Rhythm 1: Leaving a space for response
There should have been a post yesterday, because I am trying to posting every weekday at the moment. But there wasn’t. I didn’t have time to create and put up the right piece. I thought about pasting in anything, just to meet my own challenge, but there’s a greater issue. Creating a post is only one part of the cycle. The audience response is the next part. When I’ve worked on creating online research groups, I’ve seen a temptation for researchers to put up questions daily. It can work, but if it’s the wrong rhythm for your group, people who have...
Read MoreOnline science and Beyond Blogging
This past Wednesday was Beyond Blogging, a workshop/brainstorming session held at the Wellcome Trust and hosted by Shane McCracken and Sophia Collins of ‘I’m a Scientist – Get Me Out of Here’. Some thoughts It was an interesting day. I don’t know all that many folk in the science communication world, so it was great to put names to faces. The event also brought together people with very different backgrounds in engagement, including a number of people with hardcore geek credentials. Overall, I found the discussion more useful than the eventual brainstorming,...
Read MoreFluffy frameworks
I gave a brief presentation at the 2010 Science Communication conference yesterday, talking about the work that I did with the Sanger Institute on professional development in science communication. You can download the report here. The very concept of a framework was quite worrying to some people, for all sorts of reasons. In bureaucratic-leaning organisations, things on paper can often take on a life of their own. Personally I like frameworks because they help organise my thinking, but they shouldn’t stand alone. They are not the Thing Itself, they are support for the Thing....
Read MoreBackstage peformances
I’ve been re-reading Erving Goffman, who wrote a seminal wee book called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, in which Goffman wrote about our daily life as a series of performances – and indeed, a constant shifting between formal performances on the big stage, and informal ‘backstage’ chitchat. I’ve been working on a social media project for the last few weeks, and one thing that strikes me is the loss of backstage in internet-mediated conversation. It used to be that you had a bad day and you moaned about it to your sympathetic friends over a...
Read MoreSome thoughts on learning new science
I’m now half-way through my Higher Certificate in Genetics. The course is run by the redoubtable Institute of Continuing Education at Cambridge, and every Tuesday evening for the last two terms, I’ve been knuckling down with about 15 other mature students to learn about DNA and modern evidence for evolution. It’s been interesting. I was a straight-arts student at school, fairly steeped in language, literature and history, who went on to do experimental psychology at university. To my friends in Art History or German, I was Nearly A Scientist (Although Weird). ...
Read MoreTeleclasses and online workshops: the next revolution
In the midst of all the loud talk about the latest trends in social media - like the ongoing obsession with location-based services – it’s interesting to notice a quiet business revolution taking place in other corners of the net. You may already be aware of services in say, marketing coaching or personal growth, often offered as teleclasses linked to highly successful business blogs. So, for example, you can sign up for a marketing teleclass with Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz, or go for the rather wonderfully-named Virtual Retreat offered by Jennifer Louden. I do believe...
Read MoreManifesto
Some of us find it quite simple to put our real organisations and authentic selves online.
Others - well, let's just say that some of us can't bear to look at our own websites.
My mission is to help you transform your online presence so that other people understand and appreciate what you really have to offer. So that you can achieve what you want - whether that's better engagement, more readers, or more sales.