What we are working on in February

• running a Talking science with the media workshop for Wildlife Health Australia
• writing newsletter articles for the International Energy Centre
• writing feature stories that demonstrate the research of the Generation Challenge Programme (breeding crops for food security)
• producing short films of researchers at the International Horticultural Congress 2014, for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research
• summarising the research of the Landscapes and Policy Hub in plain English
• managing content for the bioenergy portal Biomass Producer (this month we are visiting Mildura to develop a case study on converting grape waste to energy)
• providing communication support to the national Managing Climate Variability program and running their MCV Climate Champion program (this month we are on the road interviewing farmers in Victoria and South Australia and updating their stories)
• managing content for Climate Kelpie
• writing about grains research, for the northern region of the Grains R&D Corporation
• promoting the Cultural Atlas of Australia and managing the Facebook page
• running the Queensland Talking Scientists Program (2014-15) with the Department of Science, Information, Technology, Innovation and the Arts

• I did your workshop a few years back when I was with the CRC for Polymers. It truly was worth my while! The workshop taught me the tools to communicate effectively and the hands-on element of the workshop helped us out of our shell. I walked away a more confident and better presenter. I still use these skills today 5 years down the track!

  Sherri Hsu

  BE (Chem) PhD, MRACI, 3M Australia, Sydney, 2014

• I love that you 'practise what you preach' with your newsletters. Not only are the newsletters informative, concise and clear, they also are great examples of how to put in practice the principles and ideas you write about. I look forward to many more useful newsletters which help to improve my own communication.

  Nicole Thornton

  Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney, 2013

• My team experienced an early Christmas wish when Econnect rescued a highly technical document and turned it into something readable by a general audience (thank-you Mary and Sarah). While we greatly appreciated your wordsmithing skills, we equally appreciated the calm, reasonable and reliable approach to the job. So thank-you!

  Joan Meecham

  Queensland Government - Healthy HeadWaters CSG Water Feasibility Study, 2012

• I like this monthly e-newsletter. I trust it. It communicates. That’s because the authors do the hard work for the reader. When it arrives, the reader knows it will need only 3-4 minutes to read. And for that small investment there’s nearly always a dividend. The authors make it attractive and easy to navigate. The sentences are short. This makes the ideas less complicated. This means it communicates. And when the message is always positive, it quickly builds the reader’s trust. You can’t say that about most e-newsletters.

  Greg Clough

  Communication Specialist, Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia

• You’ll be pleased to know that I trash most newsletters, but always try to have a look through yours. As you say, the art of capturing an idea in a visual way is to simplify without being simplistic.

  Richard Stirzaker

  Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO Land and Water

• The workshops together with booklets were fantastic - managing the media I thought was harder than "climate change" - now it’s been made easier. Good fun - nice group interaction left feeling good /worthwhile allocation of time.

  Jennie Hawkins

  Farmer and participant in the Climate Champion program