January 20, 2015 8:14 pm

Live-Tweeting from LA and SF with a Little Help from Our Friends

You may not know it, but StarTalk does a lot with a very small staff.

One reason we can do it is great fans who volunteer to help us out when we need it.

We’ve had plenty of volunteers edit video and audio, write guest blogs, take pictures and more.

You’ve gotten to know some of our volunteers by name: Stacey, our Social Media Coordinator, who manages our Facebook page (and tweets during our StarTalk Live! shows); and Sarah, our Social Media Assistant, who managers our Tumblr and Instagram accounts and helps me live-tweet during our StarTalk Live events.

Which brings us to this week’s twin West Coast StarTalk Live! shows.

Since Stacey, Sarah and I can’t get out to LA or SF to cover the shows, we’ve enlisted the aid of two highly qualified, science-focused tweeters to handle it for us. They’ll be “taking over” the @startalkradio Twitter account on the night of the shows.

For StarTalk Live! at the Palace Theater in LA on Thursday night, we’re handing the reins to Scott Lewis, who tweets as @scientificscott.

And for StarTalk Live! at SF Sketchfest on Friday night, Heather Archuletta, who tweets as @pillownaut, will be doing the honors.

In all likelihood, you know both of them already, and if you don’t, I highly recommend following them on Twitter.

Here’s how Scott describes himself:

“I’m the online media consultant for the Hubble Space Telescope and creator of KnowTheCosmos.com. I also provide video/audio post-production for various clients involved in science outreach, including the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics. I’m a YouTuber (DeepAstronomy, Space Fan News, Know The Cosmos), avid Tweeter, budding photographer, huge space nerd. Extraordinarily passionate about sharing the story of who we are in our highly engaging Universe, where we are not merely tenants, but have an exceedingly deep connection with. You can throw in that I’ve sold David Grinspoon (Dr. Funkyspoon) a travel package to Europa earlier last year. Sucker didn’t see that I didn’t include climate control or a return trip. Also, I help Derek Muller (Veritasium) shoot YouTube videos when he’s in town.” You can follow Scott on Google +.

As for Heather, here’s her slightly more official bio:

“Heather R. Archuletta was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, and educated at Mills College and the University of London. She loves to travel for both jobs and leisure, having lived in 7 states and visited all 50. After working in the tech industry for 17 years at large corporations like Oracle and Western Digital, she joined NASA for space flight simulations, to study the long-term effects of weightlessness on the human body. These projects help Johnson Space Center scientists learn about how to keep astronauts healthy in space. Her “Pillow Astronaut” blog and social media accounts have been featured in Wired, Popular Science, and FOX news in America, as well as news outlets in Europe, India, Scandinavia and Russia.”

There’s one other participant that is absolutely critical in live-tweeting our shows, and that’s you, our audience. Sometimes, while we’re trying to tweet out Eugene Mirman’s last joke or a dare-we-say world-changing quote from Bill Nye (who’s hosting both the LA and the SF events), audience members beat us to the punch, often with better tweets than we were writing.

Sarah and I will be monitoring the hashtag #startalklive during both shows, and retweeting the best of your tweets. We will likely only see them if you use the hashtag, but if you do, and they’re good, we will retweet your tweets to all of our followers.

By the way, there are still some tickets left for each of the shows, but if you want to go, you’d better hurry. Here is the info and links:

StarTalk Live! at the Palace Theatre in LA 1-22-15

Hosted by Bill Nye the Science Guy with co-host Eugene Mirman, comedian Tig Notaro, and NASA/JPL scientists Dr. Suzanne Smrekar (Deputy Principal Investigator, Mars InSight) and Dr. Abigail Allwood (Mars 2020 Rover). Get tickets here.

StarTalk Live! at SF Sketchfest in the Nourse Theater on 1-23-15

Hosted by Bill Nye the Science Guy with co-host Eugene Mirman, with science guest Stanford Professor Scott Hubbard (Program Architect of the Sentinel Mission to protect Earth from asteroid impacts) and another special guest or two we haven’t announced yet. Get tickets here.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!

–Jeffrey Simons