Once more into the breach...
I haven't been able to follow the whole conversation going on with respect to conference blogging, since I'm still away at a conference for another day. Technically, the conference ended a on thursday, but I'm still here visiting with some of the more important people in my life - so that is my excuse.
At any rate, I received an interesting comment from someone posting as "such.ire", to which I wrote a reply. In the name of keeping the argument going (since it is such a fascinating topic), I thought I'd post my reply to the front page. For context, I suggest reading such.ire's comment first:
click here for his comment.
My reply is below:
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Hi Such.ire,
I really appreciate your comment - it's a great counter point to what I said, and really emphasizes the fact that this debate will have plenty of nuances, which will undoubted carry this conversation on long after the blogosphere has finished with it.
To rebut a few of your points, however, I should point out that your examples aren't all correct.
Yes, conferences are well within their rights to ask you to sign NDAs as an attendee - or to require that confidentiality is a part of the conference - there is no debate on that point. However, if you attend a conference that is open and does not have an explicit policy, then it really is an open forum, and they do not have the right to retroactively dictate what you can (or can't) do with the information you gathered at the conference.
I think all of us would agree that the boundaries for a conference should be clearly specified at the time of registration.
As for lab talks for your lab members - those are not "public disclosures" in the eye of the law. All of your lab colleagues are bound by the rules that govern your institution, and I would be surprised if your institution hadn't asked you to sign various confidentiality rules or policies about disclosure at the time you joined them.
Department seminars are somewhat different - if they are advertised outside the department to individuals that are not members of the institution, then again, I would suggest they are fair game.
I don't blog departmental talks or RIP talks for that reason. They are not public disclosures of information.
Finally, my last point was not that journalists and bloggers do anything different up front, but that the method of their publishing should have a major impact on how they are treated. Bloggers can make corrections that reach all of their audience members and can update their stories, while journalists can not.
If a conference demands to see the material a journalist publishes up front, it makes sense. If they demand to do the same thing for a blogger, it completely ignores the context of the media in which the communication occurs.
At any rate, I received an interesting comment from someone posting as "such.ire", to which I wrote a reply. In the name of keeping the argument going (since it is such a fascinating topic), I thought I'd post my reply to the front page. For context, I suggest reading such.ire's comment first:
click here for his comment.
My reply is below:
-------
Hi Such.ire,
I really appreciate your comment - it's a great counter point to what I said, and really emphasizes the fact that this debate will have plenty of nuances, which will undoubted carry this conversation on long after the blogosphere has finished with it.
To rebut a few of your points, however, I should point out that your examples aren't all correct.
Yes, conferences are well within their rights to ask you to sign NDAs as an attendee - or to require that confidentiality is a part of the conference - there is no debate on that point. However, if you attend a conference that is open and does not have an explicit policy, then it really is an open forum, and they do not have the right to retroactively dictate what you can (or can't) do with the information you gathered at the conference.
I think all of us would agree that the boundaries for a conference should be clearly specified at the time of registration.
As for lab talks for your lab members - those are not "public disclosures" in the eye of the law. All of your lab colleagues are bound by the rules that govern your institution, and I would be surprised if your institution hadn't asked you to sign various confidentiality rules or policies about disclosure at the time you joined them.
Department seminars are somewhat different - if they are advertised outside the department to individuals that are not members of the institution, then again, I would suggest they are fair game.
I don't blog departmental talks or RIP talks for that reason. They are not public disclosures of information.
Finally, my last point was not that journalists and bloggers do anything different up front, but that the method of their publishing should have a major impact on how they are treated. Bloggers can make corrections that reach all of their audience members and can update their stories, while journalists can not.
If a conference demands to see the material a journalist publishes up front, it makes sense. If they demand to do the same thing for a blogger, it completely ignores the context of the media in which the communication occurs.
Labels: Blog, conferences, rant
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