The 2009 Bio International Convention wraps up today. We’ve had a great trip and I have to say (although I’m half asleep on my feet) I am sad to go. If you’re here in Atlanta, make sure you stop by our booth in the BIO Pavilion before you go. We’ll be giving out IAmBiotech t-shirts, and we’ll have our last nightly raffle for a Flip Video Camera. Hope to see you!

One of the great things about being down here at the booth is how many engaging conversations we’ve had with people across the industry about how to start using social media to communicate with others in the field and share their work with the public. I’ll be writing a more in-depth post about this later, but in the meantime I wanted to share the insights of a fellow blogger I’ve gotten to meet here at Convention, Mary Canady. Here’s a highlight from her recent post about a new media breakout session here at Bio09 this week:

While most of the conversation centered around implementing social media at the corporate level, I was curious about the panel members’ thoughts on engaging scientists with social media, and how to encourage participation. This was definitely a topic they had considered, and indicated that as with corporate SM implementations, the value needs to be demonstrated up front. In other words, clearly answer the scientists’ innate questions ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘how will my career suffer if I don’t participate.’ From my own experience with the San Diego Biotechnology Network and with social media, I agree with this generality, and plan to motivate scientists during a ‘Social Media for Scientists‘ presentation I am giving with colleague William Gunn on May 28th. I plan to encourage scientists to ‘Just Do It’ and get involved with SM sooner rather than later, because it is highly experiential and the benefits are highly specific to the user…