SciCombobulated - BIG Event 2009

I'm aware this site is a bit broken, incidentally

2009-07-24T18:42:47Z

Bits of it work. Bits don't. But the hour or so I hoped to find to polish it up a little before the Event began was somewhat torpedoed by the Ri's wifi being down. Once we were underway, keeping up with everything was tough enough -- posting was harder -- getting anyone else signed up when I wasn't sure if it actually worked? Well, that wasn't going to happen.

But hey, the point of doing this was to start climbing the learning curve. Turns out it's not quite as trivial as I'd hoped.

Home again, home again

2009-07-24T18:14:20Z

Jiggity-jig?

Not quite. I’ve had a blast, some good arguments, and feel a smidge of remorse for having being rather negative about the ISOTOPE project. I hope at least some of my criticism was positive. I’ll write it up here and you can judge for yourself.

Also to come over the weekend, hopefully:

A write-up of the Corporate Social Responsibility session run by Laura Grant and nearly screwed up by me. We think we got away with it, and I’ve come away with clear action points, which is always a good thing, I feel. Lorraine Kenny of Thinktank noted something that was forehead-slappingly obvious which I think made all of us feel a bit thick.
Some notes on Elin Robert’s Flame On show from the Centre for Life. Top feedback afterwards, getting into some very fine details. Great stuff.
Photos from the dinner last night. If I can find the memory card.
Coverage of the Best Demo Competition. Quick crib: won by Ian Simmons of the Centre for Life with his bacon lance. Lee Patterson and Helen Lloyd picked up commendations in what was a startlingly good year.
Oh, you know, more. Doubtless.

An open letter to the Science Museum

2009-07-23T13:35:53Z

The following is posted on behalf of BIG delegate Alom Shaha.

Dear Science Museum,

I am a science teacher at a secondary school in north London. I watched your “Danger High Voltage” show at the BIG event on Wednesday 22nd July and I am sorry to report that I won’t be booking you for my school. I was deeply disappointed by the show, as were many of other people who watched. I’d like to share with you some of the reasons why I wouldn’t want my students to see it.

My concerns are primarily at the levels of structure and detail, rather than performance. Giving explainers a show of this standard is asking too much of them; as a result, their performances, in my opinion, lacked sincerity.

Specific concerns:

Science wrong or inadequately explained: There were numerous factual errors in the script and in the animations you showed on screen.
Disappointing or inappropriate demonstrations: The Tesla coil is an impressive piece of apparatus, but, on its own, is not sufficient to make for a truly exciting demo-based show. You missed the opportunity to show a number of classic static electricity demonstrations, which would have been more informative and entertaining than the approach you took. I was not alone in finding your use of the Faraday cage at the end of the show confusing. I’m not sure that it was even explained.
The audience participation seemed largely gratuitous. It needn’t be. When done well, audience participation can help people to engage more deeply with the subject you’re presenting.
The tone of the show was strange. It felt like it was trying too hard to be funny and that this was the show’s main goal.

You can probably respond to my criticisms by telling me that you’ve had positive feedback from thousands of children and their teachers. I’m sure you have — children love a break from their lessons and teachers love it when other people come in and take up lesson time. It’s easy to amuse a bunch of kids for an hour or so — I do it on a regular basis. But I also teach them stuff.

As I said at the start of this letter, I was disappointed by your show; “The Science Museum” is a recognised brand, one that teachers like myself associate with quality in science communication. I’m not a marketing expert, but I suspect that a show of the quality presented at the BIG event would, if seen widely, “damage your brand”. To be honest, I don’t care about this, but I do care about the standard of educational material that is presented to young people, so I hope you’ll take on board some of the comments above and make the appropriate changes to your show.

Yours,

Alom Shaha

Too much fun being a puffin...

2009-07-23T10:16:15Z

...to post this morning. Also: too much single malt during an entertaining argument with Noel last night. Feeling a bit fragile. Such is the way of BIG.

More later.

(The puffin, by the way, is a performance/voice exercise from Elin Roberts of the Centre for Life. It's just ridiculous enough.)

Victorian entertainment

2009-07-22T21:03:05Z

After a brief sojourn in the pub, we reconvened in the Ri for an hour of classic demos - making one's own entertainment, BIG-style. Top stuff. Rubbish write-up of it, though, as I'm wrecked and have just sat down in a cafe for a pizza.

Will try to post pics later. There's video, but you've stuff all chance of getting that out of me tonight.

Quality

2009-07-22T15:28:25Z

It’s rather hard to capture what’s going on here, what with multiple strands and all. But we’ve had a nice thread this afternoon about quality, and raising standards. Glasgow Science Centre presented their performance feedback approach, which is reassuringly straightforward and prompted interesting discussions about quality expectations.

…which fed rather nicely into Andy Lloyd’s session on excellence, drawing comparisons from the arts sector. Ironically, I missed half of that because I was having a discussion in the corridor about how important it would be to have a discussion about… er… the same thing. That’ll teach me to read the programme.

Continuing the theme of ‘deep discussions in the corridors,’ however, I’ve just had a rather head-bending chat with Jen de Witt of Kings and theatre director/consultant Stephen Wrentmore. Key points I want to remember:

I’m glad we haven’t got central funding. We wouldn’t know what to do with it.
If we were genuinely brilliant at what we do, we’d find it easier to criticise each other. That we find it hard is likely a damning indictment of where we are now.
Name a science centre that’s presenting an image of clear, dynamic leadership, raising the quality bar and making the rest of us quake in our boots. Why isn’t there one?
The business model for investing in quality products is clear; if we only invest enough to produce shows, say, that are ‘good enough for the next six months,’ we’ll eventually wither and die. Delivering progressively better work is a route to, in a decade, being able to say ‘look, this stuff is clearly brilliant. Here’s our research to explain why we ditched all this other stuff; here’s the improvement we see; here’s where we go next.’ In short: we’re investing in having a plausible pitch in a decade’s time.
Suppose we made a stunningly clear case for funding, in ten year’s time. What, exactly, are we working towards? Something like the Arts Council? Or more like 4ip? Or… what? Wouldn’t it help if we discussed what we’re after?
It’s a process. Funding — whether now or in the future — is simply a waypoint.

This may all sound a bit head-in-hands dour. That’s not the mood here. It feels like the discussion has moved on rather dramatically from the session Paul McCrory and I did last year (‘You’re all Rubbish!’), and that people are much more keen to discuss peer review, shared goals, and ongoing vision. I’m very excited about what I’ve seen today. I’m not sure what it’s for, yet, but that’s not the point.

Performance controversy

2009-07-22T15:12:37Z

I wrote recently about the odd position the Science Museum is in, and they’ve stirred a bit of controversy here with an electricity show they’ve showcased. I’m going to try to get Alom Shaha — the angry young man behind WhyScience.co.uk — to write a bit of a critique, because he’s fizzing with rage about it.

Mind you, he’s often fizzing with rage. I think he enjoys it.

David talks to the police

2009-07-22T15:09:12Z

This isn't quite how the curtain-raising science busking in Green Park was supposed to turn out.

Grand opening

2009-07-22T14:57:40Z

BIG Chair Noel Jackson gets proceedings underway in the Faraday Theatre

We're back

2009-07-22T14:55:10Z

If you're reading this, the wifi is back up. Will try to bring some reports and pics in the next few minutes, from the back of Andy Lloyd's session on excellence.

BIG Event group blog is go! (ish)

2009-07-22T08:39:16Z

In the grand BIG tradition of bodging things at the last minute with gaffer tape, here's a group blog that may - if, you know, other people get involved - help people follow this week's BIG Event. I'm sitting on a train on my way to London as I write this, so it's not entirely clear whether it's going to work. Regardless: onward!

If you're present at the Ri, sign up here and prod me to grant you access. I have a couple of spare laptops with me if you left yours behind, and for lashing together YouTube video or wrangling stills.

Alternatively, tweets with the hashtag #big09 will be pulled into this page. I'm working to make the output a bit less rubbish, but no promises there.

Let's see how it goes.

Test post!

2009-07-22T07:15:52Z

There is, National Express East Coast assure us, WiFi available throughout the train. Technically, they're right. However, I've seen faster transfer rates with two bean tins, a length of string, and a couple of teenagers shouting 'one! zero! one! one! one! zero!'.

Nevertheless, there's something resembling progress in getting this site going. Next up: trying to make the hashtag search results less ugly.