TIMS/TIMF

Here at Pint of Science, our team of volunteers use social media at its best – to bring light into the often misunderstood world of everyday scientists.

#ThisIsMyScience and #ThisIsMyField is an opportunity for scientists to give us a small taste of their fascinating work using social media platforms. Scientists have the chance to engage with anyone – whether they are an armchair scientist or a science nerd – we encourage open, friendly, and direct engagement from all curious minds! Our #TIMS and #TIMF initiative is a great way to showcase current Australian science and to emphasise how Australian research contributes to society each day.

Months in advance, our volunteers were already hard at work. We were brainstorming project ideas, discussing how to engage more scientists, and finding creative ways to pique the interest of our massive online audience. A lot of us on the team were new volunteers, including one of our project leaders, Laura Velasquez. Laura enjoyed organising a big online event for the first time and really loved connecting with her team through the festival development. New project team member, Pacharina Perez, really liked the opportunity to flex her graphic design skills (in the name of science!) and enjoyed collaborating with so many fellow science nerds.

Another first time volunteer, Teck Chua, liked experiencing the other side of a scicomm event where she learnt a lot about what goes on behind the scenes. Other activities we were involved with include connecting to organisations and institutions all around Australia and participating in Pint of Science hosted workshops. Working with the Pint of Science team has been a great learning experience, especially for those new to science communication. We would encourage anyone, scientist or not, to join the team if you believe in our cause: to build the general public’s appreciation of science!

On the first day of PintAU2021, volunteers stalked countless social media feeds for posts with the festival’s hashtags: #PintAU, #ThisIsMyScience, and #ThisIsMyField. We reshared any post we found (which was hundreds!) to help give scientists a boost in publicity for their work. This all panned out on five different platforms: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and TikTok. Twitter was by far the most popular and our hashtag #ThisIsMyScience even trended 4th nationally!

It was amazing to see all the different science going on in Australia which spanned six different themes:  #AtomsToGalaxies, #OurBody, #BeautifulMind, #TechMeOut, #OurSociety and #PlanetEarth. Here’s a glimpse at some of our favourites (in no particular order):

A singing immunologist (#OurBody)

 

The intricacies of our brain (#BeautifulMind)

An astronomer who is also interested in history (#AtomsToGalaxies #OurSociety)

And fitting this year’s theme (#PlanetEarth)

Massive thanks to all those who contributed to #PintAU21 and to the Pint of Science team for taking the time to make this festival happen. Cheers and science on!

Pacharina & Teck