The team

For your Café Sci to run smoothly and be a success, your team needs to be diverse. Try to include people with a range of interests (not just science!) and lots of different skills. Ideally you also need students from different age groups so your café doesn't grind to a halt when older students leave school.

Different roles

It is a good idea to assign different roles to different people, so that it's clear who's responsible for what and the team can benefit from everyone's skills and experiences. To get all the jobs done, you'll probably need to fill the roles listed below . You could break them down if more people wanted to get involved. If you have a keen photographer, for example, this would be a great addition to the Marketing role. For details, see here.

Café Manager

The manager is responsible for the overall management of Café Sci in your school. They will be a leader, keeping the organisation team running smoothly.

  • Scheduling and arranging a room for team meetings - and making sure everyone knows about them
  • Scheduling the cafés, making sure that the whole team is available and that cafés don't clash with any other major school events
  • Keeping paperwork organised
  • Keeping notes of team meetings - especially what was decided
  • Keeping contact details for all the members of the organising group

 

Café Co-ordinator

The co-ordinator is responsible for making sure each café event runs smoothly. 

  • Booking the space for the café
  • Organising the layout of the room, recruiting helpers if necessary
  • Organising refreshments
  • Making sure that School Reception knows about the event
  • Making sure that there is water available for the speaker
  • Writing a timetable for the day of the event and circulating it, so that everyone is clear what is happening and when

 

Café Spokesperson

The spokesperson is in charge of all the communication between the organisation team and people outside the school, for example the speaker and Project Organiser.

  • Completing the speaker request form and sending it to your local STEMnet Ambassador contact.
  • Being the point of contact for the speaker - the person they will contact if they have any questions about the event
  • Getting full contact details for the speaker, including a mobile number in case anything goes wrong
  • Making sure that the speaker has details of where the school is, when they are due to arrive and where to go when they do
  • Meeting the speaker in reception and taking them to the venue
  • Briefing the speaker about what you want to talk about, outlining what you discussed in the team meeting, why you chose the topic and the types of questions that you would like answered

 

Marketing and Publicity

The success of cafés depends on people turning up and that depends on effective publicity. You will need to publicise cafés well in advance and make sure that information about them is easily available.

  • Flyers
  • Posters
  • A website or page on the school website
  • A newsletter or update giving details of the next few meetings and their topics
  • Talking about Café Sci in assemblies

 

Reporter

The reporter records what happens at the café and supplies some feedback and details to the Project Organiser to be included on the Café Sci website.

  • Organising the café evaluation questionnaire 
  • Interviewing audience members and speakers  
  • Taking photos of the cafés 
  • Writing a brief report of events

 

Chairperson

This person works on the day, welcoming the audience and speaker, directing audience questions, encouraging discussion and introducing new questions if things slow down. This is a key role and not an easy one. It may be a role for one person or you might want to rotate it around the team. The Project Organiser can help with advice and techniques for chairing.