Scicomm-unities of Practice

On the 3rd of July, #BrumSciComm will be two years old. We’ve been running socials to support each other and provide a network for those wanting to tell stories of science in different ways. We’ll have news about what we are planning to mark this special occasion.

In the meantime, we’ve been busy. Some of you may have noticed our increased web presence, especially on the Twitter front where we now have an account @BrumSciComm. There is a steadily growing following and you are welcome to join in. We do love our hashtag, and we still use it.

To tie all our streams together we’ve gone and built ourselves a webpage at brumsci.com. See what we did there? Ha ha. We’ve also kept the hash in the title even though it doesn’t feature in the URL. Other Scicomm groups around the country also have their pages, including Sci-comm Burrito in Manchester and #SciCommPi(e) in Sheffield. If they are closer to you, check them out.

What can you expect from the website? Well it’s early days and we have huge ambitions. Where to start? Obviously there is an invitation to our upcoming social. Then we have a news section which has our thoughts and experiences on the things we’ve done, plus information for events, competitions and finding opportunities.

Lots of science communication events are happening around the region and nobody has their finger on it all. To help us as a community organise ourselves a little better and help the public, we have a calendar. In it, we are listing science events where the public are welcome, or that scicomm practitioners will be interested in attending. Let us know if you have something you want us to share. Yes, we have an email too. Hopefully, events will fill the week rather than competing against each other and making us choose.

One section that will take time to grow is the resources section. Firstly, we are building a directory of all the people who do science communication in the region, the events they run, as well as the places that were these events happen. We also have a forum for people to ask question and get advice and are building an introduction to scicomm. It will include ideas about how to go about communicating science through many ways. Expect hints and tips drawn from the collective. If you are new to scicomm then this may be useful to you.

Our styling has been taken from the posters recently made available from the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech, reflecting the science theme but with an element of creativity.