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Whew. Now that decompression following the ASTC conference has occurred, let
me pass on a few things I saw/learned in Richmond. I hope others will also
share their impressions and experiences, cause hey, one purpose for the
listserve oughta be to pass on info from the conference to others who
couldn't make it.

For no discernable reason, I shall format my conference in a method
pioneered by TV Guide.

           2005 ASTC CONFERENCE CHEERS & JEERS

CHEERS to the Science Museum of Virginia. Hosting this affair has got to be
a pain in the butt, but they did it very well. All of the staffers I met
were great, and many of them bent over backwards to help us out of towners.
(A personal thanks to Summer, David and Bee.) Among the keenest stuff at
their center was the "kugel" (a huge marble globe that hydroplaned), the
aparatsaurus bone the staff were cleaning, the Newton in Space exhibit...
and the painting pig.

CHEERS to the SMV parking lot. Seriously, this is the best smelling parking
lot ever. SMV is located right next to a cookie + cracker factory.

JEERS to canceling stuff. The Friday pre-conference tours all got axed, and
they looked interesting. Also deep sixed was a Tuesday session about one of
the most intriguing partnerships we'd heard of: between SMV and the Richmond
Ballet. The head of the Minds in Motion program, they're the ones who
brought the really great dancing kids to Saturday morning's opening, was
supposed to present on art + science, but it was scratched.

CHEERS to a big international attendance. I met/talked with people from
Canada, Trinidad, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Argentina, Israel, England,
Ireland, New Zealand and Malaysia.

JEERS to a blitz of meaningless buzzwords. If you want to get people
together to brainstorm some ideas, just say so. Don't say you're going to
"collaborate as a thinking partner with senior leaders across the globe to
create innovative forums for constructive dialogue on critical business and
societal issues". Vague jargon is the friend of no one, except the overpaid
marketing consultant.

CHEERS to getting real. At the TV partnership session, I was worried at
first that the session might drown in the jargon blitz mentioned above. But
both the television and science center attendees came right out and said
what we wanted from the other side in a partnership - and why we often
weren't getting it or couldn't provide what the other side wanted. I won't
say this let us solve all potential problems, but airing our differences up
front at least let us get a start on it by getting a handle on the true
problems. Call me nuts, but I see an honest, contentious debate as
preferable to a conciliatory blast of nothing. I needed to know what the TV
folks were seeking/offering, not to hear vague promises of "potential
partnership synergies".

JEERS to Saturday morning speaker Andy Stefanovich. I'll try to not get too
acidic, and just say I thought he was bad.

CHEERS to Sunday morning speaker Mike Melvill, the first privately funded
astronaut to make it into space. You could hear jaws dropping during his
stories of taking Spaceship One into space. I especially loved his first
action upon reaching space: whipping out a camera to snap some pictures.

CHEERS to the second most macho presenter, after Melvill, William Katzman of
the Catawba Science Center. At the Best in Show session, he performed a demo
where he walked barefoot on glass shards. And now I want to rent "Die Hard".

JEERS to the shuttle schedule. It was good to have hotel shuttles to the
conference center, but often they seemed to be running on a schedule that
had no correlation with when the session were running.

CHEERS to long running sessions that still pack a punch. Eddie Goldstein's
Live Demo Hour is always great. I've seen a lot of demonstrations, but this
year I saw several that were new to me. Highlight: Nina Simon of the Spy
Museum, who used an honest-to-Le Carre polygraphy on a volunteer.

Similarly, Linda Organ + Cathy Fudurich continue to bring it with The Best
Damn Things We've Ever Done. Presented at a pace that suggests someone was
on the Tina, this far reaching session once again showed amazing ideas. From
how to organize a huge engineering event to an innovative way to teach
genetics to a program where students raised and released endangered turtles.


JEERS to the coffee served at the convention center.

CHEERS to SMV director Walter Witschey. I nearly died of surprise when I saw
that he was actually >presenting< floor programming to museum guests with a
Segway. And numerous Virginia staffers assured me "he does that all the
time." Now that's cool.

CHEERS to some of the best partnerships discussed at this
partnership-centric conference. And wouldn't you know, outreach folks got to
see 'em.

At the NEON session, Chris Burda of the Science Museum of Minnesota told us
about how SMM works with small community science groups, from rocketry
clubs, to professional medical associations to the daffodil association.
This was one swell idea.

At outreach live, we got to see part of SMV's programming designed
specifically to help schools with the Standards of Learning (SOL - ha!)
tests. We in the science center field may bitch n moan about standardized
testing (and it's all justified!) but SMV has moved on to the next step:
adapting, and doing something about it. I wish everyone could have heard a
Richmond school principal talk about the museum's SOL programming, how
schools eagerly vie to get funding for it, and how much she thought it had
helped her students. "Five years ago, we did very poorly on the state
science tests," the principal said, "last year, 90% of our fifth graders
passed."

And if that doesn't inspire you with thoughts of what's possible for us to
achieve, what will?

Louisville is on the clock,
Jonah Cohen
Outreach & Public Programs Manager
Science Center of Connecticut

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