Just wanted to do another introduction. I have been doing biotech research for 30 years, worked in industry at Immunex for 16 and at a small startup for the last four.
Besides working at the bench, I have always been very interested in the border between biology and high tech, which has developed into the field of bioinformatics. But I was really interested in another, less specialzed aspect – how these tools increased information dispersal, resulting in huge impacts on a community’s ability to innovate and create.
For example, I created the first intranet pages at Immunex and managed the internal website for over two years, while still doing research in the lab. From 18 pages I created over Christmas to several thousand.
I saw first hand what worked and what did not in a research setting. Many of the problems could not be easily solved then because the tools were not mature enough. Even so, I created, for internal use, what we would call a blog before the name was common.
Yep, back in those old days, I had to do the coding by hand, while walking uphill to and from work in the snow ;-)
Towards the end of my time at Immunex, I used this knowledge and the ideas I had developed to write two blogs back in the early part of this century. The first, my personal one, was called A Man with a Ph.D. – Richard Gayle’s Blog. The other called, Living Code, was more science-driven and was one of the top five medical blogs selected by Forbes in 2003.
But after joining a small biotech as Vice-President of Science, I had little time to keep the blogs going and both feel into disarray. However, I have recently left the small company and now have the opportunity to try to make some of my ideas concrete.
So I have decided to focus my efforts on getting Web 2.0 tools into the hands of researchers. The tools are mature enough that people can rapidly begin using them.
The scientists just have to be shown why it is worth their time to learn these tools. I expect than in a few years, these tools will be ubiquitous but for now, there is a large activation energy present before use.
Like an enzyme, I’m working to reduce that activation energy, and to make a living.
Thus this blog and also one at the site for the company I started, SpreadingScience.
There will be some overlap in but this site will be a little more personal while the business one will focus more on creating Science 2.0. I hope they will complement oner another.
