Events

Location: Cafe and Playroom
Time: 12:30 PM - 4:00 PM

Love public radio? Addicted to On Point or Here & Now or Radio Boston? WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station, is seeking group insights from the LabCentral community to help explain the booming life science sector to the rest of the population in Boston and beyond, for a series it will air in June.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

• Serve as an informal guide to WBUR reporters putting together a segment for air. They will be asking questions like:
  • What do you think the rest of the population should most understand about the bio sector?
  • What basic lexicon should people have to be able to understand, say, social chatter here? (The reporters will also have a list of biopharma terms and throw them at you, seeking the best lay-level definitions.)
  • Are there “tribes of Kendall Square”? What are they? How can you tell who’s in which tribe? Is there royalty? Who? Serfs? What are the social strata?
  • The uninitiated pass through Kendall Square and other bio clusters and see mainly glass- and brick-walled buildings — how would you best describe what goes on inside those walls? Should they or their children seek to work there?
• Other questions welcome. The ultimate objective is to give the general public a better sense of a field that is impressive but also mystifying to those not in it (and many who are…)

The session will be audio-taped and video-taped, and will likely be extensively cut and edited for use on the air and online at WBUR.org. The video round will be informal, but will take place during lunch in the cafe from 12:30pm to 2:00pm. Residents are encouraged to engage with the WBUR crew and reporter Carey Goldberg, as they ask questions during lunch off camera, inviting those responses to be repeated casually in front of the camera. The main discussion will run from 2:30pm – 4:00pm. During this moderated group discussion in the playroom, WBUR will be taking audio sound bites from small group conversations, and then recording the report back from those small group discussions on each topic offered up by moderator Carey Goldberg.

This is an opportunity not to be missed. Please join us for this awesome opportunity to be heard and help educate the public.