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President's January Update: An Introduction
17 Jan 2020 4:52 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
Welcome to 2020.
I'll skip the jokes about perfect vision (my own eyesight is far from 20/20) and get right down to things.
I'd like to thank our former president, Elizabeth Howell, for her hard work and dedication to SWCC. It's going to be hard to fill her shoes. I'd also like to thank the SWCC directors for placing their trust in me as interim president.
A little background about me: I've been obsessed by writing and communication for decades, and grew up on a steady diet of science fiction and fantasy. After a brief period on a tabloid-like community newspaper, I've spent most of my career at universities, helping scientists convey the excitement and importance of their discoveries for the public. I've been involved with SWCC and its predecessor, the Canadian Science Writers Association, since the 1980s, and I believe strongly in its goals and mission. I currently live in snowy (for the next day or so) Vancouver, where I handle communications for UBC president Santa Ono.
I'm looking forward to the AGM and annual conference in Ottawa in June. It promises to be a great event, and the U of O campus in summer is a great place to be. This year's theme - Building Bridges With the Science of Science Communication - is very topical and critical. We'll be posting information on sessions and keynote speakers on the conference page of the website in the near future.
We'll shortly be sending out a call for nominations to the board of directors. If you're interested in the future of science communication in Canada, please consider joining the board and helping us keep this great organization thriving. Bonus: you get to hang out (via teleconference mostly) with an amazing bunch of people.
SWCC Board Appoints Interim President
Terry Lavender has been appointed as the Interim President of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada (SWCC), effective immediately and concluding at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) at this year's annual conference in Ottawa June 25 and 26.
The SWCC Board of Directors unanimously approved Lavender's appointment at its meeting on January 15, 2020. He takes on the role of Interim President after Elizabeth Howell resigned as President for personal reasons in early December 2019.
Terry brings with him more than 20 years of communications experience, chiefly in post-secondary education. He has held posts at the University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario, and Simon Fraser University. He is currently manager of communications in the University of British Columbia's president's office, where he juggles social media, speeches, videos, blogs, podcasts, and more.
The SWCC Board extends its thanks to Terry for stepping into the Interim President role. His appointment will allow for a smooth transition to a new President, with the usual call for nominations and regular election of the board for 2020-2021 at the AGM in Ottawa at the end of June.
If you are an SWCC member and are interested in joining the board of our organization, or would like to put forward an SWCC colleague as a suggestion, please reach out to our Board of Directors through the Contact Us page at sciencewriters.ca.
Our 2019 President's Departure
09 Dec 2019 10:40 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
With great sadness we announce that Elizabeth Howell is resigning from the SWCC Board as President and Director. Elizabeth is a space and science freelance writer, an international public engagement speaker and a technical writing professor at Algonquin College. She is stepping down from the SWCC Board for personal and professional reasons.
Elizabeth has accomplished an incredible amount for SWCC in a very short time period. She spearheaded a successful membership drive for the organization. She tirelessly supported the teams organizing the 2019 SWCC conference in Winnipeg, and the 2020 conference in Ottawa. She helped to streamline SWCC's very complicated membership and conference online payment system. She took an incredibly time-consuming inventory of SWCC's hard copy documents to prepare them for digitizing and archiving. These documents represent the history of SWCC and will be made publicly available online. Elizabeth organized a major refresh of SWCC's website, including a new theme and a reorganization of pages. She worked with student bloggers to contribute regular articles to the site. Her support for individual SWCC Directors, SWCC's General Manager and SWCC Committees has been unwavering.
The Board is incredibly grateful for all that she has done and wishes her the best in all of her future endeavours.
If you have any questions about this transition, please contact the Board of Directors through our Contact Us page.
President's November Update: SWCC book awards for the holidays!
29 Nov 2019 1:38 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
If you're looking for some great gifts for the holidays, look no further than the winners of our 2018 book awards.
And attention authors: Nominations for this year's process are open right now, so please check out this link and respond by the deadline to be considered for next year!
Our three book awardees crafted two incredible books -- one for children and one for adults -- and you can find more information on them below.
Do Frogs Drink Hot Chocolate? How Animals Keep Warm
Official description: When winter arrives, animals living in cold environments need to cope to survive. Do polar bears build homes? Do penguins snuggle with a friend? Yes! But their homes aren't made of wood, and they don't cuddle on a couch. Instead, these animals and many more have adapted in amazing ways to survive chilly weather.
Whether it's whales layering up with plenty of blubber, turtles burrowing into the mud to snooze and wait for spring, or emperor penguins coming together in a giant huddle, this book is full of fascinating tidbits about animal behaviour in winter.
Written in a question-and-answer format, this interactive nonfiction book encourages kids to predict the answers and shout them out. Playful phrasing and comic illustrations make the content engaging for readers, who will gain newfound knowledge and an early understanding of adaptations in nature.
Etta Kaner writes for both children and educators. A number of her books have won awards, namely, the Silver Birch award, the Henry Bergh award, the Animal Behaviour Society award, the Scientific American Young Readers book award and the Science in Society book award. Etta lives in Toronto, Ontario. Visit her website at: www.ettakaner.com
John Martz is a cartoonist and illustrator in Toronto, Ontario. His 2016 graphic novel for children, A Cat Named Tim and Other Stories, was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Awards and was nominated for the Eisner Award for Best Publication for Early Readers. His book Burt's Way Home was nominated for Best Book in the 2017 Doug Wright Awards for Canadian cartooning.
18 Miles: The Epic Drama of Our Atmosphere and Its Weather (ECW Press)
Official description: We live at the bottom of an ocean of air — 5,200 million million tons, to be exact. It sounds like a lot, but Earth's atmosphere is smeared onto its surface in an alarmingly thin layer — 99 percent contained within 18 miles. Yet, within this fragile margin lies a magnificent realm — at once gorgeous, terrifying, capricious, and elusive. With his keen eye for identifying and uniting seemingly unrelated events, Chris Dewdney reveals to us the invisible rivers in the sky that affect how our weather works and the structure of clouds and storms and seasons, the rollercoaster of climate.
Dewdney details the history of weather forecasting and introduces us to the eccentric and determined pioneers of science and observation whose efforts gave us the understanding of weather we have today. 18 Miles is a kaleidoscopic and fact-filled journey that uncovers our obsession with the atmosphere and weather — as both evocative metaphor and physical reality. From the roaring winds of Katrina to the frozen oceans of Snowball Earth, Dewdney entertains as he gives readers a long overdue look at the very air we breathe.
Christopher Dewdney is the author of five books of non-fiction as well as eleven books of poetry. A four-time nominee for the Governor General's Award he won first-prize in the CBC Literary Competition for poetry and was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize, given in recognition of his contribution to Canadian literature. His non-fiction book, Acquainted With The Night; Excursions into the World After Dark, was nominated for both a Governor
General's Award and The Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction, and was published in six countries.
Dewdney appeared in the critically acclaimed film, Poetry in Motion, and an adaptation of his book, Acquainted With the Night, was released
as a feature documentary by Markham Street Films in 2010. The movie garnered a Gemini award in 2011. His most recent non-fiction title, 18 Miles: The Epic Drama of our Atmosphere and its Weather, was published by ECW in 2018. Dewdney teaches creative writing and poetics at York University in Toronto.
Elizabeth Howell
President, SWCC
president@sciencewriters.ca
Introducing Your 2019 Favourite Science Site Winner: Minding the Brain
Can people really multitask? How do our brains imagine the future? Why do we get so fired up about sports games?
With topics like this under their belt, this year's Favourite Science Site win is a no-brainer. Minding the Brain, a podcast created and hosted by Dr. Kim Hellemans and Dr. Jim Davies, brings deep yet accessible understanding to complex and varied questions about the mind and brain. The show uniquely combines evidence and ideas from neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy – and in this, fills a gap in the science podcast landscape.
Minding the Brain reflects Dr. Hellemans' and Dr. Davies' shared passion for teaching, science outreach, and all things mind and brain. So how did it all begin? Appropriately, with a student project. Dr. Hellemans wanted something different to come from one of her students' independent study courses – something more imaginative and impactful than your typical term paper. Playing to the students' past experiences in the world of podcasts, the idea for a brain science podcast was born.
Photo by neil godding on Unsplash
But the Minding the Brain story goes back even further. Kim and Jim are long-time teaching colleagues. In fact, this is not the first scicomm project they've worked on together. One day, after Dr. Davies sat in on one of Dr. Helleman's neuroscience classes, the idea for a teaching app on action potentials – basically how neurons, the building blocks of the brain, work- came to him. And so marked one of their first collaborations. Fast forward to Kim sharing the story of her student's podcast; the project foundations combined with Jim's long-standing interest in starting a podcast made Minding the Brain the natural next step.
Minding the Brain's origin story highlights how Dr. Hellemans and Dr. Davies embody science communication in all parts of their professional lives. And the podcast is but one example of their commitment to education and outreach. In a world where many of us can access endless information at our fingertips, what role is there for scicomm? Our winners argue, rightfully, still a big one. In fact, perhaps more now than ever. Sure, we can find information about any scientific topic or field of study – but what does that information mean? Does information equal knowledge, understanding? How can we sift through the nuances and think critically enough to make sense of it all?
"I'm very very passionate about people who go on the internet…read stuff, think that they're experts in something and have an opinion. Just because they've read information. And the way I say it is that's the equivalent of me reading a textbook on cardiovascular surgery and then waltzing into an OR and thinking that I can do it." - Kim
In an information rich age, we run the risk of being critical thinking poor. And this is a big part of why the podcast is so important to them – especially for the complex and often misunderstood realm of brain science. As they note, translating science for the public is critical – but scientists haven't generally done a good job of this.
Minding the Brain is Jim and Kim's way of helping people better understand the science of the mind and brain – to...
"teach people not only about how minds work but also try to reinforce the idea that there is a science to it at all". Jim
They appreciate the role that good science communication plays in being a trusted source of accurate information that also engages audiences in critical thought.
"So that's one thing I think is great about it – if you have a source that you sort of trust…and we hope that with the podcast we've built that trust." Kim
But talking about science to the public is difficult. Talking about neuroscience and cognitive science in a podcast can be especially challenging given that so much of the learnings are visual in nature - from complex data to literal representations of how brain areas work and connect.
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
So what makes Minding the Brain work? For one, the podcast's multidisciplinary approach: by blending neuroscience with not only a psychology or cognitive science angle, but a philosophical angle too, the podcast doesn't just share information about the brain, it provides a critical lens on that information. We learn about not only the physical brain and how it works, but the mental capacities and experiences that it gives rise to.
Minding the Brain also strikes that difficult balance between making information accessible and engaging, without oversimplifying content or making it gimmicky. These are complicated topics – and we shouldn't deny that. Minding the Brain acknowledges that brain science is complex but communicates complex and scientifically accurate content in a casual, conversational way. Kim and Jim's friendship and recognized histories as educators goes a long way in rounding out the engaging nature of the podcast. Their unique voices and unique perspectives on the mind and brain just make sense. As they say: "the magic is in the conversation".
Dr. Kim Hellemans is an award-winning university instructor, neuroscientist, and Chair of Neuroscience at Carleton University. Her science story starts with her interest in understanding the causes of addiction. In addition to Minding the Brain and her Post Synaptic Simulator app with Dr. Davies, she helps her students run a campaign that aims to decrease stigmas associated with mental health and substance use and runs workshops on addiction stigma with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. Her favourite Minding the Brain episode is "#15: Multitasking"
Dr. Jim Davies is an award-winning scientist, artist, playwright, and author. He runs the Science of Imagination Lab at the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University – the only Cognitive Science department in Canada! He is a long-time member of Science Writers and Communicators of Canada and as a lover of science communication, produces content on how the mind works for a variety of media outlets. His favourite Minding the Brain episode is "#5: Concussions"
They are both always happy to take episode ideas from their listeners!
By: Maria Giammarco
Maria is a Senior Researcher at the Conference Board of Canada where she applies her research skills and background in the behavioural sciences to challenges in education and skills and equity, diversity, and inclusion. On the side She is a Science Borealis co-editor for Science and Society.
Maria holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Guelph; her research focused primarily on understanding the intersection between memory, attention, information processing, and decision-making. She also holds a MSc and HBA from McMaster University where she focused on human psychology and philosophy.
September President's Update - Face Time
27 Sep 2019 12:36 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
Credit: Michael Soledad
I'm fortunate to work with many students at SWCC, and also in my teaching job at Algonquin College. While our day to day conversations focus on learning about writing, when they get to know me I find there is a lot more on their minds.
Will what I'm learning today actually help me get work?
How am I going to make it -- financially and in terms of opportunity -- once I get my degree?
Is there a place for me long-term when so many jobs are changing quickly and are automating?
I'm a poor futurist. After all, I graduated in 2007 with a shiny journalism degree to a sunny industry. Less than eighteen months later, I struggled to find work in the recession -- along with so many of my older colleagues! So I hesitate to offer them certainty or promises. Except in one matter.
The future of your work life will definitely depend on face time, and I don't mean the app. I mean those small connections that you make as you go through your workplaces. Everybody from the admin assistant to the janitor to your colleagues all have their networks and their connections, and the more people you know, the more likely it is you can weather the storm. So talk to everyone. Take them out for coffee. Help them. Learn what pain points you can ease.
I tell students to focus on doing the thing that will make the lives of their boss and colleagues easier. I tell them to be prepared to shift as the industry shifts, and to remember that "communication" does not always mean putting yourself in the journalist or teaching or communication box. You can do all three. (I know this because I do all three.)
Among the young ones, I can see these boundaries between careers already blurring. In an era where the gig economy is at the forefront of our minds, youngsters pick up contracts and use that to leverage themselves into the next one. And the next. And the next. There's saving furiously in between and certainly some income uncertainty, but there's also an element of "You know what? I can keep changing up my career as much as I like in five years, let alone 50."
In a short blog post, I can't capture the amount of worry and of opportunity in this new economy. Stable jobs definitely have, and had, their benefits. But so does entrepreneurship. And as a person who thinks optimistically, or at least tries to, I try to look for the silver lining. And I can't but think there is some good in reinventing yourself once in a while.
Here at SWCC, we regularly go through this reinvention process, too. We used to be an organization of writers, and now we're a more diverse group of people. And I'm always looking for more help in making our workshops and conferences as agile as possible. In the next few weeks, we will announce a couple of livestreams with examples from people who are making their way in this next generation of communication careers -- and I invite you to join in the conversation. If you know an interesting science Canadian communicator who would be glad to share their expertise with us, let us know at president@sciencewriters.ca.
Looking forward to hearing from you online!
August President's Update: Doing the One Thing
30 Aug 2019 9:11 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
Credit: Elizabeth Howell
After I graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of North Dakota earlier this month, many people asked me: How did you do it?
I was of course very lucky. I received partial tuition support and could afford to support any other fees that were required. I have a moderately flexible work schedule and a supportive family. My supervisor, in a word, was awesome.
But when I dug down into these questions by others, I realized that what they were really asking was how I found the motivation for it, on top of working full-time.
It really came down to doing one thing at a time. Literally. Every evening before a weekday, I'd ask myself, "What is the one thing I need to do tomorrow to push the Ph.D. a little further?" (I tried as best as I could not to work weekends; while my husband can attest to the occasional sulky Saturday where I'd be buried in paperwork, really, it wasn't that often.)
The weekday "one thing" sometimes it meant a call with my supervisor. Sometimes it meant a couple of more hours of "coding", or labelling portions of transcripts, for analysis. Sometimes I'd do research with one question in mind to answer, so that I didn't get overwhelmed by the amount of literature.
It's amazing how far a focused hour or two daily of work gets you, if you're lucky enough to have the time for it. Take that effort over seven years, and you might be able to do something remarkable. Me, that's how long it took to finish a Ph.D. But for you, this might mean something even more meaningful.
Perhaps you have a book in you. Or you'd like to build a website. Or you want to mentor students. It doesn't take a full-time commitment to do any of these things. If you treat your life priorities as a small part-time job, working a few hours every week, over time you will see progress.
We have big goals here at SWCC, as well. We're going to run a conference in Ottawa in 2020 and will soon be asking for volunteers -- keep an eye on our website and social media for more details in the fall. Our committees are ramping up activity to work on our website and values and awards. A group of people are helping me go through several decades' worth of SWCC files to decide how best to preserve everything.
These are all huge projects. They do feel overwhelming at times. But I remind myself -- it just takes one thing every day. One thing, build it up with other things, and progress will happen in a few months or years.
Is there one thing you would like to help us with? Send me a note at president@sciencewriters.ca to ask about volunteer opportunities, which includes things such as blog posts, serving on committees or helping with the conference.
Otherwise, I wish you luck in figuring out your "one thing" for the fall!
July President's Update: What #Apollo50 means to me
20 Jul 2019 9:58 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean stands on the surface of the moon in 1969. Credit: NASA
President's Update: What #Apollo50 means to me
I was a space nerd teen. I saw Apollo 13 (the 1995 movie) one day in class and from that, my life path unfolded. I bought all the space books, I watched all the space movies, I attended every local space event I could. There was no Internet in my house for a while (although we lived in Ottawa, it was the 1990s) so I used the library constantly, breaking many plastic bags in the process as I carried loads of heavy space books out the door. All because I wanted the big picture books. Guess we weren't thinking recyclable back then.
Now, suddenly, it's 2019 and the very program that inspired me reached a big birthday today (July 20): 50 years since Apollo 11 and the first epic moon landing. And what astounds me is not only the astronauts who walked on the moon -- but the networks of people it inspired. The youth of yesterday are now the ones telling their stories to the young generation. And I don't just mean those involved in the space program. Heck, the guy installing my bathroom tub this week remembers the moon landing and to this day, he still shares his love of space.
As for where I, that space-crazy teen, ended up after countless moon dreams? I'm (luckily) a freelance space journalist today, for the most part, but I also teach and do communications and have other income streams coming into my business. And lately I've been asking myself, as new president of SWCC: How can I bring this excitement about science to others? How do I get new voices into the field and increase our inclusion? I think back to the SWCC mentors that guided my early career -- the late great Peter Calamai, the always energetic Tim Lougheed, the ever generous Kathryn O'Hara to name a few -- and I realize that answer is time.
It's being there when the young journalist asks about framing story ideas. It's finding a connection when the communications student is looking for a job. It's checking in regularly, to make sure the young scientist who wants to show their work to the public has the support to take the first few tentative steps.
So I'm shifting much of SWCC's efforts in the coming months to more training and event opportunities for all of our members, but most especially the young ones seeking networks and opportunities. We will have livestreams on our website. We will have occasional live events in major cities. Our annual conference will continue -- in Ottawa in 2020 -- but the hope is that we can see each other more often, and learn from each other. So watch this space. It's going to be active, and hopefully interesting.
I want to be as inclusive as possible in my ideas in connecting people with each other. Our country is filled with people with different backgrounds, different experiences, different languages, and I am trying to give voice to as many perspectives about science as I can. As such, I invite you to contribute to our revitalized blog. Please send your posts to office@sciencewriters.ca.
Keep looking up!
"Be enthusiastic!" and other SciComm highlights from Winnipeg 2019
07 Jun 2019 1:41 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
By: Jay Whetter
Eureka! You just discovered how to clean up the Earth and save lots of lives. But if you speak about the breakthrough in a dull monotone, betraying its value with your lack of emotion, it may not get the attention it deserves. You certainly won't get a spot on CBC's Quirks and Quarks. "You have to be enthusiastic!" the radio show host Bob McDonald implored to his audience during his closing keynote address at the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada conference in Winnipeg.
Think about the science conversations you remember. They're the interviews where the investigators are fired up about their work. You latch on to the rising voice, bright eyes and arm gestures, and you can't help but engage in the conversation and absorb the message. Enthusiasm is an essential science communication tool.
Bob McDonald's "Be enthusiastic!" was one of many scicomm tips and tools from the Winnipeg 2019 conference. I gathered another 12:
Be as 'open' as you can be. If you are the communications lead for a research lab in an urban area where people might be nervous about the work, be exceeding open. That is the communications approach for the National Microbiology Lab, which houses the world's most infectious and dangerous pathogens within a residential neighbourhood in Winnipeg's core. During a pre-conference tour, Jana Wilson, Health Canada communications advisor at the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health, which houses the NML, shared two of their community communication techniques.
Every five years the facility holds an open house. Guests don't get into high risk areas, obviously, but they get to enter the building, see the bright space, talk to the staff and experience the general calm of the place. Just before our tour, the facility had its 20th anniversary open house. Three thousand people came.
The lab's other communication cornerstone is to send out a news release any time something happens in the lab that breaches the strict employee and public safety safeguards. For example, they sent out a release after a scientist handling ebola didn't realize he had a two centimetre tear in his protective suit. It was addressed immediately, he was tested (and was fine), but the lab alerted the public anyway. Why? Because while this announcement might raise some questions in the short term, it would be much, much worse if the public found out through an 'access to information' application, Wilson says.
Acknowledge your bias. Indigenous Elder Wilfred Buck, who provided the opening keynote on Indigenous knowledge and the cosmos, reminded us that no one is unbiased. We all have our notions of how things should be and how people should behave, often based on our own life experiences and influences. Buck encourages us to recognize this bias and try to put it aside when reporting, especially on Indigenous topics. (As a #scicomm bonus, Buck was also wearing a T-shirt that read "Periodically speaking: TaNSi" with the Ta (tantalum), N (nitrogen) and Si (silicon) in periodic table squares. 'Tansi' is a Cree greeting, like 'Hello'.)
Explore without an agenda, see where it takes you. This was my 'take home' from the presentation, "Developing trust with communities when reporting on Indigenous issues," by Martha Troian and David McLeod. Their talk built on Buck's message about bias. They encouraged reporters to visit Indigenous communities without a story angle or a short deadline for a quick soundbite. Instead, take time to build trust, talk to people and let the narrative take its own shape. Troian and McLeod recommend this website: Reporting in Indigenous Communities.
Write a book. Kevin Brownlee, curator of archaeology at the Manitoba Museum, shared excerpts from his latest book, Stories of the Old Ones: Hunter and Fisher from Sheltered Water. A description on the Manitoba Museum website reads: 'Four thousand years ago in southeastern Manitoba, a young man we call the Hunter and Fisher from Sheltered Water was laid to rest by his relatives along the shores of the Lee River. The discovery of his remains and personal belongings led to the development of a collaborative research project between Sagkeeng Anicinabe Government and the Manitoba Museum. This book chronicles the project from the recovery, study, and reburial of this Ancestor.'
Get a PowerPoint mentor. Marianne Marcoux's PowerPoint on her narwhal research was well organized, multi-media (including an audio clip of narwhal conversation) and visually very attractive. In an email afterward, I asked how she learned to use PowerPoint so effectively?
"About 12 years ago, when I was a Ph.D. student, I was invited to give a talk on narwhals to a group of about 100 high school students as part of an event at the Coeur des Sciences in Montreal. The director, Sophie Malavoy, who is a science communicator and also provides training, went through my talk with me a couple of weeks before the event. We worked on it together and she gave me tricks to engage the students and use story telling. She is an amazing communicator and was very enthusiastic about my research. I learned a lot from this experience and it gave me confidence to give more talks. I have also noticed that people find the journey to getting scientific data as interesting as the science data itself. I try to use that in my talks."
As a follow up, I asked Marcoux how she checks to make sure embedded videos work properly. "For the SWCC talk, I arrived 30 minutes before the beginning of the session to test it. It turned out that the videos did not work. However, I usually have a back-up plan. I had brought my own computer so I was able to play the videos from it. It is also good to have the videos separately from the PowerPoint as a backup. It is usually possible to get out of the PowerPoint presentation to play videos." She shares this video, which highlights some of the clips she used in her talk.
Try something different. Radio stations and real estate agents plaster buses with their faces, but have you ever heard of a research project doing that? John Iacozza, executive director with the Centre for Earth Observation Science, shared some of the communications tools they used to promote Expedition Churchill: A Gateway to Arctic Research. One was to wrap a Via Rail train car with an ad for the program.
When you're constantly under fire, try to broaden perspectives. Trish Jordan worked for 20 years as the communications point person for Monsanto Canada. (She now works for Bayer CropScience, which bought Monsanto.) In a panel on "How to break through to consumers with truth vs myth on science and health", Jordan shared her experience on how to engage positively when most incoming calls are attacks. "It's not necessarily about trying to change viewpoints," Jordan says, "but to broaden perspectives when engaging in conversation about difficult, science-based topics.
Can you get folks to consider that things may not be like they think or like what they have come to believe?" Jordan also calls on journalists to help the public to "get risk right", to help people understand where an issue fits within the environmental and health risk perspectives.
Be careful with oversimplification. We may need to 'dumb down' complex scientific concepts for a mass audience, but this simplification still has to be accurate. And that's not so easy. Michel Aliani studies metabolism at the University of Manitoba. As part of his presentation, he showed a wildly complex map of the body's chemical metabolic pathways for specific lipids, sugars, amino acids, vitamins and more. The body runs on endogenous compounds (which are already present in the body) and exogenous compounds (which may come from diet as well as drugs and medications), and most of these compounds are shown on the map.
In his presentation, he circled 20 areas within this graphic where obesity is known to affect metabolic pathways. Aliani says a study that looks at only one of these pathways might be missing the bigger picture. For science communications on human health and nutrition, he recommends that journalists ask the researchers which metabolites are up-regulated and which are down-regulated with the treatment studied. If the research project didn't have the objective or the budget to dig into the whole metabolism complex, ask how this study advances the breadth of our metabolic knowledge. This context is important. "All of these pathways are known. Nothing happens in the body in isolation. So the idea that we can study one of these compounds or pathways without considering the whole-body effect is naive in 2019," Aliani says. "Journalists want the simple story, but to achieve simplicity in a way that is correct and accurate is a real art. Accurate reporting relies on teamwork between the journalist and the scientist."
More is not better if you have to use tiny fonts. Visual design is an important part of communication, and one major design faux pas is the use of tiny fonts to pack more information into a poster or slide. This makes your communication worse, not better, says Julia Krolik, who shared broad tips for good design in a 30-minute pre-lunch presentation. Krolik is the founder of Art the Science and Pixels & Plans.
Other notable Krolik tips: White space is good. Use symmetry and consistency in column width, font size and typeface. Avoid underlines for emphasis (people will think it's a link). Don't right-hand justify because it can create odd-looking 'rivers' of space through a paragraph.
Don't undervalue your work. I didn't get to the Freelance Skill Share Extraordinaire, so I asked session leads Lesley Evans Ogden and Niki Wilson to provide a few common threads. Money was a big one. "Don't work for low pay. Charge what you're worth," Ogden Evans says.
Other tips: Know a publication's editorial calendar and its writer's guidelines before pitching. Find a trusted friend or group to workshop pitches with. Be a reliable, dependable writer. And network."One other thing that came out strongly," Wilson says, "is the need to find a mentor that can really guide you through the world of writing and freelancing, and maybe even introduce you to some people in the industry." Ogden Evans and Wilson have an idea along these lines for Ottawa 2020, so stay tuned.
Use charm – if you've got it. Jean-Eric Ghia opened his talk with the usual "How are you?" but with a twist. When Ghia, a gut researcher, asks "How are you?", he wants to know if you had a good poop today. His words. Ghia, who moonlights as the Consulate of France for Winnipeg, effectively used his charm and wit to keep the audience engaged. Science doesn't have to be stuffy. Humour and charm, in natural and small doses, can make for memorable presentations and a breakthrough in communications.
Follow good live-tweeters and learn from them. I got an unexpected lesson in live tweeting while going back over Rhonda Moore's Twitter feed @R_mmoore. I was looking for one tweet in particular and found so much 'moore'. (Does a pun count as a small dose of humour?) She captured dozens of tour highlights, presentation slides and dynamite quotes. If you can't attend a conference but @R_mmoore is there, just follow her Twitter feed. She might not have time for much live-tweeting at next year's @SWC_Can conference in Ottawa – she's an organizer – but the rest of us have a year to practice.
Some of my most memorable moments from the conference came during the side conversations. This networking is often the best reason to attend a conference in person. I met Meghan Azad, who researches the breast-milk microbiome and mother-to-baby and (surprise!) baby-to-mother sharing of beneficial microbes. She pitched her discovery to Quirks & Quarks and they interviewed her.
Sharon Basaraba, whose questions coaxed a lot of dig-deeper conversations throughout the event, also reminded me that it's OK to take time to balance work and family.
During our 'Dine Around' supper at Peasant Cookery in Winnipeg's Exchange District, Carolyn Brown, who has done a lot of work in Mexico, shared a few Nahuatl words in common use today. The old Indigenous language of Mexico gave us the words avocado, tomato, coyote, cocoa and more.
As my final example, I present Phil Ferguson, space systems engineer. He explained to me, a farm journalist, how researchers are programming satellites and drones to read large farm-field images and work together to provide targeted useful information without humans having to sort through terabyte-sized files. He also suggested that, when it comes to aerospace research and investment, we might advance more quickly if researchers could take a few more chances and have a little more scope to fail. Ferguson has the most awesome beard and waxed moustache, but what really stood out for me was his enthusiasm. He provided strong supporting evidence that Bob McDonald's "Be enthusiastic!" advice works to bring your work to a broader audience. I will be talking with Ferguson again.
I'll close with a paraphrase of another line from Bob McDonald: "Canada needs more science communicators". I encourage anyone with an interest in science communications to attend the annual Science Writers and Communicators of Canada conference. Being there in person expands your personal and our collective breadth of knowledge, communication skills and community. With colleagues and mentors and friends from across the country improving together, we strengthen the #SciComm community and hopefully create a welcome home for more science communicators. See you in Ottawa in 2020.
Jay Whetter grew up on a farm in Manitoba, attended journalism school and has worked 20 years as a farm journalist. A big part of his job is taking new agriculture science and sharing it with farmers. His Twitter handles are @CanolaWatch and @KenoraJay.
If you have more highlights from Winnipeg 2019 or ideas for Ottawa 2020, share them with the SWCC at office@sciencewriters.ca or on Facebook @SWCCanada.
2019 Elected Slate of Directors
30 Apr 2019 8:30 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
Please give a warm welcome to this year's Elected Slate of Directors.
Elizabeth Howell - President
Patchen Barss - Director
Aniruddho Chokroborty-Hoque - Director
Carolyn Fell - Director
Julia Krolik - Director
Rhonda Moore - Director
Michelle Riedlinger - Director
Michael Robin - Director
Marg Sheridan - Director
Natasha Waxman - Director
Jay Whetter - Director
Richard Zurawski - Director
Meet our incoming board and read their bios.
Tweet @SWC_Can
Hold The Date!
#SWCCan2019
P.O. Box 75 Station A
M5W 1A2