You have amazing ideas but struggle to make them shine? Ideas pop up randomly in your head: you follow them, forget, see them pop up again? Or do you use a diary, git repo, or org-mode file to store your ideas? While we (as scientists) sometimes track ideas consciously, our habits to evolve and polish ideas are rarely deliberate. Yet, sometimes we experience the perfect moment: a whiteboard discussion, a blog article, a deep insight while taking a bath, ... and, suddenly, a rough idea turns into a polished insight. Somehow, we seem to know how to develop exquisite ideas!

In this unworkshop, we will crowd-source best practices of how to evolve ideas. By playing small and interactive games, we identify the critical steps that we take when working with ideas. Together, we transform these small ideas into 'science games', small deliberate activities which we can experience, practice, and use deliberately whenever we encounter a new rough idea that may need some polishing.

Join us for an experimental afternoon and play the science game with us.

Please register here: https://doodle.com/meeting/participate/id/aKrLowre

Your Hosts

Will Naameh alias MC Hammersmith

Will Naameh is an improv theater artists from Edinburgh. He started performing improv in 2006. Originally from London, he has been based in Edinburgh since 2010.

He has trained in improv with some of the world's leading schools and instructors, including Second City, iO Chicago, UCB, Annoyance Theatre, Susan Messing, Keith Johnstone, TJ & Dave and The Groundlings.

He currently performs with multi award-winning improv troupe The Spontaneous Players, known for their Edinburgh Fringe smash hit show Spontaneous Potter.

As a solo act, he performs improvised hip hop comedy under the rap name MC Hammersmith. In this guise he has won multiple Scottish Comedy Awards, headlines comedy clubs across the UK and internationally, and has supported Jason Manford and John Bishop on tour.

He is a former UK Improv Smackdown Champion and has taught improv for groups, individuals, corporations and festivals worldwide.

Alexander Viand

When he isn't visiting UoE, Alexander Viand is a PhD student at ETH Zurich. There, he's active in the scientific staff association (VMI) and had the pleasure to help coordinate the Scientific Excellence & Well-Being initiative. His research focuses on making advanced cryptographic techniques such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption accessible to non-experts by developing new systems, tools and abstractions.

Ohad Kammar

Ohad Kammar is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, and his interests include programming languages and applied mathematics (category theory, logic, algebra).

Tobias Grosser

Tobias keeps wondering: "what makes great science"? On his way to answering this question, Tobias co-founded the Scientific Excellence & Well-Being initiative initiative and continues along his quest to demonstrate that focusing "putting the human first" is not just healthy, but yields excellent scientific results. Tobias leads a research group on compiler design at the University of Edinburgh, where he researches how compilers -- in the broadest sence -- ought to be designed in the future.

Impressions