If you work in Sci-Comm, you've likely heard of BIG. It's a huge community (family) of sci-comm, which comes together each year to hold the least conference-y conference maybe ever? But that doesn't mean you don't learn anything - far from it. My first trip to BIG, at the end of my MSc, was a (mildly overwhelming) introduction to how great our community is at self-organising, and sharing our own knowledge and expertise to help everyone develop - plus usually an excuse to run around a science museum, this year that was Techniquest!
This year, I was part of two sessions: my own session on my research, and a session on 'the vulnerabilities of a sci-comm life' - it was super cool to be asked to contribute to that session and represent one background & pathway in science communication.
My session was a really cool opportunity to share my research in a completely different setting: sharing my findings with the community who I had interviewed for my study. I adapted my presentation from EASST-4S for this audience (aka added GIFs) and looked specifically at how I could feed my research back to practitioners, rather than just academics. It has been (and will be) so useful to have a network and community of people reminding me that academic research shouldn't only be for academic researchers!
