Video, science and marketing

I’ve been on the video horse lately, so lets keep riding for a bit. This post aims to bring together some recurring bbgm favorites, video and marketing.

Something that Sandra Porter said in a recent post about SciVee got me thinking. We know scientists are bad marketers. Larry Page says so and who am I to argue with him. Well actually, I completely agree. Slowly, but surely, thanks to video and podcasting, scientists are beginning to come out of their shells, but by and large they still don’t have a clue of how to use these new media formats. This, however, should be treated as an opportunity. No, we don’t necessarily need social media consultants in the sciences. Well perhaps we do, but that’s another story. Now that a number of good platforms are available, whether it be SciVee, Bioscreencast, or JoVE to pick on my three favorite video oriented sites, or even the audio/video offerings from Nature and other sources, we should start experimenting. We now have a pulpit, in a way more accessible than blogs and other formats. I’d love to see PIs interview their postdocs and grad students on video, asking them about any experiment design decisions and where they might have disagreed and who won the discussion. I’d love collaborators in a large genome wide association study to get in front of a camera and have a panel discussion on what the implications of their paper might be. It would be great to see them link to screencasts or videos of their experimental protocols. Wouldn’t it be cool to see a group of graduate students sipping coffee or red bull site and whiteboard out a paper, or perhaps the conclusions they got from the paper, and then tell you to go read the blog or wiki where they articulate their story in detail?

The other aspect here is micromedia. It’s something that I really like. Already, whether it’s using Kyte.tv, or Facebook video, or even using Eyejot to send video emails to my mum in India, short form video (or audio) can go a long way in communicating an idea. It’s up to us to be creative about how we do it. Can we, as scientists, learn to channel that creative side and get our message across, not just to the funding agencies, but also to those with casual interest or to our peers from other disciplines? Science can become fascinating again and not just the stuff that the mainstream media tells us to be fascinated (or frightened) about.

Technorati Tags: Video, Science, Marketing