Next March, the ACS National Meeting is coming to the happiest place on Earth. If you want to be there with Mickey, Donald, and me, you’ll need to submit your abstract soon. The deadline for the organic division is October 25th. Some of the other divisions don’t allow for as much procrastination.
While going to conferences and giving presentations are great, there has always been one aspect of the process that I find ridiculously illogical in this day and age. Why is it that some lab groups and managers will spend countless days travelling to schools around the globe to give talks to small audiences, but won’t devote any time to posting the same information on their Web sites that are accessible to millions of people?
It makes no sense. Take one day—one lousy day of 365.25—in your busy schedule to sit down in front of a computer to summarize your research and update your publications list. While you are at it, you might consider listing the students and postdocs that work in the lab, because we in the trenches love to feel like part of a team. And if you are really devoted to the task, you can maintain a list of alumni so it’s not like the identities of past members are erased once they graduate.
What is in it for you, as a professor? Lots of things. First of all, if you believe in the concept of giving seminars, you can communicate the same information you present in seminars on your Web site. This material will be available for 24 hours a day to anyone in the world with an Internet connection, not just to those who happen to be in some random school’s lecture hall for one hour. And while you can’t guarantee that the people who show up to your seminar will be especially interested in it, those who find your Web site by Google searches will have done so precisely because they wanted more information about you or your research.
Your Web site is also one of your greatest recruiting tools. Young people, who have been exposed to the Internet for their entire lives, expect the organizations who are legitimate in their field to maintain good Web presences. News organizations interested in you and your work will probably also begin their research by searching for you on the Web. Would you rather they find your site, that you have control over, or the site of some random blowhard on the Web who happened to make a comment about you? Part of protecting your brand involves not allowing information vacuums to form that other parties (like random chemistry bloggers—or even worse—blog commenters) can fill in. While these other sources of information about you can always exist, you definitely want to have a clear voice on the Web.
I think there is a large segment of the scientific population that still has not grasped the importance of the Internet. Perhaps they perceive that the advantages of learning how to use information technology will not compensate for the amount of time it will take to learn it. I know that making a good Web page can be a large investment of time, but it is a one-time cost. The rigamarole of traversing the country to give seminars is neverending. And let’s be honest…chances are it won’t be professors who will have to take any significant time out of their busy schedules to fix up their Web sites. These tasks are easily staffed out to tech-savvy grad students and postdocs.
I am not advocating for the elimination of conferences or academic seminars. Both are great. There is no good substitute for being able to experience a research presentation from an expert in the field and to interact with her in Q&A sessions. Static Web sites do not allow for this sort of personal interaction and discussion. All I’m saying is, while you should continue to go to conferences and give seminars, do not do so at the expense of completely ignoring your research group’s Web site.
And if you still favor talks so much, at the very least, why not get someone to tape a seminar (that you’re giving anyway) so it can be posted on YouTube or your Web site? Harvard used to record all of the chemistry seminars on DVD and place them in the library. It changed nothing about how seminars were given, but I found it much more convenient to be able to watch a DVD at my leisure than to have to schlep downstairs to a crowded lecture hall.
Perhaps this “problem” will sort itself out as time marches on and more tech-savvy young professors bubble up the ranks. Still, I worry that poor Web sites are becoming accepted in the academic culture of chemistry because a small but influential subset of scientists views contributing to the Internet largely as a distraction and waste of time.