Two winners at the Policy-brief exhibition and contest, ECCB2012 Glasgow

For the first time ever, an exhibition and a contest of policy briefs, management briefs and many other forms of very concise documents relating scientific results were exhibited during a conference. 6 couragous participants presented briefs for the contest, and each brief was examined by 3 reviewers. The scores were very narrow and Ceri Margerison (British Ecological Society) and Barbara Livoreil (president elect SCB Europe) finally decided to share the prize among 2 winners, or shoudl we say 3 as one of the brief has been written by 2 colleagues.

 The winners are Claire Feniuk-David Williams from Cambridge University (UK) for their brief about wildlife and farming (land-sharing vs land-sparing), and Jean-Yves Humbert (University of Bern, Switzerland) for his brief about mowing practices providing refuges for orthopterans in meadows.
They won a small amount of money (SCB Europe), books offered by Oxford University Press, and their brief will be published in the Bulletin of the British Ecological Society after minor revision.
Briefs are more and more popular as scientists try to find way to convene scientific results to decision-makers. This exhibition also showed their diversity in format and quality, and highlighted the fact that communicating about science remains a challenge.
The end of ECCB2012 does not put an end to this adventure. Two working groups are being formed to tackle challenges related to knowledge brokerage, briefs and scientific communication. One of them will belong to the SCB Europe section in the coming months. Anyone interested ? Please contact me at barbara.livoreil@gmail.com
Again many thanks to all who gave support in the past months. The British Ecological Society, Oxford University Press, and SCB Europe. Alter-Net, BELSPO and LWEC for having relayed the call have done a wonderful job.
The member of the Jury have done a great job in a very limited amount of time, many thanks to Kate Trumper, Paul Walton, Jiska van Dijk, Per Sjogren-Gulve, Ceri Margerison. Many thanks to all exhibitors, whose list would be much too long to report here. And last but nor least, thanks to Harald Schaich, Florence Tellier, Veronika Braunisch and Rory Crawford... next time for sure you will win!

From left to right: Harald Schaich, Barbara Livoreil, Ian Sherman (Oxford U. Press), David Williams, Ceri Margerison (BES), Claire Feniuk, Andras Baldi (President SCB Europe Section), Jean-Yves Humbert, Jiska van Dijk (hidden!, Alter-Net), Florence Tellier