As a fresh-faced 21 yr old, I did a one-year placement at a pharmaceutical company as a synthetic chemist – a position that involves a lot of what is remarkably like cooking but with ‘reagents’ (fancy word for chemicals) instead of ingredients, making potential drugs instead of cakes. I loved the placement, I loved the work and I loved the people so I set about on the pathway to getting back in to the industry. It’s eight years on, I have the qualifications to do the role, I’m applying for jobs and I’m starting to wonder ‘Is this what I want to do? and 'Can I use all the skills I've learnt elsewhere?’

This blog is going to cover my research into what scientists like me are qualified to do that’s not in the laboratory. I’ll do my best to reference websites and people that actually do these jobs and hopefully I can help some people out by sharing what I’m learning. It’ll probably be interspersed with anecdotes and rants from the lab so you can see why I'm leaving this ‘unique’ environment! If you read this, think it’s useful/funny/worth reading, pass on the link – I’d love to know if I’m any good at this writing lark.

Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts

Monday, 2 December 2013

'To do' list of a fledging scientific communicator...

As you may be aware from some of my earlier posts, I'm really interested in different ways of scientific communication - From museum events to blogging and twitter. After speaking to lots of different people I thought the only way I could see if I was even capable of writing on a regular basis was to try some writing, so I started this blog.

I've only been doing it a few months and ended up on a panel about blogging (much to the chagrin/confusion of true blog aficionados) so whilst I'm not exactly a 'big deal' (Ron Burgundy quote #1 of this blog, I hope not the last) I am trying to learn as much as possible. In order to see just how far I can push this idea in a short period of time I thought I'd turn my hand to a few other things to see just how I can best communicate my science, the science of others and the science of well, science. After discussing this amongst my colleagues, the general consensus was 'Hey, can we have that list too?' So, here it is:

1. Keep writing the blog...
Sometimes this is easier said than done, although I do enjoy it - I'd recommend starting one if it's something you think you might enjoy, you can write about anything you like - people read all sorts of rubbish when they're avoiding their tax returns, their kids and their actual jobs!

2. Practice communicating science to a 'lay' audience. 
Urgh, is there a more patronising word than 'lay'? Anyway, you know what I mean, talking about science to those who aren't scientists or don't work in that area of science. This could encompass journalism, blogging, teaching, museum work, comedy and all sorts, as I've recently learnt.

 

Competitions
I'm going to enter a couple of science writing competitions, one on 'translating' hard-core papers into 800 words of accessible text, and another more vague competition (also 800 words) that requires the writer to discuss the topic of Openness in Science - I'm not even sure I like the word 'opennes' but I'll give it a try.



Plain English Summaries
I want to add a few entries to Science Gist, a site where you can add simplified summaries of any papers you may have read. An additional bonus behind this is that a lot of people make summaries already in their own note-taking, so why not share it and see if what you write makes sense? 


Not-so-plain English Summaries
If you want to take plain English summaries a step further you can give UpGoer Five a try - this is a project where you describe anything you like (your job, your pet, Schrodinger's uncertainty principle) using just the top one thousand (or ten hundred to be 'in the rules') words. It's an extreme look at the use of jargon but it is surprisingly difficult and suprisingly entertaining to try and describe spaghetti bolognese without 'meat', 'beef' or 'cow'. It gets it name from the original project where a rocket scientist described his rocket (or UpGoer) using these rules in a popular comic (xkcd).


3. Get Political. 
Ok, not exactly, but I want to enter the poster competition that will be exhibited in the House of Commons. I think this will be a little different to the standard poster sessions scientists get involved in as it will involve communicating your work to a non-expert audience, not something you get chance to do often, is it? Or maybe you go to the House of Commons all the time. I doubt it, But maybe...

4. Get marks for attendance 
I'd like to get more of an idea of how science is communicated to the general public that's not via the written word so I've been taking advantage of living in central London and going to as many science events/seminars as I can fit in. Apart from Science ShowOff (science-based comedy, performance and juggling), I attended Science Uncovered at the Natural History Museum (and blogged about it here), Science Museum Lates at the Science Museum, attended a seminar on Science Gallery (and it's planned expansion to London) and also watched a heat for FameLab. I'm thinking of sending in a video entry. I may very well bottle it. 

At the Science Museum Lates, I bumped into a friend of a friend of a... you get the idea,  and we got to talking about the speed dating event that was happening at the museum. He commented 'Well, at least you know that the person you are going to meet will be of above-average intelligence.' I thought that was a bit sad (and not necessarily true) - I hope the (free) museums and their events in London are for everyone and not just those that deem themselves 'better than the rest'. To be honest, given the location of many of the museums in London, the only possible stereotype you could throw about is that the attendess might be richer than most. Or more likely to be called 'Cosmo' or 'Jacinta'. Both good names, by the way, but you get what I mean, I hope. (Funnily enough, I am planning to write a post on the people that actually go to the museums, but that's not for here and now).

5. Media Fellowships.
This is something I think I may have 'missed the boat' with, but I'd have loved to have heard about them during my PhD. There are lots of different media training opportunities available (listed on the BSA site here - British Science Association, not Bovine Serum Albumen, anyway...) but I've heard really good things from people who went on the Media Fellowship available from the BSA. you need to be still IN research, and contracted until the end of Dec 2014 to even apply for the 2014 places, something that's not an option for me, but I'd definitely give it a try if I could. It involves 3-6 weeks away from your research so your boss has to consent AND submit a letter of recommendation (i.e. you can't do it if they don't agree, it seems). For more information on working with/in/for the media, check out this page, again from the BSA.

5. Applying, applying
Basically I've upgraded from not getting well-paid positions that I'm not sure I want, to not getting lower-paid internships that I definitely want. I'd say to anyone else considering a similar move to mine (i.e. out of something where you've proven your experience, into something new) you're probably going to have to take a pay cut. This may seem like a pain to begin with, especially if, also like me, you're thinking of trying to buy your first house. In London. However, you are giving yourself a chance to try something new, internships are rarely very long and, if you can prove yourself, companies will usually keep people who've shown they are pro-active and keen enough to do an internship in the first place - so chin up, it's a bit of a cliche but I'd rather be doing something I actually liked!

I've recently found a new jobs board on the British Science Association (BSA), as well as a lot of pointers from Twitter and the PSCI-COM JISCMail. Actually, the BSA (again) has information on everything from  public engagement to graphic design on their Science in Society section - worth checking out. 

In other news
This week I applied for 3 jobs, 2 internships and turned down a well-paid, great opportunity job that I won't actually like doing (more on that later). 

Don't tell, will you?
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Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Bloody hell, that was intense!

It’s Tuesday, I’m back in the day-job and people keep saying ‘How was the conference?’ and ‘What did you get out of it?’ The first answer is easy – ‘It was great, there were tappy-tap-tap badges!!’ The second answer is taking a bit more thought. 

I could now write a detailed description of all the sessions I went to, explaining the goals and motivations of the panel, the attendees and ending with profound ‘take home’ message from each session. But I won’t. Mainly because a lot of people are already doing this and also because I was told that all bloggers are basically narcissists and only really write from their point of view so I thought I’d add fuel to that flame. Realistically though, this blog is supposed to be my take on finding out about new careers, so I’ll try and keep it personal.

I went out the night before (not a great idea, but it was with a very good friend!) so I missed the StoryCollider (although I intend to catch up via Storify, blogs etc.) so I was a bit tired, but very enthusiastic, when I arrived with no idea what to expect. I received my Blendology badge, which you tap with each new person to share contact information, got a speedy cup of tea and entered the conference… 


The first session, I can say without fear of exaggeration was ‘brilliant’. Salvatore Mele from CERN discussing how they work at one of the most famous ‘labs’ in the world and how they publish their data. Might sound a bit ‘meh’– but he was an excellent raconteur! He was really enthusiastic about his work, comparing the attention around the recent Nobel prize announcement to a football match and commenting on publishing papers with so many contributors.

Some excellent moments/quotes were:

His précis of a paper with 3000 authors 


His take on an awful lot of data analysing their site usage...





Describing the previously baffling Higgs field with a cartoon video  – still a bit baffling but at least I have a cool link I can send to people now.






And the fact that you can make a Lego version of their particle accelerator!

Instructions here

If you're still a sceptic, you can watch the presentation here

Then I attended two sessions that have blurred together in my mind – one on open access journals and one about peer review. These are rather hot topics in the field with the general 'ScienceGist' being – when we are fundamentally funded by the public and then published, the material we write should then be physically and mentally accessible by the public. The peer review session was looking at organisations and newer publications such as F1000, Frontiers, Rubriq and Peerage of Science that are attempting to change peer review. This is the standard current process adopted by most journals by which our colleagues must ‘approve’ our work before it’s accessed by the rest of the world. Currently the system is under scrutiny due to a number of critiques ranging from misconduct, retractions, time-delays and ‘it’s simply not the best way to do this in a modern world’. I’m tempted to agree but, as with most things, I think it’ll take time to change the status quo. There is still a lot of prestige (and funding) tied in to publication in the high-end peer-reviewed journals.

After lunch there was talk of a revolution involving such choice life advice such as:



All interspersed with ponderings on just how Alok Jha keeps his hair so voluminous?

The afternoon went by in a blur of saying NO to PDFs and deciding on some do’s and don’ts of Twitter before trundling off to the pub.

Science Showoff showed us that scientists do have a personality, as well as a love of chocolate, guitars, clocks, juggling and of disproving ghosts (or should that say LENS FLARE!).

The  next morning we were thrown in to a session on procrastination, ahem, I mean science games. They were all pretty cool, especially the game that lets you build up neuronal connections by ‘connecting the dots' to a snazzy 80s sci-fi theme tune. I have to wonder though, how many game-players are learning  and how many are just  scientists playing the game as it has less of a guilt-burden than Candy-Crush. I should stress, I honestly never play games on my computer/phone, but, after this session I’ll probably start.

Then… it was time…I had to do my session….Well, there’s the narcissism again, not my session but the session on blogging...

I introduced myself as the newbie I am, got through without getting into hyper-speed speech (too much) and mostly ‘got away with it’. I did get shot down once or twice but that actually helped things move along. We discussed what we blog on and why, who to and if we care what they think.
The floor discussions were really useful for me to understand lots of emerging opinions in the area, as well as those I disagree with, such as ‘blog comments are dead’ (Thanks Roland Krause!). Personally, I would really appreciate someone leaving comments on this blog - this whole thing is a learning exercise so I’d love to know what people think about what I’ve said and how I’ve said it – I’ve been warned that the number of comments is usually inversely proportional to how useful they are though so keep it clean, people.

Here’s the video - Yes, I have watched it back (narcissists, remember?)


After our session there was a really interesting panel discussion about staying in research and doing scientific communication at the same time. I think I’ll add it to a full post when I ‘officially’ cover scientific communication careers but needless-to-say, it seems that you can ‘have your cake and eat it’ (although there was no cake) but you can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) expect your institution to understand/be supportive, especially at the start.

The final session I attended covered the idea behind the XKCD comic Up Goer Five project. In this, a rocket scientist described his rocket or (Up Goer) using the ‘top ten hundred words people use most often’. As ‘thousand’ wasn’t in it, you can see how they start to immediately rewrite their description using simpler words – ‘door’ instead of hatch,  ‘people-box’ instead of capsule or cockpit and (my personal favourite) for the helium store – 'things holding that kind of air that makes your voice funny.' It sounds a bit pointless until you realise it’s a good way to stop using unnecessary words as ‘standard’. I confess, I’m really guilty  of this – I’ve already used the word raconteur today, but it’s a good exercise to go to their website and try it out. Try describing your job without the words ‘associate, manager, web, retail, engineer or project’ or spaghetti Bolognese without ‘cow’, ‘beef’ or ‘meat’

On the 'What did you get out of it' stream-of-consciousness, well, that's going to take some time but one thing that I found really interesting was the big idea of the conference: Impact. For those who don’t work in science and don’t have to write grants (lucky you, when you read 'grant' think ‘written begging for money’) nowadays scientists have to outline the ‘impact’ of their research. I write it like that because the impact of my research is often very limited at the start, but doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

For example, your average Joe isn’t ‘impacted’ by Bragg’s law, they couldn’t care less about X-ray diffraction, they don’t know who Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick or James Watson are, but they probably know what DNA is, and their lives and education will have been shaped by the early fundamental science that lead to Bragg’s law. How does your average physicist assert the impact of an equation that could, someday, have enormous uses and ramifications?

Answer: They could use scientific communication.

They could make people ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the seemingly magical function of a gyroscope. They could make chocolate mayonnaise to describe surfactants. They could enter schools and discuss the interesting facets of a career in science. They could blog about their research to the public. They could tweet from the lab or a conference. They could do all manner of things to show the funding bodies that they have IMPACT. They could go the extra mile to show that their research isn’t just a bunch of self-serving superiority-complexed people swanning around the corridors of their local institution. If we want, expect and need the government (i.e. taxpayers) to fund us then we need to be part of their lives as much as the local community centre, the playground, the museums and the art centres or, when it comes to chopping funding, who do you think will come first?
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Wednesday, 6 November 2013

In at the deep-end...

As part of my ongoing investigation into 'life-beyond-the-lab', I'm attending SpotOn London 2013 this week. Hell, I'm going to be a panellist. This is scary for several reasons:

                           1. I've been blogging for a grand total of 2 months
                           2. I've no idea if I know enough to even be going to this conference
                           and 
                           3. Who the hell cares what I think?

Some back story I think...

After deciding to look into the area of science communication, journalism, outreach, whatever you want to call it, I came upon recurrent tweets on some fancy-pants science communication conference. Then I looked closer at the people tweeting about said 'fancy-pants' conference and noticed genuine excitement
and enthusiasm
about the upcoming event. Then I noticed that the event is sold out every year and the tickets go out in batches (nod to Glastonbury there - I'm imagining shady characters in sports-coats selling and buying extra tickets in the Bloomsbury area) to ensure people get a chance to go. 

This was not your average 3 key-note speakers, old-boys-club-during-the-tea-break followed by one- awkward-glass-of-wine-before-I-leave conference - people seemed to actually want to go!

I ummed and aahed about buying my ticket during the first two ticket sales slots - at £100 I wasn't sure I should risk buying my ticket before asking my boss and I wasn't sure if he'd allow me to go during work hours (I'm currently trying to save my days off for potential interviews so was in a bit of a pickle). 

With each sales slot, the tension mounted due to the clever use of Twitter by the organisers to let us know that the tickets were dripping away...
then, I grew a pair (metaphorically, of course). I decided that I should buy a ticket, in fact, I needed to buy a ticket - who knows what I might learn! 

On my way to work the next day I was deciding on the best way to convince my boss that I should go to this, scanning the morning Twitter-feed, I stumbled upon a tweet that suggested that maybe I could get a ticket to this thing for free (and hopefully then know someone there!). 

Ticket cancelled with <6 minutes to go!

So, a hasty read of a blogpost,  an (hopefully not too desperate) email and a cancelled ticket reservation (I wasn't too hopeful I'd get a reply, so I hedged my bets) later I was rewarded with not just a place but a chance to help organise a session!

The generosity and helpfulness of this crowd really knows no bounds!


Now, here I am, looking forward to a new challenge, meeting new people and seeing just what people think about blogs and more 'casual' online communication between scientists. I think this is what we need to get past - the fact that because blogging, tweeting and the like are not peer-reviewed or mostly even regulated in any way, that they can't be 'valuable' or for 'proper' science.

We've had one Skype meeting, across three countries and come up with two GoogleDocs. I've realised that almost all people feel variations on my opening three points, about most things, particularly on blogging, science and speaking at conferences, so I'm going to throw myself into this! We're going to create a Storify of the event and I'm sure there'll be follow up blogposts.

I'm also attending the Science ShowOff 'cabaret' of science on the Friday night, although that may involve more gin and less learning.  Or more gin and more learning. Definitely more gin.

I'll probably have more questions than answers, but now I've realised that it's in the British Library and not the British Museum, I know I won't be all alone, next to the big lion statue thinking it's just me that has lots of questions about the value of science going all 'business-casual' online.

Wish me luck?
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