#scicomm – Page 2 – Southern Fried Science

How to NOT get ahead in advertising – what many conservation NGOs are doing wrong

August 17, 2015August 17, 2015 Chris Parsons

This year’s International Congress for Conservation Biology had a special double symposium on conservation marketing. What is conservation marketing I hear you ask? Well it’s using the tried and tested techniques from the advertising field, behind which there is a significant amount of research, to increase public awareness and especially change public behavior to aid conservation. Conservation marketing is already being used by several NGOs and initiatives – RARE for example. The Society for Conservation Biology has recently set up a working group for Conservation Marketing and Engagement* as it’s believed that this technique could help highlight many endangered species and highlight important conservation issues.

In this symposium myself and several colleagues had a presentation on why the advertising campaigns of conservation NGOs are doing things wrong – specifically these campaigns are often geared towards fundraising, telling members and especially donors what a great job they’re doing, launching surveys or petitions that do little to help conservation, oh and more fund- raising. The general public has a dire understanding of the need for biodiversity conservation or endangered species, and instead of increasing awareness and getting the public to change their behavior to act in a more pro-conservation manner, NGOs are instead concentrating on …hey did I mention fund-raising?!

As the result of many requests for copies of the presentation slides, I’ve decided to make them available for Southern Fried Science. Most of the slides are self explanatory. Feel free to copy and steal memes you like and count up the number of geeky references ….

In an Adventure …. with Scientists ! (…or why does America hate science so much?)

July 30, 2015August 12, 2015 Chris Parsons

Science

In the UK “The pirates ! In an adventure with scientists” an animated movie by Aardman Animations (the studio behind Wallace & Gromit) saw some success at the movie box office. The film was based by on the popular book by the same name by Gideon Defoe, which features, as the name suggests, pirates, Charles Darwin and scientists of the Royal Society. When the movie was screened in the US however, the title was changed to “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” because it was thought that American children would avoid a movie with scientists in. All reference to Darwin, who was one of the main characters, was also removed from US trailers, presumably because evolution is viewed as ‘controversial’ in the US.

Why is it science is such seen this way in the US?

A poster to remember

May 2, 2015 Chris Parsons 1 Comment

Science

Today I was at an undergraduate research event with our best and brightest presenting their research via posters – great science, but often dreadful posters.

Posters can be a great medium for getting your science over to an audience. They have the benefit that if you can draw people into your poster you can have a lot more intimate face to face discussion with your peers. But first you have to draw them in…

Increasingly poster sessions in conference are becoming large sprawling events, and your poster is going to have to compete for attention with hundreds if not thousands of other posters, with your audience having little time to browse, they may be distracted by friends and colleagues, they may be tired as poster sessions are often at the end of a long day of presentations, and possibly (probably) slightly to moderately drunk. Here are some simple tips for making a good poster that has impact.

This is the worst academic presentation in the world … tribute

April 23, 2015 Chris Parsons

Uncategorized

Conference season is fast approaching, and around the hallowed halls of academia frantic graduate students are rushing around trying to cat herd committee members for thesis drafts and preparing the capstone to all of their recent study and research: the thesis defense. For the past two weeks my life has largely been back to back student presentations, and on the whole they were excellent. a couple of moments when nerves got the better of presenters, but generally high quality.

Then I went to an academic meeting, and I was reminded again why we are struggling to communicate environmental issues to the general public. I had forgotten quite how excruciatingly dull and painfully constructed academic presentations can be.

The presenters were completely unaware of the effect of their talks on the audience, who were checking email, napping and in one case just staring blankly at a wall, which was obviously more entertaining than the presentation at hand.

It really was a master class in how to ensure that your presentation was as dull, dense, and obtuse as possible. So for the benefit of those who what to ensure that they can give the most perfectly dull academic presentation, here are some tips:

Hail hydra ! Taking a super villain approach to conservation #scicomm

February 19, 2015February 20, 2015 Chris Parsons

Conservation, Popular Culture, Uncategorized

Rarely do conservation or environmental issues solely deal with just one group of homogenous people. Most who deal with “on the ground” conservation realize that typically issues have multiple, often conflicting, groups with multiple view points and values. So why do so many attempts as conservation science communication just have one line of attack?