If you’ve been following Compound Interest on Twitter, you’ll know that a couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend the American Chemical Society’s National Meeting in Philadelphia at the invitation of C&EN. I thought I’d belatedly write a brief post here summing up the trip, along with a link to the slides I used during my talk for those who requested them. As I’ve also got a number of the C&EN poster giveaways from a Q&A I gave still lying around, there’s also an opportunity to nab one for yourself if you weren’t at the meeting!

I was invited to Philly off the back of the Periodic Graphics series that I create for the American Chemical Society’s C&EN magazine. At the meeting, I gave a talk as part of the “Using New Media to Communicate Chemistry to the Public” symposium, alongside other great talks from science communicators including Raychelle Burks, and Adam Dylewski from ACS Reactions. A handful of people asked for me to put my slides up at some point, particularly for my basic dos and don’ts of making infographics and the suggested resources provided at the end of the talk, so here they are.

The day after, I took part in a short Q&A session organised by C&EN and chaired by Lauren Wolf. It was great to get a chance to chat with a number of people who’ve been following the site for a while, and also hear how some teachers have been using the graphics as part of their teaching. As part of the session, we also gave out some free posters showing a selection of the Periodic Graphics featured in C&EN – if you weren’t at the meeting and want to win yourself one of the spare posters I brought back, head on over to the CI Facebook page!

Either side of the Q&A I also got the chance to catch a fair amount of the “Crafting Chemical Communication” symposium, which included some very interesting talks from Stuart Cantrill on the nature of chemistry publishing, Prof. Michelle Francl on making the bones of chemistry visible to non-chemists, and Prof. Matt Hartings on using kitchen science to enthuse people about chemistry (that last one obviously being a topic very much in line with my interests!). On a side note, Matt has an upcoming book on kitchen chemistry which I’m very much looking forward to reading.

It was also excellent to meet up with a number of chemistry and science communication people that I’ve previously only chatted to via Twitter. As it was actually my first time over in the US, I did also make some time to wander around Philadelphia, grab a cheesesteak on more than one occasion, drop in on the Liberty Bell, and squeeze in a visit to the Chemical Heritage Foundation. I’m very grateful to Lauren Wolf and the C&EN team for inviting me over!

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