Already one sitemail:)

I'll also be opening a facebookgroup for more detailed discussions.

Material for schools and teaching would be great as well, including pre school or kindergarden. Any teachers out there?

Hi Alila,

you have fantastic work, I added you to my (still very humble) artist webring.

I have no fixed agenda, i would just like to network,exchange ideas and experiences. Once we have enough people we can create a directory on the web if we like or just a simple webring. We can use light boxes or galleries on one or more agency to increase the power of the content. Those who have symbiostock shops can also connect them. Maybe we can share a Blog page somewhere to talk about our work etc�
 
But at the moment I just want to see how many people are reading here and are interested. Then I�ll open a facebookgroup where we can be more detailed.

I am new to doing video and still free to choose the genre I want to focus on. But I have a few requests from friends who are either still working in research or have technology related businesses. They need photos and videos for presentations or websites, so i thought maybe this can be combined with stock. Other friends are interested in doing stock, either as a mix of side income/hobby or even full time, if it works for them. So I am trying to give them an introduction to working with agencies. I teach a class on stock photography at a school in Cologne so I can save them a lot of time, if they really want to take stock seriously.

And between us we could already do many interesting things, if we can connect with more people, even better.

Once the network stands, there will probably also be agencies interested in working more closely with the group etc...

These are all just ideas, but I thought this thread just before the expo in Berlin, might get us connected in time if anyone is going there.

But if nobody else is interested, you at least got one more link to your website


ETA:

in case you haven�t seen this:
http://www.jacksofscience.com/chemistry/awkward-science-stock-photography/

A lot of the images on stock sites just shows how much some people must have hated science in school. And there is a lot of content that is missing and hardly any videos at this point. A lot of content is also outdated, old tools, old computers etc...

Well, what people don�t understand scares them. High School wasn�t too friendly to people who like IT or Science. Even when I was at university it didn�t make me popular when I said I was studying Chemistry. And not just because it is not the kind of thing girls do. There is an amazing amount of prejudice about all things Science. Which is sad, because it is so fascinating.

But it can also be hard to find school teachers who inspire and explain things well. I think more than 50% of my peers at university had had school teachers that were real scientist, not regular teachers. Some people apparently take science as a second subject and don�t get enough training to understand it for themselves. And then obviously you can�t explain it well. For a while I was helping teacher study group with their chemistry assignments. They were very intelligent and talented people but it was shocking to see how little they knew. They also didn�t have any lab experience, learning everything just from text books. That makes it even harder. In the end, science requires that you do things actively (again and again). I can�t imagine learning about chemistry without the lab and hands on experiments.

I really hope I can come up with useful video clips. At the moment of course I have no content (I think I have 2 chemistry pictures in my whole portfolio). But for me this is a longterm project, so I am not worried.

My old university used to rent out labs to media production companies for whatever film or TV scenes they wanted to produce. You�d walk into the weighing room and there would be fake blood and the outlines of a dead body on the floor�Also all kinds of very important looking "media" people, always wearing only black would come out of nowhere and stay for a few days. Always looking very serious, often carrying long, heavy cables and blocking off areas when they were filming. My home town is a city with a large media industry. They also do a lot of filming in the area where I live, so you get to see some interesting things.

I don�t know if they still do it and if I could maybe afford to rent one including glassware and chemicals.

I will reach out to friends who need content for their own uses first and also try to do "home school" experiments at home.

Let�s hope we can get more people from here. I opened a private Facebook group and sent you a link. Try it if you like. I know many people are apprehensive about Facebook, but it would be part of our social media strategy anyway. Companies,schools,labs all have Facebook pages these days, so it is an easy way to stay in touch with customers as well.

Maybe we can get some science or tech journalists on board as well. There must also be a market for writing text.

I�ll be happy to run an official Facebook page once we have enough members and maybe others can do twitter or google plus. A blog can be shared. A central website for an interest group would also not be difficult to set up and isn�t expensive.