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22 December 2017
10 years
It’s not very often that someone my age gets to celebrate a 10-year anniversary. But this year is one of those times, because it’s been 10 years since I graduated from college, 10 years since I started my first job, and 10 years since I started this blog.
22 December 2012
5 years already?!
Wow.
It certainly doesn’t seem like I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life blogging, but the calendar doesn’t lie: it’s been 5 years since my first post on Magma Cum Laude. When I first started, I never really imagined that this would become such a big part of my professional identity as a geoscientist, but I can’t say that I would have changed the path I’ve taken – because it’s led me to some really interesting places! Since I began this blog with the intent to write about becoming a grad student in volcanology, I’ve had the opportunity to write about everything from eruption triggering to fossiling in Western New York to numerical modeling to how many jelly beans it would take to equal the mass of a lava dome. Seriously, everything.
12 December 2012
AGU 2012 Days 4-6
As always, I’m behind on my AGU updates (possibly because I didn’t have a chance to breathe until Wednesday!) There’s so much to do, and Tuesday was the first day that the exhibits were open, which is always a time sink. Wednesday was really the first day that I had a chance to get into the science side of things and listen to some talks and visit posters. I find talks are interesting but somewhat unsatisfying in that you don’t necessarily get much time to ask questions or discuss the topic. Posters, on the other hand, pretty much guarantee that you’ll have a chance to chat about the work with the PI.
1 December 2012
AGU Fall Meeting 2012: Social Media Roundup
It’s time for my annual addition of your guide to the social media events at AGU’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco! I’ll be attending this year’s meeting (you may see me wearing a press pass and some blogging buttons), and I’ll be attending at least a few of these events. In particular, I’ll be on the panel at the Tuesday Blogger’s Forum, an co-chairing the “Social Media 101” oral session on Tuesday afternoon and the accompanying poster session Wednesday morning. Feel free to say hi if you see me around!
28 December 2011
Talking about geoblogging at AGU 2011
As I mentioned in several posts, I gave a talk at a Public Affairs session at this year’s Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco. I was invited to give the talk about my geoblogging experience in a session called “Science Communication in a Changing Media Landscape” on Wednesday afternoon. The session description gave me a lot of leeway, especially since the invitation was basically to talk about blogging – a topic where I can cover a lot of ground! I gave the first version of this talk in an hour-long seminar in my department, so cutting it down to twelve minutes for AGU was a big challenge. Here are the slides that I ended up with, and a general run-through of what I said in the talk.
11 December 2011
AGU 2011: Day 3
Well, as usual, the hectic pace of AGU caught up with me (and my laptop started having fits), so I’m behind on my meeting posts. So, we’ll go back to Wednesday’s activities:
26 November 2011
Geoblogger & social media roundup at AGU 2011
In between not doing any Black Friday shopping (yay for my wallet!), spending time with my family, and trying to fit in a little bit of research time, blogging has taken a hit this week. So I thought I’d do something that I did last year in preparation for AGU’s Fall Meeting, and give you a roundup of all the social-media-related activities you can partake in this year! You can keep involved even if you’re not attending the meeting itself, and there are sure to be plenty of posts, Tweets and other conversations by geobloggers during and after the meeting.
10 December 2010
Geoblogging bonanza at AGU’s Fall Meeting
If you’re getting ready to head out to San Francisco soon (or if you’re already there!) you’ve probably heard at least something about the geoblogging activities that will be going on at this year’s Fall Meeting. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on:
6 November 2010
The volcano Gatekeeper
One of the sad – but not unexpected – stories to come from the eruption at Mount Merapi concerns the death of the “Gatekeeper” of the volcano, Mbah Marijan. Marijan was mentioned in a 2008 National Geographic article, “The Gods Must Be Restless”, that I blogged about a long time ago – and that has turned out to be depressingly prophetic.
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.