Science Communications

This weekend, Erica Goldman and I traveled to a town outside of Boston to deliver a communications workshop for the 2012 New England Switzer Fellows. The fellows are in the midst of their graduate educations, and have diverse backgrounds – they are law students, representatives of NGOs, interdisciplinary and field scientists – all within the realm of environmental sustainability.

For several years now we have highlighted communications trainings by COMPASS in our fall retreats. COMPASS helps scientists communicate their work in a concise, lively manner that will get the attention of non-scientists including journalists and policymakers.

COMPASS trainers spend a lot of time at our retreats talking about simlifying your communications without dumbing them down. One quick way to do this is to make your writing simpler, clearer, and more accessible to a lay audience. This can be difficult when you spend most of your time writing for an advanced scientific audience, so let's get back to basics and look at an expert's advice on how to write clear sentences.

Learn about tools that can help you work and collaborate effectively in the cloud, and explore some workflows that have worked for others. Originally broadcast: July 9, 2012.

Blogs and blogging can be a useful tool to spread the word about your science, activism, and more. In this webinar, a roundtable of Switzer Fellows discusses blogging platforms, how much of a time commitment blogging is, and ways to spread the word about your blog. Originally broadcast June 25, 2012.

For better or worse, your profile picture is the first thing that anyone surfing the web will see, so it's important to put your best face forward. Here are some guidelines to help you choose a great profile photo for our website:

Many of you are probably working in organizations without public relations departments or staff. Even for those of you lucky enough to have press offices helping get the word out about your work, they may not be targeting all of the best places or doing so in a way that will help your career. The answer? Develop your own personal distribution list, or press list, and feed it regularly with thoughtfully selected news and carefully crafted messages.

In August 2011, federal marshals raided the Gibson Guitar Corporation in Tennessee, apparantly preparing to charge the famous builder of instruments with trafficking in illegally obtained wood. In the aftermath of the raid there was intense media attention on the company and its sourcing practices. Andrea Johnson of EIA was interviewed by NPR because of her previous work on Gibson's allegedly illegal sourcing practices in Madagascar.

On May 21, 2012, we hosted a lively and informative panel of published Switzer authors. Below is a synopsis of their comments and advice for anyone considering writing his or her first book. Please use the links to access their full comments and advice. We're also including two video interviews with authors who could not join us, David Sonnenfeld talking about the texbook market and Sharon Smith on what it takes to successfully market a book.