SciBars and public engagement

‘noon all,

So I have a day off work and thought I’d just let any of you reading know that I’m now also writing on the blog for the Oxford SciBar (http://www.oxfordscibar.com), so new and (possibly) interesting things will end up there, but that doesn’t mean I’ll no longer use this blog.  It’s a pretty exciting thing for me to be involved in, and I intend to make the best of it!

It just means I can continue with the arbitrary profanity on this one, and write things a little more professional (well, less sweary and probably better thought out…) over there.

The SciBar is a great idea, where we get some funding from the British Science Association (http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/web/) and get to take science into a much more relaxed atmosphere: the pub. What better way to appeal to the British psyche…?

A speaker comes in and does a talk about their chosen topic for about half hour or so, no powerpoint or anything, just them, then people can ask any questions they’d like to.

We record the whole thing and put it up as a podcast as well, with a few other questions at the end. We’ve managed attract some great speaker too, including Simon Singh and Sir Walter Bodmer in the past, more recently Dr Evan Harris has also agreed to do a talk in July.

We’re really trying to make it an entire one stop shop for the public about science in general, and use as many channels as we can to help.  For those researchers willing to do a talk it offers an easy way of helping them to reach any public engagement goals they may have, also rather informally.

It’s also quite nice to be pretty agenda-less, other than general awareness raising, and just let those who are interested come to both speak and listen.  The crowd size varies, pretty unpredictably, and I guess this just reflects what things are interesting people more or less at the moment.

For example cancer isn’t necessarily going to be something people will want to come and listen to (bit of a downer…), unless they know someone or affected themselves in some way.  And this is what we saw with the most recent one, there were fewer than our previous SciBar on the effects of chocolate on mood and the body (nice timing for valentines…), however, some of those I spoke to, of varying ages, young and old, were there because they wanted an overview of something they were being affected by.

Most recently we had Dr Martin Christlieb from the Gray Institue for Radiation Oncology and Biology, who did a great job of illustrating risk and chance in developing cancer using teams of people with different sided dice and a simple board game of the steps of cancer progression.  People would role every 5 seconds, others constantly (the rock and roll life style), others, once every ten seconds. You move only when you throw a double (two sixes, for example). Those with fewer sided dice progressed more quickly, than those with many sided, and those who rolled faster progressed faster.  Quite an elegant little demo.

Speaking to people afterwards they found it very interesting and a useful way of illustrating this.

Anyhow, I digress, my most recent post can be found here: http://www.oxfordscibar.com/1/post/2011/03/the-strangers-within-you-part-2.html where I try and delight you with tales of human endogenous retroviruses and their general awesomeness. Go there, leave comments, tell your friends, let me know where I’m going wrong, what sucks, what’s good, and whatever else!  Use the forums too!

Anyhow, there’ll probably be something shouty on this blog about cats or something soon if you like that kind of thing.

G

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