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It's been almost two weeks since I last blogged, mainly because I haven't really thought of anything to blog about. Since the technical writing course I have been having too much none PhD related fun, thus haven't reported it on here. I've now decided that maybe I'll just pop some cool pictures up of the things I've been doing, as this blog is for me as much as for you!

I've added lots of fruit, vegetables and herbs to my garden!

I did a colour blast dash run. 5k with lots of paint being thrown at you!

I had a Good Friday party and made this lovely hedgehog!

I cooked Easter Lunch in our horrid new oven...wine was necessary

My questionnaire is still open, and responses are still coming in which is great. And I am writing a paper on it, which I am hoping to get published. So I am still working, but there is no real changes, or anything particularly reportable happening! There is a lot in the pipeline though, so there will be some exciting updates soon!

Technical writing course!

It was brought up in my 12 month review that I shouldn't really be writing PhD reports in the same style as my blog! Those weren't the exact words used, but I knew what they meant.

Sunny day for a flight...

I have never been a particularly technical writer, and I really struggle with trying to be clever on paper. I can talk the talk, but I can't write it down. So I attended a technical writing course that Cranfield put on. The trainer was Dr David Cooke, and he made the whole thing very interesting. Well he had to, to compete with the views of the airfield, and the aeroplanes coming in and taking off!

Try not to over complicate.

It was a two day course and the first day consisted of a lot of grammar and spelling talks and activities. It was really informative, although it should have all been information I already knew! But mainly when writing I leave the grammar to Old Pa, as I know he loves to edit my work for me and I wouldn't want to ruin his fun.  David also spoke a lot about clarity, over complicating, and trying to sound clever. He gave us lists of phrases that can be replaced by single words, but I think I might use this list in the opposite way when I can't reach a word count.
At the end of the first day we were given a sheet with some examples of all of the different things we had covered in the day, and some of them were rather funny so I have included them on here.

Maybe rephrase this, we want to make sure it is the baby we're boiling, not the milk!

Day two was a lot more about review, report and paper writing, and David equipped us with a whole folder on how to make sure we get published. Well, that is how I see it, I just need to bring my actual science up to the level of David's writing advice, and maybe one day I will be published. Maybe.

Apparently this was real, but I don't think even David believed that this could have got past even the laziest editor

I hope Dr David Cooke never actually sees any of my writing, as I wouldn't want to make him doubt his expertise as a trainer!

Policy

This post has taken me longer than I thought it would, lots going on!

FREE STUFF

I was at the British Ecological Society policy training workshop on Tuesday! And what a day it was.

At first I was worried, as the day started with free pens and badges and note books with bees on. And we all know how I feel about bees. And free things. So I was wary that the day may have peaked too soon, but I needn't have worried!!

The workshop started with an exercise. We all popped our anxieties, inhibitions and other negative feelings towards dealing with all aspects of the policy world, onto post its. This was quite cathartic, and proved that everyone has similar hesitations.

One side of the post it walls.

There were lots of inspiring and super interesting talks throughout the day, I'm going to chat about a few that I really connected with.

The first was from Sasha Leigh from NERC. Sasha's talk gave a great overview of the policy cycle, and of all the different houses and committees there are. She  also highlighted the different ways that we can get involved and influence. And the different ways NERC can help us get involved and influence! I had a great chat with Sasha during the lunch break about how exciting it is being part of NERC. NERC have so many opportunities with which they want to help you grow as a scientist and help you get to where you want to be!

I was really looking forward to the talk from Jonny Wentworth from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. Mainly because I am in the process of applying for a BES POST fellowship. One of the things that Jonny said that stuck with me is that most policy is made as a reaction, so I am going to keep myself up to date, just in case something happens that makes my science fit! The fact that there is also no obligation for policy to be evidence based, really got me thinking. It must make it hard to be the scientist who submits the evidence and sees everything go the other way! Jonny also spoke a lot about uncertainty, which is one of the most difficult things to communicate accurately. And gave a cool paper to read on the topic, which I'll be getting into soon. He also have some really great tips for good practice...but alas I had to pop out for those two slides, much to my dismay. I have been promised that they will be emailed round though!!

I <3 Darwin, so this was pretty exciting.

We had some great exercises. Two involved journal papers which we were all sent to read prior to the day. The first paper exercise was to summarise the paper onto one side of A4. We did this in groups and it was so difficult, especially as we only had 10 mins in which to do it. Our group had Greg McInery who saved us by drawing a brilliant visualisation, but we paired it with too much writing alas.

The second started with us relating our science to the different priority issues in the paper. And ended with us attempting to relate our science to a box of chocolates. I didn't attempt this last one, I have given up chocolate for lent, and as that was the prize I had no motivation! And I coildi think of a way!

Throughout the day solutions were added to the walls of the coffee room and the post it notes were being rearranged into different groups with their potential solutions. I have some nice panoramics so you can see what I mean! It was great to have a visualisation of everything coming together!

Overall I had an amazing day, met some amazing people and have come away with a renewed sense of vigour for all things policy!!

Translating my scrawl.

Throughout the three BESS days I have created a collection of scrawls on all shapes and sizes of paper. There was so much information and ideas and inspiration that I had to write down, and I am now paying the price for forgetting my notebook. I am trying to find some order to the scraps of paper, I'm sure I'll work it all out soon, and remember why I have drawn some of these strange diagrams!

I thought I would pop on here some of my favourite things from the two days of the BESS annual science meeting...

I really enjoyed hearing about the different tools and tools that can be used to assess, value and map ecosystem service provision. I have done a bit of research into InVEST before, but I had never heard of LUCI or Aries, so I was really intrigued by them. In my PhD I am looking at the scale of ecosystem services so these tools are really relevant. Although I think I am fully invested in InVEST, I think is definitely good to know what else is out there!

I loved Helen King's talk on cultural services, as they can often be a bit looked over, though they are the services that have the visual impact and draw users into them. It gave me a bit of food for thought as I am not looking at any cultural services within my project.


The Battle of the Bands, was definitely interesting. And being a judge was quite the experience, though I am glad that it worked out that there were 4 groups in second place, and one clear winner. And the clear winner was the team where both performers were from Cranfield University and one of which was my PhD subject advisor...merely by coincidence of course.

The F3UES team collecting their delicious trophy.

Once I get through my notes, I think there will be more that I took away from the meeting, but my favourite thing is being able to make new connections, and reinforce older ones.

It's April Fool's day

And it is also the first day of the BESS conference. Knowing some of the people in attendance as I do, the April Fool's day part of this worries me. Hopefully there will be nothing too wild, although I am on the panel to judge the battle of the bands competition tonight! Each of the four BESS consortia has submitted a music video, and from what I heard last night after some people had had a couple of glasses of wine, it should be pretty entertaining. Just need to get a moment to make score cards, though I can't imagine having to make anything beyond 4.

The NRG BESS gathering yesterday was great, so cool hearing about what other people are doing in their work. Also discussing different ideas, and the things that went wrong for other people, so I know what to try and avoid. I rather enjoyed presenting my work, it's such a nice comfortable environment to do it in, and you feel like people really want to know what you're doing!

Moving the NRG BESS group forward with a website, a conference, outreach activities and all the other plans we have is really exciting, and I definitely feel more inspired to take it all forward.

We had a great policy training workshop from the BESS directorate which really opened my eyes to the difficulties of trying to be a scientist in the policy and decision making world. Talks from Laura Harrison, and Kevin Hicks about their way into the policy/science world definitely gave me some food for thought. Would I ever be able to actually keep my opinions to myself and be unbiased?!?!

NRG BESS, and me on the left with rather unenthusiastic Jazz hands, it was the 4th attempt and I was hungry!