Silly and wonderful photoshop job Johnathan Chung.

One of our primary missions at CosmoQuest is to share science with as many people as possible. This means travelling to where people are. We’ve been weighing our reduced budget as well as our core mission and decided on our travel schedule for the rest of the year. We’ve had to cut down how many people we send to each event, but not as much the number of events, which is lovely. In some cases, this means we’ll be looking for volunteers for help us run a booth or table. In other cases, it just means we’re looking for dinner companions as we travel the world solo! In either case, we hope you’ll come out and meet us where possible. So, here’s the line-up as we know it so far:

Every even-numbered-Tuesday with good weather – Edwardsville, IL – Yes, it makes for strange selection criteria. However, if all of the above are TRUE, then you can bet we’re having a Star Party at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, our home campus. I’ll been running the star party this spring while the usual “star of the show” is out with an injury, but I hope to keep helping out through summer and fall. More information can be found at the SIUE Physics website.

May 4 – Edwardsville, IL – That’s this Saturday! I am doing a Family Science Day at our hometown library. Making a giant mess while teaching science is one of my favorite things to do, so come along and join me. You can find out more information about the event at the library’s website and let us know you are coming via our MeetUp page.

May 15-17 – St Louis, MO – NSTA STEM Forum and Expo – Are you a science educator planning on attending the STEM Expo in St. Louis? CosmoQuest will be there along with our collaborators from the SIUE STEM Center. We have side-by-side booths at the Expo on Wednesday night’s preview and all day Thursday and Friday. More information about the conference can be found on NSTA’s website, and let us know you’ll be there on our MeetUp page.

May 24-27 – Baltimore, MD – Balticon – This sci-fi/fantasy convention is chock full of writers and podcasters, plus our own Pamela Gay will be presenting and debuting our comic/activity book, Free Wifi on Mars. Find out more at Balticon.org.

June 2-6 – Indianapolis, IN – AAS Summer Meeting – I’ll be presenting results of our CosmoQuest citizen science motivations survey at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Indianapolis in June. Social MeetUp details coming soon! (Also, I’m currently booked at a hostel to save on costs, but if anyone knows of other accommodations, I would be grateful!)

June 15-16 – The Internet – Pamela and I are doing a 24-hour Hangout-A-Thon as a fundraiser for CosmoQuest! You can join from wherever you are, as long as you have some sort of internet connection. More information to come… I promise!

July 4-7 – Minneapolis, MN – CONvergence – Part-vacation, part science outreach, I’m coming to CONvergence to be a part of Skepchicon and all the science-y goodness that goes on at this Midwestern sci-fi/fantasy convention. I’ll be helping with science demos, panels, and the Skepchick room party! Stay tuned for more details as I get them.

July 8-12 – Finland – European Week of Astronomy and Space Science Conference – Apparently Pamela is going to Finland? I just found out about this possible trip, so I’ll let her fill you in on details a) if it becomes a reality and b) when it gets closer. Me? Oh, I’ll be in the Poconos with family, ignoring email for a week.

July 20-24 – San Jose, CA – Astronomical Society of the Pacific – Georgia Bracey and I will be presenting educational results from CosmoQuest at the ASP’s annual meeting. Come see our talks/posters if you are in attendance, or watch the MeetUp site for details on social events around the meeting.

Aug 28 – Sept 2 – Atlanta, GA – DRAGON*CON – Quite possibly my favorite event of the year, Dragon*Con is where we make our biggest public impact. However, we will be needing your help to staff our fan tables this year! Email getinvolved at cosmoquest dot org if you already know you are coming and want to help, and I’ll add you to our list of possible volunteers. Pamela and I have guest status and will be doing panels and talks with all our favorite people in the usual tracks, so follow the blog as we update with our final schedule as the date gets closer. And maybe there will be an Atlanta Skeptics Star Party again as well? It’s not my place to say… but rumors are favorable.

Sept 16-18 – Cambridge, MA – dotAstronomy – I’m going to the 5th dotAstronomy conference, a delightful unconference about ways to share and do astronomy with a bit of a hacker mentality. Hope to see you there if you applied, or see you in the area on a night off. What crazy shenanigans will we come up with on Hack Day this year? It’s anyone’s guess…

Oct 14-18 – Warsaw, Poland – Communicating Astronomy with the Public – Pamela is going to and on the organizing committee for this conference bringing together astronomy communicators from around the globe. More information can be found at their conference website.

Oct 19-20 – Seattle, WA – GeekGirlCon – While Pamela is conferenceing in Europe, I’ll be getting ready to spread the CosmoQuest love at GeekGirlCon, a conference in celebration and promotion of my fellow geeky females. With any luck, my panel and talk ideas will be accepted, plus you can see us at our exhibitor table. A bunch of my fellow Skepchicks will be in attendance as well!

Dec 9-13 – San Francisco – American Geophysical Union – To round out the year, Pamela will be presenting even more science and education results at the massive annual meeting of the AGU in San Francisco.

Jan 5-9, 2014 – Washington, DC – American Astronomical Society – Though this is technically a 2014 meeting, the AAS winter meeting prep all happens this year. Gear up for the biggest American astronomy conference where I’ll be presenting science and education results from CosmoQuest. Oh, and we’ll probably have a table in the exhibit hall, too.

There may be several other events that I cannot yet announce as they are being hosted by other organizations, but we’ll update the blog as needed when those come up. Plus, you can always check our Google Calendar and join our MeetUp group which I promise to keep a bit more updated than I have in my first year as a post-doc.

Thanks, and I hope to see you at one or more of these events soon!

Image credit: Silly and wonderful photoshop job by Johnathan Chung. Thank you!