Welcome to 2024. For those lucky to have had a break, we hope it was a restful, safe and rejuvenating one.

Looking forward, we’re both really excited for the year ahead. After our first national committee meeting last month, we are very optimistic about what we will be able to collaboratively achieve this year.

Something we are sure that you’ve all been thinking about over the break is the conference in June (or maybe not…)! Lucky for you, abstract submissions are open for talks, workshops, panels and anything else you may like to run at the meeting. A big reminder and warning – the discounted ‘Hatchling’ rate will close on 1 Feb. If you are wanting to lock in this rate you must fill in the ticket request form before Emma logs in on that Thursday morning.

And yes – you’ll note we said form above, not via the new member portal. Progress is still underway here, and we’re working to ensure that we are building the logic in the back-end to not only support this year, but hopefully the next several years without needing serious updates. We hope to have more to share shortly. A reminder of our previous promise: while the member portal is being updated, no-one’s membership will expire. Brand new members are still able to join by following the links on the main website to another form.

Finally, one of our key focuses for the year will be building and strengthening relationships within the science communication and broader STEM community, both here in Australia and abroad. To that end, we do want to highlight an opportunity for ASC members and friends to attend an event hosted by the Science Journalists Association of Australia – more details here. We hope to bring members more and more opportunities like this to increase the breadth of events and interests covered by our activities.

We wish you the best of luck and good health for the year ahead.