Outreach

Outreach is a vital component of my our overall science program. Scientific information is often interpreted to the public long after it has been discovered and often by people removed from the scientific process. We strive for an immediate sharing of science with the public through both traditional outlets and web-based dialogues that allow me to interact with the public more intimately.

 

Deep-Sea News

Deep-Sea News (http://deepseanews.com) is a blog, founded by Craig McClain who nows serves as its chief editor. Deep-Sea News is considered the most popular marine blog on the web (rated by Nature Blog Network) and since August 2004 our traffic has increased to over 100,000 visitors a month. Deep-Sea News has won multiple awards (EcoDardevil, Thinking Blogger Award, OpenLab 2007-2011/Best of Science Writing on the Web) for the website and enjoyed collaborating with Seed Media, Science, Nature, and National Geographic on web initiatives.  Deep-Sea News was featured content on the Discovery Channel (6/08-12/08) and Scienceblogs (1/06-6/08). My work with Deep-Sea News continues to be highlighted. “Deep Sea News casts back to the best traditions of popular science, sparking curiosity and bewonderment, explaining the phenomena in comprehensible language. It’s all about communication between the expert and an interested reader, a transfer of knowledge and ideas, sharing the passion. Deep Sea News is a solid blog with wide appeal. Recommended.“-Blog Critics Magazine. DSN is highlighted in the Charlotte Observer by Scott Huler: Online Science Conference Draws 250, in the NewsObserver, Columbian Journalism Review, and NPR’s Where We Live: Explorers.  The most up-to-date list of coverage can be seen over at DSN.

Blue Works

Craig McClain serves as the founder and executive director for LUMCON’s Blue Works, set to break ground in 2020, is a 25,500 square foot facility in Houma, Louisiana, 45 minutes inland of the marine center. This building will include 8,400 square feet of learning and research space including: a fabrication lab, 3-D printing lab, two makers spaces, two research laboratories, and a new collections space. These areas plus another 10,000 square feet of public gathering and exhibit space provides LUMCON with a tremendous amount of new education and research space. Blue Works’ mission is to provide collaborative technology space designed to foster work at the intersection of technology and engineering on the most pressing coastal and ocean issues. Blue Works also embodies LUMCON’s mission of open science to make STEM available and accessible to everyone. Meeting the technological and engineering challenges of coastal and ocean issues requires this inclusivity, as well as training and exciting the current and next generation of scientists and engineers. Blue Works seeks to create a place where people can freely use tools and supplies; to create and invent projects that are personal and unique to them. These spaces will serve as the center of innovation where students and faculty, both as researchers, develop ideas and bring projects into reality

OCEANDOTCOMM

Craig McClain is the founder and organizer of OCEANDOTCOMM conferences, storytelling sprints and product-driven meetings for doing science communication. Events bring together a diverse set of science communication experts to share ideas, skills, methods, and opinions. Participants do not passively attend or deliver talks or workshops; instead they are tasked with using the LUMCON’s resources to find and tell a story related to the theme of the event. All products derived from the event are open access and freely available to the public. The resulting kaleidoscope of perspectives created around the event’s theme provides an immersive experience, which allows audiences to interact with the theme of the event in a way that is not otherwise possible. In 2018, thirty-seven science storytellers participated in OCEANDOTCOMM 2018, held at LUMCON’s facility in Cocodrie, LA. The theme for OCEANDOTCOMM 2018 was ‘coastal optimism’. Many stories about South Louisiana have focused on what is being lost with coastal change. But South Louisiana residents are resilient and many solutions have been proposed to alleviate Louisiana’s coastal problems. Those stories–of response, of success, of hope–are told much less often. During their four full days, the OCEANDOTCOMM 2018 participants began work on twenty-nine projects including blog posts, videos, an interactive infographic, radio pieces, crochet, paintings, interactive 360 images, and a break-in box (the opposite of an escape room). At the conclusion of the event, seven projects were ready to share digitally. Two months after the event’s conclusion, fifteen projects were completed or launched and another twenty-two were still in production. For example, one team created an interactive infographic that illustrates connections between Louisiana coast and Gulf of Mexico ecosystems, showing data from fifteen focal species. While the infographic was originally housed on a data-sharing website, the authors worked with editors at American Scientist to publish an article on those ecosystems and featuring the infographic.

Sizing Ocean Giants

Sizing Ocean Giants was an experimental course, taught by Craig McClain,  with Duke University undergraduates combining science and outreach. Designed the course on principal that effective science communication requires better integration between research and outreach. Undergraduates collected data on the body size of various ocean giants ranging from the giant squid and blue whale to the oarfish and leatherback turtle. Each student focused on collecting data from scientific literature, contacts at museums, public media, fisheries services, and other archival information for organisms. Most of these connections were built through social media. Each student contributed blog posts to storyofsize.com that serves as the core of our outreach. Each student also engaged the science community and public via Twitter. Each week students completed Twitter assignments. Examples of the student’s outreach can be found at the website and on Twitter at #sizingoceangiants. The course was featured in the Toronto Star. Published scientific paper at PeerJ with students that has been viewed >93,000 times and was in the top 100 most public talked about articles of 2015.

Popular Writing

Along with Deep-Sea News, my writing is featured at several popular media outlets. Some of my favorites are

Outreach Training

A key part of outreach is training and providing commentary on different strategies of engaging the public. McClain has developed and taught workshops on social media for scientists for engagement with the public and other scientists (Oregon State University 2012, University of Lund 2013). McClain was keynote lecturer for Oceans Online 2013 and discussed how to build an effective social media outreach campaign. McClain has been an invited panelist for several discussions on social media outreach (Union of Concerned Scientists Science of Social Media, National Academy of Science Roundtable Discussion on the Public Interfaces of the Life Sciences, Grist’s Seas the Day Forum). McClain as also authored papers in outreach including: “Digital Environmentalism: Tools and strategies for the evolving online ecosystem”,” A critical evaluation of science outreach via social media: assumption rich but data poor?”, and “Likes, comments, and shares of marine organism imagery on Facebook.”