How do you get yourselves heard by academics? Not by talking, not by posting on social media, LinkedIn or Xing. You are not an academic yourself so you can’t normally publish where they’d publish.
Except sometimes you can!
This is how I am now writing an article for an Indian magazine, where the other people writing for this edition are actual scientists from our clinic.
Because of all the silly thinking I’ve done in my silly little room, I wrote a pitch in less than a day, had it accepted on the next, and am now contacting people for quotes. Target 2000 words, deadline 10 April.
The pitch is already 600 words and maybe doesn’t need that much more. So how about a lot of quotes from relevant people?
The first person I messaged for a quote, a huge cheerleader for actual transformation in one of the big industries in the South of Germany, suggested I start a LinkedIn group to build community around it, so I’ve done that.
The next one, tech architect of the NHS national vaccine booking service, is “happy to jump on a call” with his service designer and would like to “share show and tell materials.” I mean who knew it was that easy to find out how the NHS provided an online booking system so quickly. Turns out you can just ask. People who do this are out there and happy to talk about it. Who knew.
Next I need to remove some of the more therapeutic content I’ve written so my website looks like somewhere you can find serious stuff. Then I need to work out what format that should be in. I don’t fancy just video, or just audio. Also I’m not that good at recording either. I tend toward text. That needs figuring out before jumping on that call.
Maybe I need to do some actual user research.
This is all great fun. Suddenly I feel that I’m taken more seriously, already now, because I’m kinda publishing?
Doesn’t even matter that the actual magazine is web only and has a gmail address for submissions.