October 23 was our first meeting of the year and our first meeting as a new group! We started off the meeting with a few icebreakers to get to know each other better, and each attendee shared their interest in science communication and what they hoped to get out of the group. Our group included grad students, undergrads and faculty with interests in science storytelling that ran the gamut from nature video production to science-inspired music videos. We also passed around Oreos. Ben Zino, for correctly guessing the number of Calories in the Oreo container, received the first book giveaway of the year.
We then played a game using the online word processor Up-Goer 5, which underlines in red words that are not among the “ten hundred” most used words in the English language. For the game, meeting attendees paired up and had to describe a complicated scientific process as clearly as they could only using those 1,000 words. It was a great and hilarious exercise in making our scientific communication more simple, and less jargon-y. Some of the processes we had to describe included: a hiccup, a platypus, the Heliocentric Theory, and instructions for making bread.
We then spent the remainder of the meeting learning about the nuts and bolts of freelancing, from group President, Bradley Allf. Bradley described what popular science publications are looking for in a story, how to develop such a story, and how to pitch that story to a news outlet or magazine, and how to then go and write that story. Bradley also explored the topic of interviewing, and how to ask better questions of your sources, as well as what kinds of rates to expect as a freelance science writer.
