S.Oladokun and F. Martinelli
Student Reporter at the Tropentag 2019 Conference, Kassel, Germany

This study aimed to question the long-standing premise that “scientists are boring”. We hypothesize that given the right conditions, place and time; the fun in scientist can be unleashed.

The study location was the Bio-Restaurant Weissenstein, at the University of Kassel, venue of the conference dinner of the 2019 Tropentag Annual Conference. The program started at 19:45h with live music from the stables of FitzPassing. The FitzPassing live band consist of Vincent Wolf (guitar) and Lisa Karkos (singer), who are inspired by the works of the great jazz musicians Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass. Other local experimental conditions include; an indoor temperature of 18C and 50% humidity. At least seven types of intercontinental buffet service were available, with a supply of drinks ranging from red wine, beers, fruit and fizzy drinks. Dessert was described to be as much as the desert sand. The study population in attendance was 560. A mixed model approach involving the use of photography evidence and sample interview was used to test study hypothesis.

Interview results showed 60% conference dinner attendants using the word “fun” to describe their experience at the dinner, 30% of study population described the event has been “a blast” and the remaining 10% described the event as “okay. Pictorial evidence provided sufficient grounds (P<0.05) to reject the null hypothesis, that “scientists are boring”. It is thus inferable from this case study, that given the right conditions, scientists can be fun people. Further studies on the satisfaction derived from such event across the different age demography of target audience could be exploited.