Thanks to Kristin Alford from Bridge 8 for contributing this article:
The ability to synthesise complex information and articulate it in a clear and concise way is a skill. When that is done well within a strict word limit under tight deadlines, it’s something to celebrate.
Kylie Sturgess (@kyliesturgess <http://twitter.com/kyliesturgess> ), Dr Krystal Evans (@dr_krystal <http://twitter.com/dr_krystal> ) and Dr Sarah Keenihan (@sciencesarah <http://twitter.com/sciencesarah> ) are worth celebrating.
Over the course of the Australian Science Communicators Conference in 2012 <http://2012conf.asc.asn.au/> they made sense of the content in short sharp bursts using a range of social media platforms. Kylie live-blogged many of the sessions and has several podcasts, Krystal live-tweeted almost everything and Sarah both live-tweeted and provided Storify summaries.
If you were at the conference and drew on the back channel to see what others were thinking or to catch up on parallel sessions you couldn’t get to, you would have appreciated their contributions. If you weren’t at the conference, their commentaries and summaries made it possible to follow along. This was certainly the case for Ed Brown (@reallyedbrown <http://twitter.com/reallyedbrown> ) who interviewed all three in his ‘Science on Top’ podcast <http://scienceontop.com/2012/03/sot-special-asc2012/> (this link includes all Kylie’s blogs, other links and Ed’s own Storify summaries of Day 2 and 3).
As producer of the social media session <http://2012conf.asc.asn.au/2011/12/24/plenary-6-sophisticated-social-media-use-science/> , I was certainly interested to see what the back channel had discussed during the session, so seeing Kylie’s blog <http://freethoughtblogs.com/tokenskeptic/2012/02/28/live-blogging-the-sophisticated-social-media-use-and-science-asc2012/> and Sarah’s Storify <http://storify.com/sciencesarah/asc2012-plenarysophisticated-social-media-use-and> was immensely useful, and both made it easier to share the content with others later. Mentioning this later on Twitter also brought endorsement that the contribution was worth recognising.
Congratulations and thank you Kylie, Krystal and Sarah. A specially-designed certificate from James Hutson is on its way.
(Also published at http://bridge8.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/socmed-stars-at-the-asc-conference/)
Dr Kristin Alford
Futurist & Founding Director
Bridge8 Pty Ltd
http://www.bridge8.com.au
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