3. Promote Your Café
First Steps
Register your Making Stuff Café
1. Select a name, time, and place.
- It’s fun to come up with a catchy, playful name for your café. Try for something clever and memorable!
- Science Cafés tend to be held on weekday evenings, but can also be held on weekend afternoons. Unless you’re dealing with a group that’s already established, avoid Friday evenings, Saturdays, and Sunday mornings.
- Pick a venue that people are excited to visit and invite their friends to. Typical venues for science education events, such as science centers or lecture halls, are not always the best meeting spots for Science Cafés. An unconventional venue is an important part of the atmosphere for the overall event and a great way to reach new audiences.
- Go where your audience already congregates naturally. Science Cafés have been held in pubs, coffeehouses, bookstores, restaurants, art galleries, malls, and even bowling alleys.
2. Put your Making Stuff Café on the map by emailing us.
Electronic and Social Media Messages for Making Stuff Cafés
When it’s time to send a last-minute reminder, electronic media is an effective way to reach a lot of people.
Try using e-mail, listservs, blogs, e-newsletters, Facebook, Twitter, Meetup.com, and Foursquare to reach folks who may be interested in your café.
1. Catchy Openers
“Making Stuff: Stronger”
- What's stronger than Superman?
- How would you like to break things for a living?
- How can fabric stop a speeding bullet?
- Can fragile things be strong too?
- Strength comes from within! Well, material strength is determined by atomic structure.
- Did you know that goats can make spider silk?
“Making Stuff: Smaller”
- How small is small?
- How do you build something atom by atom?
- Could tiny robots cure blindness?
- Is smaller better?
- Size matters! Learn about innovations in nanotechnology.
- The technology of the very small is revolutionizing the world.
“Making Stuff: Cleaner”
- Upcycling: Trash doesn't have to be waste!
- Is waste material being wasted?
- How can you grow car parts?
- How can technology help us live more sustainably?
- You may soon be asked by the grocery bagger: paper, plastic, or cheese?
- What if everything we use could be reused, recycled, or composted?
“Making Stuff: Smarter”
- Can things be smart?
- What if airplane wings could actually flap like bird wings?
- How does a material remember?
- What if a material could heal itself?
- Invisibility cloaks are real!
- Hey, smarty-pants—do you have smart pants?
2. Additional Text to Complete a Posting
- Make sure that all your promotional messages include the café date, time, and location as well the topic.
- Explore the fascinating world of materials science—the study of stuff. NOVA's four-part Making Stuff series explores the material world and presents dramatic stories about how the field of materials science has changed history and is shaping the future. Come to our Making Stuff Café to learn how scientists are generating new materials that function differently and are stronger, smaller, smarter, and cleaner than ever.
