So, here I am, sitting on the couch of my cool Portuguese host in Copenhagen after arriving on Monday for a conference. I'll be in Scandinavia until the 18th so in the meantime I'll write here about what's going on.
So, I got the first great news while still in Portugal: the day before, I received an email stating that I was included on the travel grants list, meaning that they reimbursed me for the trip to Copenhagen and also from the one from Helsinki back to Portugal. As I'm going in a really low budget and I don't mean to overload my parents, this is great.
The conference took place in three places, all closely located: the Concert Hall, the South University of Copenhagen campus and the IT University - some kind of new age architecture, the coolest I've ever been and where I got a locker for the whole week for asking in the reception about it. All of this in the area of DR Byen.
The first day was essentially assisting to this session on EU living labs (not that interesting) and then some reception where I met Mar, Roser (two Span... catalan girls) and Max, a British dude who works for Guardian. I was the youngest and probably the only student among the participants, which was curious when people were talking and in the middle of the conversation "yeah and then my son/husband/wife (...)" and I would slowly start acknowledging it.
I stayed at a friend's place during the conference, in Høje Taastrup, like one hour away by train + metro. He's older than 25 (I don't know his real age but here in Denmark they throw you cinnamon if you're still single at that age and they've already done it with him) and lives with his fiancée, Nikki, which I fooled by speaking Danish at the doorbell this one time after coming from the supermarket where my "godaften" wasn't good enough to do the same with the cashier.
So, on Tuesday the day was about how to properly communicate and defend integrity (one core value press seems to be forgetting these days), then some video-making session after lunch where I met Thom, also a Brit, and also people from Nature telling that we should never aim to catch every audienc. Before dinner the talk I assisted was about how to make media talk about things which can influentiate politics (the focus was on world hunger), which I'll be back to in a bit.
There was just some reception by night that day and then on the following morning we started adressing the climate change topic (the main theme of this conference) and how it's ridiculous that climate change advocates and deniers have the same "power" in media - for it to be proportional, we should have debates not 1 to 1 but 99 scientists to 1 skeptical. I went to this EU press release after lunch regarding some research and science comission and/or council related to Moedas' comissionary which was pretty complex and confuse, basically EU in a nutshell. We then had this workshop about what we think about the way climate change is being communicated in media (I personally believe that being too alarmist leads to a skeptic public). After that, there was this really cool magazine as an example as an alternative way in media (https://www.substanzmagazin.de/) and I went to another press release, this time about conspiracy theories (CT) on media (there's this projet which will even have this kind of a conference in Lisbon in september which focus on how CT influenciate and have influenced society).
The coolest talks took place on Thursday, starting by the panel sessions where Shawn Otto and Mike Galsworthy focused on the manipulation in both USA and UK, respectively, about science in media - showing once again its power and how it's important to relate both fields. Went to Niels Bohr institute after lunch, where was interesting to learn about the story of the place and Bohr itself (and how Einstein would ask him for cigarettes after his doctor forbidding him) and also this project in Greenland to study ice-melting. The last session I've attented was about new technique to spread science and I've even made a pitch alongside Roser and Thom, where we focused on how young people didn't have much voice in this conference - true that I didn't apply to present anything as so far I have nothing but I've seen some tweets of other people complaining about this so it felt pertinent and maybe we'll present it in Toulouse next year. It's not about old vs young people though, but how we all benefit for listening to all and different ideas.
By night, we went to Christiania for this Science and Cocktails evening (some kind of an expensive PhD), where the physicist Lawrence Krauss gave a talk about how the Universe exists by chance. Didn't like very much the way he talked about Higgs and gravitational waves as if they are already considered as facts, neither how he didn't have that much empiristic data to base himself but no doubt he's an astonishing communicator. After that we went to a local café to drink something.
The next day I went to an Hindenburg masterclass, this audio software for journalists which isn't very useful for me but still worth it anyway. I then had lunch in the meat harbour with Mar, Roser and Thom and after they left we went for this Digital Playground where I should go back tomorrow and sponsored by Olympus with visual illusions and experiences. The final farewell took place at the sky bar of this huge 23-floor hotel, and the drinks were free for us! I then went to my new host, Paulo, a really cool Portuguese guy and his Danish girlfriend which says I have a Jutlandic Danish accent (still not Copenhagen but at least closer than Lisbon). Today the day was spent going to this American event with crafted beer and USA flags with some friends of Paulo he met in meet-ups and I then went to Tivoli - it's cool but if I couldn't had make it for free with Paulo's card, it's just worthless to pay 120 (18€ ) just for enter.
Anyway, here I am now heading to sleep. In the meantime I've sent an email to this Danish professor I've met in the conference who told me there's a PhD on Science communication here in Copenhagen. I had already put aside the idea of continue studying but this can be a great way to enter the country and the state really supports you a lot in these programs. We'll see.
Vi sis,
Pedro
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