Collage of technicians in their workplace

Celebrate the roles of technicians with #ActualLivingTechnician

Here at the Science Council we’re celebrating the exciting and integral roles technicians play in the workplace and in our everyday lives with #ActualLivingTechnician!

Back in February, an Ecology Professor from the U.S. took to Twitter to exclaim how most Americans could not name a living scientist, so it was no wonder why many people don’t fully appreciate what scientists do. From this the #ActualLivingScientist hashtag was born. The hashtag immediately went viral, being used by thousands of scientists tweeting pictures explaining what they get up to in their science job. This opened up the exploration of countless scientific endeavours to anyone and everyone. Today, the hashtag is still going strong, and, with one simple search, the internet now knows what thousands of actual living scientists really do.

The Technicians Make It Happen campaign, funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, believes it is now time for everyone to understand all the amazing things technicians make happen. So today, they are officially launching the #ActualLivingTechnician hashtag to coincide with the Higher Education Technicians Summit 2017.

Technician roles are varied and interesting, and, whilst they don’t always have ‘technician’ in their job title, they play an integral role in almost every business in the country – we have so much to thank them for! From building aircraft to lab research, from lighting design to games development, from cyber security to mobile phones, technicians really do make so much happen.

The Science Council is proud to support the professional development of science technicians through our professional registers.

We invite all technicians, from in-training to experienced, from every discipline of science imaginable, to tweet a photograph of yourself at work, with a small description of who you are and what you do, along with the hashtag #ActualLivingTechnician. For everyone else, we invite you to share photographs of the technicians you work with, to emphasise just how integral they are to scientific work.

With this hashtag the aim is to raise the profile, and celebrate the importance of, the technicians in our society and the invaluable work they do every day.

Find out more about the Technicians Make it Happen campaign at www.technicians.org.uk, or follow them on Twitter at @technicians_mih.