I made one promise to myself for this BPS meeting: Get uncomfortable! This means going to workshops and career development sessions that involve participating in activities which might make me slightly uncomfortable. So, on this Subgroup Saturday, I left my usual Motility and Cytoskeleton Subgroup to go learn how to tell my scientific story in the “Scientific Story Telling: What’s Your Story” session. Led by some expert scientific communicators Joe Palca and Madeline Sofia from NPR along with Lesley Earl of NCI at NIH, we as a group of scientists in a wide array of topics worked together to breakout of our jargon chains with the aim of becoming better communicators.

For this session, we were divided into tables and were given the assignment of explaining our research in two minutes, with feedback given by our fellow group members. Now this might mean explaining your work to a fellow biophysicist or to your grandma who never took a biology class in her life. So, first tip of the day was know your audience. Simple but important. Second tip of the day is know your goal. If I’m talking to a fellow graduate student I might want their advice on a method or technique but if I’m talking to my eight-year-old cousin, I want to get him excited about science. These goals need very two very different approaches. Next on the list is eliminate jargon. One of the hardest things to do when you have spent years learning a whole new language of technical terms. One way to do these is using metaphors! And during the practice of our two-minute stories, we found not all metaphors work and sometimes too many can lead to confusion but when you found the right one, its golden. Ultimately when speaking to a general audience or an expert in the field, it’s important to tell a story! You need a beginning, middle and end. Proper structure keeps an audience listening. And so does being enthusiastic! No one wants to listen to someone who sounds bored with their own topic. We want Bill Nye level enthusiasm people! And the last tip of the day, practice practice practice! In just two rounds of attempts, each of us at the table had greatly improved from our first attempt at the two-minute speech, armed with just the feedback from each other.

After this two-hour session, there was also a Q&A session with Joe and Madeline from NPR. This informal networking session brought up a wide variety of topics but most importantly, that scientist need to become more effective communicators, so we can be better advocates of science. And in the current pollical climate, it is even more important to become active science advocates. The media can only do so much to help our cause but really it is up to us to inspire and encourage people to believe in the importance and power of science. If each of us, took some time to talk to a non-scientist about our own research, not only telling them about cool science but putting a real life human behind the science, together we can make a big impact. Individually, we each study a very small piece of science but together we create a wealth of knowledge that has uncovered very big discoveries from the laws of gravity to vaccines for cancer. This is what we are good at people! Taking small steps to help an ultimately bigger cause. The same can be said about science communication. Individually, we can take small steps to inspire those around us but together as a community, we can make impacts on the public’s perception of science and the scientists doing the work. With that in mind, pick up a “Ask me about my research” button near the registration desk and start a conversion about science!

Also, if you are looking for a good burrito not that far from the convention center, try Taqueria Mana! I figured I should end strong…

--Mara Olenick