At last night’s reception to celebrate the start of the 2008 NESTA Crucible programme of personal and professional horizon-widening for research scientists, conversation turned to networking. I was talking to some of the Cruciblists (some of whom may have been cruciverbalists missing Vera, but…) and the conversation turned to two of my favourite conversations – cake and networking. So I would like to offer you them both, maybe.
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Mixed miscellanies
I think this is going to be a fairly varied collection of posts on stuff to do with art, science, culture, geekery and science communication. But we'll see, eh?
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Nature Networkers: eat cake and network
- Date:
- Tuesday, 29 Apr il 2008 - 23:02 GMT
You see, one of the great things about Crucible apparently, was that they had to talk to each other, and scientists just don’t do that enough, especially not with scientists from different departments, different disciplines, different institutions. But interdisciplinarity is A Good Thing – it was the flavour of the night. New research collaborations, or just helping each other out a bit, seemed to be being formed over the afternoon coffee or evening canapés.
And what about talking to scientists within your own departments, I asked. Well, apparently there wasn’t enough of that either, with common rooms turned to lab or office space or meeting rooms. How depressing. There were glimmers of hope though – with speakeasy-style prohibited wine nights in the lab/office of one researcher’s department, attempts at proper coffee mornings in another, and, wait for it – a cake club at a third. Yup, once every so often (though not regularly enough), the sharing of cake, progress, coffee and ideas with one’s colleagues.
I’m a massive fan of networking. It works. It’s useful. Corporately (I’ve found out stuff handy for my job through networking) and personally (I got my last two jobs through it), it works. It’s an essential part of organising professional events to ensure that there’s opportunities for it to happen. And in Britain, we’re good at it. We’re good at creating frameworks and events for it to happen in. It’s a sellable feature, according to those whose job it is to encourage companies to invest in UK plc.
Which led me to two thoughts:
Firstly, an auto-cake-club web gadget, to help these plucky scientists organise their cakeclubs.
Secondly, on Thursday night, the R&D Society is running an event looking at the different types of professional networks for R&D, whether virtual ones (like websites like this), or physical ones (like the Knowledge Transfer Networks). It’s an opportunity to learn about different types of networks, and to suggest ways that they can be improved. And we have a few spare places that are unlikely to get filled with paying folk. And Nature Network folk tend to be an interesting bunch. Soo…
Would you like to come along and network, and talk about networks on the night of 1 May, for free? Details of the where and what are on the event page. If you do, just let me know by filling out the booking form and pop “Nature Network” in the Notes/reference box. Ignore the payment bit. [1] There may even, just possibly, be cake.
1 Small print: There’s only a set number of paces available, but I don’t anticipate them all being used up. First to respond, and those that haven’t been to an R&D Society event before, get priority.
Last updated: Tuesday, 29 Apr 2008 - 23:02 GMT
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Comments
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The problem with a lot of these things, especially in the UK, is that they are so London-centric, and often happen on Fridays or over the weekend. This spells death for anyone who lives outside London, especially as rail networks are always poor at weekends because of engineering works. Yes, I know it’s Nature Network London, but what about networking in – say – Leicester, or Newcastle, or Aberystwyth? (let alone Cromer?). Some societies do organize regional meetings, but as far as I can see, only the Cafe Scientifique movement has done anything to address this systematically.
@Scott: The Crucible event was fun – I always enjoy these networking events. I can’t make the R&D event on 1 May, but thanks for offering free places to NN members.
Nature Network’s own pub evenings attract a diverse bunch of folk (from magicians to librarians via astrophysicists), and I think people really value that. If anyone wants to feed back about how we could make them even better, just drop me a line, or leave a note over in the London forums.
@Henry: Until they invent teleports, it’s always going to be a challenge to create useful events in smaller centres. As NN launches new hubs (and, yes, we ARE going to get round to that real soon), we will be encouraging and helping local scientists to hold their own networking events. Sure, we’ll be starting with big cities like New York, but regional hubs (say, North-East England) are also on the cards.
In the meantime, the good people of Leicester, Newcastle, Aberystwyth and Cheddar Gorge can use web networking to meet people.
And Basingstoke, apparently.
Henry: yes, many of the events happen in London – including almost all of the R&D Society events. That’s because London is populous and connected enough to sustain the necessary audience numbers. The R&D Society used to have a North West England branch, which sadly withered away a few years ago – but we have held events in Sheffield and Newcastle of late, and hope to do more outside the M25.
Plenty of professional societies have regional branches and organise local events – eg the BCS and IOP are both up your way. And I’ve seen independent regional groups set up too – like the good science communication folk of Cardiff and Oxford both set up their own local networking groups. The ABSW was trying to encourage local activities too – if you’re a member of them, maybe you could help with an ABSW event/pub gathering up Norfolk way?