I attended the best conference of all time this past month.

From March 25-27, a whole bunch of science communicators from around the US congregated in Portland. The Association of Science Communicators, or ASC. Now, I’ve been to plenty of science conferences, but this one rose above them all for multiple reasons:

1) Everyone was excited to be there!

2) Everyone was a fantastic presenter and communicator; every talk and workshop was engaging and fun. It was like being at my own version of Disney World with how much I wanted to explore!

3) There wasn’t the bizarre hierarchy of lab heads vs students that has been pervasive with the other. Everyone was, for once, a peer, an equal. I met grad students who’ve been podcasting for years, and I met lab heads who were just introduced to science communication. Everyone had a specialty and we all wanted to connect those specialties to make something great.

4) We all had similar morals when it came to the state of science and science communication.

To be surrounded by that many like minded people, after years of fellow scientists telling me how unimportant scicomm was or how my presentations were “too entertaining,” was thrilling. To be told, “yes, we need to make jokes in our talks to keep people engaged”; to have the moto of the conference be “avoid science jargon”; to have utter vindication that all of my grad school training and workshops and blog posts and stage practice were important—no, crucial to science! The first talk happened, and when there was a ripple of nods as the speaker described the disturbing lack of cross-talk between STEM professionals and the general public was amazing.

For the first time in my STEM career, I was amongst my people.

I walked away thinking, "Is this how I was meant to feel at all those previous conferences? Inspired and hopeful?”

Inspired. Now there’s a word I haven’t used to describe myself in a while. Not that I don’t have inspiration, but compared to my other traits (tired, surviving, working, etc.), it hasn’t taken center stage as part of my identity in years.

Goodness, it feels good to be back.

On Friday the 13th, I finished my fantasy book! I’ve never finished a full fantasy manuscript before! I wish I could say I celebrated, but I was simply relieved. This happened to me all the time with my PhD manuscripts, where I didn’t feel the thrill of finishing the darn project until after I’d finished my final edits. Then the joy hits me like a truck.

But as I wrote, “The End,” I was disappointed but not surprise that I didn’t stand up in the coffee shop right then and there and whoop, “HUZZAH!”

And I still haven’t touched it much after writing those two words. In my defense, I finished it and then had to try and get myself ready for the ASC conference. I’ve been told by a few other authors that it’s normal to set it down for a few weeks and then pick it back up for editing. “Give yourself some breathing room,” they said.

And so we’re doing just that: letting the story breathe.

But I do have a new YouTube video! Two of them, actually; you can hear the story behind the “why” on my Patreon’s Video Enabler level.

This is a two-parter on my big PhD paper, “Layilin inhibits integrin activation and its loss results in platelet hyperactivation via Rac1 in inflammatory bowel disease.”

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

I also have so much more video content for this paper, but due to Premier Pro being a pain, I had to edit those parts out. I’m now learning DaVinci editing software per suggestion of a fellow ASC member (who’s far more video savvy than I).

Currently finishing up a volunteer animation project. Once I have that out in the next day or two (now that I finally have time for it), I’m going to try and make my first 3D biochemistry image on BioRender.

Oh, and I’m typing away on my next blog post. The inspiration I gained from the ASC conference has driven me to write up almost 800 words in a handful of hours, with attached research.

(If you want to have a say in what topics I touch on for my blog, you can join my Patreon to vote for topics!)

I’m currently honing my illustration skills. I present to you a Steller’s Jay with a hidden orca!

Alrighty. You’ve figured out your medium. Now you can just start publishing your scicomm work, right?

That’s actually perfectly valid. If you need to get your material out there to experiment what does and doesn’t work for your content and/or medium, I encourage it. Be aware that this, like any scientific experiment, will lead to a lot of failures before you find your scicomm “groove.” But if you want to do a bit more planning, I’d suggest figuring out your niche next.

What do I mean by “niche”? Think of this as the ultra-specific type of content that is made for an ultra-specific kind of audience.

For example: My science blog covers science in scifi and fantasy books, with the occasional dip into real life topics or table toproleplaying games (TTRPGs). The ultra-specific content centers around the question, “How does one ‘sciencify’ magic?”

My content is not meant for scientists. It’s not meant for your everyday laymen. It’s not even meant for I’m writing to authors and readers, specifically those in scifi/fantasy.

Now, do scientists read my blog? Absolutely; turns out a lot of STEM folks are huge fiction enthusiasts. Do many of my audience also happen to play TTRPGs? Yep-ski-doodle.

The key part of my niche is that no one else is doing this type of content. Or at least, not many people out there are pumping it out.

Does my content come close to others? Sure; look at RPGeeks. They’re a group of science communicators who play scifi-ish tabletop roleplaying games and then dive deep into the science behind their game’s setting.

But there’s a key difference between their content and mine: I focus on world-building (the word authors use when crafting their settings) ideas and techniques while they focus on a singular story and gameplay. We complement each other.

What about RPGeeks vs Science and Sorcery? Both are a bunch of science communicators playing games and telling stories to show off science. Absolutely, but S&S’s niche is doing shorter, chaotic games with more audience participation (usually for charity) with more rotation between players and game masters. That’s their niche. Both groups technically cater to different audiences (though there’s a ton of overlap; the audience that love science-specific games are very flexible in the kinds of games/stories they watch).

Back to the topic: how do you find your niche?

The answer is that I can’t tell you how to discover that for your work. Like any artform, it’s a case-by-case basis. For inspiration, I’d look at whatever passion is driving you to do scicomm work in the first place. You’re a parent who’s passionate about lab work? Cool— maybe you craft your work to appeal to “Parents in STEM.” You’re a cyclist who likes food? Maybe you make content that appeals to fellow cyclists who like to think about what they put in their body for races or rest periods. You’ve worked on ships in the past? Maybe you focus on making projects that highlight marine biology or ship work. Raven the Science Maven, one of the best scicommers out there, started off with content talking about modeling, makeup, and hair. Then, she switched to talking about STEM and her loyal audience stayed to hear her chat as a scientist.

Also, don’t fret if your niche is similar to another science communicators; unless you’re plagiarizing their content, it’s near impossible to truly step on another communicator’s niche (see S&S and RPGeeks). Your niche will determine, and be determined by, your overall tone, voice, and even visual style for your projects. All of this combined will set you apart from others, making your content uniquely complementary to any other similar content out there.

(I keep stressing the complementary part because RPGeeks once put my Elf post on blast because they loved how similar my post was to some of their own scicomm work. They not only posted my work, but then followed up with their own TikToks to complement my work. I was starstruck for a good 24 hours after that.)

The ultimate lesson is that you usually* don’t cater to a massive audience right out of the gate. The best scicomm content creators I’ve seen start small, get their loyal audience, find their scicomm talents/voice, get the “kinks” and “growing pains” out of the way, and then go “wide.”

*There was an amazing discussion at ASC about making broadly appealing content to help with combating misinformation, but again, this section is for newcomers to science communication. Grow your niche, flourish, and then go wide if you have the means and bandwidth… Though if you know how to go viral fast for scicomm, have at thee and tell me your secrets!

Next we’ll talk about voice in your science communication. To no one’s surprise, it’ll be about audience again, but as we discussed at the conference, “Everything’s about audience” :)

Again, if you like what I do and want to support me while keeping my material free to access, you can join my Patreon or make a one-time tip on KoFi! (Yes, I remembered that hyperlinks are a thing this time around!)