Tomorrow I will travel to Essen and participate in a meeting organized by the "Instiute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities". With that title, I know already that I'll be feeling completely out of place there as a biologist.  The reason I'm there is a panel discussion on the next afternoon (Tuesday) that I was invited to by Cornelius Puschmann. The whole event is called "The public, the media and politics: intellectual debate and science in the age of digital communication" (my translation, it appears they don't have an English version). The program features mainly discussions but also some presentations. From what I could gather, the meeting will mainly be about how digital communication has shaped the image of public intellectuals today. Compared to intellectual debate in other ages - the coffeehouses of the 19th century or the newspaper pages of the 20th - what kind of personalities, strategies and topics are represented by public intellectuals today?

The panel I'll be participating in is called "The Delphi-Round: Digital Science Communication - Three Generations of Media-Users", is moderated by Claus Leggewie and Cornelius Puschmann, and will be comprised of the following participants:

• Björn Brembs, FU Berlin
• Stephan Humer, Universität der Künste Berlin
• Jens Klump, Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam
• Felix Lohmeyer, SUB Göttingen
• Sonja Palfner, TU Berlin
• Patrick Sahle, Universität Köln
• Jan Schmidt, Hans Bredow Institut für Medienforschung, Hamburg
• Manfred Thaller, Universität Köln
• Bernadette Fritzsch, Alfred Wegener Institut für Polar und Meeresforschung

I feel quite small and insignificant with so many experts on digital media and digital comunication on the panel. What could I possibly contribute that these guys don't already know? I think I'll try and meet these guys tomorrow, on the day before the panel and probe them a little bit, to see what I'm supposed to do there.

I'll try to blog from there, but as always, I have no idea how connectivity will look like and how much time I'll have. I should at least eb able to set off a Tweet or two.