> If you want science for grownups, you have conferences.
Adults outside a field do not go to conferences.
> As for art museums, the problem is that they are usually just exhibitions, and to be honest, that's boring, especially if you are a kid.
Some kids are interested in art. It can be well presented. You can have guided tours aimed at kids.
Go to a big city art museum and they're swarming with school groups.
School groups vary. Some kids are interested, some are not.
I have had some bad experiences with school groups who did not know how to behave in a theatre - mostly Shakespeare plays because of where I lived. Some were enjoying them but were not used to keeping quiet. Some just did not want to be there.
And, even in the UK, I've seen school groups that are as well-behaved as you can reasonably expect a bunch of kids to be and I've seen groups making a lot of noise and running around with their teachers (or whoever) vainly trying to maintain some semblance of control.
You do realize that the original Shakespeare and similar time period plays were MUCH more like how the kids did it, right? Plays in that century were bawdy, vicious, and just nuts. And to be fair, Shakespeare's own material talks about stuff, if modernized, would be considered rated 'R'.
Sitting quietly to watch a show is pretty recent. Even classical performances were louder with praise and en-core requests shouted out loud.
I'm not exactly sure when the 'sit down, shut up, and listen' happened, but yeah.
The greatest Science museums leverage interactivity. Art museums do up always 'up to some extent'. Kids should be able to paint anything (moustache?) over Mona Lisa.
If there are tech conventions, why not science conventions?
Do people not in tech go to tech conventions?
My company has a tech convention every year. Last time I went I played spot the tech person - most people there failed the test (they were former engineers now in management trying to pretend they were still technical). I'm a staff engineer and I was the lowest position person I saw there - not even senior engineers much less the low or mid level engineers that would benefit from talking to the seniors at a tech conference.
You're completely misunderstanding the purpose of a tech convention. The sport you need to play is "spot the customer".
You could be right, though I didn't spot very many I couldn't identify, it could be just what I was looking for. The company is selling to tech people in the company as a tech conference, but that doesn't mean that is really the point. (though I would expect the majority of our customers are not technical people, and thus I don't see how there is value in bringing customers in)
The customers are often not in the breakouts or even on the show floor much. When I was involved in my former company's event, there was a big customer briefing center that was back to back meetings with (typically) customer management at some level and a separate day track for executives.
Even as an analyst--as I've been off and on--I didn't necessarily do a ton of breakouts. I'd watch the keynotes, whether in-person or streaming, and then it was hallway track, meetings, and usually some sort of separate analyst/media activity.
There are community open source and adjacent conventions that don't really have customers or, necessarily, many managers there. I'll be at one in a couple weeks. But directly company-run events are absolutely about generating leads/business. A lot of foundation-led events are somewhere in the middle.
I think tech aficionados and media types do. Tech conventions are more consumer-friendly than the scientific equivalent.
I'd categorize both those groups as being "in tech." Even if they're not active developers, they're certainly tech-adjacent especially in the software space.
There are probably counter-examples, but I'm not sure where I'd go if I were, say, an enthusiastic amateur physics or chemistry enthusiast of some sort that would be especially accessible.
There are. But there are mostly attended by people working in the field.