“We are science volunteers. “We are volunteers of science” One of its founders, Roman Pereborshchikov, talks about the new scientific and educational project “Obrazovach Lecture Hall: Gutenberg Smoking Room” Newspaper headline about the Gutenberg smoking room

The name of the project came from two components. “Smoking Room” is like the memory of the author of the format, Mikhail Yanovich, about the student smoking room of the Russian State Humanitarian University, where sometimes very emotional disputes about everything in the world began. Gutenberg was chosen as the "owner of the smoking room" not only because he is the inventor of the first printing press, but also under the influence of McLuhan's book "The Gutenberg Galaxy", which Janovich read at about the same time. As a result, this name has taken root very well.

- What is Gutenberg Smoking Room?
- Gutenberg's Smoking Room is a popular science project, which in 2014 became, according to our data, the most visited non-commercial lecture hall in Moscow.

- Who are its organizers?
- Founder of the lecture hall and author of the format - Mikhail Yanovich, producer of interactive applications. The curator of the project is your obedient servant, in the past the head of the online publication "Public Assembly".

- What is your format?
- The format of the events is a story about a particular field of knowledge based on the literature that struck the speaker. During one event, the audience listens to three stories on almost any topic. The range of topics is so wide that a biologist, cosmologist and philologist can speak in one event. The duration of each performance is 30 minutes. Without claiming to be a full-fledged report, we aim to interest the audience in self-study material.

- Tell us how it all started?
- We can confidently say that our project has not one, but two birthdays. The first day marks the birth of an idea. I can’t say the exact date, since it was about three years ago, and no name even existed then. It all started with the fact that Misha had the idea to retell in the company of friends popular science and non-fiction books that amaze the imagination with their content so much that it is simply impossible to keep this desire in oneself. I think everyone has experienced this at some point. A company of about ten people, mostly friends and acquaintances, gathered at someone's house, sat on the floor and shared the learned information with a cup of tea or a glass of wine, depending on preferences.

Of course, the impression from the first gatherings was not very good, since the retellings were made according to some kind of formal scenario, there was no exchange of emotions that are born after reading. But these were the first "pancakes", further and still emotions are an integral part of every performance, and, undoubtedly, the public likes it very much. For the next two and a half years, Kurilka slowly but surely expanded. First, until there were too many people for the apartment, and then on the sites of libraries or organizations, where 40-70 people could fit.

How do you select speakers? How is the examination carried out?
- Well, at first they were friends and acquaintances, there was no special need to conduct examinations. Then, with the expansion to the first public events, I had to select topics according to their level of adequacy, an examination of logic, if I may say so. At the same time, absolutely everyone could become a storyteller, no experience was required. public speaking, nor the presence of any skills, only the theme of "something non-fictional" and desire. Definitely, it had an audience for us, everyone could easily become a part of this process. And further than more people came to us, the more seriously the selection was carried out, we always wanted to match the scale.

Now it is much more difficult to become one of the speakers of the Gutenberg Smoking Room than at the beginning, there are a lot of applicants. To do this, the candidate must have experience in public speaking and be an expert in the field he is talking about. Sometimes we make exceptions, then one of the two conditions is enough. For example, Andrey Seryakov, a nuclear physicist, CERN employee and Science Slam winner, recently spoke with us, but at the same time he told why European civilization was historically more technologically and socially developed than the same tribes African continent or the Inca Empire. Our format allows these kinds of experiments, and we think it's very cool.

- Where did this name come from?
- The name itself came from two components. "Smoking room" - like Misha's memory of the student smoking room of the Russian State Humanitarian University, where sometimes very emotional disputes about everything in the world began. Gutenberg was chosen as the "owner of the smoking room" not only because he is the inventor of the first printing press, but also under the influence of McLuhan's book "The Gutenberg Galaxy", which Misha read at about the same time. As a result, this name has taken root very well.

- Can you smoke at your events?
- We could take the name "Gutenberg Brothel", but this does not mean that we would give each person who came to a girl of easy virtue. Although the idea is not bad. You can not smoke, everything is written in the legislation on this matter. My attitude towards smoking is extremely negative.

- Have you participated in the "Smoking Room" from the very beginning?
No, not from the very beginning. I became involved much later, only six months ago, but immediately set the goal of transforming the "Smoking Room" into "the best lecture hall in the country." It's funny, but in a certain sense I already succeeded. During this time, we have achieved a significant improvement in the quality of content, opened a YouTube channel, joined forces with the Obrazovach project, launched a branch in St. Petersburg and rebranded.

The full name now sounds like "Obrazovach Lecture Hall: Gutenberg Smoking Room". Clumsily, of course, but you can't erase the words from the song. In general, the project "Educator" should be noted separately. Created it former employees Lenty.ru Andrey Konyaev, Igor Belkin and Alexander Ershov. In nine months, the Obrazovacha group on the VKontakte social network gained more than 150,000 subscribers by publishing news on popular science topics and providing them with funny pictures “on the topic of the day.”

We found them very easily. mutual language, literally one meeting and shook hands, and then it started. Together with the new name, we got from them access to a whole army of knowledge-hungry brains. More than 200 people came to the first event in the building of the Moscow Central Telegraph, 250 came to the next one, and about twice as many watched the online broadcast. So we have to look for as big venues as possible.

- It's complicated? Now you can rent any room.
- In general, there are certain difficulties with this, since the Gutenberg Smoking Room is a completely non-commercial project and admission to our meetings is exclusively free. Nobody earns or receives bonuses. We are science volunteers. This, of course, is not a unique case, but on such a scale, I think that this is the first time. We do not have the budget to purchase expensive equipment or rent halls. Doors are opened to us solely because of the quality of the content and sympathy for the format.

- So you are working for an idea?
- Yes. “Gutenberg Smoking Room” is a very personal project for quite a few a large number of people. When everything is free great value playing help from the outside. It can be said that the "Smoking Room" is a human symbiosis, in which several dozen people participate, each of which pursues the goal of popularizing science among the masses.

- What are your plans for the coming years?
- Speaking about the future, we are making a lot of efforts to expand into the regions. On January 9, 2015, our branch in St. Petersburg held the first event, which was organized by the guys from the KL10TCH IT club. Spectators could hardly fit in two halls. Their success convinced us of the correctness of this undertaking. We plan to create branches in all million-plus cities, and Kazan is next in line. Also in the summer, together with colleagues from other sites, we plan to organize a major science festival in the Moscow region. But for this, one desire is not enough, so we are looking for sponsors and partners. We hope that such an event will be in great demand among young people and families with children.

Interviewed by Natalia Demina

We talked about the new scientific and educational project Obrazovach Lecture Hall: Gutenberg Smoking Room with one of its creators,Roman Pereborshchikov . InterviewedNatalia Demina .

— What is a Gutenberg Smoking Room?

“Gutenberg Smoking Room” is a popular science project, which in 2014 became, according to our data, the most visited non-commercial lecture hall in Moscow.

— Who are its organizers?

— What is your format?

- The format of the events is a story about a particular field of knowledge based on the literature that struck the speaker. During one event, the audience listens to three stories on almost any topic. The range of topics is so wide that a biologist, cosmologist and philologist can speak in one event. The duration of each performance is 30 minutes. Without claiming to be a full-fledged report, we aim to interest the audience in self-study of the material.
Tell us how it all started?

- We can confidently say that our project has not one, but two birthdays. The first day marks the birth of an idea. I can’t say the exact date, since it was about three years ago, and no name even existed then. It all started with the fact that Misha had the idea to retell in the company of friends popular science and non-fiction books that amaze the imagination with their content so much that it is simply impossible to keep this desire in oneself. I think everyone has experienced this at some point. A company of about ten people, mostly friends and acquaintances, gathered at someone's house, sat on the floor and shared the learned information with a cup of tea or a glass of wine, depending on preferences.

How do you select speakers? How is the examination carried out?

- Well, at first they were friends and acquaintances, there was no special need to conduct examinations. Then, with the expansion to the first public events, I had to select topics according to their level of adequacy, an examination of logic, if I may say so. At the same time, absolutely anyone could become a storyteller, neither the experience of public speaking, nor the presence of any skills was required, only the topic of “something non-fictional” and desire. Definitely, it had an audience for us, everyone could easily become a part of this process. And then, the more people came to us, the more seriously the selection was carried out, we always wanted to match the scale.

Now it is much more difficult to become one of the speakers of the Gutenberg Smoking Room than at the beginning, there are a lot of applicants. To do this, the candidate must have experience in public speaking and be an expert in the field he is talking about. Sometimes we make exceptions, then one of the two conditions is enough. For example, Andrey Seryakov, a nuclear physicist, CERN employee and Science Slam winner, recently spoke with us, but at the same time he told why European civilization was historically more technologically and socially developed than the same tribes of the African continent or the Inca Empire. Our format allows these kinds of experiments, and we think it's very cool.

- Where did this name come from?

The name itself came from two components. “Smoking Room” is like Misha’s memory of the RSUH student smoking room, where sometimes very emotional disputes about everything in the world began. Gutenberg was chosen as the "owner of the smoking room" not only because he is the inventor of the first printing press, but also under the influence of McLuhan's book "The Gutenberg Galaxy", which Misha read at about the same time. As a result, this name has taken root very well.

— Is smoking allowed at your events?

- We could take the name "Gutenberg Brothel", but this does not mean that we would give each person who came to a girl of easy virtue. Although the idea is not bad. You can not smoke, everything is written in the legislation on this matter. My attitude towards smoking is extremely negative.

— Have you participated in the "Smoking Room" from the very beginning?

No, not from the very beginning. I became involved much later, only six months ago, but immediately set the goal of transforming the "Smoking Room" into "the best lecture hall in the country." It's funny, but in a certain sense I already succeeded. During this time, we have achieved a significant improvement in the quality of content, opened a YouTube channel, joined forces with the Obrazovach project, launched a branch in St. Petersburg and rebranded.

The full name now sounds like "Obrazovach Lecture Hall: Gutenberg Smoking Room". Clumsily, of course, but you can't erase the words from the song. In general, the project "Educator" should be noted separately. It was created by former employees of Lenta.ru Andrei Konyaev, Igor Belkin and Alexander Ershov. In nine months, the Obrazovacha group on the VKontakte social network gained more than 150,000 subscribers by publishing news on popular science topics and providing them with funny pictures “on the topic of the day.”

We very easily found a common language with them, literally one meeting and shook hands, and then it started. Together with the new name, we got from them access to a whole army of knowledge-hungry brains. More than 200 people came to the first event in the building of the Moscow Central Telegraph, 250 came to the next one, and about twice as many watched the online broadcast. So we have to look for as big venues as possible.

- It's complicated? Now you can rent any room.

- In general, there are certain difficulties with this, since the Gutenberg Smoking Room is a completely non-commercial project and admission to our meetings is exclusively free. Nobody earns or receives bonuses. We are science volunteers. This, of course, is not a unique case, but on such a scale, I think that this is the first time. We do not have the budget to purchase expensive equipment or rent halls. Doors are opened to us solely because of the quality of the content and sympathy for the format.

So you are working for an idea?

- Yes. Gutenberg Smoking Room is a very personal project for quite a lot of people. When everything is done for free, outside help is of great importance. We can say that the "Smoking Room" is a human symbiosis, in which several dozen people participate, each of which pursues the goal of popularizing science among the masses.

— What are your plans for the coming years?

— Speaking about the future, we are making a lot of efforts to expand into the regions. On January 9, 2015, our branch in St. Petersburg held the first event, which was organized by the guys from the KL10TCH IT club. Spectators could hardly fit in two halls. Their success convinced us of the correctness of this undertaking. We plan to create branches in all million-plus cities, and Kazan is next in line. Also in the summer, together with colleagues from other sites, we plan to organize a major science festival in the Moscow region. But for this, one desire is not enough, so we are looking for sponsors and partners. We hope that such an event will be in great demand among young people and families with children.

The Gutenberg Smoking Room is a non-commercial popular science project, a finalist for the Ministry of Education's Loyalty to Science Award in the Best Popular Science Project of 2015 nomination. The Gutenberg Smoking Room is a phenomenon of the volunteer educational movement and the most visited lecture hall in Russia.

"Smoking room" was born in 2012. Initially, it was a friendly club for lovers of popular science and non-fiction literature. We gathered in a narrow circle of friends to retell books to each other and just talk in English. interesting topics from the world of science.

In 2014, the project became crowded within the club of interests, and the "Smoking room" was transformed into a real lecture hall. In 2015, Kurilka branches appeared in 15 cities, and more than 14,000 people attended our events. We have organized more than a hundred popular science events, at which more than 300 scientists spoke, from graduate students to academics.

Today, the project has acquired international status, having launched a branch in Minsk, and preparing the launch of the project in other countries. On the this moment more than 500,000 people watched our lectures on the Internet, and more than 22,000 people visited the live events of the project!

The main driving force of the project is the love for science, progress and the unquenchable light of knowledge!

We want to involve as many people as possible in science, so admission to all our events is free, since everyone should be able to freely come for new knowledge.

Due to the lack of budget, we do not have the opportunity to purchase high-quality equipment for recording lectures. Because of this, videos are not always obtained. good quality, and a decent number of lectures are not published at all. This is important, because a lecture attended live by 200 people can be watched by more than 20,000 people on the Internet!

We can continue to record lectures on existing equipment, but in this case, we risk losing even more high-quality popular science content.

Another problem that we want to solve is related to the situation in small regional cities, namely the lack of popular science events there. We want there to be events with the best popularizers of science from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok and other major scientific centers Russia. We would like to bring more strong specialists to the regions.

Organizing a lecture hall with an eminent scientist in Moscow or St. Petersburg is not difficult, but bringing him to Tobolsk, Mirny or Bratsk is problematic. We want you to have the opportunity to attend events with the participation of the best Russian and foreign scientists, regardless of where you live!

For 18 months we have been honestly working for you and all popularizers of science, never asking for anything in return, but the time has come when further fate the project is up to you. Support us, and we promise that we will do everything to make the torch of enlightenment burn even brighter!

For 600,000 rubles we will be able to purchase the minimum necessary equipment for several (9) branches of the lecture hall.
If we collect 1 million 150 thousand rubles we can provide equipment for all 17 branches of the lecture hall that exist today.
If we raise 2 million 200 thousand rubles, we will be able to launch a program of business trips for scientists and science popularizers from major scientific centers in Russia to small regional cities.
If we collect 3,000,000 rubles, then the dream of many will come true - we will bring Neil deGrasse Tyson to Russia! Yay!

The world we live in is an amazing place full of secrets and mysteries. We live in an amazing time when scientists from all over the world are changing our understanding of the Universe, the microworld and life in all its manifestations. Help us tell the public about science, and we will not be indebted!

Over the course of the project, the Gutenberg Smoking Room has gained great respect and support from scientists, educational institutions, Ministry of Education and other popular science projects!

We talked with Zmitser Bylinovich, one of the organizers of the Minsk non-profit educational lecture hall Gutenberg Smoking Room, to find out how the project with scientific lectures became so popular and what to expect from it in Minsk.

The idea of a smoking room appeared among Moscow students - first in the format of a book club, - Zmiter tells us when we meet at the Ili club, where the second Minsk "Smoking room" will take place on Saturday. - Initially, the guys got together and discussed the science pop they read, like Hawking and Dawkins. But then Roman Pereborshchikov, the current ideological inspirer and head of Kurilok, looked there and said that, guys, this is not a very interesting format, it’s worth shifting it to a lecture one. What was most surprising was that he was not sent, and the "Smoking Room" really quickly became a lecture hall when people are going to listen to three lectures for half an hour about life, the Universe and all that.

Lecturers, as a rule, are young scientists, junior and senior researchers, sometimes doctors of sciences, and sometimes senior students. Each lecture is followed by a short discussion and the opportunity to ask questions, and lecturers, instead of trying to present the material in detail and look at the paper, simply try to open the topic for the listener and encourage him to further study on his own. For a year and a half (largely thanks to the information support public "Educator") "Smoking rooms" appeared in 14 cities of Russia with more than a hundred events attended by 14,000 people. These smoking rooms featured a variety of topics: from the nature of schizophrenia to the conquest of space.

Topics can be very different - only any pseudoscience is excluded. And, of course, no one will set the goal of teaching you how to take triple integrals, the goal is to interest, inspire you to do science yourself. And as a result, this format is in great demand - in Moscow, the non-profit Kurilka holds events at three venues at once: about culture together with the Gogol Museum, about space together with the Museum of Cosmonautics and about neurobiology and other topics at the site of the Moscow State Engineering University with a capacity of 500 people .

Zmiter himself is a second-year student of applied mathematics at Belarusian State University, and another organizer, Dmitry Grishchenko, is a geophysicist and editor of the "Physics of the Impossible" public. They learned about the “Smoking Room” while reading “Obrazovach”, and then responded to the call to organize lecture halls in their cities and thus assembled the first Minsk “Smoking Room”:

- The first "Smoking Room Gutenberg" was held at the Minsk Planetarium on February 13. The main problem was in the streaming broadcast due to the complexities of the planetary Internet. But we were very surprised and pleased by the number of people. We announced the event in the public “Tea with raspberry jam” and “Onliner”, and in half an hour all 120 people who can accommodate the Minsk planetarium registered. This time we settled on the new Ili club, as it can accommodate 120-150 people, and there will also be drinks and food during the break.

The second Minsk “Gutenberg Smoking Room” will be held on Saturday, March 12, at 16:00. It will include three half-hour lectures: Russian cosmonautics popularizer Vitaly Egorov, known on the Internet as Zelenyikot, will talk about whether there is water on Mars, where and how to look for it. Geophysicist and co-organizer of the smoking room Dmitry Grishchenko will explain why Lake Vostok is unique and how its study helps to understand the history of the Earth and solar system, and biologist Alexey Shpak will talk about why bats are so special and what is the reason for their phenomenal longevity.

Registration for the smoking room is passing, but you can just look live broadcast of lectures. And since there will be many more “Smoking Rooms” in Minsk, so as not to miss them, you can subscribe to the public “

The Gutenberg Smoking Room is a semi-private club where members exchange retellings of the most important non-fiction books in the format of short TED lectures. In an hour in the "Smoking room" you can find out content of three important books that never get their hands on. For several years, "Smoking Room" has turned from kitchen conversations of RSUH graduates into one of the most interesting edutainment projects city, the creation of which did not require a single ruble. The Village spoke with the creator of Kurilka, Mikhail Yanovich, about who needs all this and how it works.

About the idea

There is such a book by McLuen, The Gutenberg Galaxy, which everyone must have read. It is about the fact that all knowledge, all the most interesting things are concentrated in a book, and all the many books that the Gutenberg printing press produced form a galaxy. I have always loved this metaphor.

When I was still in my final years at the Russian State Humanitarian University, I began to feel sick from fiction: I ate it. The only sort of books I could read at the time were either professional books (I took an accounting course to take over publishing from my father) or sci-fi and non-fiction. And immediately it became sad that there are a lot of books, it is impossible to read them all and at the same time it is difficult for autistic people to be alone with a book for a long time. And, of course, there is a difference when you read by yourself and when someone tells you something in a lively voice. What is told is remembered better and brighter.

Mikhail Yanovich

31 years

Education: Graduated from the Russian State Humanitarian University (Mark Blok Center for Historical Anthropology)

engaged in publishing, in 2011 he came up with the project " Smoking room Gutenberg»

Probably, the desire for interesting thoughts to sound out loud is common to all of us. Maybe it's from childhood - the love of sitting in the parents' kitchen when friends come to them and chat. Talking about books is generally such a kitchen story.

About smart girls

I don’t remember at all how we started making the “Smoking Room”. My friends and I were meeting at my house. I once suggested: "Guys, let's try to retell something, who read what and who remembers what." And it was unbearably shameful - I only later learned from one of the speakers of the "Smoking Room" such a phrase - second-handed confusion. This is when you feel embarrassed for your neighbor, he understands that you feel embarrassed for him, and you all begin to feel embarrassed.

I painfully experienced several such smoking rooms, but I did not refuse the idea and continued to persist. I began to think what the problem is. And then it became clear to me that everyone was retelling within the same scenario: some kind of formal retelling, some kind of financial statements, and not a story about their emotions. As a result, we have developed a recipe for the best retelling - this is when you retell the things that hooked you the most, which add up to a single story.

You feel embarrassed
for your neighbor he understands that you feel embarrassed for him,
and you all start to experience embarrassment

On the plasticity of the brain
and the birth of prison

In 2012, I read the book Brain Plasticity by Norman Doidge, and it became my book of the year. I was so overwhelmed by what I read that I couldn't keep it to myself. I realized that this is a book with a great aftereffect, after which you want to rush into the attack and which you need to retell. I turned to the bookstores I knew, which had their own sites, and the Chitalcafe let us in.

We came up with the name “Gutenberg Smoking Room” and the slogan: “Read - retell. Life is short - there are many books. "Smoking room" - because, according to my impressions, at the university, the smoking room was the most effective space for personal growth. I didn’t smoke there as much as I talked: you listened to a lecture, there were five minutes of something interesting, and now you retell this to some parallel who didn’t hear it, mixing it with stories from your personal life.

To our horror, 70 people came to the Chitalkafe. How they found out about us is a mystery. Three retellings were announced. Two narrators came: I was talking about Brain Plasticity, and my friend Mischa Maizuls was talking about Michel Foucault's absolutely killer book Discipline and Punish about experiments with prisons and psychiatry. In general, I had a monstrous retelling (friends who came told me), but Misha saved the day.

After this time, a certain constant number of people who wanted to participate in smoking rooms appeared, and everything began to spin. Now smoking rooms are held extremely sporadically: once every three months or twice a month, and it depends solely on the enthusiasm of those who wish.

We are all so smart here - beautiful, interesting, in love,
a it turns out some kind of Soviet library

About format

We have two formats - a house party, when we just get drunk in a soft form at my place and get to know new people-speakers. Admission fee - short (5–10 minutes) retelling. And a large public smoking room, where we have three or four speakers, each of which is given 20 minutes for stand-up (with a stopwatch) and 10 minutes for questions.

You can choose any non-fiction book with some restrictions: we have banned everything about politics, religion and esotericism. We do not take politics, because all political conversations are inevitably confrontational - I do not see anything productive for myself in this. We also try to avoid books on psychology, because there are a lot of tendentious ones.

Most people come to business literature and just to psychology. A very predictable audience is going to these books - young marketers, PR people, guys starting their careers. If we talk about the scientific pope, then the most interesting retellings are obtained from a variety of graduate students or researchers.

One of the most interesting retellings was by Ilya Kolmanovsky. He talked about a book by Edward Larson based on the letters of Robert Falcon Scott, which he wrote with South Pole knowing that you are doomed. This is the story of such a very adventurous approach to generating scientific knowledge when the world is so interesting for a person that he is ready for trials and death for the sake of science. In the retelling of Ilya Kolmanovsky, it was amazing. Always excellent retellings on ethology, on animal behavior.

In my experience, the university the smoking room was the most efficient space for personal growth

About networking

We do not take money from visitors. “Gutenberg Smoking Room” is not about money at all. This is such a kind of club of interests, no matter how terrible it may sound. For me, Kurilka is networking, a way to gather a lot of interesting people. I would like, for example, Leonid Parfyonov to take it and come to us to retell some book that greatly impressed him. I really wonder what books have influenced people whose biographies are fascinating and who you admire.

While we do not have our own website, only