Some people say I'm chatty...

Some others would go for 'bloody annoying' and I do occasionally wonder, particularly after meeting someone for the first time, if I really had to tell them their tie/socks/t-shirt were nice and where did they get it? Have they been to that really great tie/sock/t-shirt shop in McNowhere? Do they prefer ties to, say, the cravat? Where are they on the neckerchief?

Anyway, you get the idea, I hope. I like talking to people, finding out about them and increasingly often nowadays, telling them about my job/science or how they can do things in the lab.

This got me thinking that maybe I could use this as part of my job. I was recently advised to think of something I'd do anyway and find a way to get paid for it. So yeah, it makes sense to get paid for talking to people if, like me, you do it automatically and like doing it.  I also like to think I'm good at it. I don't mean that the way I talk is particularly good, it can be unintelligible when I get excited, tired or angry and my Welsh accents gets (even) broader. What I mean is that I think I can talk to most people about most things with a bit of enthusiasm. Even if it it's something I know nothing about, sometimes especially then - I like talking things over with people.

So, what's the point...

Well, I'm going to spend a considerable amount of time over the next few weeks looking into an area of science called 'Scientific Communication'. Scientific communication has become a 'catch-all' term to describe the relay of science between different people and covers a multitude of jobs.

Traditionally, in my view scientific communication has usually meant science fayres and festivals, possibly Outreach* schemes run by institutions and science journalism. There are a lot of roles in this area that I'm really interested in and I'll be scouring sites for posts that involve organising events related to science, as well as being the scientist that does the explaining and sharing what I've learnt with you lovely people. Fundamentally, I'm going to be looking for roles in scientific communication  that involve putting into practice the transferable skills we learn from our degrees that we hear so much about - communication, organisation, independence, decision making, prioritising, perseverence, people skills, time-management, the list goes on.

On the subject of an actual job, I'm writing this blog in order to 'precipitate' my thoughts (check out my science-pun, a must have for these sorts of blogs), get some practice at 'communication' and promoting my stuff and to see if I actually like doing it. I'd recommend you do the same if this is something you think you might be interested in. There's also a vast amount of scientific communication that goes on on-line and I'd suggest getting on Twitter and checking out the blogs to see how others are doing it.

If you want to get an inside line on what's getting 'communicated', and by whom, then check out the next blog where I'm going to start a more formal list of blogs/tweeters on sciencey stuff. I'll include a synopsis and my opinion of each source (much as that matters) and try to keep it up to date as I go. I started something similar a few weeks ago but I've come across many more and thought a regularly updated list would be more useful - watch this space. Literally. It'll be in this space.

By the by, four more jobs applied for this week, I'll let you know.

*Another 'catch-all' to cover any event where an institution 'reaches-out' to people -Often prospective students. The students learn about science and (by proxy) the institution, the institution gets exposure to a wider audience and the person carrying out the activity gets bombarded with enthusiastic questions that they often can't answer.