Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Meeting Minutes - Feb 13 Social Media & Online Presence in Science

Thanks everyone for a great meeting on the role of online presence and social media in science.  At this meeting we learned that job search committees will look at your online presence, for better or for worse, so here are some tips about maintaining a positive online presence:

Blogs/ Twitter
-Can be a great way to connect with public and communicate science in an approachable way
-Unfortunately could be safest to hold off on promoting controversial issues until after a job is secured (or after tenure!)
-Even non-controversial issues on blogs can get picked up by extremists who can cause damage through email bombing and phone calls; you have to pick your battles
-Keep blogs positive and focus on exciting research or professional activities
-At conferences Twitter can be especially good for tracking what's going on and making connections
-If you want to have a "secret" page where you can be honest and open about anything, set up a special e-mail adress for it and don't put your name on it

Emails
-At Berkeley (and other federally funded/public email accounts) they have a record of all of your emails, even deleted ones...

Facebook/Social Sites

more after the break!

-It's safest to keep your Facebook page private and professional
-Watch out for other people tagging you or commenting on your page
-Can be a great way to communicate with other scientists

-Watch out for old stuff coming back to haunt you



News Sites 
-Make press releases for any papers you have coming out

Google

-Google yourself and see what comes up; watch out for people with the same name as you and for old stuff coming back to haunt you!
-Google Scholar is a good way to track your publications, citations etc.
-Watch out for old "Google Group" emails that will show up in search



Listserves
-Another good way to make professional connections with people

Professional Websites 
-It can count against you in job searches if you don't have some positive, professional web presence, even if it's just a personal web site.
-Keep your webpage updated

-Upload CV as google doc that only you can edit and link to it on your website; this allows you to keep your CV up to date as things are happening without having to upload a whole new document.  Also means you can put links on your CV.

0 comments:

Post a Comment