Author Archives: Jesse Shore

About Jesse Shore

Jesse Shore is passionate about engaging the community with science and in looking for ways to weave together the arts and sciences. He has been developing science based exhibitions and events since 1984, and was President of the Australian Science Communicators from 2010-2012. His business, Prismatic Sciences, produced five travelling exhibitions for the Royal Australian Chemical Institute for the 2011 International Year of Chemistry and he manages the ongoing national tour. He previously worked at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney as an exhibition project leader and Senior Curator of sciences. While at the museum he was one of the founders of the Ultimo Science Festival, a major National Science Week activity. He is currently collaborating with an artist to create artworks which have a science slant.

What will SKA do for science communication?

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The news this week that the Square Kilometre Array will be shared between sites in Australia and South Africa seems to have been received well in Australian science circles. What opportunities and challenges will this mammoth science project bring to engaging the community with science? Much of the science is complex but the project attracts media attention partly because of its scale and expense, and partly because of the competition between nations to win the bid.

Astronomy holds the fascination of a wide range of people even though few are aware of how the technology developed to study the stars has impacted on their everyday lives. Wireless LAN was a recent spin-off of radio astronomy. The very scale of the SKA should bring new developments as technology evolves to process the vast amounts of data and other extreme needs of the project.

But what of the science? The antennae in the different continents will scan the sky for signals of different radio wavelengths. One set of antennae record the longer wavelengths, the other the shorter. It’s like listening to different messengers who each bring separate parts of the overall message.

Perhaps by splitting the project between the two main nations the SKA decision has both divided the wavelengths and multiplied the world’s attention. ‘Watch this space’ becomes ‘watch these spaces’ or more properly ‘watch these outer spaces’.

In the spirit of sharing perhaps my opening question becomes, “What will SKA do for science communication and what should science communicators do for SKA?” My antennae are listening for your replies.

Jesse Shore
National President

The biggest snapshot of science engagement in Australia

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Who, what, where, when, why and how do we communicate science in Australia? And what do we think our success rate is? The ASC is part of a team to find out the answers.

The Inspiring Australia program has funded a project to create a national audit of science engagement activities. We will get a picture of the diverse range of activities which were delivered, or are planned to be, from January 2011 to June 2013.

The information will be gathered mainly by a nationwide survey and the collated and reported data will be a valuable tool. It will inform individuals and groups who deliver and coordinate the programs, potential partners and sponsors, and be a starting point for related projects to develop means of assessing the success of activities.

ASC branches will be running special events about the audit. Members can be part of focus groups to provide another stream of information and insight, and to suggest which groups we should promote the survey to.

The team working on the national audit comprises Jenni Metcalfe (Econnect Communication), Kristin Alford (Bridge8), and Jesse Shore and Kali Madden (Australian Science Communicators). Nancy Longnecker (UWA), Rod Lamberts (ANU) and Joan Leach (UQ) are advisors for the project.

Read more about the project in the attached announcement. The link to the on-line survey will be announced soon.

Jesse Shore
National president

Announcement of National audit of science engagement activities – 27 Apr

What are the upcoming issues and themes in science communication?

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The recent ASC conference had many people asking how can we increase our effectiveness? And what can we do to have more positive outcomes? Sometimes we need to drive our professional development in a new direction to break out of the tried but no longer true way of doing things.

What new issues, themes, skills, techniques, etc, do you think have the potential to improve the outcomes of our work?

Jesse Shore
National President

Chief Scientist’s speech to ASC conference – the transcript of Ian Chubb’s presentation

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Professor Ian Chubb, Australia’s Chief Scientist, was a worthy voice to present the Robyn William’s address, to open the ASC conference. Ian’s presentation started minds thinking and the points he raised kept delegates challenged throughout the 3 days of the event.

Kali Madden is continuing the spade work needed to post podcasts of various plenary sessions on the ASC website. Look for them to start rolling out in another month or two. In the meantime I’m posting the pdf of the transcript of Ian Chubb’s speech.

Jesse Shore
National President

Ian Chubb’s ASC2012 speech, 27 February 2012

 

 

Seeking videos for rejuvenated ASC YouTube channel

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The ASC’s YouTube channel has been a quiet place the last 3 years. It contains a playlist of videos of portions of the Hot Air Symposiums held in 2009, but nothing since then. From late May we will start uploading the video interviews made during the ASC20102 conference, with the full set of interviews in place by end of the year.

The ASC Communications Team (consisting of James Hutson, Sally Miles, Kali Madden and me) will act as gatekeepers. We will select videos shot or commissioned by the ASC (like the conference) for uploading to our account.

We are also looking for links to other video content of interest to ASCers as long as this material is accompanied by permission to allow reloading to our site. So please send Sally Miles, Scope Editor, editor @ asc.asn.au, links to videos (with permissions for reuse if needed) that you think we should add to our YouTube channel.

Jesse Shore
National President

Member Profile: Jesse Shore, ASC National President

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I’ve been fortunate to find a career which allows me to indulge my two passions in life; my fascination of science since I was 12 years old, and my attraction to acting and other involvement in live theatre from my early 30s. I became a scientist to fulfil the adolescent dream and then managed an amateur theatre company to immerse myself in my adult captivation. I had no idea that my two interests would soon merge and be fulfilled by an area of work that was yet to have a name.

People tell me that my career sounds like I took a left turn but I see it mainly as a westerly-trending journey with a step to the north. My impulse for science took me from Brooklyn, NY, to Berkeley, CA, and then far to the southwest to Canberra. The ACT was my cocoon where the science-adolescent transformed into the theatrical-hopeful. It was after the move north, to work on the Powerhouse Museum project in Sydney, when the adult science communicator truly emerged.

It occurred to me that developing museum exhibitions was much like putting on a stage production. The wide range of display media seemed like the sets, props, lights, sound, scripts, and so on of live theatre. I found I could use my science background and theatre experience to bring meaning and fun to science-related ideas.

Being exposed to the broad range of subject interests of the Powerhouse, such as science and technology, decorative arts, social history, and design, was also helpful. They gave me the idea and the means of placing science within a broad cultural context.

Although my job title was Senior curator of sciences, from the mid-1990s, around the time the ASC was formed, I started to say that I was a science communicator. The term science communication was fairly new then, and even today I get asked to explain what a science communicator is.

I’ve now clocked up 28 years of communicating science and welcome the chance to put energy into the broader area of the profession through the ASC and its activities. If I could find a way to describe what it is that we do in around 25 words or 140 characters I’d feel that I made a real breakthrough.

It is exciting to be active with the ASC at a time when its profile is rising and it’s becoming increasingly influential. At our recent national conference we stepped up to a new level of organisation and amenity. Attendance numbers increased and so did financial support. Feedback from delegates was overwhelmingly positive and we had many constructive comments about how to do things better for the next event.

I’m looking forward to the ASC taking its next steps forward as an organisation but I may be a tad overly optimistic that our profession will become a household word. Now if I can only get on stage again I’d be really happy. Did someone say, “To be, or not to be – a science communicator”?

Jesse Shore
National President

ASC National conference 2012 – three great days

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What happens when you have 250 science communicators in the same place at the same time? Going on observations from the recent national conference in Sydney you get an intense buzz of social networking. Every face to face gathering was busy with people talking, laughing, exchanging ideas and contact details, moving around to meet new people and to catch up with a wide range of colleagues. Cyberspace was filled with an intense stream of tweets which lasted well after the conference – and they are still coming although now at a trickle (see #ASC2012 for the latest). One tweeter during the conference pleaded for others to slow the pace as he couldn’t keep up with the flow and catch a moment of the sessions at the same time.

We are still digesting the results of the post-conference on-line survey. We had around 130 completed questionnaires – a great response rate. I’m happy to report overwhelmingly positive feedback. There were good suggestions for improvements which will be considered as we start planning for the next national gathering.

I look forward to developing the relationships with the federal and five state Chief Scientists and with all the Inspiring Australia representatives who featured at the conference. The ASC is growing its connections all the time.

My choices for conference highlights

Day 1: Ian Chubb’s talk provoked much ongoing discussion about several big topics and issues. One was that public interest in science developed countries is declining while the inverse is true in developing economies. Why is this? Is this a worrying trend (I say yes)? What do we do about it? Is there an inverse relation between celebrity appreciation and cerebrum use?

The cocktail function at the end of Day 1 gave us a look at UTS’s impressive new function space. Around 150 delegates got together for two hours of intense chatting and mixing in a most pleasant atmosphere. I thought this worked far better than a sit down dinner for networking. Also we didn’t have to charge for the event (thanks to UTS sponsoring this most hospitable function).

Day 2: The opening plenary about career possibilities for science communicators featured good energy and diverse jobs paths. It not only highlighted several talented early career sci-commers but revealed the Australian Museum was holding a ‘Jurassic Lounge’ event that night which added to delegates’ choice of social events for the evening. I enjoyed the ABC Café Scientific chat-fest but I noted the tweet stream from rapt Jurassic Loungers.

Day 3: Chris Fluke in the morning plenary said that he was satisfied with 85% accuracy in his astronomical animations (he sometimes exaggerates vertical scale for visual effect). This kicked-off a discussion topic that we won’t see the end of. In the afternoon plenary about science to policy I was interested to hear about how rallies of scientists were organised to get media attention and public support to pressure the government not to cut funding for medical research work. The threatened funding cut was a rumour at the time but timely action of getting scientists onto the streets may have been instrumental in preserving funds during a cost-cutting period.

Days 1-3: I was also impressed with the efforts exhibitors at the conference put into making their display areas look appealing. It enticed me to chat with a few of them and I would have visited all the stands if I had less running around to do.

The Science-As-Art exhibition seemed to be a big hit. More than 100 votes were cast for the People’s Choice winner and there was a lot of feedback that the exhibition should be a regular feature of future conferences.

Several teams of people worked hard and effectively to achieve a great conference. The ASC conference organising teams lead by Rod Lamberts are deservedly basking in the bright glow of congratulations for the high quality of the overall event. Our professional conference convenors ensured that all ran smoothly and made the most of the excellent venue.

So how do we do even better next time? I’ll leave that to you to send your suggestions.

Jesse Shore
National President

ASC assistant treasurer appointed

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The National Council has appointed Pete Wheeler for the ASC assistant treasurer position.

Pete is the treasurer of the ASC WA branch, has been treasurer for another society and manages the sizable budget for outreach and education activities in his job for an astronomical centre.

David Ellyard, our national treasurer, and Pete will soon start working together to bring Pete up to speed with the national accounts and to divide up the financial tasks. Pete will become a non-voting member of the Executive and National Council.

Pete joins Sarah Lau, our national secretary, as WA members on ASC national committees.

Jesse Shore
National president

ASC2012 – three days is not enough

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Overview: The ASC2012 conference forms a great package. The program features impressive speakers and important topics, with appealing social events from Sunday through Tuesday nights, and a few deals for attractions while you are in Sydney.

Chief Scientist plenary extended: Given we have a plethora of Chief Scientists, we have extended the duration of their plenary. The session will start at 2.00pm as per the program and run until 3.00pm or 3.15pm (with a slim chance of going to 3.30pm), to allow plenty of interchange, discussion and exploration of issues.

This will leave 15-30 minutes before the afternoon tea break. Some or all the Chief Scientists will go to the refreshment area at this time where you can gather around a Chief Scientist for an informal conversation.

The rooms reserved for the previously scheduled concurrent sessions will be available, should a Chief Scientist choose to give a short presentation or have a more formal Q&A. Either way, you have an opportunity to talk with the state Chief Scientist of your choice.

Sessions will be recorded: the audio of all sessions will be recorded and some sessions will be videoed. This will serve as a resource for conference goers.

Full house of exhibitors: a range of organisations will have booths at the conference where you can talk with their key people. Find out what each organisation has to offer and quiz them about their science communication skills and achievements. The booths will be in the Banquet Hall and will be busiest during the refreshment and lunch breaks.

Science-As-Art Exhibition: the Science-As-Art exhibition at the conference will showcase examples of science visualisation created by scientists and science communicators right across Australia. Prizes will be awarded for the best entry. Also look at the artist-inspired Periodic Table on Show, made to celebrate the 2011 International Year of Chemistry.

Jesse Shore
National President

Australian Enabling Technologies Roadmap

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The deadline for submissions about the Australian Enabling Technologies Roadmap is 23 February. Have a read of the ‘ETRM’ at http://www.innovation.gov.au/Industry/Nanotechnology/NationalEnablingTechnologiesStrategy/Pages/ExpertForum.aspx. It covers the projected developments of new forms of nanotechnology and biotechnology and synthetic biology over the next 10-15 years. It also mentions some expected impacts.

My comment would be that the ETRM is light on in how it will navigate the landscape with all levels of the community. I welcome your views before the impending deadline.

Jesse Shore
National president