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*scicommunity*: sharing Australian science engagement activities with peers and public

Web 2.0 offers many opportunities for networking and creating a sense of community amongst like-minded, geographically-distant peoples. At Bridge8 we used wordpress, slideshare, twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr to share what we do, learn from like-minded (and not so like-minded) people near and far, and to scan our horizons for faint signals of emerging trends. With the support of DIISR’s Inspiring Australia strategy, we’ve recentlybeen working with James Hutson to create a new kind of community, one we’ve dubbed scicommunity to reflect an onus on community and communication in all things scientific. In a nutshell, scicommunity is an online, editable platform for the collection of Australian science communication and engagement activities. It will be open and shared, free and unlimited for appropriate groups and individuals. We hope it will generate a sense of community amongst Australian science communicators.

As well as being a useful, single site to view and search for science communication events in your area, at defined times of the year, and targeted to specific types of audiences, what might we expect to come from scicommunity in a community sense? No car-pooling or ‘bring-a-plate’ dinners of course, but perhaps the generation of some exciting new ideas, such as the identification of opportunities to leverage existing initiatives, an encouragement of partnering and complementary activities, and perhaps even new investment in science communication. You know: shared, community stuff.

While we’re excited to launch scicommunity, we’re very keen first-up to make sure it’s of an appropriate design and layout to capture the key elements of the activities listed; hence we’re commencing a pilot phase next week to iron out any last kinks and wrinkles. If you’re interested in scicommunity, please use the comments space below to let us know what YOU think is important to know about a science communication/engagement event, what sort of information we should be trying to capture and how we can best generate a sense of community amongst communicators of science in Australia.

Comment here: http://bridge8.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/community-and-communication-in-science/