Marketing for Scientists

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  • Why Getting a Ph.D. Should Be A Let Down

    Did you go to a thesis defense this spring? Last time I attended one I had some strange thoughts about how we reward each other in this crazy business of science that I thought you might find amusing.

  • iPosters and Betterposter: How to create a conference poster that people want to read

    Download free templates, or make the switch to digital-only. This article originally appeared in Nature Index. A few years ago, presenting a poster at a scientific conference inevitably meant battling with thumbtacks, rubber bands, and an unwieldly sail of paper with little power to inspire. Now researchers are increasingly opting for digital posters and templated…

  • How the Word “But” Could Save The World

    (The post was first published at Scientific American Blogs.) Candidate Hillary Clinton’s speeches were less compelling than those of now-President Donald Trump. We all understood this. But I, for one, would stumble over my own words each time I tried to describe what made Trump’s speeches so much more effective. Fortunately, Randy Olson and Jayde…

  • Pluto, Planet Nine and Other Backyard Worlds

    (This article was first published at Discover,  PLOS blogs, and the SciStarter blog,) Eighty-seven years ago, this week, Clyde Tombaugh was poring over a pair of photographic plates, hoping to change the world.  He was staring hard into an arcane device called a blink comparator, which allowed him to rapidly switch from viewing one image to the…

  • The “Last Starfighter” Model for Citizen Science

    This article was first published in Scientific American. Alex Rogan masters a video game called “Starfighter” where he defends “the Frontier” from “Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada” in a space battle. Soon after he becomes the world’s highest scoring player, the teenager meets an alien who informs him that the battle is real! The video…

  • Interview with Professional Speaker Bernadette Vadurro

    Being a scientist means giving lots and lots of talks. You have may have heard me mention the National Speakers Association, the society for people who give talks for a living. I’ve been fascinated by this organization for several years, and trying to learn what I can from them about how we scientists can give…

  • Cool Worlds: Birth of a Science Vlog

    Just as the pundits predicted, video is taking over the internet.  Youtube has now become the second most popular site on the internet, beating out Facebook.  And with the rise of video, science video blogs (vlogs) are taking off everywhere.  There are the big budget science vlogs by TED and Google, and popular lone wolf…

  • Two Books to Help You Stand Out in the Scientific Job Market

    This book review was first published in Physics World. The press coverage of this year’s Grammy awards taught me a new term: “producer inflation”. The term refers to the way making hit records seems to require bigger collaborations now than it did in years past, when teams of one or two producers sufficed to create…

  • Bringing the Media to You: A Marketing Tip from the National Speakers Association Meeting

    This week I’m writing to you from the National Speakers Association annual meeting, a great place to learn new marketing tricks.  I’m going to share with you a tip I just learned from journalist Geeta Nadkarni. It’s an idea that sounds simple and obvious–and I bet you haven’t tried it yet. First, let me introduce…