Science engagement community gears up for Ecsite conference - Mikko Myllykoski

Professionals from the science engagement community will come together in June in the “biggest international village in the world”, nestled between the Alps and Jura mountains, when Geneva hosts the Ecsite Annual Conference. Around 1,100 professionals from Europe and beyond are expected to participate and “collide creatively”, as the theme of the conference suggests.

Both the sessions and the social programme are designed to create time and space for meaningful encounters in a friendly atmosphere. The local host is the Natural History Museum, in partnership with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), University of Geneva Scienscope and Campus Biotech.

Keynote speaker James Beecham, a particle physicist at CERN, will be looking at infinity and discussing topical research such as dark matter. The other keynote will invite us to look inside ourselves. Giulia and Jill Enders, the authors of Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ (2014) will share the story, idea and method behind the phenomenally successful book that sold 2.1 million copies in Germany alone, and spent 74 weeks in the top 10 list of best-selling non-fiction literature.

Attendees can enjoy a two-day pre-conference workshop (5-6 June), three days of conference with more than 80 parallel sessions (7-9 June), and, as always, the Business Bistro trade fair. Thematic trends include escape rooms, narrative approaches and VR/AR applications.

My gut feeling tells me there’s a giant fondue cooking for everybody… and not only at the Gala Dinner. See ecsite.eu/annual-conference.

Mikko Myllykoski, experience director, Heureka, and Ecsite’s ACPC chair