Monday, September 27, 2010

The Theory Social Network

Derrick Stolee tweeted that the videos from the 2010 Complexity Conference are now on-line. If you want to attend a conference live, don't forget early hotel and conference registration for FOCS ends Thursday. Hope to see you there.

On a related topic, I once wondered if we could have a "virtual complexity coffeehouse" where researchers could electronically drop in, talk research and other stuff. I even once played with Second Life on the hope that one could create the coffeehouse there, but found that environment wanting.

The new Q&A site (http://cstheory.stackexchange.com) comes reasonably close, the format of the communication seems to generate real discussion about various problems and interest among the community. I know it's working because I've already had to tell one of my students that he spends too much time there. Now, if they also had some discussions on controversial issues, advice on living the theory life, and dispensed a good latte we'd be all set.

2 comments:

  1. "could electronically drop in, talk research and other stuff."

    Mathoverflow permits some amount of such discussions to take place through soft-questions, though it might be better to wait till cstheory becomes more mature. In any case, you can use meta where discussions are welcome.

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  2. An IRC channel sounds like what you're looking for; a real time chatroom, in other words.

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