CZ Talk:Biology Workgroup/Biology Week

When?

Hello biologists,

It's looking like Biology Week is most viable as our first Workgroup Week, thanks to volunteering by Supten S., John Dennehy, and Anthony Sebastian (and Daniel Mietchen).

For future reference, note that CZ:Biology_Workgroup/Workgroup_Week is reachable from both the Biology Workgroup homepage, as well as the Workgroup Weeks homepage.

In order to give journals, newsletters, and others adequate lead time to announce Biology Week, the week itself should take place 6-8 weeks from the time we actually send the announcements out. I would have preferred that it take place this summer, but two weeks from right now is mid-July, and we probably won't be able to do the promotional work for another few weeks, which would put 8 weeks away in August--and August is no good, because it's vacation time for too many people. That puts us into September.

Sooo...I'm thinking Sept. 7-13. Does that sound doable? Too close to the beginning of the semester? (Would the next week be better?) If you have any objections, suggestions, cogitations, etc., please let me know now!

Please discuss below!

Otherwise, I'll make a general announcement of this date by Friday.

Also, bear in mind we will need a Biology Week coordinator--a bio editor. I'll work with this person and try to make it as painless as possible. --Larry Sanger 14:05, 21 May 2008 (CDT)

The date works for me. --John J. Dennehy 14:12, 21 May 2008 (CDT)

Early September might be a bit too close to the start of the semester. Things are very hectic at that time. You might want to consider a little later in the month, maybe the 22nd or 29th.

I think that early fall would be better than mid summer, but because this is an election year, we don't want to push it later into the fall because everyone will be distracted by politics.

John Moffett 06:32, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

An argument for a July date could be The 19th International Biology Olympiad taking place in Mumbai, India from July 13-20, 2008. September would be good because that's the time when lecturers start thinking about how to organize homework assignments, from which CZ:Eduzendium might profit. -- Daniel Mietchen 18:58, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Cut from the CZ page: "A more detailed poll is here (please state your opinion) - perhaps more easy to handle than verbal expressions (discussion remains on the talk page)."

Date set, and next steps

I've set the date for Biology Week at September 22-28. I hope that's all right with you all. Since there wasn't much more input, I figure a decision had to be made. I think that week is long enough after the start of the fall semester that it will be feasible for a lot of people to get involved then. Also, the ample lead time will help us get organized, and I suspect we'll need that time to get organized, because we'll be doing this the first time.

Let's get started sooner rather than later--well, some of us (Daniel for instance) has already gotten started. There is a lot to do, as you'll see if you look! My own next steps will be to get a Biology Week coordinator installed; then I'll at least help make a list of top academic departments in the field, together with e-mail addresses of department heads, where we can solicit statements of support from various people and departments. I would like to get those mails sent out ASAP. Anyway, more about that soon.

After that, we'll be able to send out announcements to many and various biology workgroup mailing lists, etc. That will be very exciting, I think, because I am very confident we'll get lots of new biologists involved right away, not just during Biology Week, but after every announcement we make of Biology Week.

My hope then is that the energy and excitement we generate in the Biology Workgroup will get other workgroups interested in doing the same. Of course, if energy and excitement levels are low, we can count it as another lesson learned. But...I don't think that's going to happen. I suspect many of you are simply skeptical that anything interesting is going to come out of this initiative. But I know from experience that many new people will join us if we merely make our presence known and make many invitations; it's practically a law of nature.

Mark September 22-28 on your calendars, please! --Larry Sanger 12:42, 5 June 2008 (CDT)

Academic recruitment

I'm not sure the strategy of making a list of top departments is going to work. Most department lists are not publicly available, and usually only people on the list can send e-mails to them. sometimes only the list owners can send e-mails to the list. It is possible to try and find list owners BEFORE the recruitment week, ask them to send the e-mail at the start of the week, and then send a reminder e-mail beforehand. Or at the very least, we can ask citizendium members to sign up to send e-mails to lists they are on personally. But I don't think this culling is going to work. Another strategy is to farm individual e-mails, but that might be a bit time consuming. Marielle Fields Newsome 18:54, 7 June 2008 (CDT)