N8 Science Events 2010 Now Nanogon
During 2010 this URL carried a set of links to events taking place at the research intensive universities in the north of England. It formed part of my effort to explore science writing, publishing and editing from the north of England. This is a need I identified first in the second half of the 1990s, when, as a successful working journalist, science writer and editor, I returned to the UK from Washington DC.
Now, in 2013, I am even more convinced that my thinking of the second half of the 1990s about the need for an editorial product such as N8 Science Events (where science is also at times one of the humanities) fits into what could be an expanded economy, drawing on the growth of the University sector, providing publishing and academia work for their competition to exist within an expanded economy, not to knock seven commercial bells out of one another in an economy limited to the size of one or the other. It would also help if other viable industry sectors are not diminished. That is the exploration I have been making as a sole trader, and continued as I recovered from a bruising and sad (for me) encounter in 2004 with the Ivory Tower at its dimmest and most needlessly arrogant (ie the University of Manchester) and destructive. N8 Science Events could, I think from a professional and informed position, be a good title, and fill a commercial niche, societal need and editorial gap. I am still having difficulties finding or making the business case, but am working on the problem, and think that new media will help make the business case viable, actually enhancing and not diminishing other existing media products. None of my efforts are intended to undermine competition for this editorial niche which I think exists.
I oppose totally the idea that students should be canon fodder for a pacified society and economy.
