NAMES 2024 was a great success; check out the photos and stay tuned for more news!

NAMES 2024 Conference, 7-9 May, was hosted by and at Konya Science Center, Türkiye. The overarching theme was Forward Together (معًا إلى الأمام); a call to gather as a community and discuss ways to maintain relevancy and deal with the challenges facing science engagement within our institutions, considering recent and ongoing global changes.

Our audience's needs, expectations, and perspectives have evolved in tandem with the emergence of digital tools and solutions. Modern educational techniques have gained global prominence thanks to these tools. Digital media now serves as a fundamental mode of communication, seamlessly integrated into our organizational structure and even shaping in-gallery aesthetics. As a result, digital visitor experiences have become the new norm, blurring the distinction between digital and nondigital. These tools offer abundant opportunities to enhance operations, interpret content, engage visitors, and collect data, prompting our institutions to realign their missions and objectives.

NAMES 2024 seeked answers to essential questions: How can we design for effective science engagement as we are reacting to up to date needs of both users and science communicators? What impacts have recent challenges had on our sector? How have visitors' needs, expectations, and experiences changed? How can we leverage data analysis effectively? What influence will trending topics like Global Warming have on science engagement and our institutions? What will be the implications of big data and artificial intelligence in this context?

Together, we aimed to explore these questions to better understand the future of our field.