Wednesday - |
- I had heard about a lot of good science festivals in Cheltenham, Cambridge and Edinburgh, but when I checked the programme for this one, but it was disappointing it was full of dry boring stuff, trashy pop science and non-science like the religion of Climate Change ranting. So even though it had begun on Friday I waited for the days of rain to stop so I only came for the last 2 days.
- Again hitching down was very easy, it took only 2 lifts and less than 3 hours. I was lucky to get dropped off right outside Liverpool University where the festival was so I was able to get to a 1pm lecture
| Wed - Psychology Session|
- The Psychology of Sound - a student presentation which had won an award for clear presentation about the concepts weren't that clear to me, it was mostly confusing apart from the moving noiseblock picture. Basically your brain can phenomenally filter out a moving conversation from background noise.
- The professor Dr Peter Naish in the introduction was able to demonstrate false memory by forcing it in the whole audience. And show how fake memories of abuse had been provoked by hypnosis relaxation treatment.
- Military mental health in the UK armed forces - A Navy psychologist spoke of flashbacks and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder PSTD, pressure wave brain damage ... The thing is he kept coming up with figures like "60% of returning soldiers report feeling stress", but surely if you are only asking peoples opinions, then you end up with no objective scientific measure. .
- Therapy in Post-traumatic stress disorder - German woman lecturer - boring - interventions that help bad memories/nightmares - e.g. relive fear of losing legs, but at the same time walk around the room being aware that your legs are 100% OK
- A life without pleasure: mechanisms of a depressed brain
Dr Morten Kringelbach - Talked about manic depression I think ?
- The recurring nightmare - Guy from The Edinburgh Sleep Centre Talk - Spoke about people who are plagued by repetative nightmares.
-One thing he said is that 8 hour sleep is just a fashion as medieval people used to have 4 hours get up and then have another. He spoke of sleep coming in 70 minute cycles at the end of which you are almost awake, but usually fall back into deep sleep.
- Recovering memories that never were - Dr James Ost - University of Portsmouth Talk - This was the most interesting talk. He spoke of studies where people spoke of seeing the videos of traumatic events like the 7/7 bombing and Amsterdam Aircrash, when in fact no video exists. Proof of the unreliability of eyewitness evidence by new DNA has exonerated men when in eyewitnesses have sworn that "that was the man". So eyewitness evidence is not reliable enough to count.
- I would say that memories are not a video, but more like an impressionist painting. Info comes in from the eyes, opinion is added and that forms our memory
| Fun Maths lecture - |
- The festival was based in the Student Union I got a set of tickets from Box Office and caught a bit of the preview show in the bar before the next show at 7pm.
- He reduced juggling to numerical patterns and showed it had mathematical beauty, it took him long enough. He could have done it much quicker instead of overrunning by 45 minutes.
- This was part of his attempt to show that everything in life can be linked to maths. A great idea, but his show needs further refinement. juggling maths talk by Colin Wright
| Quentin Cooper at the Cavern Club
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- Afterwards I went down to the Cavern Club where Quentin Cooper presented a discussion on music and memory, the science of drug addiction, rock music etc.. it wasn't that great at the time. But when I listened to the 30 min podcast of the 3 hour show it sounded much better. Mehmet singing Amazing Grace
- I checked my email, but no HC or CS people came through ... it seems to me that even though most people say on their profiles that they host in reality they are more interested in being hosted when they travel rather than hosting people themselves.
- so I camped out .. super windy and then rain
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Thursday - Heritage Session
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- It turned out to be 8 "amateurs" giving a presentations about local/student projects to raise awareness and to win an award.
- 1. The bladder stone of an Ancient Skeleton - The first one was about just after a training seminar body excavators had found an unusual pebble next to the next skeleton they had dug, which they knew was a bladder stone. So this time cos it had been kept they had been able to analyse it to find more about the person, but unfortunately not a great deal this time.
- 2. Medieval Wreck on Hastings Beach.. The guy obviously has a lot of skill and experience. He won, but I don't support his idea.. I heard recently that scientists raising the Mary Rose had said that with the benefit of hindsight they realise they should have never have started the project. Such projects cost hundreds of millions of pounds more that expected.
- 3. Recording The Rutland Water Damming- The Rutland local history group had archived stories about the damming of a valley 40 years ago and their museum. It provoked me to visit the area next time I am near.
- 4. The Re-examination of a bronze age skeleton in Scarborough which had been discovered 150 years ago and at one stage boiled.
| Thursday - |
- I rushed out to the Lunchtime BA Forum - clearly the organisation is run by grey oldies and has got slightly out of touch.
- Then went to a student musical about Einstein and Marie Curie etc. It wasn't very good the story was shallow contrived and I guess some drama teacher had strange ideas : the whole thing was completely over-sexualised the youth performers , which was unecessary and disturbing.
- Went back to the heritage awards -
- 8. Analysis of the Reliability of Carbon dating - caught the end of an American students talk, when she checked accepted dates she found that many particularly from pre-1970 were nowhere near as reliable as experts accepted them to be.
- Then an hour later we went to the presentation which turned out to have a free bar -- if more people had known about that then maybe the lectures would have been more than 20% full.
| Thursday - Richard Wiseman lecture
- Richard Wiseman was the clever , smooth matey show as usual - highlighting how the brain can be deceived by tricks and optical illusions etc. One interesting thing is most of the effects he showed applied to the logic of brain decoding images : like many adverts feature bouncing balls, cos sales people know that when you get people nodding they are much more likely to accept your proposition.
- one applied to the logic of brain decoding sounds i.e. that when prompted we can pick out Satanic lyrics in backward Led Zeplin songs.
However I think is important to realise that if the brain can be so easily deceived in decoding sights and sound then surely it can be deceived in many humanlogical processes as well.
- Lots of little things like the surrounded circles, showing how to do magic tricks, the changing the card backs Youtube stunt . a lot of brillant stuff
- Met up with Stevie a HC star and stayed at his house.
| ABC was there
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- Actually afterwards I see that Robyn Williams from ABC Radio Science was actually at the festival. His recent programmes feature reports on some of the lectures I went to. Good articles, but I think he gave the festival an over positive spin.
- Carbon hyprocrisy ? - When you listen to the ABC Radio Science programmes it seems he's done half his interviews in the UK so I guess he flies in and stays the summer here. It's a little strange that Robyn who is always alarmist about climate change is doing so much flying.. his CO2 footprint much be huge. Likewise the UK based Naked Scientists are also quite alarmist about Climate yet they sometimes fly to Australia etc to do reports ... ah finally I see they are beginning to co-operate I see Robyn's prog features a segment recorded by the Naked Scientists.
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BAFOS Conclusions
- The festival didn't quite cut-it, but just that little bit extra would make future festivals amazing.
- In many respects a lot of work had been put into setting up the festival and getting things right like, rooms, box office, signage, but this year the programme was disappointing. It wasn't as interesting or provoking as it could have been. However maybe we the audience have been spoilt by TV, it must be difficult to compete with some of the slick presentations we are used to seeing on TV these days
- The BA certainly has 3 great ideas
: to get excited about science and take it to the masses
: to have a festival to do this
: going to Liverpool : Firstly if you want to reach people you have to go to them.
- Secondly this country is over London-centric so full marks about getting out of London.
- I don't know if the aim of bringing science to the masses was achieved overall, but lectures that I went to were mostly nowhere near full.. e.g. The in heritage prize room was only 20% full
- Most of the things I went to were only 20% full. There is no point is having free tickets as it doesn't help control attendance, better to charge £1 and then have free tea and biscuits, which helps guarantee people turning up on time and fuels post lecture discussions. Though I enjoyed the expensive canapes that were offered sometimes.. smoked salmon, even miniature yourshire puddings with beef inside etc , I would have preferred the money to have been spent on something else.
- Boo hoo the choice of events this year wasn't very exciting to me. The Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Cambridge Festivals seemed to have lots of "cross over events" i.e. events which are based on real science but are fun and interesting so draw the public in.
- Personally I had expected to come down for the whole week, but when I checked the A5 programme I found only 2 lectures I really wanted to go to.
(the Richard Wiseman and Fun Maths lecture (Wed)) I had been hoping for more shows of the calibre and style of Richard Wiseman
- However when I checked the festival Website after the festival The Festival News Page does make the festival look more exciting than it actually was to me.
Pre-festival PR not very good, but later PR very good
- In particular outside journalists also put a positive spin on the stories
..the BBC Website - very positive
No TV or Podcasts : A missed trick ?
- The Royal societies Christmas lectures are good crossover events at bringing science to the masses, something of the same type at Liverpool would have been great, but there appear to be no televised events or podcasts ... the festival reached 1000s, but mass media could have reached millions.
Observations/ Tips -
- Good Work
It was obvious that so much work was done right : organising the schedules, the Box Office, Navigation (The Number system for rooms)
, printing the programmes, posters etc, the publicity, last minute changes etc
0- The A4 detailed booklet didn't use the simplified number system for lecture locations- it should have
1- Low Numbers - there were often very few people in lectures I attended. Problem with publicity ?
2- Use Back Doors - Lectures were often disturbed by people arriving late/ leaving early - Don’t use the front doors of lecture theatres instead use the back door for the main entrance.
3- Train the Lecturers - They often had problems with their power point, couldn't keep to time, and had poor showmanship - Please offer some training instructions to speakers
- they need to know some important things :
- 1. they can't overrun cos people have to move on to other lectures
- 2. they need to have a backup copy of their presentation (not carried in the same bag !)
- 3. they need to know how to work an audience - "not all speakers can be entertainer", Yes we can, we can learn the skill of entertaining just like we learned the skill of walking. In fact most speakers have this skill already without realising it and don't need to be as nervous as they often are
- 4 no need to print full programme so early
- 5 Better scheduling - encourage standard time blocks so that people can move from event to event without overlapping say 2 hours - the first 5 minutes should be a warm up - people will always be late cos of weather/traffic etc so they shouldn't miss anything crucial. Then you could have something like a 40 minute lecture followed by 10 minutes questions, then another the same , thus leaving 15 minutes for coffee/ getting to the next lecture.
EXTRA POINTS
-6 Schedule listing - the box office should have had a whiteboard with events hours by venue so people can see at a glance what is happening.. I drew a picture
-7 The poster failed to convay what the festival is about I dew a picture
| Bad Marketing
- Even though in early August I had seen the Festival A5 programme and Ignite around Liverpool, most Liverpool people I met didn't know about the Festival. - May I suggest a fun warm up event the week before to create a stir in the local media.
- We always have the problem of dragging the apathetic public away from the comfort of their TVs, but there are techniques.... where were the lectures about the Science of Beer or Why men always want to look up women's skirts etc ? (Cheltenham had a lecture "The History of Vibrators", which actually raised important points about anthropology and social science.)
- Joe Public don't bother to read in detail so I think you could have saved money by not printing the Ignite Magazine nor A5 Festival program. Instead the money could have been targeted at the local tourist information people and the local media to get a couple of free newspaper articles.
The rest of the publicity could have come via a simple A5 leaflet and the website. I recommend that programmes should be printed as late as possible with the actual timetable in the centre so it can be inserted at the very last moment. (Later PR was very good .. a lot of positive spin)
- Lack Of Connections - The BA got quite a few organisations on board, but a number seemed to be lacking.
- People like Dr Bunhead etc the childrens science entertainer (If you check the Edinburgh Fringe guide you'll find 20 different science based shows)
- The Naked Scientists - only a short podcast, but no shows
- The BBC Radio/TV has 20 science programmes, but you only had one : Quentin Cooper from Material World-Dr Karl on Radio 5,
- Science Radio from other countries : Australia : ABC Radio National, Germany : DW Spectrum, CBC : Canada
- The programmes from Commercial Broadcasters : Time Team, Mythbusters, Scrap Heap Challenge etc
- The Skeptics
- The newspapers like The Guardian's Bad Science guy Dr Ben Goldacre' - The Telegraph has large science coverage
- Magazines like : New Scientist Magazine, Scientific American, AAAS, BBC Science Magazine, BBC History Magazine,
- Pop Science Books/ Authors like Kjartan Poskitt the magic mathematician kids author etc
, Richard Holmes (yes I know you had the forensic crime writer)
- Science Tourism - Jodrell Bank, Industrial and Science Museums, MOSI
- Café Scientifique
- National Geographic, Discovery Channel, British Nuclear Fuels
- The Celebrities you didn't realise are interested in Science guest lecture
-There are links on the website to Facebook and Festival Blog ..which are largely empty.. a normal PR rule is don't promise things you can't deliver
Opportunities exist for a couple of fringe events
- Science Book/Magazine Fringe Festival ?
- Science Recruiting Fringe Festival ?
- Scienc-Fiction Fringe Festival ? come in costume etc good for newspaper publicity, Dr Who would get the kids in, something in the US called Dragoncon
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Bad Science at the Festival|
- In the rush to be popularist I think the BA lost focus on promoting good science it had climatelectures with alarmist titles and in particular The Magazine Flipside didn't do a good job of selling science - the way the articles are written seems like media studies grads rather than people who understand science e.g. "Omega 3 fats are brain food" this is not proven !
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