Monthly Archives: February 2015

Tuesday night – Improv

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I had an amazing and unexpected day.. Last night i wrote  about the very cool talk that Diane and I attended given by Alan Alda.. He was up here talking about how to help scientists communicate with the public. Last night we learned that there was also going to be an all day workshop today on communications. .. by lucky chance, one of the workshop coordinators managed to find me a place..

 

It turned out to be a wonderful experience .. About 40 of us .. mostly faculty members.. spent the day working on improv skills and story telling skills as aids to communicating our work.

 

We began by taking the abstract from a paper from my friend alan’s work on climate modelign and trying to rework it into non geek  speak.. We had a ton of fun with that .. They  even invited three non scientific passersby in to the room to test our messaging.. Charlie tried the messaging out on them.. great illustration of how hard it can be ..  very cool !

 

Then we broke into two groups .. Our group of 20 did some amazing things including physical improv like the ‘mirror game’ .. where we tried to mimic our partners moves.. then reverse who was leading and who was following so many times that we forgot who was who..   One of my favorites was an exercise where we took a blank piece of paper.. and used it as a prop to describe  to our course-mates a favorite  picture .. as if we were all seeing it.. It was fun and powerful.. and believe it or not.. very applicable to the kind of communications i need to do all the time in and outside of my work. It really impressed me that Mr. Alda was just one of the 20.. no special talk or treatment.. just very human (likes tennis) and there to have fun  like the rest of us.

The most useful session for me was in the afternoon where we worked with the group to tune our ‘elevator speech’ . ie. who are we and what are we about It was very powerful hearing from others in the class.. Some just nailed it.. some couldn’t get it all out, others didn’t know what they were tying to say. I would put myself in that last category.. the group compassionately ripped my spiel on play apart .. and then helped me put it back to gather.. Some great lessons in there.. (too much in my head,   trying to get too much stuff across in too little time,   like hitting ‘play ‘ on a recording.. what did i mean exactly by ‘play’.. got some better examples ? .Start with a story, . all the stuff that i’ve wrestled with on this message.. .. .

My favorite story was by a prof from Johnson state that just said conversationally that he liked  getting his students fired up with lab experiments.. .. simple and sweet and very compelling.

It was a memorable day.. I left with much to think about .. and many tools that I can apply both to my work and to my outreach..

i felt so lucky to be there today !!! Thanks to UVM, Mr Alda and Stoneybrook  U for making this happen !

note all, nite sam

-me

 

ps. Chai had her ey operated on today.. and she’s doing great. looking very regal in her fancy collar ..

Monday night – Blind date with Alan Alda

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Diane and I went to a truly wonderful talk this evening given by the actor Alan Alda.. Everyone knows him from his MASH days,. what you may not appreciate is what a fantastic spokesman he is for the Sciences.. Actually.. he’s not just  a spokesman for the science .. but he’s a champion of getting the scientists to be better  spokespeople for their own work..

 

He spoke for an hour without notes or slides.He was entertaining, interesting.. and so deeply man. I can’t remember ever enjoying a talk this much.  He was speaking  for the 95% of folks he claims are not science literate.. He compared most of their interaction with science as a bad blind date.. and he intends to make that first date less awkward. In face, He likened learning science to love.. first comes attraction, then infatuation.. and finally commitment.. it really resonated with my own experience to sharing science with kids.. you have to real them in.. keep them interested.. then it sticks.

Along the way I picked up some great nuggets about communicating.. science or anything else I think.. Alda’s main message was about the importance of relating to your audience.. and having enough empathy to understand what they want .. how they learn.. and how they take in information. He talked about the importance of listening, the need for improv skills.. (I still remember an Improv class I took from Paul Zaloom as being one of the best things I ever did to help my show)

T
I first learned about Alda’s love of science when i heard a Science Friday podcast about ‘The Flame Challenge’. The idea came to alda based on an experience when he was 11. He asked a teacher .. “what is flame” and got a non inspiring answer.. Now nearly 70 years later.. he’s circling back to fix that,. The Flame challenge.. which is (i think) in it’s 4th year, challenges sceintists to explain to an 11 year old some scientific principle like “what is a flame?”, or “what is color ?”.. or last years “what is time ?”.. or this years “what is sleep ?”.. You still have 2 weeks to apply for this years !

The results are judged by kids themselves.. last year Alda said it was 20,000 11 year olds.. how’s that for a jury..

Here’s the winning entry from the first years “What is Flame ?” questions

What is a Flame from Benjamin J. Ames on Vimeo.

here were many lessons I plan to apply to my own science schtick.. i was so grateful to UVM and the Alda center at Stoney Brook for making this happen tonight. (Thanks Dan H !!!)

nite all, nite sam
-me

Sunday – Chinese food for Christmas

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So… I think the Super Bowl is on right now. Not exactly sure because We Don't have a TV hooked up . this would be an excellent time to go out and do something where you didn't want crowds. The logic been that most other people would be watching TV right now watching the game or at least the commercials. That was always the rationale for Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas because no one else was in the restaurants. Don't know why am thinking about that right now… But the thought of both Chinese food and Christmas is making me happier than football probably would.

I do hope folks are enjoying the game and that whoever you are rooting for his winning… Though I realize that's a paradox because there are probably people out there rooting for both teams. I'm proud to say I even know who's playing… But I didn't before 1:30 when my mom told me one of the teams was actually Boston.

 

I guess that would make me a Boston fan by default.

 

Anyway… Hope you are enjoying the game… And if you don't have Chinese food… You have something good to eat while you watch.

night all night Sam

-me

Ps.. Right now my friend Chris and the grocery store today when out for science demo supplies. Nice seeing him

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I hope

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am guessing most other people our watching TV

 

 

Saturday night – retreat !

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I’d been looking forward to this for several weeks.. this morning was the Generator Board retreat. We all met at Burlington City Arts for a half day of facilitated soul searching: who are we , how far have we come, where are we going.. standard  board stuff.

I coul dhave swarn they said it was a SPa day.. but I was the only one who showed up in my jammies.. Geeeez !

 

I really love the folks on this board. They are so dedicated and energetic

 

. It really did feel good to think how far we’ve gotten in the past year.

It was fun to think back to our humble beginnings

here’s our first setup day

generator setup from john cohn on Vimeo.

and here was our opening a month or so later. In march..

fastgenopen2 from john cohn on Vimeo.

We did lots of thinking of where we want to go with generator.. now that it’s up and running well.. there was lots of passion, energy and good intentions. Those give me confidence that we will find our way to awesomeness.. I personally believe that much of that direction will come from  combination of our board thoughts, the members and the community.. I feel there’s will be  lots of fun trial  and error. along  the  way and I welcome both -)

I’m proud to be part of this orginization.. and look forward to traveling with it as it evolves. I want to publiclly thank the other mmebers of the board, our leaders, members, staff and our fascilitator today , Paul,.. for helping us move along the way !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

ps. Heres an awesome video that someone shot of the lights we did at ECHO under freind Travis’s leadership. .. these are a little showy.. but it’s fun to see what it can do.. goign forward, we’re tuning it down to do some fun interactive stuff.. and help interpret data from the lake.