The STEM Media Producers Convening (SMPC) was designed to create a more vibrant community of practice for STEM media practitioners, and to foster dialogue among media makers across disciplines, with common agreement that in today’s dynamic media landscape, a collaborative community can more actively promote STEM content creation and public impact across multiple platforms. This broad goal grew out of a July, 2011 convening of media producers, sponsored by CAISE, the Center for the Advancement of Informal Science Education, where the participants defined this primary goal: “Build the field of STEM media professionals through organization and convening.” The other goals of the July convening – to build a stronger evidence base and to build public awareness – became additional objectives of the SMPC.

A significant motivation for the convening is the unfortunate fact that this community, which produces STEM media products reaching tens of millions of people every year, has no formal organization nor regular conferences. It is a deeply fragmented community, and this project was in essence designed to initiate conversations that might lead to the formation of such an organization. The STEM Media Producers Convening afforded a ‘first ever’ opportunity for leaders in different communications fields to begin to bridge the gap across disciplines and consider common challenges and ways in which innovation might be achieved through a new professional organization or other mechanisms that would encourage substantive discussion and collaboration.

We convened a select group of 30 producers of STEM media in four categories: television, radio, large-format films, online video and digital games. We also included several experienced STEM media evaluators, a number of NSF grant officers and representatives of CAISE. The event took place in on the first day of the 2012 CAISE NSF PI Meeting, on Wednesday, March 14, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. (Attendee lists and agendas are online at caisemedia.com)

The agenda was designed to enable producers in each discipline to confer together on challenges within disciplinary groups in the morning, and then, in the afternoon, to mix participants for a cross-disciplinary analysis of these challenges and how a formal organization and regular conferences might address them.

Discussion revealed many common concerns, such as: How do media makers across platforms achieve contemporary content and create fresh, engaging styles across platforms and for demographically diverse audiences? In an increasingly cluttered field of ‘factual’ programming, how do producers re-imagine the core objectives of a STEM program and how can they employ current storytelling techniques in ways that advance, and do not diminish STEM content? How do producers reach younger audiences?

Evaluation took center stage across all disciplines and conversations. Media makers agreed that evaluation tools need to be sharper, and integrative and long-term evaluation studies need to be undertaken to improve projects going forward and to demonstrate the central value of STEM media for policy makers, funders, and for the public at large. Game developers discussed the difficulties of evaluating audience impact in their field. They are seeking greater awareness of their products as teaching tools, and they need better metrics to demonstrate the subtleties of audience impact in addition to reach. Radio producers posed a series of questions: What do audiences get out of radio/audio STEM content and how does context affect outcomes? What do audiences get out of participation in community engagement activities? What are the most effective tools to gauge reach and impact of audio programming?

The PIs took part in other conferences during the term of the grant: the Jackson Hole Science Symposium, Denver, CO, September 5-7; the Third Coast International Audio Festival (TCIAF) on October 5-7 in Evanston, IL; and the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers in Washington DC. Promising conversations are underway to continue convenings of the community in association with Jackson Hole Science Symposium.

We also created a LinkedIn group, the STEM Media Producers Consortium (STEM Media Producers Consortium ), to be a forum for continued information sharing and community building.