Susan Hewitt gives a Zoom talk to the Marine Biological Association of the UK

A couple weeks ago while I was on vacation in Sanibel, Florida I was asked if I could give a Zoom talk about iNaturalist to the Marine Biological Association of the UK, on the morning of Thursday May 6th. The meeting was at 11 am British time, which means it was at 6 am Eastern Standard time. The meeting was called "Marine Biology Live; Citizen Scientist Special".

It meant I had to get up at 4:45 am to be ready. Also the WiFi reception in our hotel cottage was really terrible, but fortunately the weekday manager of the hotel lent me the office key, so I could do the talk from the office, where the reception was plenty good enough. But during the talk, my husband Ed had to put the office lovebird out on the porch, as she kept squawking rather loudly.

At first I had intended to extemporize the talk, which was supposed to be only 10 or 15 minutes in length, but in the end I wrote it out. The MBA is very prestigious, so I wanted to make sure I did a good job, even though I did not have much time. It would be easier to talk about iNat for an hour than to talk about it for only 10 minutes!

My little talk went OK in the end, although I sounded a bit trashed from having to get up so early. The MBA filmed the whole meeting and put it up on their YouTube Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvATd6Qo0UY

Posted on May 14, 2021 09:19 PM by susanhewitt