SCHB & NESACS at AAAS Boston 2013

Photo of Boston from the Cambridge-side of the Charles River after picking
up our Family Science Day chemistry outreach supplies by J. Maclachlan

L to R: Bassam Shakhashiri, Jennifer Maclachlan and Jack Driscoll
Found a familiar face at #AAASmeeting in the hotel and
at the Chemistry
Section Meeting

L to R:
George Ruger, Nancy Jackson, Jennifer Maclachlan at the
Simmons College
chemistry student/professor Friday afternoon February 15, 2013
reception organized by George Ruger,
Immediate Past Chair, ACS Mid-Hudson
Local Section and SCHB member
during the AAAS meeting

I attended the Chemistry Section business meeting  on Friday evening February 15, 2013 as a member of the Chemistry Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This was my first #AAASmeeting and my reason for attending the meeting was to present a career workshop in the Career Pathways track called Learn How to Satisfy Entrepreneurial Cravings with my esteemed local American Chemical Society Small Chemical Businesses SCHB colleagues: Jack Driscoll and Mukund Chorghade. The AAAS sections meet once a year at the annual meeting to plan the symposia for the following year. I went to the meeting to seek out possible connections for future programming and/or cooperation with the chemistry section with bringing our SCHB programming module to AAAS members. Based on my chat with the members of the Chemistry Section governance prior to the meeting, it was clear that the Chemistry Section would not be a good match for our Entrepreneurial Programming. However, they expressed interest in possibly pursuing something similar to the SCHB Something's Brewing in the Bayou: a chemistry of beer type event although the preference would be as a social event with a brewery tour rather than a symposium. Additional pre-meeting preparation paid off with contact sharing between SCHB Program Chair, Joe Sabol and I as we discovered that our own Best Practices for Entrepreneurs for the ACSNOLA meeting, John Newsam, was receiving the honor of AAAS Fellow for Section Industrial P. I was able to setup a lunch meeting with John to introduce him to my father, Jack Driscoll,   a scheduled panelist for Best Practices at ACSNOLA. Joe reached out to Anice Anderson, the Chair of Industrial Section P and setup a meeting between Anice and I so we could discuss future mutual programming.  At the tail end of the Section P meeting which we couldn't attend because we were hosting our Career Workshop Lounge,  Jack, Mukund and I had the good fortune of being invited to lunch with the Industrial Section P business meeting attendees.This was a fantastic serendipitous event allowing the opportunity to communicate the SCHB goal of future programming with AAAS Industrial Section P.  Joe was able to work with Anice and John remotely in order to draft a proposal that went before council the next morning. On the Sunday morning of the annual meeting, a council comprised of representatives from each of the AAAS sections meets for a pitching session resulting in which symposia will move forward for the following year and co-sponsors are put into place. 

Saturday February 16, 2013 Facilitated a career workshop at AAAS Boston called Learn how to satisfy your entrepreneurial career cravings 

Entrepreneurial career cravings? Learn how to satisfy them.
Date: Saturday, February 16, 2013
Time: 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM
Facility: Hynes Convention Center
Room: 209

We had 24 attendees at this AAAS Career Pathways Workshop on the snowy Saturday morning in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center. I opened the workshop by introducing what Jack Driscoll, Mukund Chorghade and I all have in common: all three of us are member volunteers for the American Chemical Society, active members of both our local section of the American Chemical Society Northeastern Section but also the American Chemical Society Technical Division of Small Chemical Businesses whose mission is to aid in the formation, development and growth of small chemical businesses. I spoke about how I came into entrepreneurship inherently as the daughter of an entrepreneur having run the family business alongside my father for nearly 20 years. Jack discussed how he came into entrepreneurship by sheer desire to work for himself and Mukund discussed how he had to become an entrepreneur to employ himself. Jack and Mukund each had half an hour and used the time to talk about their experiences: what worked/what didn’t and resources that are available from ACS including SCHB member benefits,the ACS Entrepreneurial Initiative, ACS Career Consulting tools as well as funding resources both conventional and unconventional funding. Emphasis was placed on traditional networking as well as social media networking. Questions were asked throughout the presentations making it slightly more audience driven than the usual Powerpoint presentation. However, we were able to keep the questions focused because of the unique opportunity to meet one-on-one with folks seeking guidance via the career development lounge  following the presentation where SCHB representatives Jennifer Maclachlan, Mukund Chorghade and Jack Driscoll after the workshop to discuss specific chemistry career options. Two of the people talked to us afterward about starting their own small chemical business, one was a Post Doc who is a NESACS member but had not gone to any Local Section meetings because he had heard that it was an “older group” and that the majority of members were “academics”.  I invited him to our next meeting and told him that it was an excellent place to network. I followed up with him post meeting and will again in the Fall. A reporter interviewed Mukund but it did not yield any press coverage. The career development lounge that AAAS provided was located in the back corner of the expo hall which was setup cafe style for conversations. Jack met with a women from The University of Einhoven in The Netherlands, who could not attend our workshop but could attend the career lounge and wanted to use us a a point of contact for entrepreneurship and invited Jack to give a similar presentation on scientific entrepreneurship via webinar. This webinar on entrepreneurship occurred on May 13, 2013 with an audience of 25 potential scientific entrepreneurs who were at a meeting in San Jose. ACS resources were highlighted in Jack's presentation along with his own entrepreneurial experiences. 

This portion was written jointly by Jack Driscoll and Jennifer Maclachlan and submitted as part of the quarterly PR report for NESACS. 

February 16-17, 2013- Family Science Days at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)Meeting, HynesConvention Center Boston MA This spectacular science outreachevent was sponsored by AAAS and co-sponsored by the Cambridge Science Festival. This free two day event was attended by 3,700 people. The American Chemical Society: Northeastern Section of the ACS (NESACS) together with the ACS Division of Small Chemical Businesses(SCHB) reserved and staffed a booth. The ACS Office of Public Affairs provided several hundred copies both of Kids Discover Chemistry Magazine and the Celebrating Chemistry Nanotechnology National Chemistry Week handout in addition to Chemistry Ambassador sashes, stickers and pins for distribution at this event. There were more than 60 organizations at the Family Science Days.

Our hands-on materials were provided by NESACS National Chemistry Week Coordinator, Chris Jaworek-Lopes. David Sittenfeld of the Museum of Science not only donned a Chemistry Ambassador sash and put in volunteer hours at the booth, he also arranged for us to borrow the Museum of Science demo kits that we utilized in addition to the NCW supplies. We had three experiments: sunscreen, surface area and nanosand. The latter was the most popular. I mentioned to booth visitors that the ACS had some very educational nanotech videos on their YouTube channel. When thanked for his time at the booth, Mark Jones (pictured right above next to Jack Driscoll) replied that the experience was 

“surprisingly enjoyable”. Mark Jones acted as a Keynote speaker at the 2013 ACS Central Regional Meeting (CERM) and was volunteered to us by his Dow Chemical colleague, Katie Hunt, 2007 President of the ACS, who knew that we had booked an ACS table at this AAAS event. We had about 350 parents and children visit us on the first day and about 250 on the second day. The audience was primarily K-6 but we did talk to several sophomores about careers in chemistry. One Post Doc mom asked me whether I would make a video to invite her 6 year old son to the Expo the next day. I did that and met her son the next day. On Sunday, Lisa Shatz from Suffolk University, brought a number of EE gadgets including a Mendocino motor driven by a flashlight, solar cells and magnets, a robot, a Gauss meter, a magnet & a tube of iron filings that could beused to demonstrate a magnetic field. We were graced with the most amazing volunteers from the ACS Small Chemical Businesses Division, Northeastern Local Section of ACS (NESACS), Mid-Hudson Local Section of  ACS, Dow Chemical (MI & MA), Suffolk University Department Chairs including a Trustee and Museum of Science Boston (MOS).We couldn't have staffed the six hours each day(Saturday and Sunday) without this team of volunteers: Mukund Chorghade, Jack Driscoll, Chris Gilmore, Mark Jones, Jennifer Maclachlan and Family, George Ruger, Lisa Shatz, DavidSittenfeld, Sonja Strah-Pleynet and Family,Tricia Vickrey and Dennis Walczewski.

Of course on the Saturday evening of AAAS, I attended the social media soiree and premier networking event for science bloggers and tweeters. 

Overall, this was a very successful meeting having achieved what I would consider a great deal of PR for the ACS Division of Small Chemical Businesses based on our participation in the technical program (workshop), social events, section business meetings and at the community science outreach event. 

Below are the tweets that I did as the @ACSSCHB administrator before the AAAS Meeting.

1. Jennifer Maclachlan ‏@pidgirl13 Feb

   Session hashtag for live tweeting of Learn how to satisfy #entrepreneurial career cravings at #AAASMtg is #selfemploy http://ow.ly/hGuGk 

    Retweeted by SCHB

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2. SCHB ‏@ACSSCHB13 Feb

   Early bird registration ends 2/18 for #ACSNOLA. Register today! http://dld.bz/cg5Y6  Here's our FULL technical program http://dld.bz/cg5Yr# 

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3. HynesBeacon ‏@HynesBeacon6 Feb

   RT @pidgirl: Boston area Free Family Science Fun #FamSciDays Sat/Sun 16&17 at @HynesBeacon http://ow.ly/hgb9y 

    Retweeted by SCHB

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4. SCHB ‏@ACSSCHB12 Feb

   Have #entrepreneurial career cravings & going to #aaasmtg? Join us Sat 1030am RM 209 @hynesbeacon & learn from 3 scientific entrepreneurs

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5. Jennifer Maclachlan ‏@pidgirl11 Feb

   Session: Learn How to Satisfy #Entrepreneurial Career Cravings Saturday morning at #AAASMtg http://ow.ly/1S9If1 

    Retweeted by SCHB

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6. SCHB ‏@ACSSCHB12 Feb

   #FamSciDays event at #AAASMtg in Boston Feb. 16 & 17 2013 together with #NESACS & #ACSSCHB at the ACS table http://www.scribd.com/doc/124231749/Free-Family-Science-Days-at-AAAS-Meeting-in-Boston-Feb-16-17-2013 …

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