Our second meeting of the year started with a new round of introductions for the club members for whom this was their first meeting. Then we launched into an icebreaker game where attendees had to give a Powerpoint presentation… without knowing what the Powerpoint slides were! This game, a staple of the previous iteration of this group, the Science Communication Graduate Student Association, is a fun way to practice thinking on your feet and embracing the spontaneity that is sometimes necessary in different realms of science communication, like interviewing, researching, and taking questions from an audience. The slides were random photos we found online put into a Powerpoint slideshow that auto-advanced every 5 seconds. Participants had to quickly come up with a narrative to tie the slides together and hilarity generally ensured. Embracing awkwardness is surprisingly important in interviews especially and this game helped us learn how to do that better.
After the icebreaker, club member Ben Zino led us in a discussion about his experience in science YouTube. Ben, an undergrad here at NC State, is the brains behind the popular YouTube channel “The Wild Report,” which has more than 10,000 subscribers.
The channel is devoted to documenting the wildlife that lives right in our backyards and focuses in particular on the reptiles and amphibians of the southeast. Ben talked about how he got started in science video production, what kinds of equipment he uses, and how he has managed to build such a large following all while staying on top of his schoolwork. At the end of the meeting, Ben took questions about his presentation and we got to watch clips from some of the videos. If you’re not following The Wild Report already, go hit subscribe!
