News & Updates

Science events professionals are a wild bunch of individuals. Which, considering what we all do for a living, makes sense. With such a wide variation in our practice, it's hard enough to describe what we do and how we do it with people inside our field, but for "outsiders" it can feel like a near impossibility. How do you encompass the scope of not just your own work, but the context provided by the field itself?

When I first got into science education and communication, I went to a number of academic conferences for my work. I still attend these meetings, but after eight years of meeting and networking with many of the same professionals and seeing recycled sessions in many forms, I was starting to reach a point of burn out. That’s not anything negative about the people or the topics at these meetings, but rather, about my learning capacity and ability to reflect. In fact, I still love getting together with my colleagues, but sometimes it’s exhausting, both mentally and physically to put together sessions, networking meetings, and zip on my people suit for four straight days.