High Risk; High Reward

**With modification, this will be Xposted on my other blog this weekend**

I went to the NSF Science Communication Workshop: Becoming the Messenger today. It was really insightful. We learned about making videos, which I have never done before and have been somewhat intimidated by, as well as how to use twitter, facebook, blogs, and other social media to broadcast our message. I learned a ton!
One of the big over-arching themes, which seems to keep circling back into my sphere of influence, is that we need to reach out with a message to the public, not wait for the public to contact us. We need to be specific in what the message is that we want to get across and to do this we need to distill our message into a few very important points that refer back to our main message. We need to be personable and likeable, but stay on message.
They showed us example after example of both science communication done right (e.g. Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Colbert Report) and communication done wrong.
I talked to a producer there about science communication as a profession and he gave me his card and told me to contact him. He told me I need to consider this option of moving away from being strictly a scientist carefully, because it will be a long, hard, lonely road where I won't get the respect of my science peers. This respect will be traded for the love of the people. It's a high risk; high reward situation.


Now you might say, well that is all very well and good, but what does this have to do with me? I'm a milspouse, not a scientist.
Here's my answer: Milspouses like scientists are facing the exact same image issues. We know that about 18% of Americans know a scientist personally. We know that <1% of Americans make up the military and that over 90% of military families feel that society has disconnected from us. Admiral Mullen is encouraging us to take the bull by the horns and get our message out to the American people, which is the same thing scientists are being encouraged to do by NSF. These two groups have more in common than what one might assume.
While the development of military blogs provides a way to create access for non-military people to relate to us, the fact of the matter is that blogs do not get the traffic that videos do and if you looked at most of the traffic to the average milblog, it is dominated by people in the military community, not JohnQ public.
We need to reach out better. I think the media dominantly portrays military spouses as those who wait (i.e. "waiters") and as parents. These are great things and I am in no way suggesting they aren't, but the average American doesn't understand patient long-suffering. They can't relate to it. They don't know what to do with it, any more than I know what to say when someone talks about a topic I can't relate to. Military spouses are so much more diverse than the image that is sold about us. I think we need to sell that diversity, sell how we are community leaders (everything from Room Mom at school to US Congressman and everything in between), volunteers extraordinarie, entrepreneurs, and any other profession you might imagine. We need to explain that we are like everyone else, except that we have this extra hat we wear. We need to lower the bonding barrier for people.
Blogging is a start, but it isn't going to get us where we need to go ladies. We need to step up our game.  I want to resuggest the "I'm a Military Spouse" videos. I know it is scary to put ourselves out there, but we can speak more freely than the people who wear the uniform; we can bridge the gap in a way they can't because we walk amidst the public everyday. We just need to stop flying below the radar.
I have a script written for my video. I just need to take the time to film it.
We worked with the HD Flip Video Cameras today and they are super easy to navigate, so I am less worried about production/editing than I was. I would like to see us put these out on the web and take the message to the people.
You can modify the message to fit your particular experience. Maybe your spouse has been discharged after an injury, or your spouse is in the National Guard or Reserves, maybe they are on their 7th deployment to A-stan. We all have different jobs and different experiences, but there are fundamental underlying principles that we share. We need to share our story and our message with America.
Please try it out. A Flip camera is about $100 from Amazon, and nearly indestructable. It's really easy to use. Don't have $100, many cell phones have video camera apps, or you can use the webcam on your computer. It doesn't matter. Do your best. If you need help with editing/importing/uploading, I can be a resource (as I have finally figured all this stuff out).
When you consider that the American people want to cut our programs and our benefits, most important of which is health care for our spouses when they come home from war, we really have nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking control of the message and putting ourselves out there. I think this is a low risk; high reward situation.

And if someone wants to create a button or image we can add to each video to tag it as part of this project, I would be willing to pay them a nominal fee. I don't have time to do it right now.