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SciTech Daily Review

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Conference Season

There's something about the winter months that inspires conferences. June to August sees people flitting about all over the country, congregating in centrally-heated venues for the conference season.

I'm not immune to the conference season either, having attended two gatherings in Wellington recently. One was the opening of the Telecom-sponsored Science and Technology Roadshow, which'll be travelling throughout the country.

The national tour -- the first of its kind -- is a tribute to the perseverance of science teachers and people like Roadshow manager Brian Taylor. It'll provide at least a glimpse of the intellectual puzzles that make science a fascinating subject, and engender an enthusiasm and appreciation impossible to achieve with the limited resources available to most schools.

I did wince a little at the demonstrations given at the opening. The demos were good, but the role models were off target -- a white-coated "mad scientist" in a fright wig speaking with an indeterminate Germanic accent, a hunchbacked Igor, and MacGyver saving us from a "radioactive" bomb.

That's no way to convince children that science is done by New Zealanders and that it has a future for them.

Attendees at the Sci-Tech 2000 conference spent the following two days themselves wondering what the future held in store for New Zealand science and technology. Restructuring, funding problems, lack of commitment to research and development, a national focus on short term goals, poor communication between scientists and technologists --all these gave the conference speakers and delegates a great deal to discuss and argue about.

There was the concern, amongst those attending and those who would have liked to, that this could well be another talk-talk-talk conference with very little to take away from it.

Fortunately, there was a spur-of-the-moment suggestion of forming action-oriented groups throughout the country. Certainly, after two days of castigating the present and bemoaning the future, I, for one, was pleased to hear a positive, active suggestion come forth.

Gil Simpson, the group co-ordinator for the Canterbury area, sees the groups as providing a meeting ground for scientists, technologists, researchers and manufacturers interested in focusing on common issues. The perceived need for communication between the various interested parties seems to be the main driving force.

It's still too early to tell if these groups are going to be able to make a difference in any way. The aims are high, but it is in the execution of such aims that any benefits will be seen. It's easy to engender enthusiasm at a conference -- whether it will survive in the off-season is another matter.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.