On Thursday, weather permitting, I’ll be flying over to North Carolina for ScienceOnline 2011, undoubtedly my conference highlight of the year. It’s a chance to catch up with some good and far-off friends and to meet some others for the first time. It will also be a busy trip. At last year’s conference, I chaired one session and this year, I appear to be inflicting myself on the other delegates no less than four times. Poor, poor people.

First up, Carl Zimmer and I are running Death to Obfuscation, a workshop on science writing for a broad audience, who isn’t obliged to read your stuff. We’ll be looking at some of the basic elements and pitfalls that writers need to