Heather Doran

Image from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dirkb86/8444929253/ This January I visited London for an interview. I was feeling nervous and excited and, as I usually handle challenging situations, I tweeted about it. People on twitter offered words of encouragement and support. Some of the people that tweeted I have met and know well, others I only know through twitter (and I don't even know their real name). With all of these people I have built relationships completely online and we have shared advice, interesting news stories and silly memes. The tweeting helped, I found at the end of February that I was successful. The twitter conversations I had just before the interview helped me get through the interview, and reinforced my feelings about why I was there. The interview was for a project focusing on how science is shared via social media with the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust . The project is a Travel Fellowship and I'm going to be meeting with people across the US

Last week I was invited to speak at a Biomedical careers event at the University of Aberdeen about Careers in Science Communication. I thought others might find the presentation useful (especially some of the links) so I have included it below. I put a post out on twitter for gif's and images that encapsulated the 'field' of science communication. The brilliant Matthew from Errantscience.com  created these two gems. Ways to do #SciComms comic based on extensive research :P pic.twitter.com/Gh01122Rjn — Matthew (@MCeeP) February 11, 2015 . @hapsci and this is one I just drew on a whim pic.twitter.com/w20vB64BVL — Matthew (@MCeeP) February 10, 2015 I only had a limited amount of time for the talk so I gave a little background about what I did as a student (Editor and co-founder of Au Science Magazine) and how I have worked at science festivals and present the Talking Science radio show with the team in my current role. I spoke about the field

This is a series of review posts focusing on apps and tools which may help people navigate the digital landscape and the masses of information out there. I focus on tools which might help academics and those that work with research, especially those that will save people time. This post lists more tools and tricks.  Buffer  sells itself as 'Social Media Management' application and that is pretty self explanatory about what it does. You can schedule posts, post from multiple accounts simultaneously and generate statistics such as the number of clicks on a link and audience size, allowing you to refine you content, post at the best times and generally be better and more active on social media with minimal effort. I am finding Buffer incredibly useful and enjoyable to use. It was really simple to integrate it into my posting and social media use and has allowed me to better manage my posting schedule and saved me lots of time. I've been using Buffer for just over

Image courtesy of  jscreationzs  at FreeDigitalPhotos.net I'm speaking to more and more research groups about how they can get online and share their work via social media. I used some of the thoughts and diagrams from 'An introduction to social media for Scientists' published in PLOS Biology 2013 to illustrate some of the thoughts, barriers and journeys to engaging online in a short talk I gave.. I'm looking to speak to more people and read more case studies about how collective research groups have shared their science openly online - rather than the science being communicated by single individuals -  which I see to be more commonplace. Research rarely exists in isolation so I see more groups moving to this collated model. Communicating as a group is, in theory, easier than as a single entity as there is potentially more to discuss and potentially less onus on one individual to provide all the narrative. That said, it is more difficult for people to com

I've been thinking this week about all the apps, tools and plug-ins that I use to make my digital life easier. I use a variety of tools to catch up with digital conversations, save things for later and to make sure I don't miss blogposts.  I also use them to manage my own digital footprint so I can update blogs and twitter when I am away from my desk and laptop. There are lots of options out there so I want to collect a round up of what people use and for what. I'm particularly interested in hearing from researchers. 98% of the tools I use are free and I am reluctant to pay for something new without a really good review first. New tools are launched on a what seems like daily basis and older apps and tools get changed, removed and updated frequently. Here's a run down of what I use (and for what). I would be really interested to hear from others about what they use and how it makes your life easier! - Twitter - I use twitter.com from my desktop and laptop and