Peter Krause, the ever-friendly and patient press officer for ESOF, says the best thing about the organization is that it began ten years ago as a grass-roots idea: scientists who wondered why Europe had no equivalent of the AAAS and decided to create one. Since then, it has grown in all directions, but it still retains the flavor of scientists creating spaces for scientific exchange on a pan-academic level.
That feeling was certainly present yesterday evening, at a session on science communication. The speakers were three communicators in very different fields. The first, Angel Rodriguez Lozano, began as a radio journalist in Spain. Now he is syndicated in every Spanish-speaking country around the world, and his science podcasts reach millions. His secret is to actually present some six different programs, each geared toward a different audience. Several of those audience members have become so enthusiastic, they have become contributors to the podcasts. I believe that the true secret of his success is that he has a particular person in mind for each, and speaks to them, personally.
The second was Sabine Louet, a young French researcher who, together with a few like-minded scientists, started a magazine by and for European scientists, called Euroscientist. The idea is to focus on topics that affect all researchers, for example funding. This magazine is, of course online, and their secret is that they have a deep understanding of how to tie everything in and together on all the social media. This works particularly well, as they really want to give everyone in the research community a voice.
The third is a Brazilian research student, Atila Iamarino. Among other things, he is the instigator and organizer of the Portuguese Scienceblogs site. But at some point he got involved in online science videos -- the kind that explain, for example, the science between superheroes powers or that underlying popular issues. From what I can tell, they are really fun and well done. If you understand Portuguese, you probably already know about Nerdologia. I am actually hoping he will find the time to write a guest post in English for the site, to let English readers know what he does (and he does it completely voluntarily).
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