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Tag: Communication
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100 Hours of Astronomy is set to be the single largest astronomy outreach event in the History of Humankind. Over 1 million people are expected to attend more than 1500 events, in 130 countries of almost all continents (I guess we couldn't sell the idea to the penguins). So how did we manage to get here? Well, hard work, that's for sure! But how many hard working people do you know that never seem to get noticed?That just can't seem to reach those that matter? Let me tell you our secret... Communication! Like the title says, "is the name of the game". All of us at 100 Hours are science communicators in one way or another, which means we have to talk to everybody and reach everybody. We're part politician, part scientists, part journalists, part teachers, all mixed into one. If we need to get funds, we are politicians. If we are talking to the public, then we're teachers or scientists. If we want to get our message to the world, we have to be journalists... ...and we're also none of those. To scientists and teachers, we're more like journalists. To journalists and politicians, we're scientists. But I digress. For the success of 100 Hours of Astronomy, one of the things we had to do was reach the media. And that's hard, because most of us have no journalism background, so we don't know what a journalist is after or how do they think. Last week I was privileged enough to attend a Science Communication Workshop in Dubrovnik (Croatia) for people involved in the IYA2009. For 2,5 days Professor Steve Miller the other ESConet trainers "grilled" into us this mysterious art of thinking like a journalist. I left Croatia with fresh insight and have lifted a bit of the veil on what journalists seek.
ESConet trainees and trainers in Dubrovnik. Thanks to Catalin Mosoia for the photos.
So I just wanted to finish this last post before the start of 100 Hours of Astronomy with two thank you notes.
- Thank you to ESConet for helping us become better communicators. - And thank you to every single newspaper, magazine, radio station, TV and website that thought 100 Hours of Astronomy was such a good idea, they had to talk about it. Thanks to you, we were able to reach many, many people, that otherwise would never even have heard about 100 Hours of Astronomy or the IYA2009
As I write these lines, our website was considered website of the week by the "Voice of America" website. And in Portugal I've been contacted by several media, including the leading news channel "SIC Notícias", and the largest free newspaper in the country, Metro.
So watch us in the news, wherever you are in the world.
Note: We will not be blogging during the 100 Hours event. We will resume blogging for a few weeks after 100 Hours, to let you know about some of the amazing things that will have happened during the event. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit Cosmic Diary, where Lee Pullen, Avivah Riyadi, and Sotira Trifourki will be blogging live during 100 Hours.
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