What most impressed me when SciVee was launched, almost one year ago, was the reaction of science writers’ and science journalists’ communities. They were amazed by the idea of a free, accessible, web-based tv built around scientific research. SciVee was presented as a brand new thing in the science communication. Of course the idea of building a virtual place where researchers talk to the public in a video with no intermediation was a good point in spreading of culture (whatever it means), but I was surprised the communicators themselves were so surprised. Didn’t they ever watch a video on YouTube? Didn’t they ever surf the video channels of CNN’s website, searching for any videonews? Was webtv too far from their daily work?

It must be added that when you participate to one of the international conferences on science communication, such as Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference in Malmo and Copenhagen in June 2008, even blogs still go under the “New Media” category. It seems that the thinking part of the professionals of science communication is reflecting more slowly than the rate of adoption of new technologies and tools by general public. In other words, there are several professionals and non-professionals that are already using and designing new tools and new technologies for sharing videos and videocasts, and this could be an (some say is the) important challenge for the future of science communication, but we still think that this is a frontier.