Epernicus, Labspaces, ResearchGate and others cater almost exclusively to scientists, BioCrowd was created as an online networking and career development site for ALL bioprofessionals including those involved with marketing, manufacturing, publishing, writing, fun raising etc. We want prospective BioCrowd members to think of the community as a “one-stop-shopping” site for life sciences professionals who want to network, advance a career or even start  up a biotechnology company! Check us out!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (I hope to see you at BioCrowd!)

 

Social Media And Advertising

Facebook has over 500 million users and Twitter has close to 175 million who write 95 million tweets daily. Conventionally wisdom suggests that using either of the platforms to advertise or brand a product or service would be a no brainer. However, my experience with paid ads on Facebook (I haven’t tried Twitter yet) suggests that the ROI on using social media to advertise may not be that substantial. There is no question that using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, GroupOn  to build brand awareness or create a buzz about a product or service or to share coupons is extremely useful. But for straight up advertising and click through rates—not so much!!!

I will be the first to admit that I know little about marketing and advertising (although I did take an advertising class as a microbiology major @Cornell). However, the sheer number of users on Facebook and LinkedIn, suggested that I may be able to grow membership @ BioCrowd and promote readership @ BioJobBlog by advertising on these platforms. To that end,  I invested several hundred dollars into advertising campaigns on both platforms. Unfortunately neither campaign had any noticeable effects on enrollment at BioCrowd or readership at BioJobBlog. I attributed the lack of success of these campaigns to my woeful understanding of the arcane disciplines of marketing and advertising —I am a scientist, after all! 

Imagine my surprise (and delight) when I read an article in a local newspaper entitled “More and More Executives Using Social Media to Promote Business” which described several business owner’s experiences with advertising on social media that were identical to mine! Like me, they thought that advertising on Facebook and other social media platforms was so obvious that they couldn’t pass on the opportunity. Also, like me, they were extremely disappointed with the results. For example, a Princeton, NJ-based clothes retailer (which caters to college students) invested $500 on a Facebook ad. While the ad, that offered 20 percent discounts on clothing, received 1 million page views, not a single one translated into a sale! Others described similar experiences. I guess the old saying “misery loves company” may be apt here.

Although some still consider social media to be a passing fan, I strongly disagree. I think that social media is clearly here to stay and has become an essential way in which we communicate with one another. That said, because social media is only about six years old, it may be too soon to determine whether or not advertising on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media platforms can translate into a reasonable ROI. I guess only time (and money) will tell!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!

 

BioCrowd and Quertle, a New Biomedical Literature Search Engine, Ink a Deal

BioCrowd (www.biocrowd.com) and Quertle (www.quertle.info) announced today that BioCrowd has enhanced its site by embedding Quertle's semantic biomedical search engine. BioCrowd is an online networking site for bioprofessionals that offers it members discussions, blogs, podcasts, job searching tools, and research product reviews. With the addition of literature searching capability via Quertle's new generation biomedical search engine, BioCrowd has evolved into a one-stop site for persons involved in biomedical research.

Quertle's search engine uses advanced linguistic methods to find conceptual relationships, not just query terms scattered throughout a document. Searches yield highly relevant documents instead of the long lists of sometimes incomprehensible results offered by other literature search sites. Quertle's pioneering approaches, including Power Terms™ - which represent entire classes of related concepts such as "diseases" - provide its users with a means to quickly get answers and make discoveries through literature searches.

By accessing Quertle through BioCrowd, community members will now have full access to a gamut of web resources routinely used by life scientists. "Embedding Quertle in BioCrowd adds the best literature searching capability to an existing tool chest of key web resources," said Professor Vincent Racaniello, a virologist at Columbia University School of Medicine and a BioCrowd co-founder. "There is no longer a need to visit multiple sites to gain access to the tools and functionality demanded by life sciences researchers." Clifford Mintz, PhD, BioCrowd's Chief Business Officer added, "We talked to a variety of biomedical search engine companies and Quertle's product surpassed its competitors."

About BioCrowd

BioCrowd is an online networking site exclusively designed for bioscience professionals. It was started by Clifford S. Mintz and Vincent Racaniello, two longtime bioscientists, who recognized a need for junior and senior scientists to network with one another and other bioscience professionals to realize and achieve professional or career goals.

About Quertle

Quertle is a biomedical search engine focused on delivering informative results to biomedical researchers using advanced linguistic technologies and an in-depth understanding of the biomedical field.

 

Pharma Begins Using Social Media to Recruit New Talent

Over the past few years, life sciences companies have shed over 200,000 jobs. Unfortunately, downsizing at some of these companies may not be over yet. Nevertheless, companies are always looking to recruit new talent to keep up with normal job turnover rates or to replace highly specialized employees whose skills sets are essential to successfully running the business. Because many of these former life sciences employees possessed special or arcane talents and skill sets, advertising for their replacements using conventional methods like job boards and print ad advertising have historically met with limited success. The advent of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have prompted HR professionals and hiring managers at some life sciences companies to test social media as a recruitment tool.

While Facebook may come to mind as the most likely social media tool for this purpose, it isn’t! This is because Facebook is primarily a social, not a professional network like LinkedIn or BioCrowd. Further, despite Facebook’s gargantuan size, the lack of real time interaction coupled with the sheer volume of updates, ads, activities and games at the site render it largely ineffective as a job advertising or recruiting tool.

Twitter, on the other hand, is an ideal medium to advertise jobs and attract new talent. This is because information that is broadcasted on Twitter has the potential to reaches large numbers of persons very rapidly. Moreover, regular Twitter users pay attention to activity on their feeds and like to “retweet” information that they find useful or helpful to their followers. Finally, many Twitter users regularly cull their follower lists to more accurately reflect their interests which suggest that the quality/focus of most follower lists on Twitter far surpasses that of friend networks on Facebook. For example, I manage the @BioCrowd Twitter feed. To that end, I decide who BioCrowd follows and wants to follow. And, not surprisingly, I only follow or allow individuals to follow BioCrowd  who are interested or work in the life sciences. Currently, BioCrowd has over 1,300 followers, all of whom work or are involved in some aspect of the life sciences industry. Because, I have intentionally created a highly specialized network of life sciences professionals, the likelihood of a prospective employer finding a “right fit” candidate by tweeting a job ad to the BioCrowd network greatly increases. Further, the ability of Twitter users to direct the job tweet to specific followers or retweet it preserves the longevity of the ad and improves its effectiveness. And, perhaps the best thing about using Twitter as a job announcement platform is that it is free!

The use of social media as a recruiting and retention tool by Fortune 500 companies like American Express, Best Buy and others is not new. However, its use as a recruitment platform by life sciences companies is very new to the life sciences companies. As many you may know, the life sciences industry has been slow to adopt the use of social media. Nevertheless, several companies like Merck (@merckcareers1) and AstraZeneca (@JoinAstraZeneca and @AstraZeneca Jobs) have decided to boldly go where no other pharmaceutical companies have gone before and are beginning to experiment with Twitter as a recruiting tool.  

About a year ago, I wrote a post that suggested that social media would be an ideal recruitment and retention tool for most life sciences companies. The fact that a couple of companies are testing this idea suggests that my idea may be a good one! 

If you know of other companies using Twitter to recruit new employees, please leave a comment or contact me.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (@BioCrowd)

 

Online Networking Sites Have Changed the Job Seeking Paradigm

Before the advent of social media, the only way job candidates could communicate to a hiring manager why they—rather than other applicants—were the right fit for a job was through a face-to-face interview. Conventional wisdom suggests that a skilled candidate who can also demonstrate a legitimate enthusiasm for a position is generally the applicant who wins out. However, the online world, specifically the social web, has changed all that.

Numerous studies suggest that over 70% of hiring managers screen prospective job applicants by trolling social networking sites like BioCrowd, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. While some hiring managers do this to make sure that a potential new hire hasn’t done anything untoward or unseemly, the plethora of blogs, forums, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and Twitter feeds enable them to get to know job applicants better than ever before. In some cases, a well-crafted and carefully managed Facebook or LinkedIn profile or blog can make the difference between a new job and unemployment.

This is not to say that jobseekers are required to have Facebook or LinkedIn page or Twitter feed to get hired. But, if executed correctly, they can help. That said, there are certain cardinal rules that must be followed to not run afoul of prospective new employers. These include:

  1. No swearing or use of foul language
  2. Do not post party or sexually-explicit photos
  3. Don’t say bad things about past employers or current co-workers
  4. Keep posts and status updates to a minimum and make sure that they are posted before or after working hours
  5. Avoid posting opinions about religion, sexual orientation and politics

Also, it is a good idea to Google yourself from time to time to see what the search results look like. Most employers routinely Google job applicants to acquire more information about prospective hires. As many social media gurus like to say “Google never forgets.”

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

 

Attention: All Science and Medical Writers--BioInsights Launches the BioWriters Forum

Medical/science writing is increasingly becoming popular among PhD life scientists are having trouble finding traditional laboratory-based, research jobs. The transition from laboratory research to writing is not an onerous one; especially if you like to write.

As many of you may know, I am a freelance medical/science writer who entered the field about 10 years ago.  Because most freelancers work from home offices, the lack of communication with others can be overwhelming at times. Consequently, many of us subscribe to e-mail-based listservs which allow us to stay in touch with other writers and frreelancers. Most of these medical writing listservs are run and maintained by the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA). In order to access and participate at the listservs, you must be an AMWA member which costs $145 or more per year.

While the AMWA forums are very popular, AMWA officials assiduously monitors them and at times, restricts some of the content that can be posted. For example, members of the 'freelance business only listserv' are strictly prohibited from posting jobs or alerting others to potential freelance opportunities. AMWA officials contends that these posts are inappropriate and disruptive. However, the real reason for the prohibition may be that AWMA operates a separate, fee-based service that allows freelancers to hawk their services.  In other words, allowing  users to mention freelancing gigs or job opportunities on 'freelance business only' listserv, could potentially jeopardize an additional AMWA revenue stream.

Occasionally, freelancers like me break the rules (go figure) and mention "hot" jobs or employers who may be looking for writers. I do this because, as a freelancer, I am painfully aware that my success as a freelancer is contingent upon my ability to maintain a regular, ongoing stream of freelance gigs. Unfortunately, the AMWA officers who monitor the listservs (many of whom are not freelancers), don’t understand this. Consequently, repeat offenders-- like me--have been threatened with financial sanctions and possible expulsion from the listserv.

Because I don't like feeling oppressed and being told what to do, I decided to create my own forum where freelancers can freely exchange information, post jobs, alert others about potential gigs and jobs and generally have an open and ongoing discussion about medical and science writing.  To that end I launched the BioWriters Forum about two weeks ago. The forum is hosted by BioInsights, Inc and is sponsored by BioJobBlog and BioCrowd. The forum is free but membership is required in order to participate. Please check it out and join if you like.

For those of you who decide to join, please feel free to send me any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, kudos, kvetches etc, that you may have.  Enjoy!

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Freelancing!!!!!!!!!

Employers

 

Social Media and Microbiology Education

Vincent Racaniello, a BioCrowd founder and Professor of Microbiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons published an article on PLOS Pathogens entitled “Social Media and Microbiology.”

Vincent, a virologist by training, has spent the past 30 years at Columbia where he has been recognized for numerous achievements including identification and characterization of the human polio virus receptor, the creation of transgenic mice to study the neural tropism of the polio virus and the identification of viral virulence factors that contribute to the pathogenesis of a variety of viral infections. His contributions to the field of virology have resulted in a number of honors including the Eli Lilly Award, a Harvey Lectureship, a 10 year Merit Award from NIH and editor of the Journal of Virology and other peer reviewed microbiology journals.

While not conducting laboratory research and teaching virology to undergraduates and graduate students, Vincent spends a considerable amount of time writing for his blog the Virology Blog and creating podcasts for his award winning show entitled TWIV (This Week in Virology). He is a committed educator and firmly believes that his role as a scientist is to improve the public understanding of infectious diseases and science in general. 

The introduction to his article aptly describes his philosophy about social media and science education.

“Social media consists of Internet technologies that allow users to create and share content, and to foster dialogues among other users. Examples include software applications for communication (blogging, social networking, discussion forums), collaboration (wikis, social bookmarking), and multimedia (sharing photographs, video, and livecasting). In the world of science, social media is becoming an increasingly integral component of both research and education. My experience with two types of social media, blogging and podcasting, has convinced me that scientists must embrace these applications to enhance research, and to better communicate their work to the public.”

If you want to learn more about Vincent or chat with him, he can frequently be found at BioCrowd interacting with undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs and even colleagues from time to time.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

 

Meeting Update: BioConference Live:Clinical Diagnostics

The fourth BioConference Live: Clinical Diagnostics meeting will be taking place on October 20-21, 2010.   This online-only, live, interactive virtual event will cover new technologies, best practices and other pertinent topics for Clinical Diagnostics professionals. Registration is free and all interested persons can attend!  The conference is accredited by the ASCLS American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science and Professional Acknowledgment for Continuing Education (P.A.C.E.).

Therapeutic areas to be covered include: Infectious Diseases, Cancer, Diabetes, Allergy & Immunology, Cardiology, Point of Care, Automation, Molecular Diagnostics, Hematology, Laboratory Testing, Stem Cells, Protein Arrays, and Clinical Chemistry.

Some of the featured speakers include:

  1. Alan Wu Ph.D., Chief of Clinical Chemistry & Toxicology & Prof. Laboratory Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital and University of California, San Francisco
  2. Steven Burrill, CEO Burrill & Company
  3. David Persing M.D. Ph.D., Chief Medical and Technology Officer, Cepheid
  4. Peter Gilligan Ph.D., Professor of Microbiology-Immunology UNC Hospitals
  5. Thomas Goodwin Ph.D., Project Scientist (NxPCM) and Director Disease Modeling & Tissue Analogues Laboratory NASA
  6. Steven Binder, Director Technology Development Bio-Rad Laboratories
  7. Brad Karon M.D., Ph.D., FCAP, FACB, Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Laboratory Medicine Mayo Clinic
  8. Alex Rai Ph.D., Director, Specialty Laboratory, Chief Scientific Officer, Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine, Columbia University
  9. Robert Fitzgerald Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of California San Diego

Login will take place on October 20th and 21st between 9 AM and 6 PM EST.

Sign Up Now and have a chance to win an iPad if you refer a friend!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Learning!!!!!!!!

 

More Seniors Flocking to Social Media: Are Online Social Networking Sites Passé?

A recent report published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that in the last year, social networking services have nearly doubled in popularity in Americans over the age of 50. Interesting, there were virtually no inroads among those aged 18 to 29. The spike in popularity also includes those over 65 years old who are twice as likely this year as compared with last to say that they belonged to social networking sites.

The authors of the report suggest a few reasons for the increasing popularity of social networking among seniors (aside from the observation that older people are slower overall to adopt technological innovations). 

First, social networking sites provide a rare opportunity to bridge the generational divide; for example grandparents and grandchildren can keep track of each other or share family photos on a single network like Facebook. Second, many older Americans use Facebook and even Twitter to reconnect with people from their past. Finally, social networking sites have been around for almost a decade and there are growing signs that younger folks are moving beyond social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to the next big thing (whatever that may be).

While online networking sites may have begun to outlive their usefulness for social activities, there is trend toward the use of these sites for professional purposes including job searches and access to information. LinkedIn and BioCrowd are two good examples of this type of online professional networking sites.

FYI, I rarely visit Facebook and occasionally have time for Twitter (I turned 57 this past July). Most of my online time is spent on LinkedIn and BioCrowd looking for new contacts and access to interesting information about the life sciences industry. 

Just sayin’

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Surfing!!!!!!!!!

 

BioCrowd Launches the BioJob Center

Looking for a job can be overwhelming, time consuming and emotionally draining. Recognizing this, BioCrowd founders Cliff Mintz and Vincent Racaniello began searching for a tool that would help to reduce the pain associated with looking for a job. To that end, BioCrowd in association with Career Management Source, Inc— an emerging, life sciences recruiting management software company —are pleased to announce the launch of the BioJob Center at the BioCrowd.

The BioJob Center offers both job seekers and employers ‘real time,’ current job listings, application tracking, and e-mail job alerts. Job seekers can search for jobs (based on job title and/or location) and directly apply for them from the job center.

Employers can list job openings; advertise jobs; call out ‘hot jobs’ or search candidate resume databases. Jobs posted to the BioJob Center are also simultaneously listed on other job sites including www.JobJobHealth.com and Twitter Jobs. Other job boards and sites will be added in the near future.

The search engine that powers the job center was specifically designed to automatically ‘pull’ thousands of job listings from life sciences corporate websites, bioscience job boards and other sources. Job search results are updated in real time and positions that have already been filled are automatically eliminated from search results. This feature prevents job seekers from wasting time applying for jobs that no longer exist!

Job seekers can post their resumes and join the BioJob Center for free! One of the cooler features of the new tool is customized candidate e-mail alerts. Job seekers who use this feature receive alerts when new jobs (that meet specifications) are posted to the BioJob Center or added in real time by the search engine. This helps to save time by avoiding multiple visits to job boards and conducting an endless number of Google searches.

Whether you are a job seeker or employer, Vincent and I believe that the BioJob Center will help to expedite and alleviate some of the stress associated with job searches.

Please visit the BioJob Center today and let us know what you think! Also, those of you who may have suggestions, ideas, kudos, kvetches, etc please feel free to contact me!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

 

Good News for Jobseekers: German Law Will Limit Employer Use of Facebook to Vet Job Candidates

Over 70 percent of hiring managers and HR professionals routinely use Google to find out more about prospective job candidates. While many jobseekers know this and do everything possible to expunge deleterious and compromising information from a Google search on their names, some don’t know that Facebook profiles are a routine target of all Google searches. Consequently, hiring managers may have access to some personal information (including photos) that may jeopardize a job candidate’s prospects.  

Today, German government officials proposed a new law that would place restrictions on employers who want to use Facebook profiles to recruit and vet job candidates. The bill would allow hiring managers to search for publicly accessible information about prospective employees on the Web and to view pages on job networking sites like LinkedIn, BioCrowd and Xing.  But it would not allow employers to access or use information about job candidates on purely social networks like Facebook. The proposed law would also prohibit companies from secretly videotaping employees except in certain areas as long as they disclosed the fact.

The idea of crafting legislation to limit company access to personal information of job candidates found on social networks like Facebook, Ning and others reveals the underlying paradox of the social media phenomenon. That is that people publicly, voluntarily and willingly offer private and intimate information about themselves as part of their right to freedom of expression and then that information can be used against them! In other words, the transparency and inherent freedom of expression offered by social media can in reality hinder, restrict or inhibit the professional and social opportunities of those who use it. I highly doubt that legislation similar to the proposed German law would ever see the light of day in the US.

For now, I highly recommend that jobseekers continue to routinely Google themselves to see what information is “out there” about them. Also, continue to limit access to personal profiles on Facebook and any other “purely social” online networking sites that you may belong too. Both activities will help to insure that the photo of you in a compromising position or with a beer bong in your hand won’t eliminate you as a prospective job candidate.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

 

Words of Wisdom from the Executive Suite

For the past few years, CEOs have been taking a lot of heat; and in many cases rightfully so. However, from time to time some of these “captains of industry” say things that may be useful to ambitious young executives, employees and would-be entrepreneurs. 

The folks over at BestCollegesOnline sent me a link to a post entitled “The 30 Best CEO Interviews You Should Watch on YouTube.” While I haven’t seen any of the videos (I don’t have the luxury of time to do so), viewing some of them may be worth it!

Check them out and let me know if find a good one.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

 

Facebook Reaches 500 Million Users but Pharma Continues to be Slow to React

An article in today’s New York Times business section loudly proclaimed that the number of people using Facebook had topped 500 million. Further, according to the article: “The company has grown at a meteoric pace, doubling in size from a year ago and each month, more than 30 billion photographs, links to Web sites and news articles are shared through the site, and its members spend roughly 700 billion minutes there.”  

While these statistics are mind boggling and represent an incredible business opportunity for any company, life sciences companies including most major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have largely shunned Facebook. In a post earlier this week on EyeonFDA, its author, Mark Senak rightly noted that:

 “When social media began to ebb from a media pathway for individuals to connect, to one where institutions and industry began to employ social media as a means of communicating with their constituencies Facebook has become an extremely important referral source - a driver of traffic - to Web pages.” Despite this, “the pharmaceutical industry, as a highly regulated industry, has lagged behind other sectors.”

The reasons for pharma’s reluctance to use social media to engage stakeholders are numerous. The most common ones offered include the lack of regulations guiding the use of social media and its possible effects on adverse event reporting for approved medicines. However, the lack of regulatory guidance and consequences for adverse event reporting didn’t prevent life sciences companies from building branded product websites, sponsoring patient communities or investing in social networks for physicians. Therefore, it is unlikely that the lack of regulatory guidance and fears of overwhelming adverse event reporting aren’t responsible for pharma’s reluctance to embrace social media. I suspect that the real reasons may have more to do with increasing transparency surrounding clinical testing, drug approvals and drug pricing and reimbursement. But, I digress....

Interestingly, despite the lack of regulatory guidance and concerns over adverse event reporting, some pharmaceutical companies have chosen to boldly go where no other life sciences companies have gone before on Facebook.  According to Mark, the following companies have created corporate or disease/cause-related fan pages on Facebook:

  1. Labs Are Vital sponsored by Abbott Laboratories
  2. AstraZeneca US Community Connections
  3. AstraZenecaCareers
  4. Bayer Karriere
  5. Bayer Sustainability
  6. Johnson & Johnson Network
  7. Nursing Notes by Johnson & Johnson
  8. Pfizer

While the number of person who are fans of these pages are minute (as compared with the total number of Facebook users) they likely represent highly committed and focused groups of user—any pharmaceutical marketer’s dream! Although Facebook still subscribes to the notion that “bigger is better, niche networking and social media sites are growing in popularity. This is because these sites may give marketers and advertisers a “bigger bang for their buck” as compared with larger, more unfocused and disparate user communities. In other words, penetration and uptake rates are likely to greater in focused niche populations as compared with the general population at large.

I have long contended that social media tools can be used for other than promotional purposes in the life sciences industry. To that end, the use of social media for clinical trial patient recruitment and retention is rapidly expanding and there are signs that pharmaceutical companies have finally recognized the power of social media for recruiting purposes e.g. AstraZenecaCareers .  

I have no doubt that the life science industry will eventually recognize the utility power of social media. It is no longer a question of “if” but rather ‘when” for social media and the life sciences industry?

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!! 

 

A New Job Search Tool is Added at BioJobBlog

Some of you may have noticed that a new tab entitled “BioCareers” has been added to the BioJobBlog navigation bar.  If you click on the tab you will be taken to the BioCareers a new  job board and search engine agent created by Career Management Source and BioCrowd

BioCareers offers real time job listings, application tracking, and e-mail job alerts. Employers can post jobs, advertise jobs, search resume databases and have jobs listed on other jobs like Job Job-Job Health and Twitter jobs. 

The search engine that powers BioCareers automatically pulls life sciences jobs in real time and updates job searches when positions are filled or new ones become available. Candidates can search for jobs by location or job title. One of the nicer features of BioCareers is candidate e-mail alerts that are automatically generated when new jobs are posted or added in real time by the search engine.

To check out BioCareers click on the BioCareers tab or here.  We are in beta right now; so let me know what you think!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

 

The Job Search: Online Job Searches-Do They Work?

Like most scientists, the questions that I enjoy the most have simple answers. Black or white is much easier to deal with than shades of gray (although shades of gray can be titillating from a research perspective). With this in mind, the answer to my question about online job searches is a shade of gray rather than black or white. It goes without saying, that applying for jobs online is simple, facile, and extremely gratifying. On a given day, you can apply for thousands of jobs and feel like you have done something positive for your future.

However, after you come out of your computer-induced blissful state,I want you to remember that tens of thousands of people have also done the same thing that you just did! Just think of those billions of bytes of information being transmitted to all of those websites. It is a wonder that the job boards never crash from traffic overload. Do you ever wonder why you rarely hear back from employer regarding the positions that you applied for? Have you ever thought about who reviews all of the resumes and cover letters that you and your colleagues send to job board and corporate websites? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is straightforward and obvious data management/recruiting software.In other words, humans rarely look at any of the stuff that you send to their sites.

Typically, resumes are reviewed by computers and if your resume does not contain the appropriate "key words" your chances for that job are remote. Consequently, I do not recommend that you use the internet exclusively to look for that new job. Nothing beats the tried and true method of networking and hitting the pavement to meet as many people as you can who you think can help you find a job. However, there is a light at the end of the job tunnel...at least for the more mature and experienced job seekers out there.

As I like to remind my younger colleagues, "What we old guys lack in stamina we make up for with expertise"! All kidding aside, many of the jobs posted on the major job boards are placed there by professional recruiters. These recruiters are "trolling" for individuals with prior job experience (and a few gray hairs) because today's employers want job candidates with "previous industrial experience". Also, the longer you have been around, the more skills that you acquire which gives you more flexibility with regard to the different types of jobs that you can apply for.

So, in a nutshell, if you have a few years of "real life" job experience under your belt, I highly recommend that you take advantage of any online job opportunities that are consistent with your skills and areas of expertise. If you do not have any prior job experience, I recommend that you spend more time on Facebook or Twitter rather than wasting your time on Monster!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

YouTube and Pharma: An Update

There is no question that video is taking the Internet by storm and is quickly replacing the written word as a means of communication. Despite the obvious business opportunities offered by videos, most big pharma companies have failed to jump on the video bandwagon. As always, there are exceptions to the status quo and a handful of life sciences companies most notably Johnson & Johnson, have been experimenting with video over the past few years.

According to Mark Senak, the unofficial life sciences company video archivist and author of the always insightful EyeonFDA blog, there are presently about 15 companies that have channels on YouTube; the largest video sharing website on the Internet. Previously, Mark was able to find 10 or so active companies on the YouTube website. Despite this modest increase, Mark notes that most pharma YouTube channels are not regularly maintained and suffer from lack of original content. 

There is no question that video is expensive to make if it is done commercially. However, Ken Grant at Analtech, a small chromatography company in Delaware, who has successfully used video to drive and improve business outcomes, contends that a low cost Flip video camera or equivalent is sufficient to get the job done! 

I suspect that big pharma may be waiting for FDA to weigh in on the use of social media for promotional purposes before it allocates any resources for video production. However, as I have stated many times before, social media can be used in many other ways (besides for promotional purposes) to meet business objectives and maintain corporate brand integrity. Until pharma marketers and brand managers recognize this, social media and pharma will be a moot point.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

 

Social Media for Life Scientists: Videos, Wikis and Blogs...Oh My!

Mary Canady who writes the Comprendia Blog and helps to manage the San Diego Biotechnology Network has crafted a number of useful social media lists for scientists and others who work in the life sciences industry. 

Videos are de rigueur and you can find a plethora of science video websites on Mary’s comprehensive list (almost, she forgot BioCrowd). 

Many life sciences and technology companies are experimenting with social media; primarily by writing corporate blogs. Check out Mary’s list of corporate life sciences bloggers to find out what they are thinking and blogging about. 

Finally, wikis are growing in influence and importance in the life sciences. There are a number of well crafted sciences wikis out there that may be useful. Click here to see the list.

Hat tip to Mary!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

 

Strategic Career Planning for Life Scientists

While most successful professionals want you to believe that they “fell into” their current jobs, the truth is that they wouldn’t have made it as far as they had without thinking or divining some type of strategic career plan. The trouble is that many early career professionals buy into this assertion—and rather than chart their own career trajectories—tend to gravitate toward jobs or job titles held by these seemingly successful professionals. 

More often than not, these would-be jobseekers have little or no understanding of what their “role models” do on a day-to-day basis as part of their job responsibilities. For example, many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who I talk with at career development symposia tell me that they want to go into business development or regulatory affairs or management consulting. After they tell me this, I routinely ask “Do you know what the director of business development or a regulatory affairs manager does?” Frequently, these persons have little or no idea about the duties and responsibilities associated with the job choice that they just enunciated to me. Generally speaking, many of these career choices were based on informal discussions with people who hold the job title(s) in question or from information gleaned from career development talks offered by people like me.

The point that I am trying to make, is that it is vitally important to know what the duties and responsibilities of a particular job are and what a prospective employer will likely expect from you on a day-to-day basis. While a job title may sound important or glamorous, the actual day-to-day activities and realities of the job may be tedious, mundane or simply boring. To avoid this possibility, it may be worthwhile to set up so-called “informational interviews” with professionals who are already in the job(s) that you may be considering.

While informational interviews are increasing in popularity, many professionals simply don’t have the time to accommodate the growing number of requests for them. To that end, BioCrowd, a networking site for bioprofessionals, recently created a weekly “Day in the Life” series that will showcase articles written by various life sciences professionals ranging from scientists to CEOs. The goal of these career vignettes is to educate students and would-be job seekers about the various career opportunities available in the life sciences and to provide some insights into what these professionals actually do on a day-to-day basis while on the job.

Please visit BioCrowd to learn more!

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

 

Final Agenda Posted for BDI's Social Communications and Healthcare Event

In case you haven’t heard, the Business Development Institute is hosting its Second Annual Social Communications and Healthcare event next Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at the The Graduate Center of The City University of New York in midtown Manhattan, New York City. 

The meeting, which starts at 8:30 AM and continues until 1:00 PM, will consist of a serious of plenary talks followed by moderated round table discussions on a variety of social media and healthcare-related topics. Yours truly will be leading a roundtable discussion on non-promotional uses of social media in the life sciences industry.

Agenda

8:00 a.m. - 8:25 a.m.

Registration 

8:25 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.

Introductory Comments
Steve Etzler, Founder and CEO, Business Development Institute 

8:30 a.m. - 8:50 a.m.

Case Study: Contributing in a Meaningful Way
Presented by: Marc Monseau, Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media, Johnson & Johnson

8:50 a.m. - 9:10 a.m.

Case Study: How to Use Social Media to Engage with Physicians Online
Presented by: Louise Clemens, VP, Business Development, Within3 

9:10 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

Case Study: Pfizer 2.0 - Living and Learning
Presented by: Ray Kerins, Vice President / Worldwide Communications, Pfizer Inc. 

9:30 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.

Case Study: Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute Community: Social and Safe Through Focused Community Management and Moderation
Presented by: Rebecca Goberstein, Associate Marketing Manager, Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Institute & Jenna Woodul, EVP, Chief Community Officer, LiveWorld 

9:50 a.m. - 10:10 a.m.

Break

10:10 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.

Case Study: Going Social for Health Impact
Presented by: Ann Aiken, Health Communications Specialist, Center for Disease Control (CDC)

10:30 a.m. - 10:50 a.m.

Case Study: Establishing Pharma's Digital Footprint: Lessons from the Consumer Health World
Presented by: Tim Weinheimer, Vice President / Digital Strategist, Ketchum Washington DC

10:50 a.m. - 11:10 a.m.

Case Study: Social Media - Getting Started in a Heavily Regulated Environment
Presented by: Gigi Peterkin, Associate Director of Interactive Media, AstraZeneca

11:10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

Case Study TBD

11:30 a.m. - 11:50 a.m.

The Dosie Awards: The BEst in Healthcare Social Media
Presented by: Jonathan Richman, Director of Strategic Planning, Bridge Worldwide & Author, Dose of Digital

11:50 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

Break    

12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m.     

Roundtable Session 1

12:30 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Roundtable Session 2

For more information, including registration, please click here to visit the event website. Or contact Steve Etzler at setzler@bdionline.com or 212-765-8045.

BioJobBlog readers can use promo code BC for a discounted rate of $155.

I hope to see you at next week's meeting!!!!

Until next time …

Good Luck and Good Tweeting!!!!!!

 

Experimental Biology 2010: Anaheim

I will be at the Experimental Biology meeting this year in Anaheim from April 22-27 doing my annual career development presentations and resume critiquing. Also, this year, I am bring my Flip camera this year to video interesting scientists, students and others who want to be featured in the Career Corner at BioCrowd.

In case you were wondering the titles of this year’s career development seminars include:

  1. Alternate Careers: Taking the Road Less Traveled
  2. Interviewing Tips and Insights
  3. How to Use Social Media to Find Gainful Employment in the Life Sciences Industry
  4. Career Opportunities in the Life Sciences Industry

Please feel free to drop in to listen to one of my talks or sign up for a resume critiquing session.

See you in Disney Land…oops I mean Anaheim!

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!

 

BioJobBlog Surpasses the 1,000,000 Unique Visitors Mark

I started writing BioJobBlog about three years ago mainly to express my personal views on a variety of topics ranging from science education and career development to happenings in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. At the time, blogging was a relatively new phenomenon (especially in the life sciences space) and I had no idea whether or not anybody would really care about what I thought or had to say. 

Apparently, some people do—last week the number of visitors to BioJobBlog quietly surpassed the 1,000,000 unique visitor mark. I say quietly because I had been assiduously watching my stats (like most bloggers) over the past few months to craft a post as soon as I surpassed the mark. Ironically, I inadvertently took my “eye off the ball” and unknowingly passed the mark earlier this week by about 15,000 page views. Go figure.

I want to thank everybody who reads BioJobBlog and finds my post useful. I know that at times I can be vitriolic and pedantic; but I am who I am and I guess you have to take the bad with the good—or not!

For those of you who may not know, BioJobBlog is self-funded (I have no sponsors or paid advertisers). Because of this, I get to say what I want, when I want and how I want to say it. Hopefully, my financial situation will remain stable so that I can continue to self finance the blog and “tell it the way it is” (or at least how I SEE it).

Finally, I want to thank the readers who send me comments and notes about my posts and the blog in general. Generally, they are helpful, incisive and thought provoking and provide fodder for new posts. With this in mind, if anyone is interested in appearing as a guest blogger at BioJobBlog, please don’t hesitate to contact me! While blogging is often fun and even addictive, it can become extremely tedious and  labor intensive at times.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Reading!!!!!!!!!!

 

Social Networking for Biocareer Development

By now, most of you have heard at some point or another that networking is critical when it come to trying to land a job. Unfortunately, networking is not an inherited genetic trait and it takes a fair amount of skill (some say art) to develop and excel at it! To make matters worse, most scientists are told and frequently reminded that networking for career advancement is equivalent to shameless self promotion and that “good scientists” generally refrain from doing it. Consequently, most scientists are not good at networking and in some cases shamefully inept.

The advent of social networking sites like BioCrowd, Facebook and others provides an opportunity for scientists to overcome their fear or guilt about networking. More importantly it provides a “safe haven” for scientists who want to avoid the anxiety and pressures of face-to-face networking at live events. While online networking may be a surrogate or substitute for the real thing, if leveraged correctly, it can be used to find and land a job or advance a career. 

Surprisingly, the use of social networking by life scientists lags behind that of the general public. After all, many life scientists pride themselves as being on the cutting edge or part of the vanguard pushing new technologies that can be used to “push back the frontiers of science.” Nevertheless, social media and online networking sites have become routine parts of most job searches and both are used by employers and prospective employees alike. To that end, I crafted a Powerpoint presentations that describes the “dos and don’ts” of social media for job searches and career advancement. 

social media, life sciences, career development
View more presentations from cliffmz.
While the presentation is a start, I strongly urge life scientists and other jobseekers to attend locally-sponsored social media seminars and workshops to hone your social media and networking skills. Like it or not, social media is here to stay and those who fail to harness its potential will likely remain in the ranks of the unemployed for the foreseeable future!.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting

 

BioCrowd New MultiMedia Upload Feature Is Up and Running

We previously announced that BioCrowd, an online bioprofessional networking site, was going to launch a new feature which allows members to upload any type of multimedia files ranging from videos to podcasts to poster presentations to their profile page and the BioCrowd network. Also, members can view  videos or listen to podcasts, comment on them and  let others know whether or not you liked them. Like most other websites that support videos, we offer an embed feature that allows you to copy the code of videos that you like and post them to other website, blogs or YouTube.

We hope to run contests for best video, podcast, PowerPoint or poster presentation in the very near future. If you are already a BioCrowd member, please visit the site and upload your favorite multimedia files to the network.  For those of you who are not members yet, please drop by, check us out and join if you like!  If you have any problems or identify any bugs with the new upload feature please e-mail me.

I hope to see you at the BioCrowd!!!!

Until next time.... 

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

BioCrowd, An Online Network for Bioprofessionals, Unveils New Features

 It's official; BioCrowd was one year old on Monday. During the past year,Vincent and I have been surveying the bioscience social media space to come up with ideas to keep BioCrowd fresh and relevant. To that end, we redesigned the BioCrunch section of our home page to include a bulletin board feature, a weekly video pick and RSS-driven news, video and podcast feeds. Also, we created a feature called the Career Corner that will showcase the interests, careers and lives of featured BioCrowd members. The inaugural career vignette is about me. So, those of you who want to learn more or can’t get enough of me, check it out!

Next week, we hope to launch a new user-generated, multimedia file upload capability. The new functionality will allow members to up load any type of multimedia file (videos, podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, poster etc) to website. Uploaded files can be read, viewed or listened to at the website and members can rate the content (like vs. dislike). Finally, multimedia files will be aggregated according to type and linked to the profiles of members who generated and uploaded the content.

We hope that BioCrowd members enjoy the new features and continue to visit the site. Also, please tell your friends, colleagues, mentors or other bioprofessionals about the site.  

Both Vincent and I look forward to seeing and chatting with you at the BioCrowd.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Networking!!!!!!!!!!

 

An Analysis of Social Networking Sites for Life Scientists

Mary Canady author of the Comprendia Blog recently analyzed the popularity (or lack thereof) of a number of social networking sites that were created for life scientists. It would seem that online social networking sites would be ideal for scientists because we are not known for our networking or social communication skills in real life. However, only a few of the more than 15 life sciences social networking sites started in the past two years are doing well based on the traffic and usage statistics cited by Mary in her post. 

While Mary’s analysis included most of the well known life science social networking sites, she failed to include BioCrowd, the networking site started by Vincent Racaniello and me. While BioCrowd does cater to life scientists, we intentionally expanded our network to include other bioprofessionals including medical writers, marketers, consultants, venture capitalists and even CEOs! After all, it takes a village to take an idea from concept to commercialization.

Hat tip to Mary for the insightful post!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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What Do a New Award Winning Book and BioCrowd Have in Common?

Vincent Racaniello, virologist extraordinaire and a BioCrowd co-founder is slated to appear on ABC World News this evening to discuss Rebecca Sloot’s new book entitled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The book details the life of little-known Henrietta Lack whose cancerous cervical cells (subsequently called HeLa cells by the scientists who managed to cultivate and immortalize them in the laboratory), revolutionized the field of virology and changed the way viral vaccines are manufactured.

Rebecca Skloot, the author, is an award-winning science writer, and a contributing editor at Popular Science magazine; she's worked as a correspondent for the NPR show RadioLab, and PBS Nova ScienceNOW. Her writing appears in The New York Times Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Discover and others. The “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack” is her first book.

So, why is Vincent being featured on tonight’s newscast about the HeLa book? For those of you who don’t know, Vincent has spent almost 30 years unraveling the molecular mechanisms by which the polio virus causes disease. And, as many of you may know, HeLa cells are the cell line of choice to cultivate polio virus in the laboratory. In addition to cloning the polio virus receptor in HeLa cells, members of Vincent’s laboratory have elucidated the genes and their proteins responsible for the neurotrophic effects of the virus that can lead to paralysis from polio infections. Further, for those of you who may not know, Vincent, while a postdoctoral fellow in David Baltimore's laboratory, was the first to demonstrate that transfection of HeLa cells with cDNA made from polio virus genomic RNA (using the newly discovered HIV reverse transcriptase enzyme that resulted in Baltimore winning the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) yielded infectious polio virions.

While Vincent’s findings greatly aided research to elucidate the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of the polio virus, it transformed and revolutionized the entire field of RNA virology. Prior to Vincent’s discovery, it was impossible to study the molecular biology of RNA viruses using recombinant methods because unlike DNA, there are no known RNA restriction enzymes. The ability to transcribe viral RNA into cDNA molecules that yield infection RNA viral particles permitted researchers to dissect RNA virus genomes (using recombinant DNA technology) to determine contribution of individual genes to viral pathogenesis.

Vincent, one of only a handful of virus pioneers, is now applying his considerable pioneering talents to social media because he believes that Web 2.0 tools like blogs, podcasts, videos and social networking sites can be successfully used for science education and improving the public understanding of the life sciences.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Viewing (ABC World News Tonight)!!!!!!

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BioCrowd Featured on BIO's 'I Am Biotech' Website

I Am Biotech, the Biotechnology Industry Organization’s (BIO) outreach program is trying to promote the use of social media to spread the word about the importance of biotechnology and how it has changed the world for many individuals.

BioCrowd was invited to contribute to the social media section of the website. Like us, I Am Biotech believes that social media has an important role in promoting a better public understanding of biotechnology and other aspects of the life sciences industry.

Please check us out and learn more about the value of becoming a member of the BioCrowd by clicking here.

Until next time

Good Luck and Good Surfing!!!!!!!!!!!

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Comedy as an Alternate Career Choice for Life Scientists?

Let’s face it; scientists aren’t generally regarded as being funny. While I have met several very funny researchers during my almost 35 year career, the vast majority of my colleagues have been mostly serious and, at times, difficult to amuse; especially when things weren't going so well in the lab.

I consider myself to be a funny guy. And, hanging out and playing softball with Larry David, co-creator of Seinfeld and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, for three years while a postdoc at Columbia Medical School convinced me that I have some talent. However, while I have often fantasized about a career in comedy, I never had the courage to turn in my lab coat and give it a try. The same can't be said about Tim Lee; a card-carrying PhD-trained biologist who after realizing laboratory research wasn’t for him decided to embark on a career as stand up comedian.

While Powerpoint presentations (modeled after scientific seminars) serve as the centerpieces of his stand up routines, Tim is also exploring other comedic vehicles to help him continue to make a living as a stand up comic. As he told BioCrowd co-founder Vincent Racaniello and I in a recent podcast that we did with Tim before a mid-week stand up gig in San Francisco, 'you gotta lead with your strengths."

Tim has been working as a comedian for the past seven years and, much to his surprise and pleasure, is "making more than he would have if he had chosen to do a postdoc after completing his PhD degree." Tim's star is rising and was recently featured in a New York Times article entitled “Did You Hear the One about the Former Scientist.”

Vincent and I had a wonderful discussion with Tim about his difficult decision to abandon science and what it feels like to embark on a new career (that you didn’t spend 10 years training for!) He still takes science seriously and frequently peruses journal articles and other scientific sources for material. And, for the record both Vincent and I thought Tim was pretty, pretty good (as Larry David would say) at what he does!.

To listen to the podcast and to see a video of one of Tim’s stand up routines visit BioCrowd!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (the comedy clubs can use a few more good scientists)

 

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How to Make Flu Vaccine: A Tutorial

Flu season is upon us and, not surprisingly, there is no dearth of information available to the public about the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccines. Mostly there are stories about the lack of availability of the vaccines, underreporting of deaths associated from H1N1 infections and perhaps, most importantly concerns about flu vaccine safety. Despite attempts by the CDC and a few dedicated virologists like BioCrowd co-founder Vincent Racaniello, flu vaccine manufacturing is an enigma to the lay public.

While I am a card-carrying microbiologist, my knowledge of the manufacturing of flu vaccine is admittedly lacking. With this in mind, I came across an outstanding tutorial about flu vaccine manufacturing published by the College of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (my alma mater). The UW tutorial is easy to understand and will shed light on and help to demystify flu vaccine production for lay people (and a few scientists like me).

 

How Much Do You Really Know About the Flu?

Yesterday, after giving a talk on social media to a great NYC-based PR firm called Ricochet,I decided to take an uptown trip to visit Professor Vincent Racaniello at Columbia University Medical School to talk about the new applications that we plan to introduce to BioCrowd.

When I arrived at Professor Racaniello’s office, which has an outstanding view of the Hudson River and George Washington Bridge, he was in the middle of taping this week’s This Week in Virology (TWiV) podcast with co-hosts Dick Despommier and Alan Dove. Much to my surprise, Vincent invited me to join the conversation although I am a bacteriologist not a virologist. The podcast was devoted mainly to answering questions that listeners had submitted to the show. One listener alerted us to a post at Newsweek Online entitled “Fight Flu and Falsehoods” while we didn’t agree with the author’s assertion that “that hand washing doesn’t affect the transmissibility of influenza”—it does reduce infections rates of other viruses, bacteria and parasites, so it is a good idea to continue to wash your hands—accompanying the article was an outstanding online quiz that assesses how much you really know about influenza and other viruses. 

I think it would be fun for BioJobBlog readers to take the quiz, report scores and then tabulate the results.

To take the quiz, click here and to report your score click here!  I will tabulate the results and share them in a later post if enough BioJobBlog readers and their friends take!

Until next time

Good Luck and More Luck On the Quiz!!!

 

Conference Round Up: e-Patient Connections 2009

e-Patients Connections 2009 (#epatcon) was held this past Monday and Tuesday at the Park Hyatt hotel in Philadelphia, PA. BioCrowd was one of several co-sponsors of the event. The theme of the conference, organized by Kevin Kruse a veteran medical communication and training expert, who now runs Kru Research, was to “reach, engage and educate empowered digital health consumers.” And, boy, did it deliver! While this was Kru Research’s first official conference, it was well organized, extremely interactive and the quality of the speakers was second to none! Topics that were featured included social media and the life sciences industry, technological advances in e-based healthcare delivery, the relationship between the news media and healthcare information and the continuing evolution of online and e-based healthcare communities.

Conference attendees included representatives from the life sciences industry, medical communications experts, advertising and marketing professionals and a multitude of social media enthusiasts and consultants who kept the Twitter screen humming throughout the meeting (a big shout out to the “troublemaking table”). And, surprisingly, there was a representative from the Division of Drug Marketing and Advertising and Communications (DDMAC) at the US Food and Drug Administration, who I believe, was one of the most sought after individuals at the meeting. CNN reporter Elizabeth Cohen who writes the Empowered Patient and racecar driver Charles Kimball, a type I diabetic and company spokesperson for Novo Nordisk also gave talks.

My favorite talks were those presented by online patient community organizers including Tricia Geoghegan of Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals who created the Facebook ADHD Allies community, Lisa Tate of WomenHeart and Robert Schumm of Bayer Consumer Care who created Facebook Strong@ Heart and Rachel Lewinson of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Organization and Susan Harrow Rago of Novo Nordisk who created Juvenation.org a website dedicated to those with Type I diabetes. These communities are outstanding examples of how partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and advocacy groups can help to better educate the public and heighten awareness about potentially life-altering diseases. Another example of a great online community and healthcare portal is Insomnia 123.com. This website was conceived and constructed by Christine Macadams and her partners’ one of whom is a practicing physician. Unlike the other online communities, which are sponsored and mainly supported by consumer healthcare division of large pharmaceutical companies, Insomnia 123.com was exclusively created by a group of concerned individuals who wanted to better educate and improve the lives of people with insomnia—a largely unreported and self-medicated condition.

On the technical side, the talks presented by Lee Segal of Klick, Kevin Durr of Avantera , Ian Kelly of Red Nucleus and Scott Ballenger of ListenLogic were illuminating and extremely informative. Some of the innovations taking place in digital media are exciting and almost overwhelming at times (even for a social media enthusiast like me). I think the company to watch is ListenLogic which uses semantic search engines to collect real time data and “chatter” on the web. This technology may provide a cost-effective solution to assuage the concerns of many life sciences companies that claim that collecting and analyzing overwhelming amounts of data is one of the main reasons why they are reluctant to entry the social media space.

Marc Monseau of Johnson and Johnson gave an illuminating talk on his experiences as a corporate blogger and Twitter user and described some of the challenges that had to be overcome before his company was able to break the “social media barrier.” Janice McCallum, an economist by training and a healthcare communications and media expert gave an informative talk about the growing role and impact of patient-generated healthcare content on patient awareness and education.

Finally, the novel and innovative Pecha Kucha sessions were outstanding and extremely well done! While all were expertly crafted, Dr. Val’s and Jonathan Richman’s Pecha Kucha were memorable. Dr. Val’s, which was extremely powerful and moving, was performed entirely in verse and Jonathan’s was—well, one of Jonathan’s always entertaining and informative presentations.

In summary, the “e-Patient Connections 2009” was a resounding success and in my opinion reached its goal to “reach engage and educate empowered digital health consumers.” That said, I can’t wait for “e-Patient Connections 2010” meeting!!!

Hat tip to @ellenhoenig and @eileenobrien for inviting me to my first tweetup (great fun) and finally meeting @janice McCallum, @christianeTrue, @stevewoodruff and Silja aka @whydotpharma

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

 

Yes--There Is Life After Being Denied Tenure!

Cliff Mintz, BioCrowd co-founder and the mastermind behind BioJobBlog, is featured today in an online article at the Science Careers website entitled “Life After Rejection.” The piece was expertly crafted by Siri Carpenter, PhD a free lance science writer based in Madison, Wisconsin— coincidentally, the institution that awarded me my PhD. 

Being denied tenure as an Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Immunology was one of the most devastating events in my professional life. It literally took me over 10 year to come to terms with the implications of the decision. But, I am here to tell you (and in the article) that there IS life after being denied tenure; and in many ways, it is quite liberating. My tenure denial empowered me to explore careers that were previously closed to me as an academician and perhaps, more importantly, to find out who I am and what I really wanted to do with the rest of my life!

Don't get me wrong; it still bugs me that I wasn’t awarded tenure—mostly because being refused tenure implies that you “weren’t smart enough” to make it in academia. Not surprisingly, the “not-being-smart-enough label” doesn’t do much for a person’s self esteem and, many who are denied tenure (including me) tend to view themselves as abject failures in the eyes of their colleagues and friends.

However, looking back, being denied tenure was probably one of the best things that had ever happened to me. Truth be told, I would have been a lousy academic. I am too social and entrepreneurial to have flourished in a system that is rigid, parochial and not conducive to change.  That said, if I sound bitter and a bit envious of those who were granted tenure, you are correct!  After all, who wouldn’t be envious of  people who come and go as they please, don’t have to answer to a boss and are guaranteed a job for life; regardless of their social skills, academic performance or contribution to education?

The point that I want to make is that being denied tenure is an emotionally devastating and traumatic event that nobody ought to experience. However,  if  you should to find yourself in the uncomfortable position of being denied tenure, please remember to continue to believe in yourself, don't give up and, as corny as it may sound, "follow the advice of your heart" when making your next career move!

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

Podcast Alert: BioCrowd Founder Talks about Using Recruiters to Find Jobs in the Life Sciences Industry

Have you ever received a call from a “head hunter” who suggests that they might be able to assist you in your job search? Can professional recruiters actually help you find a job? Finally, have you ever wondered what’s in it for the recruiter if they don’t charge jobseekers a fee to help them with their job searches?

If you are curious about these and other questions, please listen to a podcast  of BioCrowd founder Cliff Mintz's interview with Romi Kher, the host of Cornell University’s 10GoodMinutes ,a talk show that provides career advice for young professionals.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!

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Novoseek: A Cool Search Engine for the Life Sciences

I previously posted an article on BioJobBlog about biomedical and scientific search engines. One of them called Novoseek, which is mainly geared for life scientists, has recently launched a new set of features known as  My Novoseek

My Novoseek allows users to create a personal account to store and manage indiviudal Novoseek searches. Its functionalities include:

  • Search history
  • Saved searches
  • Search labeling and indexing
  • New publication alerts
  • Account filtering and management

These newly introduced features improve Novoseek’s search capabilities, content management and convenience. For example, saving searches and creating alerts offers users a facile and convenient way to be alerted when new papers are published in your areas of interest. Also, Novoseek’s indexing and content management features makes creating and labeling collections of papers really easy. Finally, the ability to customize and manage account settings and view search histories makes searching for new information easier, less time consuming and prevents search redundancy.

While I haven’t spent much time evaluating other biomedical search engines, my experience with Novoseek has positive and I recommend that you check it out. Also, unlike other biomedical search engines, Novoseek has a distinctive social media bent and is using it to constantly add new features to meet new and exisitng user demands. To that end, Novoseek maintains its own blog to keep user abreast of happenings in the biomedical search engine world and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

Signing up for Novoseek is easy, requires only three steps and only takes five minutes or less.

Please visit the Novoseek website and let me know what you think.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Searching!!!!!

 

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Swine Flu and Then Some!!!

Since the beginning of the pandemic last spring, BioCrowd founder and virologist extraordinaire Vincent Racaniello has been vigilantly writing at his at his Virology Blog about HIN1 pathogenesis, epidemiology, immune responses and vaccines.  When not blogging about HIN1, Vincent also writes about other viral diseases and does a weekly virology podcast called This Week in Virology (TWIV).

In a very short time, Professor Racaniello has amassed a huge collection of original articles that could be compiled into a virology textbook with a title like “Everything you ever wanted to know about H1N1.” And, not surprisingly, his Herculean efforts have not gone unnoticed: today his Virology Blog was recognized and listed as a legitimate source of H1N1 information by the New York Times

For those of you who haven’t been overwhelmed by the unrelenting swine flu media frenzy and are seeking sound information about the H1N1 epidemic, I highly recommend that you check out Vincent’s blog. Also, you can talk with Vincent at BioCrowd when he is not too busy blogging, podcasting or conducting laboratory research.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Remember to Wash Your Hands !!!!!

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Social Media: Why Life Scientists May be Missing Out on a Good Thing

I have previously written several posts on the reluctance of life scientists to use social media and online social networking sites. While I realize that scientists may be somewhat socially challenged, the almost universal disdain for social media is puzzling and troubling to me. More importantly, the reluctance of life scientists to embrace social media flies in the face of some revealing new statistics on social media use by the American lay public.

According to a recent survey by Forrester Research, “half of online adults now belong to social networks like, Facebook and Linked In, a 46 percent growth rate year-over-year.” More importantly, almost a quarter of Americans are content creators who write blogs, upload video or audio or post articles online.” Interestingly, the growth of social media is being driven by adults 35 and older. The survey found that four of five adults of all ages use social media including blogs, social networks and review sites. Finally, most adults visit social networking sites, in way or another at least monthly.

Many scientists who I have talked with (mostly graduate students and postdoctoral fellows) primarily use social media to stay in touch with friends or “hook up” with others after laboratory hours are over. And, other scientists—mostly laboratory heads and principal investigators—view social media as a colossal waste of time. Unfortunately, the scientists who underutilize or shun social media don’t understand its hidden potential to advance scientific research and perhaps more importantly to interact with the lay public to demystify “science.”  In my experience social media has been a powerful way to disseminate information and quickly reach large numbers of people. Isn’t this what science is really about?    

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Flu Vaccines: Decisions, Decisions!

Professor Vincent Racaniello, a BioCrowd co-founder and virologist who studies the pathogenesis of polio and influenza viruses commented that there will likely be two influenza vaccines offered this fall: a trivalent vaccine consisting of seasonal H3N2 and H1N1 strains and an influenza B strain; and a monovalent one consisting of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 strain.

He posited an interesting question to BioCrowd members earlier today: "Will you be receiving a flu vaccine this fall, and if so, which one?"

To weigh in on the topic and find out which vaccines makes sense for you, check out Professor Racaniello’s influenza vaccine survey and discussion at BioCrowd!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Networking @ BioCrowd!

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Public Library of Science Launches (PLOS) Launches a New Website for Rapid Research Communications

The Public Library of Science (PLOS) announced that it has launched a new website called PLOS Currents that is intended to serve as a vehicle for the rapid publication of scientific research and new ideas and themes. Not surprisingly, the first theme for PLOS Currents is influenza. On his Virology blog, Vincent Racaniello, a BioCrowd cofounder and prominent virologist, discusses why PLOS Currents is important and timely for scientist actively engaged in influenza research and vaccine development.  

The opening of PLoS Currents: Influenza was announced by Harold Varmus, Chairman and Co-Founder of PLoS. He wrote about the reasons for starting this website at The Official Google Blog:

The key goal of PLoS Currents is to accelerate scientific discovery by allowing researchers to share their latest findings and ideas immediately with the world’s scientific and medical communities. Google Knol’s features for community interaction, comment and discussion will enable commentary and conversations to develop around these findings. Given that the contributions to PLoS Currents are not peer-reviewed in detail, however, the results and conclusions must be regarded as preliminary. In time, it is therefore likely that PLoS Currents contributors will submit their work for publication in a formal journal, and the PLoS Journals will welcome these submissions.

Contributions that will be welcome at PLoS Currents: Influenza include research into influenza virology, genetics, immunity, structural biology, genomics, epidemiology, modeling, evolution, policy and control. The manuscripts will not be subject to peer-review, but unsuitable submissions will be screened out by a board of expert moderators. This policy will enable rapid publication of research.

The path to publishing original scientific research is often long and tortuous.  A manuscript describing the findings is prepared and submitted to a scientific journal (such as Nature, Cell, Journal of Virology). The manuscript is assigned to two or three expert reviewers, generally scientists involved in the same area of research. If their reviews are favorable, the paper is published. Usually additional experiments are called for, which may require additional time to complete. Many months to a year may pass before the paper is published, although some manuscripts (e.g. those on 2009 pandemic influenza) may be expedited. The point is that PLoS Currents: Influenza will allow everyone – including non-scientists – to read about research soon after the authors have prepared the paper.

PLoS Currents: Influenza is a terrific idea, and I welcome this venture with great enthusiasm. I hope that PLoS Currents will grow to include other areas of science. But Varmus warns:

Given that the contributions to PLoS Currents are not peer-reviewed in detail, however, the results and conclusions must be regarded as preliminary. In time, it is therefore likely that PLoS Currents contributors will submit their work for publication in a formal journal, and the PLoS Journals will welcome these submissions.

During peer review of submitted manuscripts, new experiments may be suggested that change some of the conclusions of the research. Hence, the papers that appear in PLoS Currents: Influenza may be different from final versions that are published elsewhere.

I wonder how other scientific journals will react to submissions of manuscripts that have appeared in PLoS Currents. Many journals do not accept manuscripts that have already appeared elsewhere. For example, the instructions to authors for the Journal of Virology state:

By submission of a manuscript to the journal, the authors guarantee that they have the authority to publish the work and that the manuscript, or one with substantially the same content, was not published previously, is not being considered or published elsewhere, and was not rejected on scientific grounds by another ASM journal.

It’s time for scientific journals to change this policy, and allow for preliminary publication at sites such as PLoS Currents.

Rapid and open-access publication will drive research forward and help inform and educate the public about science.

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Managing Emotional Fallout After Losing a Job

Losing a job is a BIG deal whether you were layed off, fired or right-sized out of it. Not only do you have to worry about health insurance, bills and paying rent or making a mortgage payment, you must also deal with a myriad of self esteem and emotional issues that frequently arise after losing a job. While there are many articles and books that describe how to functionally conduct a job search after being layed off, there are only a handful that discuss how to cope with the stress and negative emotions that frequently accompany job loss.

Many people who lose their jobs frequently experience emotions like anger, desperation, hopelessness and even depression. These feelings must be acknowledged and then addressed and managed because they not particularly useful when looking for a new job. Further, when left unattended, these feelings can exact both a financial and an emotional toll on the unemployed.

In this Sunday’s New York Times, Phyllis Korkki, who writes “The Search” column describes how to manage the negative emotions and financial problems commonly associated with losing a job. She also provides tips on how to minimize “the pain” and accentuate the positive after experiencing a job loss.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!

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Why Bioscientists Aren't Warming to Social Media

BioCrowd co-founder, Vincent Racaniello, and I were chatting the other day with Crowdvine’s Tony Stubblebine (the guy who created the BioCrowd software platform) about the reluctance of scientists to embrace social media. Both Vincent and I, both scientists ourselves, posited that scientists are simply asocial or at the very least not comfortable engaging in social activities whether they be online or IRL. Tony, a self-anointed software geek, wasn’t buying into to our argument and noted that even software geeks are social!

This prompted me to do a little research and I found a blog post written by Nachiket Vartak a blogger and doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology. While the blog post focused mainly on reasons why bioscientists won’t use Twitter, I think that many of his observations can be used to generally describe the chilly relationship between many scientists and social media. Before you read on, I must inform you that I paraphrased and embellished some of Nachiket’s original ideas on the subject. That said, here are some of the reasons why bioscientists may not use social media.

1. The reputation of social networking sites
Many scientists disdain social networks because they believe that social networking sites and microblogging platforms like Twitter are nothing more than places to waste time. Those scientists who use social media usually do it in-between experiments and when planning activities which usually involve copious quantities of alcohol, for after laboratory hours fun. In other words, social media is for fun not for work. Also, many so-called serious scientists contend that “real science discussions” only happen on closed e-mailing lists or forums and not in the “open” on social networking sites.

2. The social activation barrier
According to Nachiket, the stereotype that scientists are asocial is well.....err...true! He asserts that many scientists feel more comfortable focusing on themselves (and their research) rather than interacting with others to learn what they have to say or what they may be thinking. And, many times, unless an individual can demonstrate that they are “smart” they probably aren’t worse listening to anyway. Finally, scientists train for years to become independent investigators. Not surprisingly, there is very little emphasis and importance placed on teamwork or social interactions with others scientists or lay people for that matter. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that many scientists aren’t particularly social or inclined to participate in extracurricular social activities.

3. Privacy aka “secrecy”
Science is a highly competitive endeavor and, in many cases, the discoveries that are made represent many years of sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears. With this in mind, nobody wants to be scooped or beat out by their competitors. Consequently, scientists are generally instructed to be very hush-hush when it comes to sharing any information or data that might give the competition a “leg up” in the competition. Any leak, large or small, could mean the difference between fame and failure and, perhaps more importantly, a successful career as a scientist.

In marked contrast, the success of social media is contingent upon its openness, sharing and transparency. Thus, as Nachiket aptly pointed out social media is antithetical to the very nature of science and scientists.

4. Legitimate channels of communication
The only acceptable and legitimate means of scientific communications are presentations at meetings and publications in peer reviewed journals. These forms of communication are the lifeblood of scientific community and critical to the success of all scientists. If you aren’t published, you have no credibility as a scientist. The scientific publishing and communication industry is big business and “the rules of engagement” in the industry have been well established and institutionalized. Unfortunately, social media threatens to destabilize the science publishing world both financially and philosophically and possibly change the way science information is communicated. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that there is little support for social media in scientific publishing world and the science community in general.

While the number of science blogs and podcasts continue to increase daily, scientific social networking sites continue to struggle. This is because the information flow in blogs and similar forms of social media can be easily monitored and controlled. This is not the case for social networking sites like BioCrowd and microblogging platforms like Twitter.
However, if scientists are truly asocial beings then none of the existing science social networking sites will gain traction and be successful. Call me crazy, but I think social networking is an ideal medium for scientists to exchange information, ideas and develop relationships that can help them jumpstart their careers!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Networking!!!!!!!!!!


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Tired of the Swine Flu? Check Out the Coxsackie Virus

On several occasions while driving in upstate New York, I noticed an exit sign on the NY State Thruway for Coxsackie, NY. And, not surprisingly, I began to wonder whether or not the Coxsackie virus was named after this obscure upstate NY town.

I first learned about coxsackie viruses as a graduate student while taking a medical virology course at the University of Wisconsin taught by the late noble laureate Howard Temin. However, despite a thirty year friendship with Vincent Racaniello, a BioCrowd co-founder and virologist extraordinaire, I never asked him about the origin of the coxsackie virus name. Much to my surprise, he had recently taken a trip to upstate NY and noticed the Coxsackie NY exit sign while driving on the thruway. This prompted him to blog about the coxsackie virus isolation, its pathogenic properties and of course, the origin of its name!

Coxsackie NY and the virus named after it 

by Vincent Racaniello,PhD

Recently while driving north on the New York State Thruway I passed the exit for the town of Coxsackie, NY (population 8,884). I grabbed my camera and photographed the exit sign, and reminded myself to write about the virus named after this small town.

In the summer of 1947 there were several small outbreaks of poliomyelitis in upstate New York. Gilbert Dalldorf, the director of the Wadsworth Laboratory in Albany, NY, and his associate Grace M. Sickles investigated this outbreak. In particular they sought polioviruses that could replicate in mice. This search was motivated by the fact that research on poliovirus required the use of monkeys which were extremely expensive. Dalldorf had attended the Fourth International Congress for Microbiology in 1947 where he heard that very young mice – suckling mice – could readily be infected with Theiler’s virus.

Dalldorf and Sickles made fecal suspensions from two children suspected of having poliomyelitis, and inoculated these into adult and suckling mice. Only the suckling mice (1 – 7 days old) developed paralysis; animals more than one week old were resistant to infection. The damage responsible for limb paralysis was widespread lesions in skeletal muscles, not in the central nervous system as occurs with poliovirus. Further study revealed that the viruses could be distinguished serologically from poliovirus.

Not only had Dalldorf and Sickles identified the first members of a very large group of human viruses, but they also introduced and popularized a new and inexpensive animal into the virology laboratory – the suckling mouse. In 1949 Dalldorf suggested that the new viruses be called Coxsackie viruses, because the first recognized human cases were residents of that New York village. This unique name is of native North American origin.

Over ten years later the importance of this work was recognized by Dr. Max Finland of Boston City Hospital:

The isolation by Dalldorf and Sickles of viruses which produced paralysis with destructive lesions of muscle in sucking mice and hamsters, from the stools of two children with signs of paralytic poliomyelitis was an achievement that may rank in importance with Landsteiner and Popper’s production of human poliomyelitis in monkeys.

In subsequent years many different Coxsackie viruses were isolated that cause a variety of clinical syndromes. Today at least 30 serotypes of Coxsackie viruses are classified in the enterovirus genus of the Picornaviridae. The viruses are classified into groups A or B depending upon the pathological effect in suckling mice.

Not every locale is pleased to have a virus named after it. In May 1993, an outbreak of an unexplained pulmonary illness occurred in the southwestern United States, in an area shared by Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah called “The Four Corners.” Muerto Canyon was proposed as the name for the etiologic agent of the disease, because the virus was first isolated from a rodent near the canyon. However after residents objected, the name Sin nombre virus was given to the agent of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.

Dalldorf G, & Sickles GM (1948). An Unidentified, Filtrable Agent Isolated From the Feces of Children With Paralysis. Science (New York, N.Y.), 108 (2794), 61-62 PMID: 17777513

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Building A Social Networking Site for Bioprofessionals

At the recent Social Communication and Healthcare conference I was invited to run a roundtable discussion entitled “How to Build a Social Networking Site for Bioprofessionals.” The discussions were well attended, primarily by employees several pharmaceutical companies and vendors who sell scientific equipment and reagents. Several bloggers and medical communications professionals also attended.

While microblogging platforms like Twitter are slowly supplanting traditional networking sites as the social medium of choice, themed online communities like BioCrowd--hich was exclusively designed for bioprofessionals ranging from scientists to venture capitalists—are still useful for jobseekers and people who are interested in a “richer” networking experience. For those of you who are interested in social networking sites, I wrote a brief synopsis of the two roundtable discussions that I conducted.

Please feel free to contact me with any additional thoughts, ideas or comments you may have about the piece.

 Until next time...

 

 Good Luck and Good Networking!

  

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The Who's Who of Social Media, Pharma and Healthcare

I met Jonathan Richman,the author of the Dose of Digital blog, last week at the BDI Conference (#BDI) on Social Communication and Healthcare in NYC. BTW, for those of you who were unable to attend, you missed an informative and compelling meeting on the status of social media in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Anyway back to Jonathan. He gave a great talk on pharma and social media which prompted me to visit his blog. While perusing Dose of Digital, I came upon a wiki that Jonathan maintains called --what else-- the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki.” 

It’s a comprehensive, cataloged list of social media initiatives underway at pharma, biotech and healthcare industries. Noticeably absent from the wiki, are social networking sites like BioCrowd that were specifically created for life scientists and other bioprofessionals. Hey, wait a minute, aren’t scientists the lifeblood of the life sciences industry? Would there be a life sciences industry without scientists? Hmmmm....I will have to talk to Jonathan about this!

I highly recommend you check out the wiki if you are a life sciences social media enthusiast!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Social Media Hunting!!!!!  

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NYC Social Media and Healthcare Conference Update

The “Social Media and Healthcare” conference that will be held on July 23, 2009 in NYC at the Graduate Center of The City University of NY (365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street) is shaping up to be a great one. At present, over 350 people have registered for the meeting. There are a few slots left if you are interested in attending.

Several BioJobBlog readers have asked whether or not the sessions will be recorder and available online. Steve Etzler, one of the conference organizers told me that Blogtalkradio.com will broadcast and archive the audio from all of the case studies that will be presented during the morning sessions. Unfortunately, the round table discussions won’t be available.

As I may have mentioned, Cliff Mintz, Co-Founder of BioCrowd will be leading a roundtable discussion entitled “Building Social Networking Sites for Bioprofessionals.”

See you on Thursday!!!

Until next time....

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NYC BioBuzz: Social Media and Healthcare Meeting on July 23, 2009

BioJobBlog and BioCrowd along with the Business Development Institute, the Journal of Communication in Healthcare and others are co-sponsoring a meeting entitled “Social Media and Healthcare” that will be held on July 23, 2009 in NYC at the Graduate Center of The City University of NY (365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street). Topics that will be covered include:  

  1. Managing regulatory and legal issues when planning and implementing social media strategies
  2. Is there a role for social media in President Obama’s healthcare reform plans?
  3. Why real-time social media tools like Twitter are gaining momentum and when it makes sense to use them
  4. How social media has affected crisis communications in the healthcare industry
  5. Selling social communications projects and proving ROI to senior management
  6. Creating and participating in communities to achieve communication, educational and branding objectives
  7. Planning and executing a social communications plan with little or no budget
  8. Building relationships and partnerships with new healthcare media leaders beyond advertising
  9. Best practices for using social communications to connect internally with employees and stakeholders
  10. Tools, technologies, and best practices for monitoring and measuring social communications

The meeting’s agenda features case study presentations and a series of roundtable discussions on social media topics. I will be leading a roundtable discussion called “How to Build a Social Networking Site for Bioscientists.” Approximately 300 senior marketing, communications and media professionals from Fortune 1000, middle market and emerging growth companies are expected to attend from leading pharmaceuticals, medical technology/device companies, managed care providers, hospitals, healthcare media companies, government and nonprofit organizations.  

BioCrowd members can register for the meeting at a discounted rate of $155. Check it out—it will be money well spent!

Hat tip to Steve Etzler at the BDI and Mario R. Nacinovich Jr., Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Communication in Healthcare for organizing this topical and important meeting.

I hope to see you at the meeting next Thursday!!!!

 

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Social Media Internship at Science Magazine

I just learned from Diego Pineda who runs the Medical Writer Blog and Medical Writing social network about an interesting internship possibility at Science magazine. For those of you social media enthusiasts interested in the opportunity, here is a job description.

“Science, the world's leading journal of original scientific research and global news, seeks a three-month intern to help implement and manage social media projects for its news department. The candidate should be very familiar with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking platforms, and should have experience creating content for these platforms. Other duties will include promoting news content on the internet, moderating comments on our daily news site, and repurposing news content for multimedia projects. Some writing and research assistance for our online news site is possible. The ideal intern will have a science background-or at least a strong interest in science-and some journalism experience. The internship will be at our Washington, D.C. headquarters.”

For consideration, send a resume and cover letter to AAAS, Human Resources Department, 1200 New York Ave., NW, Suite #101, Washington, DC 20005.  (Attn:  Requisition #1763) You may also reach us by Fax at 202-682-1630 and e-mail at jobs@aaas.org.

It appears that Science is finally getting into the social networking.  For those of you, who can’t wait for the Science network, please check out BioCrowd, a social networking community focused on career development for bioprofessionals.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!!!

 

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Several Ways That Pharma Can Harness the Power of Social Media

The debate, if you can call it that, over whether or not interactive social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can be used in the life science industry is moving forward at glacial speed. I decided that it was time to propose some ideas rather than continue to admonish the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a lack of guidance.

There are several reasons which may explain the inertia surrounding the adoption of social media by pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices and diagnostics companies. First, and perhaps foremost, FDA has been consistently reluctant to craft any useful guidance on the use of Web 2.0 technologies for research, clinical or promotional purposes. The FDA’s Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications (DDMAC) is still trying to figure out how to regulate website content. Is it any wonder that FDA is reluctant to tackle the regulatory implications and issues associated with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter? Second, a majority of social media advocates— who are leading the charge at many life sciences companies—are marketing and advertising executives who tend to look at social media strictly as a promotional tool. Finally, much of what takes place at life sciences companies is proprietary and confidential—information flow between the company and its employees and the public is fastidiously monitored and tightly regulated. Because of this, the life sciences industry’s “process” is intentionally opaque—which is contrary to the goals of social media which is to promote transparency (or the illusion of it).

There is no doubt that the life sciences industry is the most highly regulated industry on the planet. While this represents a formidable challenge for adoption of social media, it is by no means insurmountable—especially if social media is used for purposes other than branding, marketing and advertising. For example, the most straight forward application of social media at life sciences companies would be in the areas of corporate recruitment and employee retention. Many Fortune 500 companies outside of the life sciences industry have been using Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn for years for recruiting purposes. While not commonly acknowledged, life sciences companies have quietly begun to use Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace to recruit prospective employees. Interestingly, the new kid on the block—Twitter—looks to potentially be a more powerful recruiting tool than any of its predecessors. Unfortunately, employee retention is no longer a priority at many companies. However, before the economic meltdown a number of companies, most notably Best Buy, were experimenting with social media to retain talented employees.

Another potential use of social media is for pharmacovigilance and adverse events reporting. Companies with approved products on the market are required by FDA (and other regulatory agencies that approved their products) to set up post marketing surveillance programs for adverse events reporting. By law, companies that receive adverse events reports from consumers, physicians or other entities must report them to the regulatory agencies that approved the product. Regulatory agencies maintain adverse events databases for all approved drugs and devices to monitor drug safety.  If designed and implemented correctly, interactive social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter (which operates in real-time) would make excellent pharmacovigilance and adverse reporting tools. Quite coincidentally, John Mack, who runs the Pharma Marketing Blog, reported a partnership between UCB and PatientsLikeMe.com to create a pharmacovigilance reporting platform for UCB products.

Recruiting patients for participation in clinical trials (to assess efficacy and safety of prospective new drugs) has become extremely challenging over the past few years.Traditional patient recruitment strategies include print, television and radio ads and in some instances, websites. All of these recruitment methods are costly, labor intensive and limited in their effectiveness because they only reach small number of prospective clinical trial participants. I contend that Facebook with over 200 million users, LinkedIn with members in over 140 different countries and Twitter which is growing rapidly would be ideal for clinical trial recruitment and retention purposes. Others have also proposed this idea.

Finally, while the use of social media to promote approved drugs and devices may be difficult because of regulatory constraints, it can be utilized to keep the public informed about prospective new medicines and promote a company’s image or brand. There is no question that the public perception of the pharmaceutical industry has been severely tarnished over the last few years.  The industry’s continued lack of transparency and failure to adequately disclose potential safety risks about some approved products continues perpetuate a negative image. One way to restore public trust and confidence is to use social media to actively engage the public in conversation on wellness, addressing unmet medical needs and prospective new medicines and treatments that are being developed. Also, social media platforms could be employed to showcase community outreach programs and discuss educational initiatives to improve science education and training.

Social media is no longer a new phenomenon or technology. It is a legitimate form of communication which has become an integral part of the Web 2.0 experience. I suspect that the life sciences industry will have to make a decision about social media in the not so distant future—or possibly miss a potentially game-changing business opportunity. And, as Ken Kesey aptly said in Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’—“You’re either on the bus…or off the bus.”

 Until next time...

 Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!

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Social Networks More Popular Than e-mail!!!

The New York Times reported today that for the first time, Internet users are spending more time on social networking and video sites than on e-mail. According to a report by Nielsen, there was a 1,905 percentage change in the time that users spent viewing online video and an 883 percentage increase in social networking use from February 2003 to 2009.

These changes represent something of a paradigm shift in consumer's relationship with the Internet. People are increasingly moving away from portal-oriented sites, like shopping directories to social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook and providers of niche content.

While marketers have yet to master advertising on social networking sites, Internet pundits and social media enthusiasts believe that over the next year or so a viable business model will emerge that is reliant on social networking user influence and opinions.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Networking!!!!!

 

The Swine Flu Pandemic of 2009: Much Ado About Nothing?

A quick perusal of the media coverage of the swine flu outbreak of 2009 would lead many to conclude that this outbreak has the potential to rival or surpass the 1918 flu pandemic—widely regarded as the worst influenza outbreak in history. While the emergence of a new H1N1 swine flu variant is significant note worthy— and has possible public health implications— the unrelenting, often scientifically-inaccurate media coverage did little to quell the fear and anxiety of many Americans.  Once again, the media—rather than physicians, public health officials and influenza experts—“got out in front of the story” and managed to create enough panic, fear and anxiety, the likes of which haven't been seen since the 2003 SARS pandemic. It wasn't until last Friday, when the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Dr. Peter Palese—a leading scientific expert on influenza A infections— did a clearer picture emerge about the severity and public health implications of the current swine flu pandemic.

According to Dr. Palese, there are several reasons why people and public health officials ought to be optimistic about the current pandemic:

  • In 1976 there was a an outbreak of an H1N1 swine virus in Fort Dix, New Jersey, which showed human to human transmission but did not go on to become a highly virulent pandemic strain
  • The presently circulating swine virus is most likely not more virulent than the other seasonal strains we have experienced over the last several years
  • The current swine virus lacks an important molecular signature (the protein PB1-F2) which was present in the 1918 virus and in the highly lethal H5N1 chicken viruses.  If this virulence marker is necessary for an influenza virus to become highly pathogenic in humans or in chickens, then the current swine virus doesn’t have what it takes to become a major killer
  • Since people have been exposed to H1N1 viruses over many decades, we likely have some cross-reactive immunity against the swine H1N1 virus. While it may not be sufficient to prevent becoming ill, it may very well dampen the impact of the virus on mortality.  I would postulate that by virtue of this “herd immunity” even a 1918-like H1N1 virus could never have the horrific effect it had in the past.  The most likely outcome is that the current swine virus will become another (fourth) strain of regular seasonal influenza

The landscape of vaccines and anti-influenza drugs has dramatically improved over what it was just a few years ago. Based on what we know of the structure and sequence of the swine virus, these FDA-approved drugs and FDA-licensed vaccines (modified to include the swine strain) would be highly effective against this new virus.  Also, present technologies as well as manufacturing capacities will allow us to make sufficient quantities of a swine virus vaccine for the winter 2009-10 influenza season in the US.

In other words, there is reason for concern but no need to panic beyond typical public health precautions that are taken during “normal” influenza outbreaks.

Dr. Vincent Racaniello, a viral disease expert who writes the Virology Blog, reported that as of Monday there have been laboratory confirmed cases of H1N1 infections in 30 US states with a total of 226 cases and one death in Texas. Globally, 20 countries had reported 985 cases of infection. The highest numbers are in Mexico, with 590 cases and 25 deaths. While there have been 26 deaths to date, the severity of the infection appears to be waning and person-to-person transmission appears to be low.

Unfortunately, there has been some fallout from the news media’s oft times “over the top” coverage of the pandemic. Many US hospital emergency rooms (most notably in Texas and California) have been overwhelmed and overburdened by visits from people who think they may have swine flu. Also, while some schools and daycare center closures were warranted, others may not have been. Finally, and perhaps most important, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the lay public's understanding of infectious agents and the outbreaks that they cause is grossly deficient and must be improved. 

We live in a world where viral pandemics, food poisoning outbreaks and infections caused by multiple-antibiotic resistant bacteria are becoming commonplace. While vaccines, antivirals and antibiotics can afford some protection against many viral and bacterial disease, the best way to fight infectious diseases is to understand what causes them, how they are spread and what public health measures can be implemented to prevent or control their transmission. Until the world becomes better educated about infectious diseases, we will continue to be overly-dependent on the news media during future outbreaks and epidemics.

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!!

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Swine Flu Pandemic: Many Questions and Few Answers

Vincent Racaniello, an intrepid virologist and BioCrowd co-founder, has been keeping folks up to date on the swine flu outbreak on his blog. Today, Vincent wrote: “There are now 257 laboratory confirmed cases, with 7 deaths, in 11 countries. In the US there are 109 cases  in 11 states. There are many more suspected cases; together the statistics indicate widespread dissemination of the new H1N1 influenza virus. I no longer doubt that this is the next pandemic strain. WHO will probably soon raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6. Important questions include whether spread will continue in the northern hemisphere through the summer, or stop very soon, as is the case with most influenza virus outbreaks. Unfortunately the southern hemisphere seems in for an extended flu season. Will antivirals be useful in reducing morbidity and mortality? Will the virus returns to the north in a more virulent form in the fall? Can a vaccine be prepared in time?”

 For answers to these questions and others, please visit the Virology Blog or join BioCrowd to chat with Vincent. Check his virology blog for the most up-to-date swine flu information.

 Until next time... 

 Good Luck and Good Virus Hunting (or not)!!!!

  

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Swine Flu Revisted

By now everybody has heard that there is a Swine Flu epidemic that started in Mexico and may morph into a worldwide pandemic.  The media's coverage has been mind numbing and overwhelming.  For those of you who want the real skinny on the outbreak, I recommend that you read a post on the Virology Blog run by BioCrowd founder and virologist Vincent Racaniello.

Vincent did his PhD work on flu in Peter Palese's lab, one of the world's leading influenza experts.  In addition to his blog post, Vincent along with Dick Despommier and Alan Dove created a also created a podcast on swine flu last Friday as the epidemic began to unfold. Check it and other virology podcasts out on This Week in Virology (TWiV).

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Reading/Listening

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Life Scientists Should Learn To Be More Social If They Want to Find Jobs

While I was at the Experimental Biology meeting in New Orleans, LA this past week I presented a seminar entitled “Using Social Media For Career Development in the Life Sciences.” This was the first time that I presented this talk, and was expecting a large turn out given the popularity of Facebook and more recently Twitter, a microblogging platform.  Much to my surprise only 15 students showed up for the talk—many of whom hadn’t heard of Twitter and were only vaguely familiar with Facebook. Luckily, a few attendees had Facebook profiles and one or two were on Twitter so the talk wasn't a complete bust.  Nevertheless, the lack of interest in this talk was extremely puzzling to me—my other seminars, “Interviewing Tips” and “Alternate Careers for PhDs” were very well attended and I was booked solid for one-on-one resume critiquing sessions during the five days I was in New Orleans.

I started to wonder why bioscience graduate students in their mid to late 20s, many of whom will need to find jobs (postdocs otherwise) in the next few years, weren’t interested in learning how to use social media to advance their careers or conduct a job search.  I thought that the lack of interest in this topic might be explained if a majority of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows were already using Facebook, Linked In or Twitter to network or explore career opportunities. This proved not to be the case, after learning that only a small percentage of students (who sought career counseling) had considered using social media to network or look for jobs. While many had Facebook profiles, most students primarily used them to stay in touch with friends and family—not for professional or scientific purposes. 

The lack of interest in social media for career development  by many of these nascent GenY scientists was confounding. After all, I have been lead to believe that “GenY” is leading the Web 2.0 and social media charge and that aging boomers like me simply “don’t get it.” The fact that I get it and many  GenY scientists, don’t forced me to revisit what I learned about the social behavior of scientists over the past 30 years or so.

First, it is no secret that scientists aren’t the most  socially-adept individuals and when socializing it tends to be very “cliquish” and oft time exclusive.  Second, scientists are notoriously poor networkers and mostly engage in serious networking when alcoholic beverages are involved.  In other words, very little networking takes place in professional and scientific settings with the exception of  conferences and meetings. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, many of the academicians who train scientists don’t understand networking and often don’t offer any career guidance to their students and postdocs. Unfortunately, most academics have little or no understanding of the world outside of academia and, not surprisingly, there is little incentive for them to learn about it—mostly because of the anachronistic tenure system. Further, because PhDs are taught to be independent and self reliant, there is almost no emphasis placed developing social skills during their training.   In fact, many academics believe that being too social is the best way to be “scooped” by their competitors. Paradoxically, there are currently over 30 social networking sites for scientists (including BioCrowd, the career development networking site that and I started). I suspect that many of us who started these sites recognized an opportunity to use social media to bring scientists together on the Web in a less threatening way than IRL. Although several of these sites report high subscription rates, it is not clear how effective they are for networking and career development purposes.

The job market for life scientists has been extremely difficult and competitive for the past five years or so. Academic positions are still hard to come by and the recent downsizing that has taken place in the life sciences industry—about 85,000 jobs have been lost in the past three years— suggest that competition for life sciences jobs will remain fierce for the foreseeable future. Like it or not, graduate programs must begin to provide job counseling and offer career development training to their students and postdoctoral fellows—their lives may depend upon it. 

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!

 

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Looking for a Life Sciences Job? Try Facebook, Twitter and BioCrowd

Using Facebook and Twitter to find jobs is becoming routine in many industries including healthcare. However, the life sciences industry is lagging behind most others when it comes to social media and recruitment. Nevertheless, many companies and academic institutions are beginning to realize that Facebook (FB), Twitter and other science social networks are good source of qualified candidates for  those difficult-to fill job openings. 

Lindsey Pollak, a GenY career guru who, writes on the use of social media for job searching, alerted me to a post (via Twitter @biojobblog) that describes how to effectively use FB to find a job.  While FB may be useful to scientist looking for work, there are many other bioscience social networks like BioCrowd (@biocrowd) that regularly post jobs and career opportunities for life scientists.

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting 

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Eye on FDA Talks with FDA's Division for Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications (DDMAC) about Pharma, Social Media and Web 2.0

As many of you know, the life sciences industry, one of the most highly regulated industries of the economy has been hesitant and reluctant to embrace social media to reach out to patients, physicians and the lay public. This is because the US Food and Drug Administration, specifically Division for Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications (DDMAC), has been mute on the subject and hasn’t issue one iota of guidance on the use of social media in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology or medical devices/diagnostic industries.

Mark Senak, a regulatory affairs lawyer and owner of the blog eyeonfda.com, invited Dr. Jean Ah Kang, Special Assistant at DDMAC in charge of Web 2.0 policy development to talk about FDA’s views and ideas about social media and its use in the life sciences industry. Listening to the 15 min podcast would be, according to Mark, “time well spent” for social media advocates in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices/diagnostics sectors.

Hat tip and much “love” to Mark who wrote “BTW, I absolutely expect waves of love for this (the podcast)."

Until next time....

Good Luck and Good Listening!!!!!!!!!! 

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Some Revealing Statistics About Facebook

Facebook contends that it has over 175 million members, making it the largest social network in the world! Interestingly, according to an article in today’s New York Times, most US members are “still relatively young.” “Facebook offers advertisers a target of 54.4 million members of all ages. But if an advertiser wants to narrow its target audience to those 25 or older, the number drops to 28.8 million. Narrow it to those 30 or older, and Facebook has 20.3 million to offer.” However, this is not surprisingly because people 30 and over weren’t allowed to join Facebook until 2006. In fact, many over-30 individuals have yet to sign up! In support of this, I am increasingly getting friend requests from my contemporaries—most of whom are in their 40s and 50s.

Each week, a million new members are added in the United States and five million globally—the 30-and-older group is its fastest-growing demographic (and the one with the most money to spend).  Further, Facebook members are becoming increasingly social and gregarious. In December the average number of “friends” per member was 100. Since then, it has grown to 120 per member according to a Facebook spokesperson. If Facebook continues to grow at its current rate, it will likely experience unprecedented and astonishing growth in the next few years. And, when it comes to monetizing social networks, bigger is always better!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Networking!!!!!!!!!! 

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Connecting Scientists: What's Love Got to Do with It?

Social media is the rage these days and, by all accounts, the things that are driving it popularity are making business connections, job hunting and the opportunity to meet/connect with others on a personal/romantic level. While scientists are generally perceived as being less social than others, I believe that we, like most people, primarily join social networks for two reasons—job hunting and career development or dating and sex.

With this in mind, a quick perusal of social media sites reveals that there is no shortage of social networks specifically designed for scientists for job hunting and career development. Surprisingly, there is a dearth of sites that enable scientists to connect with one another on personal or romantic levels. This doesn’t make sense to me as someone who spent 12 years as a graduate student and postdoc. Let’s face it, we scientists generally work long hours, don’t get out of the laboratory much and generally find it hard to meet prospective mates. That is, outside of the people who we work with daily. And as I learned the hard way, workplace romances can be very tricky and uncomfortable to manage at times. But, not to worry! Yesterday, I discovered an interesting website called Science Connection—maintained and run by the Scientist.com—which was specifically designed as a “the meeting place for single science professionals and others with an interest in science or nature.” I guess you can call it match.com for scientists!

From what I could glean from its website, Science Connection was started way back in the early 1990s by “erstwhile biologist Anne Lambert, with help and advice from friends who were also biologists, birders, or science types, and with the essential involvement of her friend Roy Smith, who did the original programming.” The site boasts about 15,533 members and provides some cool stats on the number of matches, relationships, marriages and even children that resulted from members who joined the network. Most of SciCon’s members are from the United States and Canada, with small numbers from other countries and regions of the world. The scientific disciplines of its members run the gamut from physical, natural, medical and social/behavioral sciences to computers and information technology. And, some of SciCon’s members aren’t scientists but lawyers, teachers, business people, musicians and artists (science fetish?).

But, before you take the SciCon plunge, you ought to know that the average age of male members is about 49 years and for women almost 46 years. However, those averages are misleading because they were calculated from the roughly 500 members who listed their ages on their profiles. There are roughly equal numbers of men and women and the age of its members ranges from 20 to 89 years. Many members are into natural history (birding, etc.) and participate in outdoor activities.  Finally, SciCon is not a free site and annual membership is $65 (~ 18 cents/day). “The $65 annual fee buys you a list of all members of the opposite sex (what about same sex individuals?) and a monthly newsletter, which has mini-profiles, discussion forums and a place where members can announce get-togethers in their area. Member Polylogue includes in-depth analyses of cyber romance, the perils of over-50 dating and friendships that bud into romance. If the $65 annual fee is too steep a price to pay for love, then you might want to consider a three month membership which costs only $30 (~33 cents/day). However, as stated on the website, the $65 annual membership represents the “the best value.”

While I had never heard of the Science Connection before, the network has been reviewed many times in the past by a variety of media outlets that include: NPR, Newsweek (2006), Discover (2007), Forbes Magazine and others. In general, the site gets favorable reviews. That said, if I wasn’t married (my wife is lawyer) I might consider joining Science Connection. After all, it certainly beats sitting around the lab on Friday and Saturday nights analyzing sequence data—not that there is anything wrong with that!

Until next time...

Good Luck—and well, err—Good Luck

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Calling All Podcasters and PowerPoint Aficionados

We recently added a feature to BioCrowd called BioCrunch. Our goal for BioCrunch is to provide Bcrowd members with relevant, interesting and “fresh” content. Vincent and I are big fans of podcasts and PowerPoint presentations! That said, please contact me  if you are interested in contributing content for BioCrowd’s BioCrunch feature.

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Surfing!!!!

 

BioCrowd Launches Several New Features

 As many of you know, we launched BioCrowd about six weeks ago. Our membership is steadily growing and several early members suggested changes and improvements to the site. In typical Web 2.0 fashion, we listened to those suggested and decided to add several new features!

First, we added a new section to the home page called BioCrunch. BioCrunch will feature “fresh content” developed by BioCrowd members. Items that can be posted to BioCrunch include but are not limited to podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, manuscripts and possibly poster presentations. With this in mind, we urge interested BioCrowd members to send us stuff that you wanted featured in BioCrunch and shared with the rest of the community.

Second, you can now upload multiple files with discussion posts and add a single file to comments. Also, it is now possible to preview your comment or discussion posts (before you hit the send button) to insure that they are grammatically-correct and typo-free. 

Third and perhaps most importantly, we decided to publicly open the site so that RSS feeds from BioCrowd can be imported to other social media applications including blogs, Facebook and Twitter. It also means that member profiles and discussion posts are searchable by Google. However, all posted resumes and job listings will remain private and only available to BioCrowd members, i.e. you have to join to view them.

We are planning other improvements to BioCrowd—stay tuned for new updates!

Until next time….

Join Us and Be Part of the Crowd!

 

BioCrowd Podcast: Web 2.0 and the Future of Medicine

We were able to entice Berci Mesko —a Hungarian medical student who writes at ScienceRoll and is founder of Webicina —to chat with us about the transection of Web 2.0, science and medicine.

Berci, who only sleeps four hours each night, is a medical section editor at Wikipedia, runs courses in Second Life (and real life at his medical school) and can frequently be found on Twitter enlightening his followers on topics ranging from personalized RSS feeds for physicians to the latest breakthroughs in medical genetics. While this ought to be enough for most people, Berci told us that he always wanted to be a scientist and— to realize this dream— will be entering a PhD program next fall. He is a very bright, energetic and engaging fellow whose understanding of the relationships between physicians and patients are insightful and instructive.

Have a listen and also check out BioCrowd!

Until next time…

Good Luck and Good Listening!!!

 

BioCrowd Founders Talk About Why They Created a Network for Bioprofessionals

For those of you who want to learn about  why Vincent and I created BioCrowd, listen to our very first podcast!   Anybody who is interested in doing a podcast for BioCrowd, please send us a note along with your ideas and when you might be available for recording the session.

Hope to see you at the Bcrowd!

 

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Listening

Career Opportunities in Drug Development

Ever wonder how a drug makes it from the bench to the marketplace and what types of jobs are required to support the process? I created a PowerPoint presentation that describes the activities and the jobs required at each stage of the development process. I also listed the degree requirements that are necessary to secure various jobs from drug discovery through commercialization.

Everything That You Need to Know About BioCrowd ...And Then Some!

Earlier this month, Vincent Racaniello and I launched a new social network called BioCrowd. Vincent and I created BioCrowd because we believe that social media has a critical role to play in the evolution of the life sciences and existing 'science social networks' were difficult to navigate or too broad to adequately meet the needs of the bioscience community.

Our objectives are  to promote scientific and business interactions between BioCrowd members and offer advice to members who may be seeking to advance their careers or find jobs. To that end, we decided to create a monthly podcast that will keep network members apprised of all of the comings and goings at BioCrowd.

Please send us your feedback on our very first podcast.  Also, feel free to suggest topics that you would like discussed on future podcasts! 

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Listening!!!!!!!!! 

 

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Science and Social Media

Vincent Racaniello, a pioneer in RNA virology and world class researcher on the pathogenesis of polio, believes that social media can be used to enhance scientific research and improve science education. Vincent recently blogged about this on his virology blog and graciously allowed me to repost it to BioJobBlog. It is an interesting perspective from an innovative and creative scientist.

 

Science and the Social Web

In a previous post about why I blog and podcast, I discussed how these activities allow me to think more about virology and to teach far more people than I ever could in a laboratory or classroom. Is there even more value in the web for scientists?

There are three different web activities, besides blogging and podcasting that enhance science in new ways. The first is the ability to post comments on blogs and podcasts. In so doing, people can interact in ways that were not previously possible. Scientists who have never met, or students hoping to learn, all can connect and create an instructive and creative dialog. Don’t understand something in a post? Just ask. Have something different to contribute? Post it. Science can only benefit from interactions not limited by geography or time.

The second powerful web tool for science is the social networks. We know how MySpace and Facebook made it easy to meet and interact with new people. These networks also allow scientists to connect and talk about their profession. There are various groups on Facebook that enable focused, productive discussions among scientists. Even more useful are the social networks that have been developed specifically for scientists - well over 20 according to this  blog post. These networks exist to foster interactions - meeting other scientists, looking for jobs, troubleshooting experiments, finding answers to thorny questions. The value of scientific social networks is that they enable dialogue far beyond what you could achieve on your floor, in your building, by telephone or email. The result is scientific interactions at unprecedented levels.

The third web tool for scientists is Twitter. This microblogging platform restricts users to posts of 140 characters or less - the end result is concentrated information. For scientists, Twitter can be either a distraction or a gold mine. If you choose to follow individuals who are interested in science, you will, in the course of a day, find tweets with links to interesting science - news or journal articles; comments on science; questions about science or science methods - in brief, the kind of exchange originally facilitated by email but far more immediate and pithy. Follow the right people on Twitter, and receive useful information. I keep an eye on Twitter to find tips on how scientists use the web, the latest science news, and comments on science in general. In turn, when I learn of an interesting science news event or article, I tweet it. Mr. Tweet’s discussion of  the evolution of a twitter user crystallizes this concept.

There is also great value for scientists at FriendFeed. No, it’s not a fourth category - it’s an aggregator of the three activities described above, one-stop for all your blogging, podcasting, social networking, and twittering.

These three aspects of the social web are revolutionizing science. By using them, I am learning more about my field than I ever have before. Those who choose not to take advantage of the social web will miss the opportunity to become more creative and productive scientists.

 

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BioCrowd Rings in the New Year

BioCrowd, a new social networking site for bioprofessionals was officially launched today.  We are still making last minute fixes and cosmetic changes so please bear with us over the next few weeks.

BioCrowd's main goal is to provide a venue for career development and business interactions for students, scientists and other bioprofessionals.  We plan on adding new applications and functionality as the network evolves.  That said, please let us know what you think, what you like and don't like and how we can improve BioCrowd to meet your needs.

Thanks and I hope that you become a member of the BioCrowd!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!

 

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TWiV's Top Ten Virology Stories of 2008

For those of you virology junkies out there, This Week in Virology (TWiV) has just released a podcast on the top 10 virology stories of 2008. BioCrowd founder, Vincent Racaniello and Alan Dove, a professional science writer (and one of Vincent's former students), discuss their top picks for 2008 and make some predictions for 2009.

For those of you with no plans for this evening’s festivities, open a bottle of champagne, kick back and have a listen—it's good stuff!

Until next time…


Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!

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Finding a New Job: It's All About Networking

Like it or not, the best way to land a new job whether or not there is a recession is to network. While career counselors and recruiters trumpet the virtues of networking to job seekers, many people really don't understand what it is or how to do it correctly. I found an outstanding article that demystifies networking and offers tips on how to excel at it. 

For many scientists, online networking is ideal because they frequently lack the requisite skills to effectively network in real life situations. Until recently, face-to-face networking at conferences or "professional social events" was the only way to effectively network. However, the advent of web-based social networks allows job seekers to eschew the awkwardness and time requirements for  one-on-one networking in favor of a more convenient and less-threatening online experience. BioCrowd, a new online social network for scientists and other bioprofessionals, was created to help scientists advance their careers and find new jobs. While BioCrowd and similar online networking sites can help scientists make connections, it is still the face-to-face networking experience that will ultimately  help them land new jobs!

Because networking is not taught or emphasized in graduate school, it is not surprising that many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are notoriously poor “networkers.” That said, for those of you who recognize the importance of networking and want hone your networking skills, Contacts Count a Maryland-based network training company may be worth a visit. I have no doubt that there other organizations and companies out there that specialize in network training. If you find any, let me know and I will gladly post them!

Until next time…

 

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting

 

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Scientists and Social Networking

I first thought about starting a social network for life sciences professionals about a year ago after joined I Facebook and LinkedIn and then learned about SciLink, one of the first social networks for scientists. Apparently, others had the same idea and today, there are currently, by my reckoning, no fewer than 20 social networks for scientists—each promoting a unique approach to networking for scientists.

David Bradley, a UK-based science writer who can be followed on Twitter as sciencebase, did me a favor by posting a piece oh his blog in early November that reviews many of these networks. Surprisingly, most of them were designed almost exclusively for academic scientists! I was thrilled to learn this because we created BioCrowd , our new social network, for ALL life science professionals not just academicians and industry scientists. David has graciously agreed to allow me to repost his article entitled "Social Media for Scientists" below.

Social Media For Scientists

Towards the end of October, I received a flurry of emails asking me to check out new social networking sites for scientists, I’ve already reviewed the nanoscience community, of course. I suspect that, the academic year having moved into full swing, there were a few scientists hoping to tap into the power of social media tools and the whole web-two-point-ohhhh thing.

This from Brian Krueger:

“I came across your blog during my weekly Google search for “science social network.” I thought you might be interested in my website, LabSpaces.net. It’s a social network for the sciences that I’ve had on-line for the last two years and I recently got my University to send out a press release about it. I think you should stop by and check it out. Let me know what you think, I’m always looking for suggestions on how to improve the site.”

LabSpaces has all of the features of a social-networking site with the addition of a daily science newsfeed, lab profiles, a science forum, blogs, and a science protocol database. Apparently, the site provides space for researchers to create their own user profile, add their publication history, upload technical research protocols, blog about science, and share research articles with the community. The site will soon host a free video conferencing service to facilitate long distance collaborations and journal clubs.

New Zealander Peter Matthews who works in Japan emailed:

“I am a full-time researcher from NZ, working in Japan, at a museum with many international research visitors. This multilingual environment made me very aware of: (1) the difficulties that non-English based researchers face when using English, and (2) the difficulties that English mono-linguals face when trying to access or publish research in other important research languages, such as Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French, and so on. Hence my website: The Research Cooperative - http://cooperative.ning.com. Please have a look, join if you want, and please tell any friends and colleagues about this site if you think they might find it useful.”

Pascal Boels, Managing Director of SurgyTec.com emailed with a medical tale:

“Our website is for and by medical professionals. It’s a video-sharing site for surgeons and medical professionals to show off their newly minted skills. It makes it easy for medical professionals to upload videos or slideshows and share those with the community. You can search for videos by specialty, organ/region, tissue, etiology, operation type, or technique. Many surgeons perform original and high-quality techniques in their operating room and equally many surgeons would like to learn from these new and inspiring techniques. Up till now it was very difficult, time consuming and expensive to take a look in each others operating room and share practical knowledge, tips and tricks. Surgytec.com provides the solution for this problem. We are currently serving over 4000 surgeons from more than 124 countries, sharing over 400 procedures

Priyan Weerappuli had long been interested in scientific research but felt that applied research was guarded by private institutions while basic research was held within the confines of colleges and universities by overpriced journals and an oversimplification that occurred whenever research results were translated for more general audiences. His forum/platform will attempt to open this research to a general audience - http://www.theopensourcescienceproject.com

Some correspondents are claiming they’re approaching web 3.0 nirvana:

“ResearchGATE is proud to announce a major update: We greatly improved our search functionality and called it ReFind. The name symbolizes the importance of an efficient and result-driven search functionality within research in general and within our network in particular. ReFind is one of the first search engines based on semantic, “intelligent” correlations. It enables you to find groups, papers, fellow researchers and everything else within and outside of ResearchGATE without having to read through dozens of irrelevant results. Just type a few sentences into ReFind or simply copy and paste your abstract. Our semantic algorithm will then search the leading databases for similar work, providing you with truly relevant results.” [Sounds like my Zemanta/ResearchBlogging.org idea, DB]

One observer pointed out, however, that ResearchGate’s semantic search is maybe not the greatest thing to happen to search in a decade (especially, when we have the likes of True Knowledge Ubiquity, and Zemanta. Indeed, some users have said it is not much of an improvement on conventional search.

Then there was:

“ScienceStage.com - Science in the 21st century - A wide forum for science - on an interdisciplinary, international and individual level. ScienceStage.com, the only universal online portal for science, advanced teaching and academic research, bridges a major gap in scientific research and learning. ScienceStage.com is a virtual conference room, lecture hall, laboratory, library and meeting venue all in one.”

But, perhaps the best is saved for last. An Oxford graduate student, who has completed his PhD, Richard Price, has launched Academia.edu, which he says does two things:

“It displays academics around the world in a ‘tree’ format, according to which institution/department they are affiliated with. And, it enables researchers to keep track of the latest developments in theirfield - the latest people, papers, and talks.”

Price wants to see every academic in the world on his tree and already has Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Paul Krugman, and Noam Chomsky as members. But, that’s the hype what about its potential? It resembles BioMedExperts because both use a “social” publishing tree, but is that enough to engage scientists?

It will be interesting to see whether any of these sites gain the traction their creators hope for and how things will pan out as the credit crunch bites harder. “There are a bunch of them out there,” Krueger told me, “It’s kind of scary how many came out after Nature and I went on-line in 2006. There’s definitely a lot of competition out there, it seems like a new one appears every month. I wonder how the economy and loss of tech funding is going to affect the larger start-ups.”

Then, there are those perhaps more well-known social media sites and networks for scientists, that are listed in no particular order:

Nature Network - uber network from the publishing giant

BioMedExperts - Scientific social networking

BioWizard - Blogged up Pubmed search

Mendeley - Digital paper repository and sharing

Labmeeting - Ditto

YourLabData - socialised LIMS

SciLink - Sci-Linkedin

Myexperiment.org - mostly workflows.

Laboratree.org similar to Researchgate. Not particularly social beyond groups and sharing documents with collaborators, but email is better, and arguably more secure.

scitizen.com - collaborative science news publishing

SocialMD - Med-Linkedin

Ozmosis - Ditto

DNA Network - network of DNA/genetics bloggers

ResearchCrossroads - Socialised grant databases

MyNetResearch - Socialised LIMS at a price

SciVee - YouTube for scientists (see also Watch with Sciencebase page

Scientist Solutions - science chat

There are so many, I can barely keep up, but if you have any you think I should add to the list, let me know via the comments box below. Or, more importantly, if you have used any of these systems please leave your thoughts.

Meanwhile, my apologies if you were expecting a lesson in how to use the likes of Twotter, FiendFreed, Ding, Pyuke, or Facebok’s feeble science apps, to help you get on in science socially, but I thought it was about time I did some linking out to the web 3.0 brigade in the world of science, so here they are.

Addendum: Since David published this piece in early November, BioJobBlog learned about several other social networks for scientists including labroots, beaker, scientistsolutions and wizfolio.

Until next time…

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!!!

 

Was the Dot-Com Bust Really a Bust?

The other day I was chatting with Tony Stubblebine of CrowdVine (the social networking company building BioCrowd for us) and I was lamenting the possible burst of the social networking bubble before BioCrowd is launched. Tony reassured me and said that “Everyone thinks that after the dot-com bubble burst that almost all Internet-based businesses failed. However, when you look more closely, you will find that this simply isn’t true—there were many survivors who were able to build robust business as the Internet matured.”  While I felt a bit better after hearing that (Tony generally knows what he is talking about) I wasn’t totally convinced that he was right. After all, I am one of his customers who are building a new social network. That said, the very next day after my chat with Tony, I found an unusually. insightful article in the New York Times entitled “Lessons of Survival, From the Dot-Com Attic.”

The authors of the article suggest that based on their analysis of existing data that 48% of dot-com companies founded in 1996 were still in business in 2004 (more than four years after the Nasdaq’s peak in March 2000 and the so called dot-com bubble burst). According to the authors, “most people are stunned by this figure: they tend to guess that about 90% of the companies failed.” Further they suggest that “the dot-com survival rate is as good as or better than that for technologies like automobiles, tires and televisions during their formative years.”

How did the dot-com survivors do it? Instead of trying to a make a big splash in high profile market sectors, they identified niche markets that didn’t offer ROIs of hundreds of millions of dollars returns but represented viable Internet-based, business opportunities that could flourish if nurtured correctly. This largely assuaged most of my concerns about a possible impending social network bubble bust and proved to me that Tony knows his stuff! So, whether or not the social network bubble is going to burst, BioCrowd will be launched and we hope that like any new member of a species that it will be strong and fit enough to survive! 

Until next time.

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

 

 

BioCrowd-Beta Is Ready For Launch

I want to let my readers know that a beta-version of BioCrowd is ready for review. For those of you who may not know about BioCrowd, it is a social network for life sciences students and professionals that was created by Vincent Racaniello a Professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and me. 

The reason we started BioCrowd was that Vincent and I both perceived a need for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to more effectively network with established scientists and life sciences professionals to further advance their careers or find jobs. The social interactivity of Facebook and the business connectivity of LinkedIn are what led to the creation of BioCrowd.

We are looking for a few brave women and men who want to help to beta-test BioCrowd before we launch.  If you are interested, please visit us at www.biocrowd.com and drop us a line.   For those of you who don't want to participate at the moment, but want to learn about our progress, you can follow us on Twitter and FriendFeed ,

Until next time...

 

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

All Things Twitter

I finally started using Twitter a couple of months ago and I think it is pretty cool. That said, I am still a neophyte and I have yet to master the intricacies and nuances of Twitter speak (why are tweets not called twits?—it was a rhetorical question).

I found an informative post entitled 'My Twittonary-Every Twitter Term and Tool I Can Find' on the Sitemasher blog that helps to clarify the Twitter lexicon and provides insights in the latest twittering tools.

BTW, you can follow me on Twitter at BioJobBlog and BioCrowd.

Until next time…

 

Good Luck and Good Twittering (or should that be tweeting?????)

 

Social Networking and Scientific Research

Over the past year or so, social networking has taken the Internet by storm. This is largely  because social networking software purveyors like CrowdVine and Ning have provided out-of-the-box solutions that allow people to easily create social networks that strike their fancy. That said, will the advent of social networks do anything more than allow musicians to sell records or provide an easy place for people to hook up? To that end, Jessica a regular BioJobBlog reader sent me a story (see below) about a survey that was performed to gauge the possible impact of social networking on scientific research.

Social Applications to Play Deeper Role in Future Research

The future of social media will not just build friendships but support groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

Scientists and researchers are using social media… but mostly for professional reasons. A recent survey from 2collab reveals that over half of science, medical and technical information specialists working in academia and government institutions believe social networking will play a key role in shaping the future of research. Additionally, the study suggests tomorrow’s university faculty (respondents aged 25 - 44 in academic research positions who have published 1-10 articles) are already heavily using social media and are eager for the applications to be further developed for use in their work.

According to the survey which included 1,800 respondents, the top areas where social applications will have a major influence on research in the next five years include:

1.      Professional networking and collaboration (34.4%)

2.      Career development (26.4%)

3.      Critical analysis and evaluation of research data (25.3%)

4.      Dissemination of research output (24.5%)

5.      Conducting primary research (23.4%)

6.      Grant application and funding (22.7%)

Much to my delight, the results from the survey confirmed my belief that social networking among scientists would stimulate and be a boon to scientific research. This strengthened my conviction to move forward with the bioscience networking site, BioCrowd, that Vincent Racaniello and I plan to launch by the end of September, 2008. Rumor has it that their may be gifts for the first 100 people who join after launch.

So, don’t wait and become part of the BioCrowd today.

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Social Networking (it will help you get a job!)

Gone Fishing

The summer is drawing to a close, it is Labor Day and I decided it was time for a break.  Despite the title of this post, I am not really on a fishing trip.  Instead, my wife and I decided to take the family on a "moosing " trip in Maine.  Moose have a special place in my family mostly because of my daughter's affection for  moose toys, you know what I am talking about.

While she has an extensive moose collection, she has never seen a moose in the wild. That said, we decided to take a trip to Maine (the land of moose)  after reading about a moose cruise offered by a resort located on Moosehead Lake in northwest Maine.  Although the ten hour car ride was a bit of a schlep, a trip to Maine is always worth the effort.

I am happy to report that we spotted several moose on the cruise including an extremely large bull moose with incredible antlers, a female and two calves.  Although I have seen many moose in my time, there is something very special about seeing moose in the wild with the entire family in tow.  The only family members who didn't share the experience were Sandy (the Havanese being cared for by friends in NJ) and Moose (yes, that is his name) our rescue dog of indeterminate breeding who had to stay back in the log cabin overlooking Moosehead Lake.

I promise to make it back to NJ to continue blogging about jobs, career development and biotech news.  Also, please remember that Vincent Racaniello and I are launching our bioscience social network BioCrowd in mid to late September.  So, if you want to be part of the BioCrowd, please join today!

 

The BioCrowd

The social development of the web 2.0 has largely bypassed science. Hugely popular websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and the like have millions of members and generate huge amounts of traffic. But those who use these sites come from all walks of life. None are devoted solely to science.

With this in mind, it would seem that social networking sites that cater to scientists would have special value and appeal. A few have been launched —but there is certainly room for improvement.

This fall, Vincent Racaniello at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and I will launch BioCrowd.com, a new social network designed by scientists (Vincent and me) for bioscientists (and others in the life sciences) who wish to connect with others to advance, promote or shape their careers.

Please visit the home page to sign up to be notified when we launch. BioCrowd will combine the interactivity of sites like Facebook and the networking capabilities of LinkedIn to help to advance your career in the biosciences.

Be part of  "The BioCrowd" !!!!!!!!