Dr Falkner Goes to Canberra Day 1 “Welcome and Overview” (#smp2014 #AdelED)

(Disturbing social media fact: the people sitting next to me had seen my breakfast view tweet on the Canberra twitter site before they met me. I think I’m having my 15 bits of fame.)

(Colour aside: there’s a lot of orange in use here. I feel at home.)

The welcome and overview to the session was given by Dr Ross Smith (President) and Catriona Jackson (CEO) of Science and Technology Australia (STA). This is the 29th year of the even, which is a pretty impressive run! This event is being supported by the Department of Industry and a host of sponsors (who I won’t list here although I will note that a couple of Unis were sponsoring, which I found interesting, along with the NTEU). This has attracted a lot of sponsorship. There are roughly 200 scientists here, for development activities to improve our ability to communicate with parliament and the media.

Science thrives in the creation of networks.

There’ll be a launch of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Science tonight, which sounds very interesting and I’m looking forward to find out what that’s about. We have almost half the whole parliament arranged for meetings tomorrow – about 120 people – which is quite surprising and a very high level of exposure to parliament. There’s a media minder available, which I doubt I’ll need as there’s still a very low level of media interest in much of the educational stuff I work with, but it’s good to know that they’re there.

Today we’re in the NGA but tomorrow we’re in the “belly of the parliament” and have very strict rules for when we can enter the parliament. I suspect I’ll be having a very early morning tomorrow to make the early breakfast entry point. (I must check to see if there are equipment limits to what we can bring in, given I travel with a small electronics shop.)

That’s it, time for the first talk!