Sciengage, which can be found on facebook, twitter and the Sciengage website, is the brainchild of ASC member Sam Askin.

Sam took some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions for the ASC.

What are you aiming to achieve with Sciengage?

The aim of the site is to consolidate the science that is online, from the casual observer to the hardcore scientist. There are so many resources, blogs, channels and projects that is it hard to know where to start when looking to follow science. Sciengage provides a gateway from which you can explore science yourself, and return to as you need or want. It consolidates blogs and showcases science in social media and crowdfunding, and also has a discussion forum. Science communications and engagement services are also offered. I realise the site does some things similar to other sites (eg. scienceseeker, IFLS), but I don’t see it as a competitor to these resources, but a complement.

What inspired you to get involved?

My inspiration came from my own experience online. I only recently joined Twitter (6 months ago), and used it largely for news and discovery of science. What I noticed was there was SO much there that it was often impossible to keep up with, and you got a sense of missing things (and that was only following about 200 resources). I also wanted to add my bit to the online science writing world, but instead of being another fish in the sea, why not become the place that showcases what is already there, so people can have a common starting place.

How has your ASC membership helped you in starting Sciengage?

ASC (and the bigsci summit and #onsci as well) were essentially my springboard into science online/through social media. When I joined Twitter, I used profiles such as ASC to discover who was out there, what they were talking about, how they talked about it and what people were using/spreading online as resources. It was pivotal to not only my own discovery of the plethora of sources out there, but to how I designed the site and what features I wanted to bring.

Thanks to Sam for taking the time to answer our questions, if you have a couple of minutes to spare, why don’t you pop over and see what Sciengage has to offer!