SpotOn lessons for science conferencing

At the beginning of this month I was lucky enough to attend SpotOn London (Science, Policy and Tools Online; #solo13), a conference focusing on how online tools and technologies can aid in the sharing, advancement and communication of scientific research. As part of this ethos SpotOn strongly supports Open Access, ensuring all of the sessions can be watched live or recorded on their website. Having volunteered to get involved with the live streaming aspect of the event I was a member of the elite #StreamTeam, which also earned me a free ticket – WIN WIN.

As a PhD student, the majority of my previous conference experiences are of an academic nature. My adventures at both SpotOn London and the British Science Association Science Communication conference 2013 (SciComm 2013) earlier this year have highlighted to me the stark contrasts between the two conference types, both of which are interested in the communication of scientific research, albeit with different audiences in mind. As an individual flirting with both types, I’d like to use my experiences at SpotOn to highlight key areas in which I believe many academic conferences show marked scope for improvement.

At an academic conference, talks last for 20-30 minutes but can feel like they last for 20-30 hours (!) whereas at SpotOn, sessions were 1 hour long but flew by as if they lasted 10 minutes (and not just the ones that involved playing with LEGO)!

Perhaps this is simply my brain telling me an academic career is not for me, but feedback from fellow scientists, with a range of career goals, generally supports this view. I believe the answer lies in the session structures, which to some extent are limited by the content and aims of the different conferences. Standard academic conferences consist of highly structured, data-filled presentations with a very small time frame for Q&A. Contrastingly, SpotOn sessions ranged from interactive workshops to open panel discussions. In the latter, very short introductions were given by each panel member before the discussion was opened up to the floor for audience participation. Although this can make these sessions unpredictable and it can be difficult to reach significant conclusions in the allotted time, it does provide everyone with an excellent opportunity to have their say.

I’m well aware that presenting your data at conferences is important and I’m not naïve enough to suggest that this should not happen, but I do believe that integrating some interactive panel and audience discussion sections on broader topics or areas of debate within the conference subject area would offer variety and interest to an academic programme and help everyone feel like a relevant and contributing member of the field.

As mentioned previously, I was involved with the live streaming at SpotOn. This meant that any people not able to attend the conference were able to watch any sessions live on the website. Three themes (Policy, Outreach and Tools) were running concurrently throughout the conference, therefore as well as enabling non-attenders to follow the progress of the conference it also allowed attendees to view clashing sessions post-event. People could also participate in the conference through social media, including Twitter; many attendees were actively live tweeting with each session having its own hashtag (some examples including #solo13carrot, #solo13lego, #solo13blogs and #solo13dark). Such is the popularity of this added conference dimension that several SpotOn hashtags ended up trending on twitter, meaning that they represented a significant amount of the twitter traffic going on in the area at that time. Tweeting is a novel and exciting way to air your feelings about the sessions and the event itself, and also connect with others in real time, permitting everyone to express their views, irrespective of their significance within the field.

This online presence is now inherent across many fields, especially relating to communication, media and journalism conferences where rapid communication is commonplace and vital to success. Yet in academia it is almost unheard of and was completely new to me when I attended Sci Comm 2013: it is neither encouraged nor discouraged at academic conferences, it is simply absent.

The benefits of integrating both live streaming and Twitter into the academic science world is currently being severely underestimated. It would allow scientists from around the world to follow progress and get involved with any conferences they’re interested in – without the need for time out from the lab or travel expenses – giving live feedback and also allowing a wider degree of networking. One major problem standing in the way of this is that at academic conferences the majority of scientists tend to present unpublished material and would therefore not welcome the online presence. However, in an open forum like a conference, where all of your major academic competition is likely to be present, and especially given the increasing roles of modern technologies (smartphones with cameras, recording devices and e-mail; even when used innocently) in our lives, it should be expected that others will pick up on your interesting data. As such, you shouldn’t be saying anything in public (never mind on stage) that you don’t want people to know about, and with this in mind, it seems foolish to miss the massive networking and feedback benefits of social media because of an ingrained but predominantly irrational fear of competition.

Using Twitter is not a ‘requirement’ at a conference. However, a name badge is! Coming in all shapes, sizes and colours, our badges contain simple details such as our name and our affiliated institutions. SpotOn took this to a whole new level with the introduction of interactive name badges, created by Blendology. These snazzy gadgets allowed conference goers to ‘tap in’ with people they met and interacted with, creating an electronic timeline of who you met and when.

Seen as a modern approach to the business card, you were then able to access information for the people you had ‘tapped’, including their email address and Twitter handle. Each delegate’s Blendology profile could be personalised in advance, so everyone had full control of what information was shared. Despite a small amount of animosity from people concerned with handling of the data generated, I’m sure the majority would agree that these were a superb icebreaker and common conversation topic (not to mention generating a few games) thereby making networking a much less daunting task. I think these interactive badges would be an asset to any conference, with the possibility for the data you can share being endless. Their implementation at science conferences could be of real benefit: imagine being at an academic conference, networking and collaborating with fellow scientists, and upon ‘tapping in’ with them knowing that alongside their key contact details you have just obtained the links to their key publications. I think in a few years time these will be conference stalwarts. Not to mention they’re vital if you’re the sort of person who is hopeless at remembering people from their name alone.

At academic conferences, I am scared to speak to anybody who is not a fellow PhD student. There is a social hierarchy that we are afraid to break. SpotOn was attended by lots of important people, but yet I was not as afraid to speak to them due to the more open and relaxed conference environment. Are academic conferences in desperate need of a shake up? Should we be looking to these modernised communication conferences for inspiration? SpotOn and Sci Comm 2013 opened my eyes to what I believe academic conferences could become: a much more engaging and enjoyable environment in which scientists and science as a whole can thrive and evolve, developing science into a more open and accessible area that uses technology to interact more directly with everyone.

I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!

I’m a Scientist (IAS) is a UK-based, free online event where scientists compete against each other to offer up the most interesting, accurate and accessible answers to questions dreamed up by the imaginations of the nation’s school students. Each competition spans a two week period and incorporates online fast-paced ‘livechats’ and web-based Q&A discussion strands (competitions generally run during March, June and November). Scientists are divided into ‘zones’ based on their expertise and are subsequently pitted against each other in an X-factor style competition to win votes from the students and be crowned zone winner, earning a prize of £500 to develop science outreach/engagement projects. The most recent competition pitted 90 enthusiastic young scientists against each other in 18 diverse and challenging zones. As with all good reality TV shows, IAS has already been adapted for Ireland and Australia and will be coming soon to Malaysia. This is my personal IAS experience.

As all PhD students will know, there is little time available to contemplate future career paths. I’ve always toyed with science communication (sci comm) but never quite got round to pursuing it. As time started slipping away, a mad panic-stricken trawl of Google and Twitter led me to the ‘I’m a scientist, get me out of here!’ competition. I grabbed the chance to test my communication and engagement skills and signed up; what did I have to lose (except some pride, in the face of my competitive nature)? I was now confronted with the need to condense my work – three full years of solid scientific research – into just one cool and catchy sentence that’d earn me a place in an IAS zone: “My work on a hospital superbug causing severe diarrhoea involves searching for potential biomarkers in patients’ blood and faeces!”. IAS is oversubscribed and therefore scientists’ sentences are rated by both teachers and students in order to select the final five scientists for each zone.

Two weeks post-registration I received an email informing me I had been selected as one of the five scientists making up the blood zone. I was pretty shocked; I tend to think it is only me that finds my research interesting. Obviously this wasn’t the case! Now I had a whole profile to fill out about myself, my area of research, routine and chosen career but it wasn’t all science, I also divulged my favourite food, musical tastes and joke-telling abilities (non-existent). This was a rather daunting task, I knew my judges – the school students – would be scrutinizing the profiles of me and my fellow scientists and that could really affect what kind of start we’d get in the competition. What if their research was more interesting than mine?!

As the main event approached, the schools began to book their live chat sessions, 30-minute slots where the zone scientists and students connected through chat rooms. Finally, the first IAS day arrived and I was surprised at how nervous I was. For me, this was a chance to gain some approval, for my geek status to be revered. I could be a geek god to these kids! (OK OK so I’m rather melodramatic). The first live chat session was INTENSE. I happened to be the only scientist from my zone to turn up, resulting in me being subjected to a lightning-paced ‘interrogation’ from 30 students.

I LOVED EVERY SECOND. It was so refreshing to see how young minds view science, and the unique perspective that offers. Questions are generally related to your zone (so blood-related for me) but students can ask anything they like, therefore other popular topics included further details from my profile: my research, my career path, my experiences at school, as well as my taste in music, film and TV shows. I was physically exhausted by the end of the 30 minutes, and occasionally found myself wishing that some of the competition would turn up just to take some of the pressure off. Unfortunately this was not meant to be: as the days and live chats went by, I remained the only scientist in attendance, something that was voiced on a number of occasions by the attending students and flagged up by the extremely apologetic IAS support team. Following the event on Twitter (an essential for anyone pursuing sci comm) showed me this was rare; the other zones all had high levels of scientist ‘compliance’ and thriving competition going on.

I was rather annoyed at the lack of involvement in my zone, not only had my opponents taken the place of other scientists who had wanted to be involved, but they were also neglecting their responsibility to the students. Mainly because of this, I made sure I attended every live chat session, I couldn’t let any students experience the disappointment of logging on to find no scientists waiting for them – undoubtedly a strong demotivator for eager scientists in the making. Despite this, some of the scientist in my zone made a small effort to answer some of the ‘offline’ questions, a fact that further frustrated me as it felt like they were attempting to do the minimal amount possible to gain votes. However, the joy of the competition as a whole far outweighed this minor blip.
I was greatly impressed by the calibre of the questions posed by the students, as well as the positive comments coming at the end of each session – it was great to know they were enjoying the sessions as much as I was! Interestingly, it seemed my chat-room entrances were causing some of the students to scream in their computer suites. I had seemingly developed a fan club. Move over Justin Bieber, step aside 1D. In all seriousness, it was very flattering being viewed as a scientific role model.

When we weren’t online the students were still able to post questions to the IAS zone for use to answer at a more leisurely pace. The best offline question I received came on that first day: “If you eat yourself, would you become twice as big, or cease to exist as matter?”. Not only were the students wanting answers, it was apparent the clever little buggers were trying to catch us out. Touché!

The competition was split into two week-long sections. Making sure I could be available for all of the live chats in my zone involved a lot of careful planning of experiments, but perhaps more importantly meant lugging my laptop along on my all-too-short break in Tunisia, so I wouldn’t miss the last three days of the competition. We were ‘safe’ in Week 1 but throughout Week 2 all zones were subject to daily scientist evictions based on the students’ votes. The scientist with the lowest number of votes at the end of each day was voted off until the winner was announced on the final day of the competition. As the daily eviction approached each afternoon, I had visions of myself on that X-Factor stage, Dermot O’Leary drawing out the tension with overly long pauses, looked rather suave in his lab coat……Sorry where was I?! Oh yes, the daily evictions; as the days progressed three scientists from my zone were evicted until just myself and Katie remained. Katie was the person I had earmarked as my fiercest rival after viewing her profile; pretty and ‘down-with-the-kids’.

However, it was me who won the zone! In my head I pictured fireworks, being hoisted onto the students’ shoulders and paraded around the country on an open-top bus. In reality this constituted to lots of congratulatory pats on the back from my work colleagues. I didn’t need a fanfare – this was my own personal victory, proof that sci comm could be my future. Shortly after the event I received my winner’s certificate and IAS mug, plus a warm and heart-felt email from the IAS team congratulating me on my success and thanking me for “my epic work in the blood zone. It really is very much noticed and appreciated how much work you did.”

In between the constant hounding from the paparazzi and the screaming fans, I managed to compose a winner’s message. IAS was great about giving feedback post-event, which contained various zone statistics as well as a selection of students’ comments, and even a cute word cloud illustrating the popular topics from the live chat sessions, which will really help me to develop my sci comm skills for future work. I am donating my £500 prize money to the Liverpool World Museum and will be getting involved with the setting up of a hands-on science exhibition open to families and kids of all ages, something that will be the subject of a future blog post when it’s ready to go.

As IAS continues to grow and expand, I strongly encourage all scientists to get involved; the event was a whirlwind fortnight and I have no regrets whatsoever in having taken part and have learned so much about myself in the process. My personal take-homes were much improved communication skills and a more positive outlook on my own scientific investigations; the sincere and genuine interest and enthusiasm from the students really made me view my research in a whole new light, revitalizing my motivation to finish my PhD and continue to share frontier scientific work with the public. In my eyes the event was a roaring success and I hope I have managed to inspire many promising young minds to pursue a career in science, making all of the efforts at IAS worthwhile.

A blog is born

So after moonlighting on a couple of other blogging sites, I’ve finally got round to setting up my own.

 Talk about STRESS – it took me a week just to decide on a name and I only made the final decision after surveying 40 close friends and colleagues – being a perfectionist SUCKS (it’s not actually a requirement to over think everything so much).

 One of my main motivations for pursuing science communication and blogging stems from my family; I am the only member to have attended university, never mind going on to pursue a postgraduate qualification. Therefore, I constantly come across the gap between scientists and the general public (AKA my adoring family); I feel that blogging is a great way to communicate science with a wider audience. I also wanted a space to be able to showcase science stories I am interested by, and also express my own opinions on science and how I have got to where I am today.

 I’m still a bit of a novice to the world of science communication – I recently attended the British Science Association’s Science Communication 2013 conference and this gave me a great insight into what could potentially become my future career path. Further to this, I also recently took part in the ‘I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here!’ online science engagement competition, which I’ll be blogging about in detail very shortly.

 My previous blogs can be found using the following links: –

 http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/conferencecast/science_mojo_gradually_diminished_instantly

 This post focuses on how I regained my motivation for science whilst attending a conference at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York

 http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/conferencecast/bsa_science_communication_2013_scicomm2013

 This post sees my first attempt at using Storify to showcase my experience of the British Science Association’s Science Communication 2013 conference

 http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/student-voices/poo_transplants_sniffing_out_the

 This post looks at the potential of faecal transplantation as a standardised treatment for patients infected with C. Diff