[Editors] MIT Editors' Club Minutes, 5/10/2005

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT EDITORS' CLUB

*Meeting Notes from May 10, 2005*

This meeting was so jam-packed with interesting discussions from the 
importance of Q&As to the media assault on a robotic clock that I 
felt as if I'd only just sat down when the hour was up!

Here are some highlights:

*Cool Outreach Programs*

This Friday the Plasma Science and Fusion Center will host some 80 
middle-school kids and their teachers from across the state. From 9-1 
they'll attend a demonstration by Mr. Magnet, get personal tours of 
experiments toward new forms of energy, and otherwise get immersed in 
the world of plasma physics. Although the program has been held since 
the early 90s, for some reason this year the PSFC got almost twice as 
many responses as in the past, said Paul Rivenberg, PSFC 
communications director and organizer of the event. Why? Paul's not 
sure, but guesses that perhaps the list of MA middle schools on the 
Department of Education web site was recently updated.....At any 
rate, this year he actually had to turn away a few latecomers, which 
made him sad.

Sarah Griffith, manager of educational initiatives for the 
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology is equally 
enthused about HST's Summer Scholars program for undergraduates from 
around the country. This year's program will include an exceptionally 
diverse group of students, with a large percentage of women and 
underrepresented  minorities.

*New Newsletter*

Emily Ranken of the Environment, Health, and Safety Office brought 
along several copies of her office's new newsletter, as well as a 
fluorescent green brochure about EHS and how to work with them. Next 
April MIT and the EHS program will undergo a third-party audit to see 
how well we're doing in this area. To that end, EHS is hopeful that 
the newsletter and brochure will help educate the community about the 
office and its services.

Coincidentally, one article in the current newsletter turned out to 
be quite relevant to our discussion of outreach programs. The piece 
discusses how EHS can help make such programs, with their associated 
lab tours and more, safe as well as educational. For a copy of the 
newsletter, send a note to Emily at emranken at MIT.EDU  She would also 
LOVE your feedback.

ALSO: drop by the following website to complete an EHS Awareness 
Questionnaire. Once you do so you'll be eligible to win a gift 
certificate.

*Q&As*

In discussing the EHS newsletter, Susan Curran, who helps run the MIT 
homepage Spotlight, noted that the addition of a simple Q&A might 
help draw readers. I, for example, noted how  readable Q&As are. I am 
especially fond of the Q&A Robyn Fizz puts in her newsletter, i/s. 
Alexandra Kahn of the Media Lab mentioned that longer Q&As on 
specific subjects are also helpful in media relations. The 
spokesperson for her lab's $100 Laptop project is often traveling, so 
they put together a  Q&A with him to answer many key questions about 
the project (go to http://laptop.media.mit.edu/).

I've done the same for especially important research stories. For 
example, in addition to creating a press release on the atom laser, I 
had the researchers pull together a Q&A in their own words. Together 
the documents were quite popular with reporters, especially those 
from more technical publications who were able to get their fill of 
detailed info from the Q&A.

*Clocky*

Alexandra also told us about the story that's consumed her life for 
the last three weeks or so: Clocky, a relatively simple product that 
could solve the problem of oversleeping. (See my colleague Sasha 
Brown's story at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/clocky.html.)

The Clocky story began when word of the device, which began as a 
class design assignment, ran on a few web logs. Then a tiny story 
appeared in New Scientist  magazine, and BAM. Alexandra was inundated 
with Clocky Calls. "This was not a planned media effort," she reports.

"It's interesting to see how some of these new communication mediums 
[ like web logs] are getting things out there, and very very rapidly."

She went on to say that in addition to calls from media around the 
world, the lab has also received hundreds and hundreds of e-mails 
from people who can't get up in the morning and proceed to explain 
their efforts toward a solution. One person uses 5 different alarm 
clocks!

*Next Meeting*

The next meeting of MIT Editors' Club is Thursday, JUNE 16, in the 
News Office (11-400) from 12-1.

Till then,

Elizabeth
-- 
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Elizabeth A. Thomson
Assistant Director, Science & Engineering News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
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