This year the Sharing Science team has had three sessions accepted for AGU’s Fall Meeting, focused on discussing–and doing–science communication. Please consider submitting abstracts, attending the sessions, and letting others know about them!
A031: Road maps to successfully sharing science Communicating the importance and societal relevance of science is an integral part of successful scientific advancement. But how do we do it well? We welcome those who have reached out to broader audiences (journalists, policy makers, educators, public groups) in many ways (illustration/video, visits and talks, contests, interviews, social media, etc.) to share their experiences. We particularly welcome presentations that report on the results of evaluation of outreach efforts, so that we can share best practices as a community. The more we learn about the kinds of outreach and communication actions others have taken—some less expected than others—the more we expand the range of successful science communication/outreach techniques available to us. Submit here: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm16/preliminaryview.cgi/Session13203 PA038: The Up-Goer Five Challenge: A fun and radical way to distill your science A hard truth: The words we like to use to explain what we study don’t mean anything to most people. If we want to reach people who don’t do this work, we need to come up with new ways to talk about what we do and why it matters. (Written using the Up-Goer Five Text Editor.) Inspired by the XKCD comic in which the author describes the Saturn V Rocket using only the thousand most common words in English, we ask speakers to present very short (5-minute) scientific talks using only a limited vocabulary (determined via the Up-Goer Five Text Editor). Taking simplification to the extreme, this exercise—when done in a spirit of both fun and genuine commitment—allows scientists to identify what is at the heart of their research and share the essence of their work—often surprisingly well in spite of the inherent challenges. Submit here: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm16/preliminaryview.cgi/Session13343 ED006: Bringing science communication into curricula Not only is science communication an integral part of conveying the value and relevance of science to the public, policy makers, and the media, but effective communication skills are more and more necessary for all scientists as they write grants, describe the broader impacts of their work, and ensure a wide reach for their research. Many institutions are recognizing the benefit of providing—or even requiring— communications training as part of their science undergraduate or graduate curricula. We invite those who have developed or are in the process of developing these integrations between science and science communication to share their plans, methods, and the outcomes they have seen so far. Submit here: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm16/preliminaryview.cgi/Session13021
