Diatom of the Month August 2021 – Announcing an online workshop with the DOM community

by DOM editors |

The Diatom of the Month series of posts project has been running every month without interruption since 2015. DOM December 2019 made an extensive review of the first 4 years of the project, highlighting the diatom community’s desire for incorporating summaries of the latest diatom research, some Frequently Asked Diatom Questions, and marine diatoms posts. Some of our readers even want to listen to us on their commute to work and have another place to chat about diatoms, such as podcasts. 

With all of the above in mind, the editorial team is pleased to announce a workshop sponsored by the International Society of Diatom Research (date TBD by November) that will gather all people interested in Diatom of the Month as a science communication project. The webinar will welcome all kinds of diatom lovers, including academics, researchers, taxonomists, ecosystem managers, teachers, science journalists, and others. This online workshop has two goals: (1) lead participants through a brief workshop on writing the perfect blog post about your science and (2) discuss the outlook and future outcomes of the DOM project in a roundtable format. 

A tentative outline of the webinar (1.5h approx) is below:

  • Brief overview of the rationale, history, and content of DOM. Details about the editorial team and how to get involved. [5 min.]
  • Workshop on how to write the perfect blog post about your science for DOM and elsewhere. Topics include: [20 min.]
    • Identifying the story
    • Simplifying the science and avoiding jargon
    • Finding your voice as a science communicator
    • Determining the length of a blog post
  • Breakout sessions for starting a rough draft of your own blog post, or working with a group on editing an example post. [20 min.]
  • Roundtable discussion for brainstorming (1) other means of diatom science communication and (2) outlook and outcomes for the DOM project over the next 1-2 years. Questions to guide the discussion include: [20 min.]
    • What do you appreciate the most about our initiative? 
    • What is the best average length for a DOM post to attract various audiences?
    • What is the best frequency of posts? (e.g., monthly; bimonthly; quarterly)
    • What would you like to see the most as outcomes of the DOM project? (e.g., a manuscript; an educational project proposal, a podcast)
    • What do you think about a perspective paper that links DOMs and the latest diatom research to gauge how diatom science is being disseminated to broader audiences?
    • What are other science communication projects you are aware of with which DOM can establish new collaborations?

To make this webinar accessible to as many members of our community as possible, we will organize two events to accommodate time zone differences. We would like to hear from you about potential dates between December 2021 – May 2022 that will work best for the community. Please leave your preferences in the comments of the blog, email us (https://isdr.org/about-dom/), at youngdiatomists[at]gmail.com, or get in contact via Twitter (@young_isdr) before November 12.

Looking forward to hearing from you all!