Tag Archives: #geotagdernatur

Seeing the world with different eyes

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My not-so-new-anymore job, GEO-Tag der Natur,’s goal is to help people see nature around us through different eyes. In order to enrich people’s lives, but also in order to encourage and empower people to protect nature, for which a necessary first step is to start noticing everything that is there and worth protecting. We do that by providing opportunities for interactions between laypeople and experts (my personal favourite biologists? Definitely @nena_weiler & @fraubioke!), who then engage in some sort of activity related to biodiversity together.

And we see positive effects of all these interactions all the time within the project, but now it has also invaded my personal life: Instead of focussing the picture (or even my attention!) on the waves like I usually do, I climbed where I should probably not have been climbing and took pictures of a butterfly! And another insect! And more butterflies!

And even though I am still more interested in waves and physics than in critters, I love how seeing the world with different eyes is enriching my life and making me take different kinds of pictures than what I am used to. It’s nice to see that my project does have these kinds of effects, not only on our intended audience, but also on myself (and, self-reportedly, also my colleagues!), and I can’t wait to get into creating an even more awesome event for next year!

Wave watching on Brodowinsee

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What do you do the night before the most important three days of your whole work year? Yep — some wave watching with friends!

On Thursday night, we went to cool down and relax after preparing for GEO-Tag der Natur all day long. Don’t these images make you feel much more calm instantly?

And look at the waves in the atmosphere that only become visible because, as air is moved up and down by the waves, conditions change such that clouds form in the troughs but disappear at the peaks of the waves. Contemplating these things is so relaxing to me! Especially when looking at them both in the sky and in their reflection on the water.

And if you look carefully at the picture above, you see tiny little wave rings in the lower right corner. That’s small fish touching the lake’s surface from below, creating disturbances that propagate away from where the surface was deformed.

Other things make similar pattern, albeit on a larger scale. My colleagues K and K, for example, are creating wave rings, too. Theirs are much larger and propagate all the way across the lake!

And thanks to K&K’s waves, the reflections of the atmospheric waves on the water becomes even more interesting as they are deformed by surface waves on the lake.

Is there any better way to calm down any worries you might have?

And, btw, the GEO-Tag der Natur turned out a blast. I’ll update you on that once I’ve had A LOT OF SLEEP! Until then — go and do some wave watching! :-)

My “GEO-Tag der Natur” elevator pitch

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Yesterday on #scicommchall, I shared my elevator pitch.

Still not inside an elevator, but now that I have my elevator pitch down to short and sweet (it’s really only 30 seconds if you don’t watch the contact stuff in the end), maybe I will be able to manage to film it without being interrupted like I was the previous dozen attempts…

What do you think? Does it make you want to learn more about GEO-Tag der Natur?

An attempt at an elevator pitch

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I’ve been coming up with #scicommchall challenges for well over a year now, and I have always met them. Except for last November, when the challenge was to do an elevator pitch and post a movie of it. Since this is something I really want to do, I decided to force myself to it and repeat the challenge this January. And man, was this hard! For a lot of reasons: I don’t think what I am saying captures the essence of what my job is about, I hate seeing myself on video, I hate listening to my own voice even more, and wow is it difficult to get some alone time in the elevator at work! I’m really not satisfied with the result just yet. But I am sharing to maybe inspire others to join me in my efforts. Will you join me? :-)

So here are two versions, first one with English subtitles.

And then here a non-subtitled one that includes a couple of takeouts (because those are always my favorite part of every movie ;-))

But I am not done here, and my #scicommchall to myself remains: to write a better script, to film it in an elevator, and to upload it on the internet! :-) How is this #scicommchall working for you? Show me your elevator pitches!