Let me tell you a story
What I should have written about (but have been too busy/lazy to) by now is what I have been doing all summer. In short I’ve been working as part of a summer bursary scheme at Swansea University under my 3rd year project supervisor Prof. (as of October) Matt Jones on projector phones. More on this another time.
Because of my involvement in the FIT Lab and working closely with Matt, I got “roped in” to helping out at the British Science Festival in Guildford at an exhibition show-casing the StoryBank project as part of a larger project called Bridging the Global Digital Divide.
In the run up to the start of the Festival, I was not given any information as Matt wanted to keep everything a “surprise”. We were all (that’s me, Matt, Emma who worked on the StoryBank, Simon the Research Assistant who works for Matt and Ram Bhat who worked closely on the StoryBank project in the field in rural India) meeting at our hotel close to the Festival location (University of Surrey) on Friday evening. After a few delays on the train I make it to our hotel and settle in nicely. At the hotel, I’m told what I’m actually there for; engaging people attending the festival to get them to view and interact with the StoryBank.
Day 1. Nice breakfast. Get there nice and early and set up. Walk around and try to get people to view our exhibit. Interact with the people at the exhibit. Seems like explaining the same thing to people over and over would get dull. I imagine that it would.
The difference here is the interesting conversations you have with the people you speak to. Of course there are people that are not that interested but there are people who are truly passionate about the work that has been done for StoryBank and similar projects and it is great to hear what these people have to say and to talk to them about their views on the project and what it has achieved.
At the end of the 1st day, we had engaged or approached 300+ people and had some very stimulating conversations! After a surprisingly exhausting first day, we all headed off to bed to get some rest.
Day 2. Very very quiet. It’s a Sunday and there don’t seem to be as many events as there were on Saturday, at least not in our building. Not as many interactions but still a few meaningful and insightful conversations with people. After we had finished on our stand, we all decided to go to a lecture by Simon Singh called “Why journalists love silly mathematical equations” , which turned out to be entertaining, interesting and revealing. I suppose these are the things that all great lectures need…
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