O’Conall Street

I am spending the day in Nottingham with the Directors of the British Geological Survey (BGS). Last night Dr Marie Cowan was bringing me up to speed with some of the BGS’s recent communications initiatives. Marie is one of a growing number of scientists who see the value in science communications and its role in attracting young people into Earth Sciences.

The BGS joined YouTube last week when it posted a short video on a role play day for sixth form students during which they consider the arguments for and against a planning application for a quarry in an area of special scientific interest. We used this role play model to great success back in Belfast. In our case the case application related to a gold mine in the Sperrins, very topical in the context of this weeks news from Conroy Exploration that they believe the potential for the Clontibret site is much greater then previously thought. The video is an excellent first step into YouTube for BGS. The potential to use social and digital media to platform science communication is immense and I am sure we well see much more where this came from.

In Colombia the family of Ingrid Betanourt will be celebrating her release after six years under FARC captivity in the jungle. Her cause was another examples of a cause which has been keep alive on facebook and other social networks as well, of course, as being a major international news story.

Finally less then a year after announcing the closure of its Limavady plant, Seagate Technologies has detailed a £120 million investment in Derry. I have not had a chance to see the full details of the announcement but hope this will see further high added value activities coming to the North.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 6:30 am and is filed under Business, Environment, Public Relations, Science, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.