Digital Media/
Communication:
DigitalOcean
bruce caron bruce@nmri.org
Research Director, New Media Research Institute
Innovation Day, UC Santa Barbara
October 16, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009

Innovation at the heart of the Academy:
Last time the Academy really
got innovative...? 1660
...the founding of the Royal Society
Motto: nullius in verba: “not in words”
It’s time for change: nullius in tweeta
Friday, October 16, 2009

DigitalOcean planning funded by the Paul G Allen Family Foundation
Friday, October 16, 2009

• An invitation-only science-centric social network
• Preprint services [Nature Publishing]
• Global job board [Nature Publishing]
• Advanced media handling (photos, video)
• Research publication feeds [PLOS]
• Self-organized research groups/events
• “Null science” service (publishing null results)
• Data publishing with date/time stamp
• Auto NSF 2 page BIO...Your home page on the Internet
• Metrics for NSF broader impacts...
Friday, October 16, 2009

DigitalOcean
connecting young scientists to an ocean of
high-quality digital media
Google
Ocean
Video Photo
Drupal CMS with custom features
Friday, October 16, 2009

Friday, October 16, 2009

DigitalOcean: Sampling the Sea
Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Friday, October 16, 2009

StS: imagine 25,000 student fishmarket photos and stories
Friday, October 16, 2009

DigitalOcean: Informal Science
Media Netwwork
Proposal being prepared for NSF ISE RFP
Friday, October 16, 2009

THREE BOOKS
shirky, hunt, Brogan
network effects
whuffie
trust
Friday, October 16, 2009

• Code attracts/enables community
• Community builds content
• Community supports members: whuffie
• Members spread the word: Trust Agents
Friday, October 16, 2009

The social bargain cannot be
broken
What does it mean to be a peer in your peer-to-peer
network?
How do you code for democratic interactions and
participation in a social network?
Friday, October 16, 2009

The Crowd makes Wikipedia possible
Friday, October 16, 2009

Value added by the Community: tagging
Friday, October 16, 2009

whuffie
NO other endeavor carries more weight
on reputation than does science...
internally and externally
but the science reputation system needs
its own cybersocial overhaul
a scant 39% of US residents “believe” in
evolution...
Friday, October 16, 2009

Catching up to Ashton
Friday, October 16, 2009

posted Saturday, September 12, 2009
Friday, October 16, 2009

social networking and social media
digitalocean:
20K ocean scientists in the NETWORK
talking with
2M enthusiasts outside the NETWORK
who have 20 million photos, 5M hours of video
and tons of local knowledge
Friday, October 16, 2009

Professionalism
in socially networked
organizations
C o de , content, an d community
cyberinfrastructure, data, and society
Friday, October 16, 2009

conclusions
• Doing science in a socially networked
environment: nullius tweeta will arrive
• Distributed peer review is the future
• Science MUST build a presence in the Web 2.0
world (digg/twitter/wikipedia...)
• Real research builds science whuffie... better ways
to get tenure
• DigitalOcean will be cloned for your discipline
Friday, October 16, 2009