#62: Sticky Science (Redux)

Revisiting an earlier post on using sticky notes to share your science.

Jun 15, 2023

Finding myself in a creative pickle this week - which I’ll talk about more over in Notes - I decided to take advice I’ve learned from folks here, as well as a great treatise on creativity, Creative Quest:

“Revisit earlier work. Go back and look at your own work with a clear eye.”

This week, I decided to look back at a very early entry in the Campfire Notebook, and re-examine what I know about one knowledge translation exercise.

As introduced in Campfire Notebook #2, the Sticky Note Challenge (also known as #PostItNotePhD over on Dante’s Birdsite) is both a thoughtful exercise for the scientist and a creative knowledge translation vehicle to share findings with a larger audience.

*Dr. Sam Rowe 2 communicates his thesis work where he took bacteria and captured the sun’s energy to make hydrogen. (Photo: Sam Rowe; 2 July 2020.)*

It takes the advice that scientists learn how to turn their thesis into an elevator pitch (i.e., a thirty second spiel that condenses their work into three to four simple sentences that can be shared during a trip between floors) and asks that the pitch be done in the space of one standard 3x3 sticky note.

*Carolina shares her work in cancer genomics on a hot pink sticky note. (Photo: Carolina Oquendo; 22 April 2020.)*

Carolina Oquendo, a PhD student at the University of Southampton studying cancer genomics, shares a strong example of the challenge. What it does well?

It uses visuals. They don't have to be fancy, or require art school techniques, but they are important to include for the reader. She pairs her words with the actions of what she does: searching for DNA like a detective, using a computer to analyze data.
It takes the reader through the steps of her logic. “There's a disease, so I do X and Y, and the answers will tell me what areas other researchers or clinicians should focus on.”
It includes her Twitter handle. If the image was ever taken off Twitter and shared on other platforms (and unlike this blog post, it wasn’t credited to the scientist), you are still linked back to the author.

The only thing I might do different is use the acronym SMZL immediately after where she spells it out in step 1, so that it’s very clear to the reader. But otherwise, no notes.

*Dr. Julie Rorrer shares her post doc, which could be disqualified due to a technicality but we’ll allow it because it’s so beautifully illustrated. (Photo: Julie Rorrer; 21 April 2020.)*

This one gets points for using “nom nom” in a scientific post. Jokes aside, I think it does two things well: illustrates the action you’re meant to understand, and draws you into the picture because it uses slang. (Photo: Natalia Zielonka; 2 July 2020.)

Back when I first published my post, I had also took the challenge myself. I did a time lapse of that on TikTok, which miraculously allowed me to post it despite my advanced age and lack of understanding of current trends. Mind you, me not being a “hepcat” is not a new thing, but the chasm between me and “cool” is especially pronounced when I occasionally sneak onto that particular app. (Case in point: my TikTok account sits gathering dust, mainly out of spite/protest that my usual nerdy content gets so little attention, but the video I made of a raccoon opening a dumpster to a Britney Spears song garnered more than 11K views.)

Since the original post, it seems to have dwindled down - the last post to use the #PostItNotePhD hashtag on Satan’s Favourite Microblogging Tool is mine, sharing the post I wrote - but it’s still a good exercise to get you thinking about how your work may be perceived by others, even if you never share the results.

But perhaps it’s a good time to reinvigorate the challenge. So, here’s my entry for Campfire Notebook for a #StickyNoteSubstack challenge. How would you share your own work, scientific or otherwise? (If you do it, tag me so I can see!)