The longer and longer I’ve been in the industry, the more I realize how truly diverse things are and that every niche’d industry, can be even more niche.
IAFP, or the International Association for Food Protection is no exception.
IAFP is where all of the smart food safety experts come underneath one roof and talk about the latest innovations in food safety technology but more importantly, a huge portion of this conference talks about the importance of communicating food safety. I’m pretty sure that this conference has the highest concentration of PhDs I’ve been to and observing how they focus on topics is fascinating.
But I think the best part about IAFP was the fact that they really push the envelope about how they communicate food safety and I took back a ton about the different ways food safety experts talk about the importance of what they do.
This was my first visit to IAFP and I really have to thank Lily Yang, who has been a follower of My Food Job Rocks for a while, for inviting me to be a panelists for their lecture: #FoodSafety. I thought the students organizing it did a phenomenal job setting up and using a fun activity to make the discussion engaging and useful.
The guest panelists were all food safety specialist including Ben Chapman (a co-host of the Food Safety Podcast), Mike Batz, ISGP’s the forum, and This is Public Health
So I was the only one who was not in the food safety industry, and so I brought a different perspective on how I market and communicate with my audience. However, everyone there brought a different perspective and I found the panel very well balanced.
Big Focus: Academia and Regulator and Industry
When the headliner of the food industry is Frank Yannis, you know the FDA plays a huge part in this conference and when various professors and industry veterans host doZens of panels, you know that this is the apex of food safety. Like the RCA is for research chefs, IAFP is also a focal point in bridging the information gaps between all important functions of the food safety industry.
Though I could not find much value in my profession as a product developer, I did appreciate the technical achievements brought by Food Safety. Whole Genome Sequencing, complex analytical machines, Blockchain technology, and crowdsourcing platforms were all extremely interesting to see as an outsider.
The Other Big Focus: Communication
The keynote for IAFP was an interesting one. It was Dr. Barbara Chamberlin from the New Mexico University and it was about communication. Being in “the space”, I wanted to see what was the buzz about and I was blown away by the content.
Basically, Barbara and a few other amazing food safety academics have created really fun websites that explain food safety. The websites have training videos and short animations and some are actually funny. What’s also super cool is that they are beta testing a video game that plays sort of like a Role Playing Game. She said kids were so excited and could not put it down!
Like any academic, Barbara posted the proof using data showing that millions were engaged and people were excited.
What I’ve found was an effective means of communication was personalizing the effects of foodborne illnesses. Barbara mentioned her mother’s death due to a foodborne illness that really stuck. This echos a similar story to Darin Detwiler’s situation with the Jack in the Box outbreak: losing a loved one is tough, and the best you can do is to tell your story to others to not only bring awareness, but also to show that what you do is important and saves lives.
(by the way, I met Darin for the first time at the conference)
The Twitter Niche
One of the questions on the panel was about our favorite social media. What was super interesting was how the food safety industry loves using twitter. The 4 other panelists loved Twitter, but I felt very indifferent about the platform (mainly because I get a lot of success on Linkedin). So a lot of the panel focused on optimizing twitter and I was stunned about how useful the information was!
I wouldn’t be surprised if I got the most value out of this conference just because of how the other panelists used twitter. Not only to show personality but also to build community and spread information. When I got to my hotel, I analyzed #iafp2019 hashtags (@iafpnocontext is my favorite) and I am super shocked about how engaged the food safety community is on twitter. When I shared two twitter posts about IAFP, I got a ton of engagement and a lot of follows!
This is a lesson about microcosms on social media. Though the food industry is huge, something as “small” as the food safety industry loves engaging on twitter and I’ve learned that I should really be more active on this platform. Thanks to everyone who’s opened my eyes!
We need more experts to talk
A lady from Ghana asked about trust in social media. She talked about a study about how consumers ranked who was most trusted versus least trusted in the information realm. Unsurprisingly, social media was the least trusted.
I asked for the most trusted in this specific study, and I got “people trust doctors, scientists, etc the most”.
So what seems to be the gap is that there is a lack of scientific authority in social media.
Yes, it is an uphill battle to develop a brand that’s good enough to have people listen to you. It took me 3 years and I still feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface!
But I think the food safety industry has one of the best head starts when it comes to communicating good science
Going to IAFP helped me sharpen my communication skills. Though I think it is an absolute necessity to go for every food safety professional, it is useful if you are trying to communicate in food.
To leave off how much IAFP truly cares about communication and how to innovate in communication, some graduate student sacrificed precious poster space to make a very clear statement
IAFP breaks the mold in how we should communicate what we love the best I’ve seen in any profession. Not only can people break the mold in how we communicate, but the conference encourages it.
