Spring might be upon us, but some folks at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have really their mind more focused on ice, snow and Web 2.0.
To promote their research team’s expedition at Palmer Station Antarctica, they launched, earlier this month, a dedicated website called “UAB in Antarctica” that uses a lot of Web 2.0 components (a blog by the researchers themselves, technorati tags, delicious links, a flickr photo stream right from the ice and even a few YouTube videos shot before everybody left for the trip).
While browsing the site, I read the blog entry by UAB Ph.D. Philip Bucolo, M.S. posted a couple of days ago and titled “Joining the Team”. Besides the fact that this marine biologist is a good writer, what caught my attention was the comment section of his post. Bucolo has taken the time to respond to each comment from coworkers but also total strangers such as Mr. Don Miller, an 80-year old reader whose son introduced him to the website.
Starting a direct conversation with a researcher thousands of miles away from you, that’s definitely exciting whatever your age is. What a great way to put a human face on research and… on researchers ;-)
I’m sure UAB didn’t pick Bucolo because he would be a good fit for this Web 2.0 experiment, but he will bring a lot to this side of the project.
Why?
He helps us put a human face on otherwise “obscure” research. Two comments about his video interview on YouTube seem to confirm it.
Jeff Keeton, Web Communications Specialist at UAB, explained in an email that, “the main goal of this website is student recruitment, both at undergraduate and graduate levels. But our recruitment plans go all the way back to grade school children, because sadly, science and math are not taught at the levels they should be in our state and nationwide. We are trying to get more students, at all levels, to think about science and research as careers.”
The site was featured this past week on CNN.com, so UAB definitely got something right.
How could UAB make its website even more effective?
I think they should use a meaningful url format for their blog posts (always useful for people and search engines alike) and embed their YouTube videos on the website.
