I have recently put a bit of order into my records of activities as a science communicator, for an application to an outreach prize. In doing so, I have been able to take a critical look at those activities, something which I would otherwise not have spent my time doing. And it is indeed an interesting look back.


The blogging

Overall, I have been blogging continuously since January 4th 2005. That's 137 months! By continuously, I mean I wrote an average of a post every two days, or a total of about 2000 posts, 60% of which are actual outreach articles meant to explain physics to real outsiders. 

My main internet footprint is now distributed in not one, but at least six distinct web sites:
- in 2005 my blog was hosted in the "Quantum Diaries" site, an initiative for the World Year of Physics;
- From January 2006 to April 2009 I ran my own weblog at wordpress (still not entirely dead);
- From April 2009 I moved my activities to this site
- In 2010 I opened a greek blog, where I translated into Greek some of the articles published in the science20 site; 
- In 2011 I created a blog for the "Neutrino Telescopes" conference series. The activity was limited to the time frame of the conference, but then two years afterwards it was resurrected. Although a low-activity site, it contains very high-quality material if you are interested in neutrinos.
- From December 2015 I also opened a collaborative blog for the EU network I am coordinating, AMVA4NewPhysics.


Other outreach activities

Apart from the blogging activity, which I think has had some impact on the communication of science and in making particle physics a less distant and cryptic topic for outsiders (the blogs have collected overall an estimated 7 million hits), I have pursued outreach in other ways.

One is by being a speaker at public events and conferences - about 20 times in the past 15 years. Another is my social media activity (of course you're invited to follow my twitter account, @dorigo, as well as the hashtag of the ITN network I direct, #AMVA4NP; and I am liberal with accepting friends on Facebook). 

And the there are the publications. Here I should cite two back-to-back feature articles on "Physics World" in 2011 on the LHC and the road to discovery of new physics; and several articles on Italian newspapers.

To finish properly this shameless self-promotion, I need to mention the book I have written, "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab", which will be published by World Scientific in November 2016. By the way, you can pre-order your copy at this site!

Overall, I reckon I have spent the largest chunk of my free time in the above outreach activities. I am proud of it, but am also a bit sad that this "third mission" of researchers and scientists is often neglected by my colleagues. Many, actually, not only do not do their share in that direction, but are quick to criticize it, or say it's a waste of time better spent in research. I respectfully disagree. What do you, true faithful readers of this column, who have gotten to the end of this unpalatable post, think ?