New ways for AuScope community to collaborate and innovate: a reflection on AuScope Convergence 2022
A word cloud showing the AuScope geoscience community’s top five barriers to collaborating across and beyond AuScope, based on 21 responses and over 100 noted barriers. Image: AuScope
Recently, we created an online space called AuScope Convergence 2022 for our national geoscience community to ponder new ways to overcome collaboration barriers. Our aspiration: by better addressing barriers to collaboration, we can become better innovators as we strive to address national geoscience challenges. We looked to innovators in and beyond our field to inspire us. Here’s our recap.
Why Convergence?
Last year we asked the AuScope geoscience community how AuScope HQ could better support innovation across and beyond AuScope. The resounding collective response was ‘fostering collaboration skills’. As CEO Dr Tim Rawling explains:
“We’re committed to investing in supporting our community through learning and sharing opportunities like Convergence. This is our first attempt at such an event, and with much positive feedback, hopefully, it’s the first of many!”
Day 1: Looking beyond Australian geoscience for inspiration
To kick off Convergence, we welcomed Associate Professor Leah Heiss from Monash University to share her experience working collaboratively as a designer in the medtech space. Leah spoke of her award winning design work to address cardiovascular disease, hearing loss, and loneliness. Leah also explained the toolkit of approaches that she has built up over decades to address collaboration challenges.
A snapshot of Leah’s toolkit that may inspire the AuScope community. Image: A/Prof Leah Heiss
WATCH: Leah’s presentation. Pictured: a snippet from A/Prof Leah Heiss’ presentation featuring Facett, the world’s first modular self-fit hearing aid that Leah designed with Blamey Saunders Hears. Museums Victoria's mineralogy collection inspired the design that helps overcome stigma. Image: A/Prof Leah Heiss
In the afternoon, Leah guided participants through three short activities designed to help address the challenge of ‘networks and networking’. The AuScope community have described this challenge as ‘being in the right room with the right people at the right time’ and ‘knowing who to collaborate with’.
To examine this networking challenge, participants were asked to reframe the challenge using an exercise called ‘the five why’s’ which is ‘an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem’. Participants asked themselves why networking is a challenge, then why that response is a challenge, and so on, for five total iterations.
Next, participants were asked to empathise with their potential collaborators, identifying mutual constraints and positions to build trust before commencing a collaboration. Finally, they participated in an exercise of rapid prototyping by jotting down ideas and sketching to explore ‘the smallest thing that I (participant) could do to experiment with overcoming the set collaboration barrier’.
Day 2: Looking across Australian geoscience for inspiration
WATCH: AuScope CEO Dr Tim Rawling in discussion with geoscience innovators from around Australia including: A/Prof Steve Micklethwaite (University of Queensland), Dr Sara Palenco (University of Sydney), Dr Fabian Kohlman (Lithodat) and A/Prof Maria Seton (University of Sydney). Image: AuScope
The second part of Convergence opened with a lively discussion amongst innovators from the Australian geoscience community on ways to innovate, often adopting creativity out of necessity.
The audience gained insights from Dr Maria Seton about her maiden seabound scientific leadership experience and enhancing public interest in science, from Dr Fabian Kohlman about gathering valuable geochemical datasets for community benefit through Lithodat, from Dr Sara Polanco’s work with government and industry in the Basin Genesis Hub, and A/Prof Steve Micklethwaite’s experience balancing social, environmental and economic needs in Sustainable Minerals Institute projects.
In the afternoon, we asked attendees to brainstorm barrier-breaking ideas that AuScope HQ can action for the benefit of AuScope and the Australian geoscience community. Ideas that were presented include:
Learning Opportunities: A forum that enables participants to be inspired by others who have been able to successfully evolve their diverse geoscience capabilities to meet many different societal needs, to help overcome the common ‘priorities’ barrier.
Toy Library/Skills Directory: A platform for exchanging knowledge and know-how across the AuScope community to help overcome the commonly experienced ‘resources’ barrier.
Pitch N’ Ditch: A webinar series that brings participants together with an aligned vision to match capabilities with needs, which may help overcome the common ‘aligned vision’ barrier.
SciTalks Incubator: A regular and informal forum (perhaps as webinars in a PechaKucha style presentation format) that allows participants to share new findings and techniques to help overcome the commonly experienced ‘communication’ barrier.
Risk Buster: A pilot project program that allows participants to spend time collaborating and prototyping to help overcome the common ‘competition’ barrier.
This Sample Life: A booking system that tracks sample journeys through laboratories, museums and other places, enabling systemic improvements along the way, to help overcome the commonly experienced ‘collections infrastructure’ barrier.
Top Draw: A relational database that allows the AuScope community to search keywords, projects, skills, capabilities and funding opportunities to spark collaboration and innovation and overcome the commonly experienced ‘communication’ challenge.
Our winner: Toy Library! Our HQ team look forward to responding to this pitch, and considering ways that all of the pitches could come to life, since all include valid barrier-breaking points for community benefit.
Community feedback
We asked participants to share their experience of Convergence, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. In reflecting on Day 1 with Leah, attendees felt the ‘the five whys’ tool would be most helpful in their daily practice, and then prototyping — bringing small experiments into daily life to create small wins’.
The ‘geoscience innovators’ panel inspired the final day of workshops, with one participant noting:
"The panel were all very inspiring. I noticed that they had all had to move out of their comfort zone and try something new to innovate. That often involved moving outside of their particular discipline and forming multi-disciplinary teams.”
In reflecting on the overall experience, participants felt that attending the design workshops and panel discussions had enhanced their capacity to collaborate and innovate. Feedback indicates that our community is keen to engage, innovate and connect.
If you attended Convergence but haven’t had a chance to share your feedback on it yet, we would still love to hear from you via this anonymous 5-minute survey.
AUTHORS
Jo Condon and Philomena
Manifold, AuScope
IDEAS?
We’re always open to new ideas on ways to support our current and future geoscience community. Reach out.
WATCH: CONVERGENCE PRESENTATIONS, BOTH DAYS: