Our stand at the ASE Conference was generously funded by the IGD who provided the initial funding to set up the 1st University of Nottingham Summer School in Food Sciences in 2009. We now want to broaden the number of schools we engage with - was the ASE a good means of engaging with more teachers?
A spot of research before the event meant we knew we would be in the Biology tent - near @Society_Biology and @SAPS_News - so good other potential networking opportunities too.

Here we are ready to engage with teachers - with a colleague from the University of Reading.  Reading University also run a Summer School in Food Sciences for Year 12 pupils and we were at ASE to jointly promote our Summer Schools.

Teachers we engaged with were really positive and we captured the contact details of around 50 teachers from the UK. The ASE was a great opportunity to meet teachers involved with #ASEChat too. Thanks to @SAPS_News we were introduced to the fab @Bio_Joe and @hrogerson who suggested following @Viviascience and ways of engaging with teachers via #ASEchat.

Not only did we have good conversations with teachers but there were other good networking opportunities too.  Good to catch up with @Aqua_Rach and @BiosciCareer and we had a good conversation with @scarycurlgirl (who we still owe a contact to) who gave a great write up of the ASE conference in her blog.  Also came across @ashbyfood enthusing about our Summer School too. 

 So will we do it all again next year?  Well the ASE Conference is in Birmingham so that's better for University of Nottingham colleagues - not sure our colleagues at Reading will prefer the location!  Hopefully we will be at ASE14 and we will try and involve more organisations too. 

Oh and nothing to do with the Summer Schools in Food Science but worth a mention.  One of our current 1st year students was spotted on the Institute of Physics’s poster promoting physics and @NakedScientists Chris Smith autographed a copy of Crisp Packet Fireworks for my nephew – great result.