A few notes on Time by Bowie and Scentless Apprentice by Nirvana

Time on Bowie’s 1973 album Aladdin Sane (which can be read “A lad insane”). Such production work, such cooperation between three amazing musicians and one poet (where Bowie plays two of the roles. Mike Garson’s piano which effortlessly moves between vaudeville, glam rock and jazz, Bowie’s desperate struggle with the most terrible oppressor of them all – Old Father Time, and then the timing of Mick Ronson’s guitar solo – one underlined phrase which sets the whole song on fire for a couple of bars.

Scentless Apprentice reminds me that the greatest Kurt Cobain album was not Nevermind but the fragmented and chaotic last album, In Utero, which has DESPAIR written all over it. I was 30, expecting my second child and witnessed the greatest musical artist and rock poet of my generation destruct himself and choose a lonely death with a shotgun in his mouth, according to the pitiful marginalized-male cultural protocol he was taught during his mobile home upbringing. Whitetrash to Whitetrash, Guns to Guns.

And his eyes were just as blue as the eyes of my two year old son. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

 

 

A birthday celebration to my brother

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR BROTHER! On this your big day, I was very happy to receive this photo from our mother. It shows a sunny summer day in Rydebäck, south of Helsingborg, where we had some bright and formative years in a collective of kids from (as it seemed) happy and optimistic core families.

The reason that I like this photograph is that I think it mirrors our characters and our relation. You’re the serious and target-oriented explorer of the world (in this case a The Famous Five book; probably Five Go Down To The Sea). I am the easy-going spectator of whats going on – more motivated by inspiration and things I stumble over that catch my curiosity.

There’s a nice harmony in the composition. You are deep down in your well of concentration, and you will have finished this book before the evening meal. On the other hand, I will not have achieved anything measurable, but seem to enjoy this afternoon anyway.

The detail you should study is the admiration in my pose. I am fascinated by your reading skills and your focus – which eventually will earn you a Ph.D. and a career where you belong to the industrial elite of our nation.

If I should choose a single memory where I felt empowered by having such an able brother is the day during my high school years when you, the tech student at LTH, sat down to teach me how derivatives work.

I am looking forward to many fun dinners and activities together with our growing families – I am especially happy that we share a passion for music, nature, history and culture.

I think a Swedish SKÅL! is the right way to end this text:
SKÅL, STOREBRORSAN!

Beta-testning av Lottens podd ”När Lotten får avgöra”

Avsnitt #1: Det nya ordet fokusork

Det finns många ord som saknas i det svenska språket men som finns på engelska. Nu har jag löst problemet med ”attention span”: FOKUSORK!

Avsnitt #2: Berättelsen om barnförlamnings-vaccinet

The world keeps existing

I read this line by Sylvia Plath, and felt that I had to disagree:

”I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.”

It’s a wonder of a healthy brain – i.e. a brain which is neither affected by illness or stress, nor under the influence of drugs – to maintain a coherent view of the outside world without breaks in the timeline. When we close our eyes, we keep getting input from our other senses, and it all makes sense.

What Plath describes is more like the experience described by my son when he had one of his longer epileptic abscence seizures: ”It felt like being dead,” he said. A reminder that we should all value our sanity and a proper physiological function of the CNS.

Presenting yourself, your work and your science – a communication toolbox for your PhD career

olle_bergmanA preparation guide for the PCAP Workshop on February 8, 2018

Hello! I’m your workshop leader Olle Bergman, and here are some notes which will help you get the most out of our day together.

Please note that this is more of an intellectual than a practical preparation – I will start my lecture from page 1 of the story, and there will be time to develop the pitches and LI pages further during the workshop. However, I strongly recommend you to take some time to go through the material and write a first draft; I can assure you that the result will be very useful for you!

Part 1: The elevator pitch — the art of convincing the world in 60 seconds

Wikipedia: “An elevator pitch, elevator speech or elevator statement is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a process, product, service, organization, or event and its value proposition.”screen-shot-2016-11-15-at-10-18-54

In our context, the elevator pitch should be a brief summary of your research or work and its value, presented in a way that is not only short and precise but also interesting! No matter if you’re an early career scientist, a young entrepreneur or a junior policymaker: an effective elevator pitch can make things happen faster in your professional life.

Here’s the process:

  • Pick the right content
  • Shape some convincing messages
  • Choose the right wording
  • Make your pitch punchy and memorable
  • Practice.

We will explore this process together. But we will also talk about communication in general and some of my favourite topics, e.g. PowerPoint design and rhetoric.

Laying the groundwork for the elevator pitch

To prepare a personal elevator pitch, you can proceed in many different ways. Feel free to find your own style and format, as long as it’s not longer than 60 seconds. I invite you to be bold and original—you’re in a safe environment, and now is the time to experiment and try out stuff.

Below is a protocol you can follow. It is based upon a suggestion from Carmine Gallo’s book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. (Yes, the video is very American in its style – some would say cheesy – but the main messages are just classical rhetoric in new drag.)

Step 1
Jot down replies to the following questions. Be spontaneous and don’t think too much about the end result.

  1. What do you do as a scientist?
  2. What problem(s) do you solve?
  3. How is your research different?
  4. Why should I care?

Step 2
Perform a word count. Now your task is to reduce the amount of text to 90–100 words, including spaces. As you will soon discover, this step is the tough one. But you will come out at the other end with something really useful. (And during the workshop, your colleagues will help you make it even better!)

A very interesting blog post about the average speaking rate

Step 3
Now, try out your elevator pitch by reading it out loud. Does it sound OK? Use your stopwatch and time it.

Examples from the Web

“Do you know that 32 million Americans are taking statins for their high cholesterol? While statins have been shown to improve the heart function by reducing blood cholesterol levels, one of the major side effects associated with long-term use of statin is the development of muscle pain.

My research focuses separating the cellular pathways leading to the beneficial effects and muscle toxicity mediated by statins in order to identify new drug molecule(s) that only activate the pathway good for the heart. Using various cell-based assays, we have identified a drug combination that mimics the good effects of statins but are devoid of the muscle toxicity associated with their used.”

The Postdoc Way

“Using advanced cheminformatics and computational drug design methods, I try to find compounds that can help us understand the function of a group of proteins called orphan G protein-coupled receptors (oGPCRs).

If you walk into any pharmacy, there is always around 30% chance you will order a drug targeting one of the already known GPCRs. However, we know little about the orphan GPCRs except for the fact that they are present in our body in e.g. the brain, the liver, and the heart, but not much knowledge about what endogenously potentiates their action!

Understanding this fascinating puzzle, will help us better comprehend our own physiology and potentially also cure related diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and depression.”

Mohamed A. Shehata

“I am a Penn neuroscience graduate student. I studied predictive time series analysis as an undergrad at Yale and have a general interest in functional connectivity. With Geoff Aguirre, I am testing in fMRI data if blindness alters resting brain connectivity between visual and language regions.” 

Geoffrey Aguirre Lab

Part 2: LinkedIn–getting a decent page

The compulsory part of the preparations here is simple: just make sure you have registered a LinkedIn account.

But if you’re eager to get going, here’s a checklist for your first work with the LI profile

Step 1. Get a professionally looking photo.
This means it should be taken by someone who understands what a shallow
depth of field is, and who uses a portrait lens costing at least € 300. No funny FB photos or blurry snapshots, please.

Step 2. Write a headline.
Use the 120 characters wisely to describe who you are to your desired target
group.

Step 3. Write a summary
Make this brief and very focused; my suggestion is to use less than 400
characters. Of course, your elevator pitch will be a great starting point here!

4A. Go crazy and fill your page with lots of interesting stuff about
you. (Recommended if you want to use your LI profile to show how great you are.)
OR
4B. Compile carefully selected material to create a professional
persona (Recommended if you’re looking for a new job or position in a certain field.)
What you present on your LinkedIn page should be based on your personal
communication strategy. Some people want to appear as renaissance persons,
others want to appear as very goal-oriented.

5. Start asking trusted friends and colleagues to write Recommendations.

Part 3: Please send me a question

Jot down a question that has to do with science, communication and career and send them to me at olle@bergman.com. I will try to address as many questions as I can during the workshop!

Looking forward to seeing you in Copenhagen soon!

Olle B.

+46 70 888 55 41

olle@bergman.com
http://crastina.org/
https://se.linkedin.com/in/ollebergman

Copenhagen, January 21, 2016

Thank you for a great day in Copenhagen! Below you will find a pdf with the lecture slides as well as a motley but useful collection of links .

Feel free to get in touch if you’re preparing a talk or have questions about your communication strategy. I strongly recommend liking the Crastina Facebook Page (read more below) as it offers a lot of interesting links about communications in science.

Good luck with your studies, research, networking and communication!

O.

olle@bergman.com
se.linkedin.com/in/ollebergman/en
@torbern

My slides

2016-01-16_Copenhagen.key

Links

Some Twitter tips

TweetDeck

Download it here. Then use the search function to find some influencers in your field or hashtags related to your research subject. Start following 10–20 twitterers and extend your network slowly. Systematically remove those who are uninteresting, annoying or publishing too much. There is no point in following hundreds of people if you don’t want to become a specialised information traffic controller or influencer, alternatively work as a journalist or communication officer.

Symplur 

Tweeting during conferences

Books

Mr Scicomm = Kirk Englehardt

If you want a starting point for general science communication (hashtag #scicomm) your man is Kirk Englehardt from University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He knows what is going on, and presents summaries like this every week!

Crastina

I currently put a lot of effort in Crastina—a networking platform for the exchange of knowledge, skills, experience and opinion regarding scientific communication and science dissemination. The primary target group is early career scientists, but here you can find stuff which is useful for everybody with an interest for communication. (The name comes from Scientia Crastina, Latin for ‘The Science of Tomorrow’)

There are several ways to engage in the Crastina network activities.

A boulder with little trees at the top in Södermanland. [Photo: Olle Bergman, @generalblom]

A boulder with little trees at the top in Södermanland. [Photo: Olle Bergman, @generalblom]

Solna den 19 juni 2015

Hej & tack för bra engagemang!

1. Mejla gärna frågor, kommentarer och reflektioner!

olle@bergman.com

2. Föreläsningsrelaterat

3. Crastina

Som ni kan se ligger denna återkoppling på Scientia Crastina – en webbplattform för ”early career scientists” som är intresserade av kommunikation. Börja gärna på startsidan och surfa runt och skriv gärna en kommentar om ni hittar något som väcker ert intresse. Vi är idel öra när det gäller önskemål och förlag på förbättringar.

Lycka till med era projekt och ta fasta på vad Amgen Scholars-studenten Leonidas Georgiou skrev i ett mejl till mig:

 

/Glad midsommar!
O.

Böcker