Sometimes I’m not lecturing for a few months and sometimes I’m doing several a week. After I just got back from Paris, Amsterdam was waiting for me and the Zoo. I was invited to a very hip event: Discovery Festival Amsterdam. A night out, mixed with science. A band in a museum. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I was looking forward to it.
I’m hardly ever nervous about talking in front of groups (it’s my profession after all), but this one would be a little bit of a challenge. I’d do it in the Pecha Kucha format: presenting my story in exactly 20 slides, with no more or less than 20 seconds for each slide. They called it 20PK here, but I already knew the rules as someone else is trying to get me to do one of these for a couple of years now. When I told Chris about it, even he said he thought that would be quite difficult, but I figured I could do it and so I prepared while travelling to Amsterdam.
Before and after my talk, I would also present the Zooniverse and its projects in the ‘Mens vs Machine lab’. Todd, another Zooite, came over to help me with this. He arrived in the afternoon and we had lunch first. Then we found the hotel they had booked for us, which was one of the boats (!) called Gandalf. And it was right next to the science centre! We especially liked this when we walked out of NEMO in the evening, while it was raining. Anyway, Todd wondered out loud (i.e. on twitter) how woman cope with heels on boats and I just replied ‘easypeasy’. The lovely lady on the boat (of whom we never found out what language she did speak) did make clear she thought I looked charming, so that was a good start.
The ‘gig’ would kick off at 9pm, so after I had gone over my presentation, we had time for dinner with my biology buddies Sjors and Edwin (if you follow this blog you might recognise the latter from our documentary), who came for moral support and the whole experience. Standing next to these guys, you might think I pick my friends according to height, but they have other talents too. To prove that size really doesn’t matter, we took a picture with the English one as well.
Then we got our festival bracelets and met up with the guys from Foldit. We shared the lab together and it was good fun. We got many nice reactions and I’d like to say thanks to everyone who came up, said hi and tried one of our projects. It was pretty busy eventually, but I remember one girl who was rather impressed by the fact you could actually help writing papers. Another guy asked where the ‘fame button’ was. But mostly it was truly nice to see how interested these young people were in science, on their night out. Oh and the fact that I was explaining Sea Floor Explorer to what turned out to be a marine expert was kind of fun too!
My 20PK presentation was around 11pm and right before I went up on stage, I took the picture of the audience from the side. They’re not the best quality pictures, but I think it gives an idea of the relaxed atmosphere. As expected, it turned out to be a lot of fun. When I sat down in the audience later, I heard someone behind me say they liked me best, which was very much appreciated, you kind sir out there! Sjors, Ed and I already agreed to go next year, taking it all in as visitors. There was so much more fun and interesting stuff to do: I wholeheartedly recommend the Discovery Festival.
