Happy New Year from ClimateSnack

As 2013 draws to a close, so does ClimateSnack’s first year in existence. In the past few months ClimateSnack grew from a single happy writing group at Bergen University to 6 other institutes in Norway, UK, and USA. Of the roughly 75 snackers involved in these groups, 21 have contributed to the 45 snacks now available on the ClimateSnack website. Other snackers may not have published yet, but they have contributed with good advice and feedback at all the group meetings.

Even though ClimateSnack has grown as an organization, we cannot forget why we are here: to offer early-career climate scientists a resource to improve their writing and communication skills. As a snacker myself, I have had an extremely rewarding year. I’ve written several snacks, read them aloud at our group meetings, received feedback, made changes and published online. I have also read, considered and given feedback on many other snacks. This whole process has not only improved my writing and critical reading skills but also my confidence. I’ve managed to ‘cross a barrier’ and I am now excited to communicate my science to a wider audience. I also feel more confident when writing my scientific articles. In fact, writing has become fun rather than just a chore. Even though it’s still early days in ClimateSnack, I hope that during 2014 many more ClimateSnackers will feel the same.

And 2014 is already shaping up to be a very exciting year. We look forward to start ClimateSnack in Sweden and Germany, and hopefully other countries. We hope to also start an exciting collaboration, which will bring ClimateSnack to Africa.

Soon we’ll be unveiling our new logo and web site. Matthias has been working hard behind the scenes on this for several months. The test site is looking great so we hope you will like it too.

In 2014 ClimateSnack will also be attending big conferences like Oceans Sciences, Honolulu in February and hopefully EGU, Vienna in May. At Ocean Sciences we will be holding a Town Hall event with some very prominent panelists. We will discuss writing skills and how writing popular science may help your scientific writing skills. Can writing blogs help you publish a successful scientific article? If you are attending Ocean Science, come along and find out.

We are also planning some exciting courses to inspire us in other realms of science communication. In February we are holding a presentation course in Bergen with renowned lecturer, Matt McGarrity. We are also in the planning stages for an exciting podcast course, so watch this space!

None of this would have been possible without the support and contributions from our supporters at Uni Research, Resclim, the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, and Imperial College.

Whether you are a member of one of the ClimateSnack groups, or just like reading the snacks online, we hope you have gotten something out of ClimateSnack so far and will continue to do so in 2014.

From all of us at ClimateSnack, Happy New Year!

[Image from Dan Moyle via Flickr Creative Commons]

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Mathew Stiller-Reeve

I am a postdoc researcher at NORCE Climate and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. I research the monsoon in Bangladesh and I am the founder of ClimateSnack; a community that hopes to give all young and early career climate scientists an opportunity to practice and improve their scientific communication skills.

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SciSnack Disclaimer: We write in SciSnack to improve our skills in the art of scientific communication. We therefore welcome comments concerning the clarity, focus, language, structure and flow of our articles. We only accept constructive feedback. All comments are manually approved and anything slightly nasty will not be accepted.