Evolve Teams

something like what you've been working on would have actually the greatest impact on those who are involved in sorting out how to engage with the community that they live in, that they found themselves living in as a as a graduate student. I mean, I think that takes a certain level of humility to understand that, that the learning and outreach isn't for the audience, it's for those that are conducting the outreach.

And it also got me thinking, that a lot of the value might be actually people participating in these communities, as the communicators, and how this benefits them, and sharpens their skills at outreach, in ways that they wouldn't otherwise get. There's a lot of value in that. Specifically, I had friend of mine who was in the Peace Corps, and he said, "Here's the dirty secret. The primary beneficiary of the Peace Corps, isn't the host nations, it's the peace Corps volunteers." And I was thinking of that, in SciComm, and these environments. Us connecting with communities, particularly communities we don't get to work with normally, has a lot of value in, and of itself.

The actual cosplay contest itself is like the tip of the spear. There's this huge pipeline of stuff that leads up to this moment and the judging itself was interesting because these people queue up, they get in front of the judges, they explain their costume, again, as Paul mentioned they're really focused on the craft. The baseline things that I associate with cosplay which is identity and enthusiasm and community, all that stuff they take for granted. By the time you get in front of a judge, they assume all of that. All they really want to care about is their craft and how it affects their community. And that really spoke to me about how we need to think about integrating with that program. We need to look at that complete pipeline between when people start building their costume a year before the show and the hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars that go into it and what it takes for them to make that commitment, and then what are the incentives for them to participate, and then what are they actually getting judged on and understand all that and then fold in a science component appropriately.

I think part of what was encouraging for the kids was that they felt really special, we spent a lot of time leading up to this. We visited them while they were building the robot. We were very interested in what they were doing. We wanted to hear their stories, get some time with them. So, they were comfortable with us. They were feeling pretty good about themselves and they're feeling pretty special. And they came out and they're wearing their crazy combination of socks and T-shirts and other things that identified who they were, and they were really proud to be who they were. So, I think it was a real, a big growth experience, because they had all this attention and reinforcement and encouragement, but it does take time. It's an investment of time and genuine interest and that's what they felt. And we made it safe for them. We explained how things were going to happen, what was going to be expected of them and encouraged them all the way. That cultivating is really important when you're dealing especially with kids, but I think that's true of any volunteers. A lot of people are happy to help, they just don't know what they have to offer and they don't know where they're supposed to be and what they're expected to do. That was really important it turns out for these kids because we didn't even give a thought of that these kids may not have ever performed before or maybe they've never been in a parade before. Maybe they're really shy and they just joined this club because they thought it was cool. We don't really know what we're dealing with. So, getting to know what you have to work with and making everybody feel comfortable and having a plan and making them feel valued and respected and proud of who they are and what they've done, I can only see it when the actual parade happens. And then when these kids are glowing and these kids went all day showing demonstrations and walking and talking. And this would have been a big day for an athlete and these kids went all day and their enthusiasm stayed the whole time and their interest and their personalities and their patience with other people and other kids. They just kept going and they were amazing.

I will say that we had a couple of volunteers, my son included, teenager, and one of his friends, who came and wanted to contribute to building the float but we're uncomfortable. They're teenagers, so they were uncomfortable with the idea that anybody was looking at them. And so they had the opportunity to come and contribute, and saw PVC pipes, and cut chicken wire, and use a drill, and get a little bit of mentoring from our young science professionals who were leading the float building. And then they finished up their task and then went on their way. So there was even people who are very introverted and don't like the idea of being on stage, that performativeness that comes with walking through a large crowd or whatever, they contributed as well.

One of the things that I have read in multiple different ways or in multiple different books, is just about how the ability for people to come together in common cause can help inspire innovation and creativity. And it's along these lines of what our common goal of making science positive relationships with a broad community and that kind of thing. The potential is cool.

I know that the teenagers that we had in there must have felt like rockstars and these are people that are normally introverted, quiet, stay with their circle of friends and they must have been on a high all I configure for the rest of the weekend.

you get impact on both ends. And I think that that's something that doesn't get looked at very often. What happens when you as a science professional volunteer, whatever, go out and do these things? It's always outward looking. What happens to the audience? What do we do to the people that attend? But I mean, truly, what do we do to the people that do it? That is a very important part of it.