ACS COMMENT
Why Bother? ANNE T. O’BRIEN, DISTRICT I DIRECTOR
LINKEDIN, FACEBOOK, Plaxo, and other
mon first and last name,” Confalone says. “I social networks have been around for some got over 25 hits from the search and eventutime, and they work well for their purposes. ally realized that he was not even on the list So who needs another—an ACS network? of retrieved names. When I used the ACS “The ACS Network is totally unique and Network, one name came up—his, and we designed to facilitate comimmediately connected.” munication among all parTatsuhiko Fujimoto, an ticipants in the chemical enACS member who lives in terprise,” says Pat N. ConfaJapan, has posted links to lone, an ACS Board member. his favorite papers in me“Unlike other broad-based dicinal chemistry. With 90 networks, which substanthreads in his discussion tially dilute their value by topic, Fujimoto has had an spanning all professions, amazing 14,000 views. the ACS version attracts The Sustainabilthe lion’s share of chemists, ity Stakeholders Steering chemical engineers, and Group (S3G) uses the our allied disciplines.” The open platform of an ACS ACS Network is open to ACS Network group to review members, to international documents, discuss issues, scientists, and to those in The network makes and share information. bordering disciplines. Recently, S3G drafted and collaboration edited a C&EN Comment easy. We can find BENEFITS and refined a diagram of the right people, The ACS Network allows us the society’s sustainability connect with them, opportunities using this to extend what we already and work together. group exclusively. do—meet, share research, collaborate on publications, S3G uses a forum as the discuss issues, ask and anWeb repository for this swer questions, and work communications model. together—in a way that’s not limited by geFrom the more than 55 members of the ography or time. group, volunteers (otherwise unknown to The network makes collaboration easy. S3G or staff) were recruited to help plan a We can find the right people, connect with sustainability event. them, and work together. If we need input When ACS switched to the Program Abfrom a group, the network is a more effecstract Creation System (PACS) for program tive tool than e-mail. Everyone in the group planning, the ACS Network was used to can view the comments, ask questions, and communicate with program chairs and edit documents. symposium organizers. Common quesContributors ask questions and answer tions were posted in a PACS discussion foothers, and we share experience, expertise, rum, with links to resources, and responses and insights. In doing so, we are building an were published on the network. The forum information archive resource for ACS. allowed users to find answers by a quick Everyone can have a voice here. You can scan of discussion topics—a welcome alterparticipate in discussions, post documents, native to a user’s manual! and collaborate in groups. You can cast a ACS is planning a new externally hosted wider net and interact with a broad range website service for ACS local sections, diviof colleagues in forums. sions, and certain committees. Intended to find “pain points” for the webmasters SUCCESSES using this service, a pilot test included “I tried to search on a competitive network staff and 18 representatives. All subscribed for a former colleague who has a pretty comto group e-mail alerts. Initial discussions WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
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quickly showed that issues around migrating content were greater than expected. Questions were posted, and the group answered each others’ questions. These questions uncovered difficulties that needed to be addressed through support documents. The blog was used effectively to update group members on the status of the pilot. MORE TO COME
In 2010, ACS hopes to migrate portions of the ACS Network to a new platform. You’ll be able to see the “friends” of your connections; to tag groups of connections; to send messages to friends; to view Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents directly in the browser; and to bookmark external content with shareable links. You will be able to collaborate on your personal documents without needing a private group, to share and discuss publications in your profile, to hold private discussions, and to give status updates. There might be plug-ins, for example, for mobile access. Migration will allow new functionalities to be introduced more quickly. The present and future value of a professional network developed under the auspices of ACS by chemists and for chemists cannot be overestimated. The ACS Network will be the preferred site for the chemical enterprise, where potential collaborations and consultations are identified, new connections with shared technical and professional interests are developed, and old friendships are renewed. ACS Board Chair Judith Benham MORE ONLINE adds, “We can’t afford not to use the network to the full. We need to let members run with it!” What the ACS Network needs is you— to explore, to exercise its capabilities for your purposes. Try it. We think you’ll like it. Let me know how it goes at obrienatm@ verizon.net. The ACS Network was used to create this article. The group contributed and shared content on a blog and formulated and edited the text on a wiki.
