Wow, I’ve already met a ton of interesting folks here, doing a lot of great stuff, and the meeting technically begins this morning (Saturday, January 15). I began the day yesterday by finishing and submitting a fellowship application from my hotel room (whee!), and then — entirely separate from the conference — I met up with Rob Nelson of Untamed Science, a production company that I blogged about last fall. Turns out, Rob is a great dude and we had some fun conversations about science, filmmaking, and the stuff that his crew is currently working on.

Then I got to have lunch with NESCent’s Robin Smith, Craig McClain, and Jory Weintraub, as well as fellow NESCent evolution blog contest winner Danielle Lee (you can read her winning post and the rest of her cool blog ). In the afternoon, the startlingly energetic (I’m just jealous ) co-led a workshop with Joanne Manaster on producing high-quality science videos. It was a great introduction to the medium, for a crowd mostly comprising science bloggers. I was intrigued to hear that on blogs that have both video and text content, video-based posts and text-based posts attract almost completely non-overlapping audiences… Later in the afternoon, Clifton Wiens of National Geographic Television gave a candid presentation on pitching science programs for television. The take-home message? It’s hard! Connecting with an audience requires a great story, and just because something’s exciting to fellow scientists doesn’t mean it will sell.

Finally, happy hour and dinner with the the authors of 30-odd books penned by conference attendees. I’m exhausted already, and things are just getting started!