Well, my voice is slowly returning at last. It’s a race against time, because I’m invited to give a presentation at the EuroScience Open Forum 2008 in Barcelona next Monday afternoon! If my voice doesn’t hold up, I’m determined to croak and gesticulate wildly instead. The session is titled “Euroscience’s Interactive Workshop: Development of a virtual network custom designed for scientists”:

The purpose of the workshop is to discuss and give input as to how to develop a trans-, multi-, and inter-disciplinary (semantic) network for scientists on the internet. Very often it is the combination of knowledge from different fields or the borderline between different scientific paradigms from diverse research cultures which creates new ideas and knowledge. It is relatively easy for a researcher to know what is going on in their field and to have contact and exchange of knowledge with his peers. It is much more difficult to find trans-disciplinary fora for discussion.

I’m really, really, really looking forward to this! Not only will it be my first time in Barcelona, but also my first ESOF conference, and the programme looks fantastic. The talks and presentations are grouped into the following topics:

The human mind and behaviour
The Very Big and the Very Small
Open society, open science
Engineering the body
What should we eat and how should we look?
Enhancing energy security, fighting global warming
Science and Innovation Policy
Science and Art
Screening: burdens and benefits
Communicating Science

The science nerd in me will have a hard time deciding what to attend… I’ll arrive in Barcelona on Friday night and I’ll stay until Wednesday morning – so if you’d like to meet and hang out at the conference, just