Meeting Science Video Makers

For the past week I've been enjoying the company of people who do what I do - make science videos on YouTube!

It's rare that we spend time together (it was a first meeting for many of us), and it was loads of fun.

Before sharing a few pics and videos, here's a run-down of just some of the people I met with (there were many more).

Destin from Smarter Every Day
Henry Reich from Minute Physics
Vi Hart from ViHart
Derek Muller from Veritasium
CGP Grey from, well, CGPGrey
Michael Stevens from Vsauce (also met Kevin from Vsauce2)
John Green (a famous vlog brother but also behind Crash Course)
Hank Green (the other vlogbrother and host of SciShow)
Chris Casella from Science Alert
Gavin from the Slow Mo Guys

The trip included attending the VidCon conference in Anaheim, which was a huge three-day event for all sorts of YouTubers.

Education really was a tiny part of the massive event, but we did have an education panel hosted by Angela Lin from YouTube... Here are the panellists.


ViHart, Hank Green, Henry Reich, Angela, Mike Rugnetta, Me, John Green

The panel was standing room only (see below), with many people unfortunately turned away.


View from the podium

An earlier panel about physics was run by Henry, Derek and Destin and was also standing room only - the science stuff was proving popular!

Destin also set up an impromptu (and unauthorised!) session where people were allowed to experience his high-speed Phantom camera.


Destin (in yellow) shows off the Phantom

People took turns slapping each other's faces and watching it back in high speed!!!

Here's me being whacked by two of the most famous hands on YouTube:

MinutePhysics and ViHart slap Brady

Earlier in the week, prior to the madness of VidCon, the science film-makers were at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada.

This was for an even dubbed BrainSTEM, a more intimate gathering of people with an interest in online education.

Professor Mike Merrifield - a regular in films for Sixty Symbols and Deep Sky Videos - came along for this event.

It was called an "unconference", the idea being that the format was rather free-flowing and informal. We often gathered in smaller groups for themed discussions which were more like conversations than meetings.

It was brilliant and very helpful.


Derek and Henry put on an impromptu performance

And it was also fun, as this video put together by Derek probably shows!?



I've also filmed a few videos with my fellow science YouTubers and will hopefully be posting soon... For now, here's the first one I filmed with Henry about how he makes his wildly successful MinutePhysics videos.



One little extra shout-out to end my blog... I managed to forget my camera battery recharger and found it hard to find one at VidCon.

But a young film-maker named Micah went the extra mile and loaned me his charging cable... He didn't have to. If anyone has read my blog this far and wants to repay a young lad who helped me in a time of need, why not subscribe to his fledging YouTube channel.

One good turn deserves another!