the-BA : Festival Day 2

Day Two

The day had a slow start as the Media Fellows were the last ones left at the end of the evening, well we had to keep up appearances! But it was a great night at the ABSW party as we had the chance to mingle and network with other members of the journalistic sect and previous Media Fellows. I had the chance to talk to the 2004 Countryfiler, giving him the low-down on the team in Birmingham.

So as breakfast was devoured by all we made our way to the press centre and to the first of the sessions, which was based on the subject of psychology and was entitled, ‘communicating without words.’ The theme was how our bodily communication reveals aspects of our emotional state and how some others actually reveal aspects of our thinking. One of the speakers was Professor Geoffrey Beattie, the psychological advisor on Big Brother. We learned that we can never escape the eye of the psychologist as our gestures and imagistic hand movements will always give our inner thoughts away and also that one can never teach politicians to lie. Another of the speakers gave us some insight into the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and how the PM produces a facial expression that connects to the expression produced when someone smells something bad, when in the presence of Mr Brown. I have to say I spent the rest of the day analysing people’s bodily movements. Intriguing to say the least and a powerful tool for me to use in the future! Other sessions of the day looked at climate change, management of sex offenders, ethical dilemmas in science and the interesting one of women returning to science. I attended both press conferences and lecture sessions today and it was interesting to see the difference between both.

I had been allocated a specific story to cover also, so at 11am I was en-route to the theatre to get engrossed in the subject of the UK initiative of eating five portions of fruit and vegetable per day. The session began with a delightful tasting session of various organic and non-organic food stuffs, so within about 30 minutes I had fulfilled the task of my ‘5-a-day’ plan, science is actually healthy for you! The session involved speakers from government, food institutions and the most enlightening speaker from the Danish Cancer Society, who won the audience over with the most liberal use of images to advocate their ‘6-a-day’plan. So after the talks, I had various tête-á-tête with the speakers to get a few quotes and then I steamed ahead to the press centre to write my article for the BA website, with 1 hour to go before the 3.30 deadline and a word count limit. I have never had so little time to write a piece like this before, so it was daunting to see how I would cope and put the story together with a certain angle and ‘catchy’ title. I was pleased with the result and you can see my article here. So, I was hungry for my next story for tomorrow and armed myself with the press releases to give myself a head start.

I was off to another edition of the x-change with the hosting flair of Quentin Bone where we were treated to some of the highlights of the day and sessions I couldn’t attend. One of the sessions I had missed was 'telephone telepathy' and I have to say sometimes when I’m thinking of someone they call me to say hello. Bizarre!

Then the Media Fellows were off to the ‘Chillout café’ for more free drinks and food and the chance to win a high speed ride in a Lotus Elise at the Lotus test track………

Read day three

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