BD Just going back to the question of different sorts of people using different
kinds of exhibits, do you think some of those differences might also have
to do with boys versus girls?
HW Right. Aha, this ( ). International conferences are interesting
things. They either, bring up something that you then focus on, and, and you
miss things, or they can make you look at your own practice of what you do
in a different way and get something valuable out of it. And the first - big
conference I went to in this field was in 1988 in Boston. And the big issue
was, conflicts between the genders around exhibits and what they got from
it etc, etc. And, they showed videos of, you know, little boys pushing girls
out the way, you know, "This isn't for you, I'm going to do this!" And we'd
never noticed it at Techniquest, we never had any of it. And this is one of
the things and there are many things in Techniquest's history that we've got
right by accident, but we've been open to it and seen that we got it right,
and followed it up. For phase 2, I was totally concentrated on building 80
exhibits in 6 weeks. Quite, a task. And, when we were all laying things out,
you know, I said "Who we going to have for helpers?" And the guy who was in
charge then said "Oh, I thought I would get so-and-so and so-and-so" and it
was like about 2 people. And, but this is going to be huge, we can't do it.
So, we went to - my wife was chair of the "Whitchurch and Rhwbina Meet a Mum
Association" I'm not sure that this should go on the public record but never
mind. And this was a, a coffee morning - nominally or post-natally depressed
mothers, not for the post-natally, to raise money to help post-natally depressed
mothers. And there're a lot of people in there and so, my wife was one of
the first helpers and there're a whole load of people, many of whom are still
within the organisation now came. And so - no science background in most cases,
but there they were. And after a couple of weeks when you know all the exhibits
and you know all they do, you cannot help but interact confidently with them.
So we had, a whole exhibition full of role-models of, mature, women, of a
certain age, confidently interacting with science and technology. Just the
people you wouldn't think would confidently interact with science and technology.
So, in my mind that was luck but it was very important. I mean, everybody,
male or female relates to their mother. You know, fewer people relate, as
well, to their fathers. So, you know, it just worked really nicely and from
a pragmatic point of view, they were mothers with young children returning
to the world of work. They needed to be home at 3 o'clock to pick up the kids
from school. They needed to drop off 9 o'clock in the morning. They needed
to have the holidays off but hey, that fitted with everything that we were
doing. It was just such a lovely fit. Now we do try to diversify more in the
people that we have here because if you had all, mums, in the place, it wouldn't
- work so well, but I think the reason that we haven't had all these gender
issues that exercised people in the States so much is because, you know, pure
luck. We took these helpers on and it worked, so we went with it.
