Irony of ivory

Let's say, polls are in, and we didn't make it into government.
There was a deadline when registrations for short courses at the SETAC Basel 2014 conference were counted, and afterwards decisions had to be made for each course whether its worth it to run.
Three courses were offered on communication topics. I really liked reading that. But as large the choices as little was the interest. Our course drew 4 registrations...the others drew one each. As a consequence, all three courses were cancelled.
What a pity! I liked our proposal, for sure, but I would also have loved to attend the other two courses. Simon Pardoe of PublicSpace UK offered "Disseminating publicly-funded science and technology research: challenges, issues and strategies". Most environmental scientists should have been interested. From what I experienced being active for science communication the last years I doubt that many colleagues have sufficient knowledge about this - if any. The SETAC Europe Student Advisory Council (SAC) in person of current acting chair Dragan Jevtic wanted to contribute "Social and Professional Networking Tools for Science Communication". A similar course as a noon time seminar at the SETAC North America 2013 conference in Nashville was a huge success.
So what went wrong? As a "nice piece of irony", to quote Roel Evens of SETAC Europe, we seem to have failed to communicate: the importance of proper communication of scientific findings, the necessity to leave the comfort of our ivory tower, and the fact of 3 courses on science communication available at SETAC Basel. This was for us to learn. We will do better next time.

Here's to identification!

It took me quite a long time to come up with a satisfying logo for the research group."Effect-related Ecotoxicology" doesn't work well as an acronym. Adding "work group" or "reasearch group" or even "team" as initials also just sounded silly. Well, so the best way out is to avoid using an acronym for the logo. The disadvantage of this strategy is that a catchy group acronym aids in identfication of the members with their research ("Hi, I'm Thomas of the REFEC team!"). But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. So here's what I have in hand now. Maybe I find something better in the bushes later on.