While listening to the panel discussion on science communication on the final day of the 11th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (HLF), my mind kept returning to the universality of it all, which – on the surface – might be surprising, given the diversity of the panelists (by a variety of metrics): Yudhi Bunjamin, originally from Indonesia, with a freshly minted mathematics PhD plus years of experience running outreach workshops at the University of New South Wales. Érika Roldán, originally from Mexico and now working in Germany, with an intermittent stint in the US; a professional football player when younger, and now a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences. Coumba Sarr, who moved from academia to consulting for the French IT company Atos, and is active in mathematics outreach organisations in France and Senegal. Moira Chas, originally from Argentina, now a Professor of Mathematics at Stony Brook University, New York, whose wire-looped Klein bottles had been part of the HLF exhibitions earlier, and were being passed around among audience members, to experience hands-on.

But what the discussion, ably moderated by Anna Maria Hartkopf, quickly showed was how much overlap there was in the concerns, perceived challenges, strategies and overall practices among this diverse group of panelists. Moreover, in all of these respects, the discussion resonated heavily with a lot of my own work in astronomy communication, and I believe it would resonate with most modern science communicators in other disciplines as well.

Choose Your Audience!

One of the (fairly?) universal concerns is the question of just which target audience one should choose for outreach activities. A common dichotomy: Are we mainly trying to win future scientists, as Sarr does when training the Senegalese team for the (francophone) mathematical olympics? Are we trying to reach a general audience, notably the proverbial tax payers who, in most countries, contribute the lion’s share of fundamental research funding? Are we specifically trying to reach groups that have traditionally been underserved when it comes to science, as Roldán has done both with marginalized groups in Mexico and with a LatinX audience in the US? This last target group can be of interest in a search for future scientists as well, since as Roldán said: there are presumably tons of brilliant minds everywhere that did not have a chance and the means to begin a scientific career.

Linked to the choice of target group is the question of what to communicate. Here, Bunjamin described how the initial outreach projects he participated in had focused either on mathematics being useful, or else relevant for one’s future career, whereas his current efforts center on the question of what math is, and on what it means to be a mathematician.

With different target groups also comes the need for different approaches. This starts with the practicalities, with Roldán describing outreach situations in Mexico where pencil and paper became the most important tools, and not even chairs and tables were to be counted on. But the willingness to adapt is a much more general necessity. After all, in the end, the goal is not to complete a certain pre-arranged program. It’s to get participants to think for themselves or, in the more poetic words of Chas, to illuminate the path so that they can go by themselves. That is why Bunjamin, in training the facilitators of the mathematical outreach workshops he organises, gives them the clear message that their job is not to talk, but to listen – and that they should avoid being biased by what they know will be the topics and questions coming up in the course of the workshop.

But Is It Working?

More important than ever if one’s activities are flexible and adaptive, is meaningful feedback on whether the acitivites work as intended. Some of this feedback can be obtained in a systematic way, e.g. by conducting suitable surveys, or focus groups. Sometimes, the feedback comes naturally in the course of the interactions. As an example, Bunjamin mentioned that, given how in maths we often solve problems by reducing them to other, already solved problems, one indicator that their participants have caught on is when they start to say how cool it is that the different problems they have encountered in the course of the workshop are so closely connected to each other!

In the end, much of this comes down to what Bunjamin summed up at one point of the discussion: The hardest thing about science communication today is communicating that science communication is hard, and is not a trivial problem at all. That is a message primarily for one’s fellow scientists, one’s bosses, for those interested in doing science communication themselves and those whose support and leadership is required for effective science outreach. Or perhaps the better phrasing is the one Chas then proposed: That we should change “hard” into “requires time and effort,” since otherwise, “hard” could be taken as an excuse to not even try. For researchers who want to engage in science communication, being enthusiastic about their own research and eager to share that enthusiasm is a valuable starting point, but it should only be the beginning – followed by exploring who your target audience is, by adapting and listening, and finally by making room for feedback and for finding out about the efficacy (or not!) of your outreach activity.