Samuel Hansen is asking for people to support his crowd-sourced podcasting project Relatively Prime: Stories from the Mathematical Domain, ideally by donating some money but also by blogging, tweeting, etc. about this.
As far as I can see, Samuel is at a crossroads. He passed his Masters degree in mathematics and is about to graduate, so he is thinking about the next steps. One way lies Samuel the math communicator, the other way is Samuel who has some job in some office somewhere. Now, don’t get me wrong, Samuel might make a very good ‘some office worker’, but I feel sure he could make a very good mathematics communicator and we need more of those.
Samuel is an enthusiastic communicator of mathematics and has the technical skills to make an excellent producer of content. You may have enjoyed what he does as my co-host on the Math/Maths Podcast, or his interview show Strongly Connected Components, or his irreverent maths chat show Combinations and Permutations. Much as these are good outputs, they all have an element of being as good as they be in spare time. I don’t know about you, but of the two options on his crossroads I would like to live in a world where Samuel can take his enthusiasm and technical expertise and spend some serious time concerning himself with mathematics communication. One way that you and I can make this happen is by pitching in a few quid (or dollars, or whatever, Kickstarter seems to deal with the whole currency thing) and pushing him down the math communication fork in the road. This project, surely, can only be the start. Sure, you can also get some goodies, like your name on a list of funders or even a producer credit, depending how much you donate, but really the prize is knowing you had a hand in arranging the world so that Samuel is a math communicator.
The way Kickstarter works is that if Samuel doesn’t reach his target you won’t be charged and the project won’t go ahead. So there’s no risk in that sense. Donations start from just $1 so get over to Samuel’s Kickstarter page and get pledging! If you really can’t afford to, please consider putting a message about Samuel’s project on your blog, on any website you have access to, on your social network accounts. If you’re the type of person who’s impressed by ‘celeb endorsements’, Samuel has had messages of support so far from Rob Eastaway, Dave Richeson, James Grime, David Bradley & Edmund Harriss. To find out more about the project you can view the video below.