Start a Science Pub and sciencepub.us will host your web site

I’ve been organizing Science Pub in Madison, Wisconsin since July of 2009. Each month we invite a different UW Madison science professor to Brocach Irish Pub in downtown Madison. At Science Pub there’s no PowerPoint, no podium or microphone. We just sit our speakers down in a big comfy chair with the beverage of their choice from the bar.

The great thing about Science Pub is the informal, conversational atmosphere. People can ask questions at any time during the discussion and the speakers don’t need to prepare presentations or even notes. They just start taking about their field, their work and everything flows from there.

I’ve now helped start a Science Pub up in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and we’ve launched a new web site, sciencepub.us, to help others start events in their communities. Under the main site we have madison.sciencepub.us and lacrosse.sciencepub.us, and if you’d like to start on in your area we’ll set you up a site like Madison and La Crosse.

You can use this site to collect email addresses through the registration feature and send out email alerts to your members to announce events. Check out the site for Madison and you’ll see how we post entries for our past speakers and events as well. All that functionality is available on the system for anyone organizing a Science Pub.

If you already have an event going we’ll be happy to list your events, or give you a complete site if you want one.

We’ll be creating a list serve for organizers to communicate ideas about how to operate and promote Science Pub and share tips about all things Science Pub related.

If you’d like to talk about the web sites or about starting a Science Pub in your area I’d be happy to help any way I can. Email me through the contact form on sciencepub.us.