We, scientists, when wanting to communicate science always end up either presenting a talk in conferences, seminars or giving ‘progress’ reports in our laboratories. Believe it or not, we all feel comfortable in our tiny worlds surrounded by pipettes, lab journals and computer screens. However, due to recent amendments in science policies, restricted funding issues and problems like climate change, its high time to come out from our small cocoon and raise awareness about science to general public. In fact, we did- millions marched together on the streets around the world on the earth day just for a better future.
On the same line, Pint of Science, a non-profit organization which was first initiated by two young researchers from Imperial College London in 2012, has the aim to bring science closer to the society. Within the span of a few years, the idea spread and currently 155 cities in 12 countries from all over the world have joined the same motto. The event is organized by enthusiastic volunteers and always takes place in the relaxed atmosphere of a bar which stimulates a more dynamic and direct interaction between speakers and audience. This makes Pint of Science, a unique platform for scientists to share their current research to the general public in the city.
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We, a group of four PhD students, hosted the event “Pint of Science festival” for the very first time in our lovely and student-friendly city of Münster, Germany. To begin with, we faced many challenges! It was a learning experience that left many memories to cherish. Our great relief was us “The team”, and having support from each other. Truly, while organizing this event, I once again realized the importance of great team work that seem to be able to build empires from scratch. We became almost regular customers of coffee shops during our tea breaks and had lot of fun while discussing about the upcoming events. Our discussions would even extend over dinner, even after full workday in the lab. We divided the event into three different topics namely: Insights into disease models, Society-from past to future and Atoms to galaxies, in order to attract a diverse audience. Soon, it was the time to invite speakers. In Physics and Biology it was rather easy to get confirmed speakers as we ourselves have our backgrounds from these fields. However, during that time we also realized the big gap between natural science and humanities studies, that need to be filled. It took us quite a while to arrange speakers for our society session.
After the program was finalized, the second step was to announce the event! We spammed everybody with emails, our graduate school newsletters, posters all over the city and the world via human inventions of social media like Facebook and LinkedIn posts. We also created a Facebook event and I still remember how we checked Facebook notifications everyday and celebrated each like on the page. We had our own official photographer and also a special violin duet as a musical intermission. Days and months passed and time for the final show came.
On the day of the event, we reached the venue first to set up everything and so did our speakers and finally the talks were projected on the screen. Together, we were all curiously awaiting people to show up. Our minds were full of random thoughts, ‘What if no one comes ? ’ ‘What if we have made a mistake?’ After waiting for few minutes, few of our friends arrived first. That was a very different feeling, seeing them at that moment compared to our general hangouts. We were more boosted up now and within few minutes the whole venue was full and we were looking around for an extra chair to fit in. Talks began with the clinking of the beer mugs. During the three days of science festival, we witnessed great interactive talks ranging from drug screening for Parkinson, to energy and climate change policies, from archaeological excavations and to solar meteorites. It was a totally different environment. We all felt more connected to the speakers and their projects compared to our typical science conferences. To be frank, I also asked a lot of silly questions during the talks and during the breaks which I hardly remember doing in previous conferences that I attended. Last but not the least, for the first time in my life, I touched a real meteorite, that was just an amazing experience.
If I read out loud some of the feedback comments from our audience, I feel that everyone very much appreciated our effort and was very glad to get an opportunity to hear talks from different fields, to get more involved. And of course, we all enjoyed the beer! In fact, we already have a list of interested volunteers who would love to be the part of our team for next year. Not only, the audience but also the speakers admired the concept and were glad they participated. However, during one of the days of the event, one speaker turned to the audience and asked ‘How many of you are not students ? ‘. Surprisingly (or not-surprisingly) we had very few hands up in the air but I was extremely happy to see one of the waiters from the bar sitting among the audience, even though it was his free workday. Certainly, the event created whispers and ripples of curiosity in the surroundings of the bar. But we are still miles away from bringing science closer to the major chunk of public audience, to motivate them, and to make them understand what we are doing inside these fancy laboratories. We also realized the dilemma of the language barrier, and wondered if talks in German would have been more appealing to the local people of the city, although not the best option for the international students. We will need to think about it and come up with better strategies to attract and entertain a diverse audience: locals and internationals, science people and a general interested public.
Overall, we had a great experience, thanks to the idea of Pint of Science! As PhD students, we had a great opportunity to actually execute and practice networking, team building, problem solving, risk management, project management, science communication that already makes a whole business management book. Well, I have already made a new folder on my computer named “Pint of Science-2018” so, stay tuned!
Just for the Laughs….
About the Author:
Abhiyan is currently pursuing his PhD at University of Muenster, Germany. He considers himself a very social and international person, who is trying to find and establish harmony between science, society and arts. He loves connecting with different people and learning, sharing ideas with them.
Edited by: Neha Bhutani
Featured Image by: Vinita Bharat
Disclaimer- the logo in the cartoon is a registered trademark of Pint of Science.
This work by ClubSciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
