Scientists for Cycling have their first meeting

I sat in today on the "first" meeting of Scientists for Cycling, the creation of the European Cycling Federation.

After the morning plenary, most of the 1,000 delegates here in Copenhagen at Velo-city Global 2010 broke up into four groups to discuss collaboration among nations, NGOs, cities and scientists.

Collaboration is one of the buzzwords of Velo-city: we weren't here to re-invent the wheel. Find out what works in one city or nation, and bring the idea home, or adapt it to your own situation. In the urban world, the problems of neighbourhood disconnection and safety; roadway congestion; fuel consumption and pollution; and obesity are virtually universal. But a lot of research is done in isolation or is not widely shared. And data is the fuel that feeds change. Municipal staffers, cabinet number crunchers and even the ordinary are swayed, convinced, even mesmerized by numbers. So the science collaboration session mesmerized me.

The science group was the venue for the official launch of Scientists for Cycling by Dr. Florinda Boschetti of the European Cycling Federation and Lideke Middelbeek of the World Health Organization, but the 100 who attended were really there to meet those who were doing or had done similar work to their own.

It was a mixed room: eager students, grizzled experts, sociologists, engineers, health care professionals, educators and cycling advocates.

A sharing circle works with eight to 10 people: these circles of 50 each were a bit cumbersome. We were  to say a bit about ourselves, indicate what we could offer to the group and then tell what we wanted from the group. Several were studying contra-flow cycling (where bicycles are allowed to go the "wrong way" down one-way streets); others were looking for data on promotion of cycling to school initiatives; one had data on the negative impact of mandatory helmet use; the Aussie chap was looking at the interaction of cyclists and pedestrians on shared pathways (a big issues in this country as well), and so on.

But even with two groups of 50 and the spiel roughly timed to 60 seconds each (longer if there were language issues), the show-and-tell bogged down, and the next phase, a sort of speed-dating arrangement where each participant sought out someone they wanted to meet was over far too quickly.

My offering to the group was tips on ways to make their technical papers more media-digestible; my desire from the group was to get their research to publicize here in Take The Lane. A surprising number of people pressed business cards into my hand and asked for my email, for both writing advice and to offer their work for publicity. We'll see how that plays out in the future.

Scientists for Cycling promotes itself as "open to individuals (professionals and students) worldwide from all disciplines." I suspect the vast majority will be from Europe, but for Canadian researchers who have had enough of looking at the American experience as a comparative, membership in Scientists for Cycling might be worth the 80 euros a year (40 euros for students). Better yet, find a sponsor for the membership fee.

You can find out more about Scientists for Cycling here.