Social networking and business networking are not different animals

Many people now are immersed in social networking through such venues as Facebook, Myspace, and other social networking websites. They tweet on Twitter. They are quite familiar with and relaxed about doing these many, many times each day. But the same dichotomy as social interactions in the “real” world exist. In that, scientists have professional networks and ways of performing the interconnected parts of science – knowing and interacting with fellow researchers in their field; exchanging preprints, reprints, or useful references; exchanging samples or sources of useful reagent, and so on. The dichotomy? Many scientists behave differently in this professional context than they do in an analogous situation in their “personal” lives.

I often hear scientists say that it is difficult to meet people at a conference, yet they can socialize well in their personal lives. They are more outgoing and gregarious than they are professionally. They are more insular and less open about their work, forgetting that networking is based on friendliness and a give-and-take of information.

Conferences are an ideal set-up for meeting others in your field. You all are doing similar research or you would not be presenting or listening to the same types of talks. Use that commonality to connect. Talk to speakers in their breaks, or even to those whose questions show that they are interested in the kind of work you do. Exchange business cards (and follow up after the meeting to connect further by asking for reprints or a possible source of something or a suggested other contact). Friends of friends are in a social network; colleagues of colleagues ought to be in a scientific one – or contacts of contacts.

If you see a paper that interests you, let the presenter know or if it is in a journal, contact the lead author to see if there are allied papers. If you know of another paper that might be of use, mention it. Offered information is always welcomed, even if the recipient already knows of it.

Until they realize that social skills can be used in both contexts, these scientists stunt the benefits of their professional network. They limit its size and vigor. As with social networking, the more you interact with energy and mutuality, the scientific network gains from similar attitudes. Your scientific network is not just a list of names and email addresses. The connections grow stronger and more useful as you involve yourself as a scientist in them.

The bill that passed the Senate is a gutted version of health-care reform, at best. It changes little for doctors, insurers, pharma, or any of the others making billions in US health care. It is no coincidence that the American Medical Association immediately supported this version. I even agree with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, who says the big winners are the insurers who gain 30 million customers at either government expense or at the exorbitant rates the insurers have in place. The status quo expanded.

Those who say any changes would limit people’s options have not really dealt with the status quo. Currently, insurers do that routinely, having lists of acceptable doctors, hospitals, drugs and treatments. If the one or two insurers in your area do not suit you, too bad. Most of the US has only that, one or two choices that include a significant number of doctors, hospitals, et cetera to choose from. TRhe insurers point to dozens of minor providers in each area as prove of a free market, but those have only a handful of offerings scattered through the region. Not a real choice. If your insurer decides to exit an area, you will see the limitations when you get your new insurer or have to apply for one.

The saddest part of it all is how inherently corrupted the Congress is. Ben Nelson, the senator from Nebraska, had the interests of Mutual of Omaha in the forefront. Joe Lieberman is from Connecticutt, the state where dozens of insurers are headquartered. No coincidence that both held out for concessions.

So the US’s health care will remain overly expensive, but with even more profits for the companies.

I look at the news footage of the East Coasr snowstorm and am thankful O chose a job in California over ones in Ohio, Michigan, and New Jersey when I finished grad school. That was by design. I am basically not a cold weather person. I can go to Washington or Boston in winter and tolerate the cold and ice and snow, but I still dislike it.Bundling up is not fun or romantic, as the songwriters and poets have tried to make it seem. A high of -5 C is always awful weather. The scenes of the US Capitol Mall in snow makes me apprehensive that that will be the weather when I go there in early February.

I used to like hot weather growing up in the South, but have acclimated to the temperate climate of the San Francisco area. Abu Dhabi in July is awful…..but less so that Boston in January.

Over the past couple of years, I have tried to read several authors whose works you hear lots of accolades, but which I have avoided reading. I am a voracious reader, reading a couple dozen books or more a years. In fiction, these tend towards “literature” and generally away from mass-volume books and bestsellers. I think Coma is the only Michael Crichton book I ever read, never read any Gresham or Ann Rice. You get the picture. Notable exceptions would be Chuck Pahlaniuk, Dave Eggers, Augustine Burroughs, Jonathan Foer, Will Christopher Baer, Dan Brown, Gregory Maguire, and a few other contemporary authors.

My recent readings were books by Phillip Roth, John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, V. S. Naipaul, Salmon Rushdee. I found all of them to be plodding, slow paced stories, Often the main characters were totally unsympathetic, meaning I could not relate to them, their personalities, or situations. They often just seemed to be victims of thenselves and not knowing that, just blaming others. Updike’s Rabbit books are an example. The title character is totally self-centerred and has no clue why nobody likes him. Naipaul’s Mr. Biswas is similar.

Nabokov is like a lot of Russian writers for me. Turgid is the word I think of. Long paragraphs of great detail adding little to the storyline or imagery. Just details upon details. Two pages to describe five minutes of unimportant events.

In this period, though, I read some F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway and enjoyed both. So the reading past literature was not all a bore.

With the US EPA declaring that carbon dioxide is a hazardous xhemical, due to its effect on global warming, will the areas of supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) and chromatography (SFC) be doomed? I think it will be a lot harder to get tanks of CO2. Then the vented gascan no longer just go into the air. It will have to be trapped or scrubbed out. Those incumberances will make the economics and ease of doing SFE and SFC less viable. The two techniques have had their niches and are very useful in them, the best alternatives in many cases. But that will change and the heyday of the two, I think, is past.

I did my rather infrequent update of my CV yesterday, which gave me some thoughts on the motivations and attitudes involved in that. At this point in my career, it is a low-priority task. I figure that my accomplishments for almost thirty years as a chemist will not change much by the addition of a few articles, a book chapter or two, or an invited speaking engagement.

Early on, I, like most young chemists, changed it every time something new was accomplished. New paper, new presentation. Anything to add to what seemed to be a too sparse document. But along the line, I stopped listing abstracts and most symposia manuscripts unless they were peer reviewed. I started listing only invited talks, those where I was asked to present and where it was not just being someone within a symposium session. A talk had to be mine as far as why I did it in order to be classed as invited. By this I mean it could not just be a talk given because they need time filled. It had to be that they need that time filled by me.

My CV is many, many pages long now, listing about 120 technical papers that were perer reviewed, and over 70 review articles, book chapters, career development essays, and other published, but not peer reviewed ones; a long list of invited speaking; and a lot of accomplishments. AS a CV, it cannot have brevity as an element, but it can have some selectivity criteria.

So, as a career goes along, I think the CV still is needed. But the impetus to keep it up to date and inclusive wanes if you are accomplishing things. If you are more than ten years into your career and still scrambling to fill a CV, then you need to reassess what you are doing and accomplishing. You ought to be getting into that mode of editing down your lists.

I read a post on MyChemical Journey that reminded me that I have a viewpoint on H1N1.

http://mychemicaljourney.blogspot.com/2009/10/parental-controls.html

Unlike that blogger’s father, I believe H1N1 is a real virus that many people have gotten with serious consequences. As serious as the dire warnings of early summer and the continued media coverage? No, not even close. H1N1 is proving to be an average influenza strain so far. The number of serious illnesses from it and deaths attributed to it are only a fraction of the annual average of the various seasonal flus. It has no terrible symptoms, such as the severe aches that can be part of suffering through some strains of flu.

That it could spread so quickly is only a reflection that this is the first virus outbreak in which there has been ready worldwide access to the DNA testing to clearly follow any viral spreading. The bird and swine flus of earlier years could not be, the instrumentation was not cheap and universal. With that in mind, ascribing illness and deaths to H1N1 is more accurate. Even recently, anyone dying of pneumonia would not have had the root cause identified – the virus that started the problem leading to the pneumonia. Now that can be done and has been. That does not mean that H1N1 is more virulent or deadly. It only means that epidemiologists can assign causes better.

In reading reports of the 1919 Spanish flu outbreak, virulence and quick spreading would make H1N1 a tame beast. In an age where travel by ship or by train were the main ways people carried illnesses globally, yje Spanish fle spread rapidly. Virologists are afraid of that sort of strain. Thus, the crying of Wolf! this summer. But people get skeptical and gaded when there is not really a wolf.

Interesting post, to me, over on Carbon Based Curiosities.

http://www.coronene.com/blog/?p=1105

Basically, the post and discussion are about whether sexual orientation matters within the workings of science. From all I have seen, it does not. Yeah, there will be the jomophobic ones who make it matter if they can, but that is no different than that there are homophobes everywhere and involved in everything.

Scientists are rather bipolar as far as work and personal things. They usually have a sharp division between the lab and elsewhere. In the lab, they respect talent and detest hacks or the arrogant. Their persona as scientists often shows little of their character outside of science. Einstein was a great scientist, but was also quite the Casanova outside of the physics.

In the discussion context, it was about the selection of NSF graduate fellowships. I’d rather not get into what criteria are discussed, but sexual orientation never gets into it. Gender and race cannot, absolutely. These are federally sponsored fellowships afterall. But in all the analogous discussion I have been part of – choosing invited speakers or session chairs for conference, editorial board members, whatever, the personal lives only get touched upon in one aspect. Is the person reliable, easy to work with, and team oriented? On committees, people do not want to choose and then have to work with difficult people. If you are straight and difficult, you’ll get passed on. If you are gay and reliable and easy going, you might get chosen. In other words, be a jerk and get passed over.

OK, I’ve been working on a book chapter. It will be part of a very large work, a multivolume set. I have been awaiting approval from certain authors to use some of their figures. Got that and now submitted the chapter.

Each section has chapters on allied topics. The overall editors chose a section editor from amongst the chapter authors. They chose me. Now I must approve whether my chapter is good enough to include. Well, yes, that is why I submitted it.

Scientific bodies are not always put together for effectiveness or efficiency.

 Are you updated?

One thing I try to ingrain in people is that opportunities are like automatic doors. They open and close on their own accord. Unlike automatic doors, however, career opportunities are not triggered most of the time by things you do and can plan on the door opening. You might send out resumes or network regularly, but the main part of any opportunity happening is on the receiving end. My analogy of the day is that if you sow seed on fertile ground, something might sprout, but you are blindfolded and there are lots of patches of infertile ground. There are only a few oases of fertile ground. You cannot peek very often – you rarely get good tips from your network about good opportunities. But you can learn to sow further out around you, increasing your chances of sprouting some seeds.

One of the big errors people make in a job search or even when not looking and something ideal pops up, is to not be prepared to move at that moment. They put off updating a resume. Or they have only one resume and it only fits a narrow range of jobs. Or their references are not at the ready to give good words. As in any networking, you do not want to appear to always asking and receiving. Take the time to include a more personal tone to any communication. If you find an article or bit of information that might be useful to someone in your network, take note and pass it on. Being helpful gives you a more balanced appeal.

If you are actively searching, you ought to have your references in line. Update them on your situation and possible prospects, that way they have some forewarning of a request for a reference. They might even think of things to say in your favor. Have at least three versions of your resume – a generic one and two more focused towards different areas that you are aiming at. A fourth version is even better, one that is a quickly edited template that you can cut-paste-rewrite to customize for an application.

Cover letters also ought to be ready, varied, and customizable. These allow you to include a tone more reflecting your personality and attitudes, so spend time saying more than “I am interested in your position. Here is my resume.”

If you use job boards, like Monster, Dice, Hotjobs, et cetera, update your information and resume there on a schedule. This not only gives potential employers fresh information, but it puts your profile back into the latest listings.

If you are not actively searching, but have not yet found that ideal job, then at a minimum let your network know that you might be interested if a job appears that is within your targeted area – be it location, type of work, or whatever are your criteria. That way they can keep their radar on for a job that might be better for you. Without that information, the job might attract any notice and you’d never know of it.

Even if you are not actively looking, you still need an updated and ready resume just in case your ideal job does pop up. If not, you risk missing it because you had to prepare one and a cover letter even if you had an already full schedule.