Of Schemes and Memes Blog

World Science Festival round up: UPDATED #wsf11

This month on Of Schemes and Memes, science festivals are in the spotlight.

The fourth World Science Festival held in New York took place from Wednesday to Sunday last week. To keep you updated on our coverage of this annual event, we thought a summary post linking to our science festival content and others may prove useful.

Summary of our world science series

Science festivals – part 1: The World Science Festival: an interview with Tracy Day

In this post, we interview Tracy Day, co-founder and executive director of the World Science Festival, to learn more about how this creative festival came about. We find out how her background in production has inspired the intersection of art and science.

Science festivals – part 2: Cambridge Science Festival

This is a guest blog by Nicola Buckley, Head of Community Affairs, University of Cambridge and Cambridge Science Festival manager. Nicola has been directing the festival team since 2004 and set up the Cambridge Festival of Ideas in 2008. In her post, she gives us a brief history of science festivals and looks at what inspired the Cambridge science festival.

Science festivals – part 3: Cheltenham Science Festival

We welcome a joint guest post by Sharon Bishop, the Executive Director of The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, who has been involved with the last six of the ten Cheltenham Science Festivals, and Kathy Sykes, Professor of Sciences and Society at Bristol University and Festival Director since they began in 2002. In this post, they highlight the successes of Cheltenham festival, born from which was their pioneering FameLab project.

Science festivals – part 4: The World Science Festival Opens!

Celebrities from the worlds of science and art gathered at the Alice Tully Hall in New York City for the opening of the World Science Festival. The festival commenced with the Opening Night Gala, featuring a spectacular reading of Radiance, The Passion of Marie Curie and this post summarises the powerful production

Science festivals – part 5: Science Storytellers

A gathering of journalists, writers, scientists and others interested in the fine art of telling a science story, met at the Paley Media Center in New York, to hear from successful authors about their skills and experiences with science storytelling. This post summarises the thought-provoking discussion.

Science festivals – part 6: Telling Science Stories in Print and on the Web #wsf11

A summary of World Science Festival panel, Telling Science Stories in Print and on the Web, featuring many of the big names in science writing and journalism, from the “blogfather” of science blogging, Bora Zivkovic, to the Guardian’s Emily Bell via author and PLoS blogger, Seth Mnookin. Includes a Storify archiving the tweets from the event.

Science festivals – part 7: Spotlight: Women in Science #wsf11

A post that rounds up the World Science Festival’s Spotlight event that aimed to strip away the trimmings of a traditional science presentation and add cocktails to the mix. A Storify presents the tweets from the session.

Science festivals – part 8: The Dark Side of the Universe #wsf11

Those hungry for answers to the mysteries of the cosmos gathered at the Skirball Centre in New York on Thursday night to learn about the dark side of the universe. We are left in the dark about 96% of what is out there and this post summarises this event with a panel consisting of some of the world’s leading researchers in the fields of physics and cosmology.

Science festivals – part 9: Biorhythm: Music and the Body #wsf11

A post highlighting just a few of the quirky activities on offer at Thursday’s Biorhythm: Music and the Body event at the World Science Festival, in an exhibition created by Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin running until August 6th.

Science festivals – part 10: The Secret Behind the Secret of Life: Facts and Fictions

At this year’s World Science Festival, science has been liberated from the laboratory and allowed to spread its wings through the imaginative medium of theatre. This post summarises Photograph 51, performed at The 3-Legged Dog Art and Technology Centre in New York, a play focusing on the life of Rosalind Franklin.

Science festivals – part 11: World Science Festival Salon: Manipulating Memory #wsf11 Another type of event at this year’s festival is the “science salon”; a panel discussion pitched at a slightly more scientific audience and this post covers the Manipulating Memory salon.

Science festivals – part 12: The Moth – Dark Night: Stories of Stars Aligned

Science festivals – part 13: Beautiful Minds: The Enigma of Genius

WSF Blog

The World Science Festival Blog is offering instant reactions from some of their pioneering events. Each post gives a brief summary of the event, extracting memorable quotes and pictures:

Instant Reaction: Telling Science Stories in Print and on the Web

Instant Reaction: Improvising Science

Instant Reaction: The Dark Side of the Universe

Instant Reaction: Women in Science

Instant Reaction: The Radical New Science of Longevity

Instant Reaction: The Illusion of Certainty – Risk, Probability and Chance

Instant Reaction: Mysteries of the Mathematical Universe

Instant Reaction: The Mind after Midnight

Instant Reaction: Another Earth

Instant Reaction: Secret of Life

Instant Reaction: The Unbearable Lightness of Memory

Instant Reaction: Rhythms on the Brain

Instant Reaction: Cryptography in a Connected World

Instant Reaction: Cool Jobs

Instant Reaction: Rebooting the Cosmos

Instant Reaction: On the Shoulders of Giants

Instant Reaction: Man-Made Minds.

Instant Reaction: Origins of Orientation.

Instant Reaction: Music and the Spark of Spontaneity.

Instant Reaction: The Enigma of Genius.

Instant Reaction: The Invisible Language of Smell.

Instant Reaction: A Thin Sheet of Reality.

On Seeing Further.

Sciam’s coverage

Scientific American has also been giving us some great coverage of the World Science Festival, including some live blogging!

Thorium, Polonium, Radium, Oh My! Marie Curie and Maggie Gyllenhaal Kick Off the 2011 World Science Festival

Guest post by Neda Afsarmanesh who appraises the Opening Night Gala, featuring the reading of Radiance, The Passion of Marie Curie.

World Science Festival: The Dark Side of the Universe [Live Stream]

Philip Yam blogs live from the Dark Side of the Universe event at the Skirball Center in New York.

Cool Jobs, from the World Science Festival [Live Stream]

All about Stories: How to Tell Them, How They’re Changing, and What They Have to Do with Science

A guest blog from the World Science Festival’s panel of science journalists and writers that sat down to discuss the ways in which the Web is shaping and changing how stories are told.

Rebooting the Cosmos: Is the Universe the Ultimate Computer? [Live Stream]

The Illusion of Certainty: Risk, Probability, and Chance [Live Stream]

The Mind after Midnight: Where Do You Go When You Go to Sleep? [Live Stream]

The Bezos Scholars Program at the World Science Festival

Space Is an Elaborate Illusion

Elsewhere on the blogosphere

Alan Alda Shares ‘Hero’ Marie Curie With World Science Festival.

Pondering the World, With Some Help From Broadway Stars.

Five Science Facts That Will Blow Your Mind at the 2011 World Science Festival.

Why not check out Jeanne Garbarino’s thoughts on the panel Telling Science Stories in Print.

Glitz and magic as science gets the celebrity treatment From NS Culture Lab blog

Risk, probability, and how our brains are easily misled John Timmer blogs on Ars Technica about the Probability and Risk panel at the World Science Festival.

Science also wrote up the Spotlight: Women in Science event.

World Science Festival 2011: Shifting the balance in the war on cancer: A summary from PopTech on the “Cancer’s Last Stand? The Genome Solution” panel hosted by the World Science Festival on Thursday night at the New York University Kimmel Center.

World Science Festival: Beautiful Minds: The Enigma of Genius

Inquiring Minds on Governors Island: The New York Times looks at some of the child-friendly activities that were on offer at the World Science Festival.

World Science Festival: Can We Really Live to 1,000? A summary from Thursday night’s World Science Festival session, where four researchers gathered to debate questions of longevity and ageing.

Understanding the Big Bang Machine.

Now That They’ve Won on Jeopardy!, Man-Made Minds Take on Isaac Newton.

A Double Helix of Art and Science.

Cryptography at World Science Festival: Humans Are the Weakest Link.

World Science Festival: Brian Greene and Alan Alda Bring Science to the Masses.

World Science Festival Street Fair Transforms NYC’s Washington Square Park into Outdoor Science Fair.

2011 World Science Festival: A look back. The Scientist takes an overall look at the World Science Festival.

Do let us know if we’ve missed anything else and we can add it here.

Even More…

If you were unable to attend some of the events you can also watch most of them on WSFtv.

Nature Medicine’s blog, Spoonful of Medicine, will also be covering some events so stay tuned for their reports.

Nature Network Bloggers join in…

This week’s guest blogger, Jan Zalasiewicz, writing on the Soapbox Science blog is also reflecting on what it’s like to talk about science at a festival. Read more here.

Not only have we gone science festival mad, so have our bloggers and what better way to end our round up than with Viktor Poor’s comical example of what you should wear to a science festival!

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