Enlightenment by way of Festival

 I’m planning the first annual Maine Science Festival (scheduled for March 20-22, 2015), and had the opportunity to attend the first few days of the Cambridge Science Festival, accompanied by my 14-year old son. I figured that it would be interesting: I’d see what CSF has on offer, my son could scope out different events, and it would be nice to  just wander about. In short, I thought it would be fun, but probably not impact our planning all that much, since we’ve been in the planning stages for the MSF for over two years.  I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was way more than interesting – it was vital! As I said, we’ve been planning the MSF for well over 2 years, and I think we all feel like we have a pretty good handle on what makes up a good festival. The Bangor region (where the MSF will be located) has a successful track record of putting on brand new festivals, rallying the area and community to help out, and drawing visitors from all over the state and beyond. What could I possibly glean from CSF that we hadn’t already figured out? It seemed like a nice time to take a short vacation with my son, see some excellent science, learn a few things, and use it as further inspiration for our own festival. At least I was right about the last one.  By actually going to CSF, I started to realize what we could and couldn’t do at our festival. For example, we’re planning on having a ballroom filled with hands-on activities, like the CSF Science Carnival. Originally, we thought that we would have the same layout and setup on both Saturday and Sunday of our 2-and-a-half day festival. But, when I attended the CSF’s Science Carnival, I realized that that would not work: the Science Carnival was great, but probably not enough to draw most people back two days in row – at least not the one we were putting together. So, as a direct result of my experience at CSF, we’re planning on having a different focus for each day: hands-on yes, but with different programming and talks as well.  The other “ah-ha” moment I had was during the kick off event, “Big Ideas for Busy People.” I’ve always been intrigued by this CSF event, and wowed by the scientists listed in each year’s program. Heavy hitters from leading research universities and institutions – it sounded so extraordinary, and seemed so reliant on CSF’s location in one of the most scientifically intense cities in the world, that I figured this would be my only chance to experience a night of incredible science in 10 minute slots. “Big Ideas for Busy People” did not disappoint; in fact, it was even better than I had hoped. Not because the ideas and researchers exceeded my expectations (they did). But, because I realized that the Maine Science Festival could also provide the same kind of “Wow!” moments that had been fostered by CSF. In Maine, not only do we have amazing, world-class, leading research going on (something I have been spending much of my day communicating), we can use the same format to highlight these “rock star” scientists, and give them a chance to explain their work and their passion. The CSF event made me realize that we don’t need to be located in one of the world’s most scientifically saturated places to talk about the world-changing work being done; we just have to continue to highlight what it is that scientists are doing every day.  The Cambridge Science Festival gave me the opportunity to really “get” our tagline: Science is everywhere!