A software engineer, a taxonomist, an environmental scientist and a spatial ecologist walk into a community science event…

Well, it’s not the joke you were looking for, but that’s what Sam, Alex, Tracey and I did on Sunday as part of the National Science Week Program.  Along with support from our clients at the River Guardians, we headed over to the Canning River Eco-Education Centre to present the “Gaia Resources Citizen Science Sampler”.

Alex and Sam showing off our citizen science apps

We also invited our clients who run these citizen science projects – and the team from the River Guardians came along to help out.  We not only had Carol, Marnie and Rachel manning the stand with us (and to be “John the Swan”), but we also had Kerry come down to deliver one of the talks we organised to run every hour about their projects.  We had talks on Dolphin Watch, Prawn Watch and the Marri Canker project (which Alex stood in for) which gave our clients a great opportunity for engaging with their citizen scientists (and converting a few new ones!).  We also learnt not to schedule a talk at the same time as the bounce down for the Western Derby!

 Kerry giving a talk about Prawn Watch

I am really proud of our citizen science projects and the tools we’ve developed (especially our new Citizen Science Hub), as well as all of the effort the whole team put in on the day.  All four of us play a role in the citizen science projects we run at Gaia Resources and to have a day for us to be out and chatting with the people that use our apps was of great value to us.  We learned about how people use them, some of the issues they have, and I think we have newly converted a number of people into citizen scientists!

Piers

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