#sciencewithoutlimits

And...we're all finally back in the office after a week of traveling! The team's been all over the country meeting with inspiring people all advancing science in their own ways. For one leg of this tour, the Experiment Community team made a pitstop in San Jose to attend the inaugural Citizen Science conference and AAAS 2015 general meeting.

While the conference delivered everything one might come to expect from events like these (i.e. the workshops, sessions, networking); one unexpected thing was the raw and genuine enthusiasm from everyone about bringing science closer to the people, and people closer to the science.

The most memorable part of the conference for our team was the engagement we got for a weekend-long mini-project we ran. We polled visitors to our exhibit booth using the question: 

“If funding wasn’t a limitation, what science would you do?” 

We were blown away by the awesome responses from professors, grad students, high school researchers, young children, science enthusiasts, and everyone in between. 

Our board getting fuller by the day!​

However, while it was fun talking about people's science ideas all day, the most rewarding moments were when kids came by the booth (we think, partially because of the allure of stickers) to give some pretty thoughtful answers. If there was one post that encapsulated the enthusiasm at the conference, it's this one here from a 12 year old girl that stopped by. After pausing for a few minutes and reading some of the responses, she stuck this post-it on the board.

If this is what is in store for the future of science, then I think we'll be in good hands (http://sciencewithoutlimits.tumblr.com/post/111427011381)

This, and the 112 other responses we got, made it clear to us that scientific curiosity is alive and well. 

We need to continue cultivating this by encouraging more people to not be afraid to ask the big questions. That's part of the reason why we've compiled and digitized the collection of post-it notes (housed at sciencewithoutlimits.tumblr.com), and decided to open it up so that anyone can continue to add their responses long after the conference is over.

We realized that in those brief moments when people paused to ponder the question on the board, or be inspired by the responses from others, that there was no distinction between scientists (citizen or academic, young or old, experienced or novice). Everyone, for that brief moment, could picture themselves in the shoes of the future clean-energy technologist, linguist, biologist, theoretical + quantum physicist, and astronomer.

With that, we encourage you to visit the digital board and use the "submit" button to upload your own idea or a photo of your post-it. You can tag any responses with #sciencewithoutlimits and we’ll reblog them too!

Let's work together to keep the conversation going.

See you next year!