New Tools Are Opportunities – Take Advantage Of Them

I’m still heads-down getting ready for The Amaz!ing Meeting 2012 (#TAM2012), so no time for long posts. So today just a quick thought about an awesome video that was posted yesterday.

There’s lots of astronomy fans among the skeptics. Phil “Bad Astronomer” Plait was President of the JREF; Pamela Gay is speaking at TAM2012 this year.

Pamela’s co-host on AstronomyCast, Fraser Cain recently started using a new Google product called Hangouts on Air to host virtual star parties online. Google liked what he was doing so much, for their developer’s conference that is going on this week they produced this documentary about what Fraser did:

Fraser didn’t ask permission from anyone to do this. He didn’t conduct any focus groups or conduct a study. He just saw an opportunity and took it. And the result was awesome.

Skeptics, take note. Keep an eye out for new Internet technologies being introduced. Think about how you might apply that technology to skepticism. And just go do it. You might build something amazing, like Fraser did.

Get some ideas from my Year of the Skeptool post or from any technology news site.