We are pretty excited about our final line up for the last Nerd Nite in 2015 as our three speakers discuss superheros, how to identify rocks and how to make your social media piece go viral. With the weather warm, it will be a delight to experience the open space at Mr Wow’s Emporium chomping on fried chicken from the Vodoo Jerk Truck and sipping on a cold beer.

Tuesday, 1 December 2015
at Mr Wow’s Emporium
97b Smith Street, Fitzroy
Doors 7pm/$5

Back to the lectures at hand:

*Presentation 1
Uncovering the Secret History of Australian Superheroes
by Dr Kevin Patrick

Description: Superheroes, it seems, are part of everyday Australian culture. We can thrill to their exploits at multiplex cinemas, buy t-shirts bearing their likeness at department stores, or dress-up our kids in pint-sized versions of their colourful costumes. They are, however, almost without exception American superheroes. For a country which reveres elite athletes, and pays homage to the heroic deeds of ANZAC, Australia seems strangely bereft of its own superheroes. We laud Australians who can “beat the Yanks” at their own game in film, music and other forms of popular culture. So why are we content to let American superheroes fulfil our collective fantasies? The truth is that Australian superheroes have taken to the skies since the early 1940s, but most Australians would struggle to name even one (And, no, The Phantom doesn’t count!) Dr. Kevin Patrick asks why Australian superheroes have been forced to hide in plain sight for decades, and what this says about ourselves, and our sense of national identity.

Bio: Dr. Kevin Patrick is a former freelance journalist, magazine editor, children’s book author and comic-book publisher. He curated the exhibition, Heroes and Villains: Australian Comics and their Creators, which was held at the State Library of Victoria in 2006-2007. Kevin has written widely on Australian comics and graphic novels for local and international journals, and maintains a blog – Comics Down Under – devoted to the history of Australian comics. He is currently writing his first academic book, The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero and Global Comics Culture, to be published by the University of Iowa Press (2017).

*Presentation 2
Microscopic evidence of supercontinents
by Catherine Wheller

Description: Rocks are everywhere. We build our houses with them, skip them into the ocean and kick them along the pavement. But do we ever stop and look closer to see if they tell a story? We can learn so much about the evolution of our planet, just by looking beneath our feet. Catherine will show you how to identify rocks starting with what we can find around Melbourne, before moving to the more exotic field area of Madagascar to investigate large-scale geological processes that have shaped how we see our continents today. Lemur photo guaranteed. And rock samples.

Bio: Catherine Wheller is a geologist at The University of Melbourne.  Her work has taken her to the most remote parts of Madagascar which involved camping under the Milky Way and teaching local children the chicken dance. She has presented her work as a 2015 Grand Finalist in the 3 Minute Thesis competition, and when not putting her nose to rocks, she is pointing her camera to the night sky.  Catherine tweets as @catinthefield and publishes a collation of unique field stories (so far in Mauritius, Madagascar and Namibia) on her website https://catinthefield.wordpress.com

*Presentation 3
Going Viral, Emotions and Sharing
by Dr Brent Coker

Description: Everyone wants their voice to be heard above the noise. But how do you get your messages to spread far and wide? You need to go viral. In this presentation Coker explains the role of one of the most well understood areas in the research on viral spread: Emotions. Coker’s research has sought to understand why emotions cause information to spread, the most commonly used techniques to evoke the right amount of emotion, and why some emotions work, and others fail.

Bio: Brent Coker woke up one day to find his research on workplace internet leisure browsing had gone viral. Since then, he has been researching why ideas spread and what causes people to share. He has a PhD in online consumer psychology, and is developer of the bump algorithm that predicts the spread of memes and video ads. Coker has appeared on CNN, Fox News Business and MSNBC, to name a few. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, where in his spare time he enjoys cycling (for fitness) and motorcycling (for fun).