CERN

François Grey explained at Lift08 the profound implications of citizen cyberscience for the public understanding of science, and for scientists' understanding of the public. Two years after his talk, François sent us an update on his latest work.

Two years after appearing at Lift, my life has changed completely. I can’t blame that all on Lift, of course! I was about to move a few months later from gentrified Geneva to bustling Beijing, which is a life-changing event in itself. But in some sense giving that talk, to that sort of community, at that particular time, was a turning point for me.

Certainly, it was light years from the typical scientific meetings I go to. I mean, imagine an academic conference where scientists dance on stage during the break to psychedelic music – not likely! And besides being funky, it exposed me to a lot of young people doing really neat stuff on the Web. That was encouraging, because I was trying to get an embryonic project going myself.

So at the end of my talk, I announced the intention to start a Citizen Cyberscience Centre publicly for the first time. I knew I was sticking my neck out a bit, as the center had not been officially approved by the partners: CERN, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and the University of Geneva. But I had no idea just how many complications we would face getting that approval, both due to management changes amongst the partners, and legal wrangling about the wording of the agreement.

And when the ink was dry on the agreement – which committed no one to spend a centime - we faced the next big challenge: funding! A year later, and after coming perilously close to throwing in the towel a couple of times, we’ve finally made it. I say we, because colleagues like Christian Pellegrini at UniGe and Ben Segal at CERN were enormously supportive the whole while. We now have projects with IBM and HP, and I’ve been awarded a Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship to develop the Citizen Cyberscience Centre further.

So two years later – two and a half, really – we’re about to have our first really big international event, a Citizen Cyberscience Summit, hosted at King’s College London on 2-3 September. It won’t be as funky as Lift, but it will still be cool. Scientists talking with citizens, rather than with each other. Whoa, risky! Who knows, maybe someone will even start dancing on stage? In any case, it is in some sense a godchild of Lift, so thanks to all you Lifters for encouraging that dream to fruition!

Learn more on the Summit here!

Our friends at CERN are presenting a very interesting lecture on Oct. 26th in Geneva:

The Citizen Cyberscience Lectures

Mobile phones and Africa: a success story
Dr. Mo Ibrahim, Mo Ibrahim Foundation

Time: 14:00-15:30, 26 October 2009
Place: Main Auditorium, CERN

The Citizen Cyberscience Lectures are hosted by the partners of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre, CERN, The UN Institute of Training and Research and the University of Geneva. The goal of the Lectures is to provide an inspirational forum for participants from the various international organizations and academic institutions in Geneva to explore how information technology is enabling greater citizen participation in tackling global development challenges as well as global scientific research.

The first Citizen Cyberscience Lectures will welcome two speakers who have both made major innovative contributions in this area.

Dr. Mo Ibrahim, founder of Celtel International, one of Africa’s most successful mobile network operators, will talk about how the introduction of mobile phones in Africa has created jobs and enriched the social lives of citizens, as well as supporting civil society and advancing the cause of democracy.

Dr. Alpheus Bingham, founder of InnoCentive, a Web-based community that solves industrial R&D challenges, will describe examples of citizens outside a targeted field of expertise providing unique solutions to challenging scientific problems.

The Citizen Cyberscience Lectures are open and free of charge. Participants from outside CERN must register to be able to access CERN.

To register contact Yasemin Hauser (Yasemin.Hauser [at] cern.ch).

For more information visit the lecture's website.

How the Web awas Born: Stories from a scribe

Web veteran and CERN PR James Gillies tells us his perspective on the history of the Web. He shows the backstage vision from an insider's perspective of what used to be a "vague but exciting" idea that became the World Wide Web around the early 90s.

James Gillies is the Head of Communication at the CERN, the world’s largest particle physics laboratory and currently home of the world’s most ambitious scientific experiment: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which started in 2008. CERN is also where British scientist Sir Tim Berns-Lee invented the world wide web, a story told by James in his successful book ‘How the Web was Born'. Thus, during the LIFT conference this year, he will be telling us his own perspective on the history of the web on Thursday, the 26th

James Gillies holds a BSc (with first-class honours) in Physics from the University of London and a D.Phil in experimental particle physics form the University of Oxford. After being the Head of Science at the British Council in Paris for 2 years, he joined CERN in Geneva in 1995, where since 2003, he is, the Head of Communication. More recently he was in charge of the development and implementation of the global communication plan of the LHC. James Gillies LIFT profile can be found here.

LIFT Expectations (in James’ own words)

This is my first Lift conference, so I'm intrigued to see what it will bring. I'm looking forward to some interesting exchanges - the format of LIFT is different from any conference I've ever been to, but whenever you cross disciplines, there's the potential for interesting things to happen. I'm also a bit overwhelmed to be on the same agenda as Vint Cerf - unlike him, all I did was write about the Internet, not invent it!

François Grey is the head of IT Communications at the CERN, the web's birthplace. In his talk, he discusses the profound implications of citizen cyberscience for the public understanding of science, and for scientists' understanding of the public.

It's my first time in Geneva, and I'd definitely love to hook up with some of you and do some sightseeing while here.

I saw a couple of things I'd love to do while here, the main one being a visit to CERN.

(The Patek Philippe museum ranks pretty high up there too.)

Any other ideas? What are the must-do things while here?

And where can I find the best chocolate to bring back home? :)

Brian Cox is Physicist at University of Manchester / CERN. He presents about "CERN's 27km Big Bang machine" at the LIFT07 conference on Friday, February 9, 2007.