Much of the content of the President's Dream Colloquium: Making Knowledge Public is relevant to the pursuit of a career in academia. While 'academics' are often considered to be a homogeneous group, topics such as open access and citizen science are discussed in different lights depending on your field, or even sub-discipline. Even within a given area of study, there can be a generation style gap in opinion between established and new researchers. In a series of blog posts, I have explored the content presented in several of the public lectures, diving deeper on certain topics and presenting the questions we have considered in the effort to increase the publics access to knew knowledge. In an additional effort to contribute to the opening of the ivory tower to the wider public, I have been writing lay summaries of my first author research publications, also found on the blog.