I am very excited to announce that I will be giving a talk at the Boulder Teen Science Cafe next Tuesday September 29th from 5:30-7pm at the CU Museum of Natural History‘s BioLounge. My talk is entitled “Leave No (Digital) Trace: The Geography of Social Media”, and here is the ‘snippet’ from the website announcing my talk:
Our first Teen Café of the 2015-16 academic year features self-described “Geo Nerd” Dr. Carson Farmer, assistant professor in the CU Geography Department. When the average person thinks about geography, they might imagine a weathered, old map or a globe. When Dr. Farmer thinks about geography, he sees the streams of data about our locations, movements, and actions that we leave in a digital trail behind us every time we post to Facebook, send a text message, or upload a photo to Instagram. It turns out that social media is a geographer’s goldmine. Come learn about how social media can be used for good and evil, and about the fascinating ways in which scientists take advantage of the “big data” our many electronic devices now generate to study everything from the carbon footprint of your morning commute to snow and water processes around the globe.
I should probably mention that the Teen Cafe is for teenagers. To quote the organizers:
In order to maintain an atmosphere where teens can be themselves and feel comfortable engaging with our speaker and their peers, we encourage parents to drop teens off when possible and to leave younger siblings at home.
In any case, it should be a lot of fun, and it sounds like an awesome program for teens in and around the Boulder and Denver area… go science!
