The 2015 Worm Show already happened. This page is left here for historic reasons.

For five International Worm Meetings, Curtis Loer and Morris Maduro have been presenting the Worm Show. We got some great videos for 2013. For 2015, we are extending the same invitation for submissions!

Please try to get us materials before the end of May, 2015, but last year, we got some videos delivered to us by flash drive or email just hours before the show. For more information, please email Morris: mmaduro@ucr.edu

Some ideas:

Images - funny powerpoint slides, Photoshopped images, memes, movie posters

Jokes - One- and two-liners, funny observations about life as a (worm) scientist, puns, funny definitions

Videos - short (amusing) worm-themed videos, music videos, parody commercials, movie previews, animations

Live performance - a short song and/or dance, original talent, magic tricks? This would be for only experienced performers, plus you must promise to keep it under two minutes. We strongly suggest making a video instead. This will guarantee that everything will work without any problems, plus you can perfect your performance and augment the video with all sorts of fun elements that would be difficult in a live setting.

Some guidelines:

1. No making fun of specific individuals in a way that would hurt their feelings.
2. Keep it family-friendly.
3. Submissions should be in English or have English subtitles.
4. No really obscure inside jokes. We want to appeal to a global audience.
5. Try to avoid using copyrighted material. It will make it harder to post on YouTube later and we might have to replace the sound or delete it.
6. If you record a video, use the best video recorder you have access to and keep it under five minutes. Render your video in 1280x720 or 1920x1080 in 30p or 24p in mp4/AVC/H.264 format. (If you are using a 4K camcorder, that's great, but quite unnecessary as the dataprojector in Royce is probably not much better than HD resolution anyways.) Try to use a separate microphone close to the sound source if you have one. If you cannot do this, we suggest re-dubbing the vocals or putting iPhones near the people speaking to record audio separately, which can be combined with the video later (or ask us to do it -- we can give you advice or handle a bit of editing ourselves). You can upload files to a cloud storage service such as Dropbox. We would really like to have videos within a month before the meeting if possible. (Note that we may do some further editing if needed.)
7. If you propose a stage act, keep it shorter than two minutes. We are interested in original musical compositions or other types of performances. Maybe an interpretive dance? See the notes up top about this; we really encourage making a video of your performance instead.
8. We would really like to know what you have in mind. You could upload a test video of yourselves to YouTube under an unlisted link, or just ask us if an idea might work.
9. The more original, the better. For example, we already used JibJab "starring you" in 2009 (the Nobel Laureate Chippendales). We already did a lot of Top 10 lists, fake talks, etc. If you did not see the 2013 show, watch it to see what has already been done.
10. Even a single funny Powerpoint slide, joke or picture is welcome. We can deliver your punch lines for you if you don't want to be up there.
11. You do not have to attend the meeting for us to use your material. Your contribution will still be part of the show and posted on YouTube afterwards.

You can look back at the previous two Worm Shows here: 2011 2013