My Ten Most Popular Twitter Links of 2013

A list of what you thought it was worth to click on the link

It is that time of the year when we look back to find the most important past events and gain some insight from them. This list has the links that my Twitter audiences found most interesting from March 2013 to December 2013.

Year 2013 on Twitter

About the list: I have shared over a thousand links on Twitter, a lot of them never get opened, but some of the links get big responses just because they are re-tweeted by users with audiences in the tens of thousands, or because they are well tuned to the interests of the people who follows me on Twitter. I used BitLy to find the 10 most popular links of 2013, here you have the list starting with number ten and ending with number 1, the most opened link of 2013!

#10 Vote for University of Washington’s Engage Science Seminar Series!

Sometimes when you ask people to help you advertise a cause, they help you a lot. Engage Science is a student-run seminar that helps young scientists improve their communication skills. Engage was participating in the NSF Graduate Education Challenge and needed votes to have their proposal funded. Thank for the re-tweets and for the people who clicked the link to find how to vote for Engage (Total of 19 clicks).

Vote for Our NSF Graduate Education Challenge Entry!

Recently, the NSF put out a call for innovative ideas to improve graduate education. We submitted a proposal to get programs like Engage/…

Phil

#9 EPA profiles of Latinos (En Español)

Not a lot of people knows that EPA has a very active social media feed in Spanish, one of their profiles of EPA employees that I shared made it to the top ten more clicked links: Evelyn Rivera-Ocasio, a compliance inspector in charge of wastewater treatment plants in Puerto Rico (Total of 19 clicks).

Evelyn Rivera-Ocasio | EPA en español | US EPA

EPA-Región 2 División de Protección Ambiental del Caribe San Juan, Puerto Rico ¿Dónde nació? Evelyn Rivera-Ocasio: Bayamón, Puerto Rico ¿…

Epa

#8 News from Perú investing in Science

Perú tripled its investment in science and innovation this year, and CONCYTEC started an aggressive campaign to promote science education and research in the country. This is a link to a LatinAmericanScience.org English translation of a short post I wrote in Spanish for my SalsaDeCiencia blog (Total of 19 clicks)

LatinAmericanScience.org

Peru’s national council of science, technology, and technological innovation (CONCYTEC) announced this week a plan to stimulate scientifi…

#7 Developing a National roadmap for communication training in STEM graduate programs

Meetings happen behind closed doors in Washington DC everyday, but some of them encourage participants to share their content on twitter. #GradSciComm participants were so generous with their sharing that I was able to write a ScienceSalsa.com blog post about the meeting without attending it. (Total of 20 clicks)

#GradSciComm: Developing a National roadmap for communication training in STEM graduate programs

There are times when reform is necessary. The very successful STEM graduate education programs in USA are now graduating a lot more PhDs,… Ivan Fernando Gonzalez

#6 Diverse Science Writers

Blogger and scientist DNLee (@DNLee5) started a Twitter list of Diverse Science Writers, she crowd-sourced the names online, and a lot of people was interested on the list. Thank you for including me on it! (Total of 21 clicks).

@DNLee5/Diverse Science Writers on Twitter

#5 News from Perú investing in Science (En Español)

Perú tripled its investment in science and innovation this year.This is the link to the original SalsaDeCiencia.com blog post I wrote in Spanish (Total of 21 clicks).

Perú invierte en ciencia, investigación, y desarrollo

El consejo nacional de ciencia, tecnología, e innovación tecnológica del Perú (CONCYTEC) anunció esta semana un plan de estímulo a la inv…

Ivan Fernando Gonzalez

#4 Science communication for Spanish-speaking audiences event

Thank you again for helping me promote this event last November in Seattle. We had a wonderful panel that shared their first-hand experience engaging Hispanics (Total of 44 clicks).

#16:: Engaging the Invisible Americans: Science communication for Spanish-speaking audiences

There is a huge American audience with a language of its own, have you heard of it? Hispanic Americans make up 17% of the population, and…

Jen Davison

More about science communication in Spanish

If you are interested in Spanish-speaking audiences please check the following link for the event’s recap and video. It had a total of 119 clicks, but those didn’t come from my Twitter links, so it didn’t make it on this list.

Engaging the Invisible Americans: Science communication for Spanish-speaking audiences at #ScioSEA

They say you should know your audience… But can you really know your online audience? Especially one that does not speak your own langu…

Ivan Fernando Gonzalez

#3 Two science communication training programs featured in newspapers last March

The Seattle Times featured Engage Science from University of Washington, and the Long Island Newsday featured the Center for Communicating Science of Stony Brook University (Total of 48 clicks).

Science communication training: raising the bar inside and outside academia

This week two newspapers featured school seminars that help graduate students communicate their science to general audiences. The Seattle…

Ivan Fernando Gonzalez

#2 Proyecto Ciencia para todos (En Español)

“Ciencia para todos” showcases ongoing efforts to reach the massive Spanish-speaking audiences in the USA (and Globally). As part of this effort, I started a public opt-in list that may help science communicators match local Spanish-speaking communicators and a growing public Twitter list with more than 150 resources worldwide in Spanish. (Total of 131 clicks).

Additionally a total of 74 people click on the Twitter link for the form to opt-in on the list (and only half actually subscribed) and 65 people have consulted the Twitter link for the list already

Cienc ia para to dos El proyecto Ciencia Para Todos es en principio muy simple: busca ayudar a que los esfuerzos de la comunicación de la ciencia -que existen…

Ivanfgonzalez

#1 Invited post, Scientists are Humans too

In the age of PowerPoint it is hard to remember that you are the presentation, not your slides. This invited blog post talks about my struggles as a scientist to give engaging presentations, and the lessons I learned during the Engage Science Seminar at University of Washington. Effective science communication training in academia is possible, Engage even includes a talk in front of Town Hall Seattle, a great public venue, but programs like it are still diamonds because they are difficult to find in the current graduate education landscape (Total of 148 clicks).

Student Post: Scientists are Humans Too Fernando Gonzalez is Colombian/Peruvian scientist living in Seattle, Washington. He also blogs at Science Salsa, a blog about science tha…

Jessica Rohde

Thank you!

I want to thank you for sharing those links and for reading them. The year 2013 doubled the number of people following my accounts on Twitter (@gonzalezivanf in English and @salsadeciencia in Spanish) and I like to believe it is because you found the content pleasant and useful. It has been a little over a year since I started learning how to become an effective science communicator, thank you for coming along with me and helping me grow, thank you for your patience and your support.

Have a wonderful 2014 and I hope to keep enjoying the privilege of your company on Twitter!

About BitLy:

BitLy is a service that offers URL redirection with real-time link tracking. I have used BitLy on Twitter since March of 2013, and to this date it has helped me track the usage of over 1,000 links. I made this list of My Ten Most Popular Twitter Links of 2013 based on their statistics, selecting the links with the largest number of clicks. To visit my BitLy account please follow this link:

Ivan Fernando Gonzalez | Public Profile

Related: My Most Shared Tweets of 2013

Want scientists that know how to tell their stuff in public? Vote Engage now!

A group of graduate students at university of Washington wanted to tell great science stories, and bring them to the public venues of Seattle. They built a student seminar called Engage Science that teaches storytelling and presentation techniques to a diverse group of graduate students. Those students give a public presentation on a theater or another public venue. For three years Seattle’s public has benefited by an engaging window to the science done at University of Washington. The students benefit too by acquiring invaluable communication skills useful inside and outside the “Ivory Tower”. Now Engage Science is asking NSF to help other graduate students do the same all over the country. For that we ask you to please vote for Engage here.

Why are science stories important for you?

A good story can keep you glued to the chair, it makes you travel places with your imagination, and sometimes tells you something about you that you didn’t know before. A good science history can do that and more; it also gives you the facts that are currently know about of world. Well-crafted science stories bring entertainment, inspiration, and knowledge. The kind of knowledge necessary to take informed decisions about our future.

So, why not giving me just the scientific facts?

We are humans, and often we need a reason to really listen to other person, specially if they come with a lot of information about something we think we know enough or are not interested to hear. The story is a form of communication that brings together storyteller and listener, and opens the door for a real dialog. There is a personal connection needed for real knowledge contagion.

Scientists are smart, can they figure out how to tell a story themselves?

Sure, some scientists are extremely good storytellers, but they are a minority in an environment were the listeners are experts of your own field. Scientists in sub-disciplines benefit from a common language and shared previous knowledge, but that made their stories too obscure and uninteresting for non-scientist. This Engage proposal that you will support with your vote wants to help those scientists that want to tell their stories to a broader audience. It will provide seed money to establish a seminar like Engage Science in other schools, using the free Engage blueprint if desired. For more details and to read the proposal please visit this page: http://www.engage-science.com/vote-for-our-nsf-graduate-education-challenge-entry/

Please vote for Engage Science! Last day to vote is May 29th.

Thank you

Science communication training: raising the bar inside and outside academia

The scientist that forgot how to tell a story.

This week two newspapers featured school seminars that help graduate students communicate their science to general audiences. The Seattle Times featured Engage Science from University of Washington and the Long Island Newsday featured the Center for Communicating Science of Stony Brook University*. Those programs recognize a need for “communication literacy” on scientific education and represent an awesome professional (and personal) development tool for the students that take the seminars. I firmly believe scientists that like to talk about their research should be able to find a similar seminar or class elsewhere. There is a need for it, and there is a growing group of students acquiring communication training to pursue “non-traditional” science careers (now the majority of job opportunities) where the ability to communicate concisely and in plain English is very valuable.

“The goal of the [Engage Science] course, founded by graduate students, is to teach young scientists how to share their passions for cosmology, chemistry or evolutionary biology without putting people to sleep. The program is one of several springing up across the country, fueled by a new generation of researchers who see public outreach as integral to their jobs.” — Seattle Times

Those scientists will fulfill a key role by showing a more human scientist to the public, somebody non-scientist can understand and relate to. The need is there for those scientists who can communicate science effectively; experts need to bring the scientific consensus in Global Warming to a broader audience and they need to expose the hidden dangers of widespread use of antibiotics. Scientific literacy is not a luxury when those subjects can have such a big impact on people’s lives.

The other role for this bunch of scientists trained on presentation design, jargon removal and storytelling will be inside their research institutions. They will raise the bar for scientific presentations for scientific audiences.

“Though we typically perceive scientists in white lab coats conducting experiments, a critical part of their work involves giving lectures and making presentations.” Long Island Newsday

I spent so many years attending boring scientific talks that I forgot how to tell a story, and I forgot that the presentation is a lot more than the graphs or the slides. We need scientists trained in communication inside and outside academia. Luckily I got help from Engage Science at UW, and I think I am starting to get better at telling stories. I hope you agree. You can read my take on the lessons learned during the Engage seminar at “Bringing science back, one story at a time” and the invited post “Scientists are human too”

(*) The article is behind a pay-wall but excerpts of the text are available at the Center for Communicating Science Facebook page.

Engage Science Students Blog Post: http://www.engage-science.com/

On the need of opportunities and rewards for science communication http://neurodojo.blogspot.com/2013/03/steering-into-skid-what-can-we-fix-with.html

The soap opera model of science communication, scientists as real people: http://neurodojo.blogspot.com/2013/03/blockbusters-and-telenovelas-models-for.html