#quixotechem #greenchain #scholarlyhtml #oscar4 #pantonprinciples
Am attending the 241st National Meeting of the ACS at Anaheim (read Disney). In case you want me I am at the Sheraton Park. I have a hectic program being author of 6 presentations and giving 4 (there used to be a rule that this wasn’t allowed I think but the sky won’t fall in). So here’s the program… (CHED = Chemical Education; CINF = Chemical Information; COMP = Computation
- Sunday (today): prepare talks for tomorrow. Go to CHED Reception (Disneyland Pier Hotel). We are trying to find a wifi dongle top-up card as w2e don’t trust conference wifi (apparently it’s free this year)
-
Monday: 0910 CINF Open Data session. Convention Centre Room 202A I’m talking about the Panton Principles. It’s hard work promoting Openness at the ACS. W talks in this session. I think I am the only Libre presenter. One is not very obviously Open (looks commercial), one is defending the need to charge for scientific data and one is open-but-NC as far as I know. I’ll blog this later (I normally blog my talks as a record for the attendees because I don’t use Powepoint because I don’t know what I am going to say before I start and because Powerpoint corrupts thought processes. I don’t expect many converts (of course BMC is already Libre, but not many people publish chemistry (yet) in BMC. Let’s see if we can change that.
1055 CHED Online Open Semantic Resources for chemical education. I apologize to the previous speakers as I am in CINF. They are: Bob Hanson (Jmol), J.Bradley (Jean-Claude?), Henry Rzepa (iPads), Tony Williams (Chemspider), Robert Belford (WikiGlossary), Martin Walker (Wikipedia), then me. I am talking on online semantic resources which includes Chem4Word, Crystaleye and The OSCAR/OPSIN/ChemicalTagger triptych. I am rather gutted to miss the first bit but both sessions run in parallel and they are a few hundred Mickey Mice apart so it takes time to commute.
Evening: CINF party (I think) and then (I think) The Blue Obelisk dinner at Gumbo Shrimp (I think). Also have to prepare a talk for the next day.
-
Tuesday CINF. Allday-session run by Henry and Steve Bachrach. Internet and Chemistry, social networking. I kick off with the Green Chain Reaction (a collaborative project run on this blog and completely Open in all senses. Then Marcus Hanwell presents Quixote at 0950. It was going to be Jens Thomas but he is leaving Daresbury and off to see the world.
At this stage I can probably start to wind down a bit.
- Wednesday CINF. . Internet and Chemistry, social networking continues. Steve and Henry have done very well to get two days of contributed. I must admit that when they asked me I wasn’t bursting with enthusiasm. We’ve been down this route before and the enthusiasm of the late nineties has disappeared. However I thought that if I was positive and so were others then we might get a critical mass. And I keep telling people that we have ton keep believing. So two days of contribution is very gratifying. Mainly people I know , but that’s what you expect in a session on Internet and social networks. Anyway Sam Adams is talking at 1340 on the Clarion project, which will include his new Chempound repository system. I’ll write more later…
-
Thursday COMP. I put in a presentation on our collaborative approach to CompChem information. A mixture of Chempound and Quixote. It’s called Memex for Computational Chemistry. At 1145. The idea is that it is (not will be) possible to forget what work you have done and let the computer discover it for you. An imaginative assistant that has the whole past knowledge of the subject.
My talk is preceded by one with the intriguing title “withdrawn”. So the room will be empty to start with. So it’s a real challenge for me to fill a room with the last talk of the meeting on the last day after a withdrawn paper. But I am sure that people are already changing their plane reservations. Put in your spreadbets on the attendance count (One very well known compchemist got 3 (apart from himself and the chair) the last time he presented – his wife, and two young ladies who were looking for a different sessions. But the show has to go on. I plan this talk to have the same impact as the original Memex, so make sure you are there!
Wompf! And then off to Seattle to talk with friends at Microsoft Research and write a blog on the Fourth Paradigm that I have been doing for the last “little while”. And then to PNNL for NWChem, OREChem and then back.
To the launch of OSCAR4 on April 13th. Which you should register for now… (I’ll blog this later)