i gave a talk on communication strategies at the dotAstronomy 5 conference.
Title: How Do You Organize a Party in Space? You Planet.
Abstract: So you want to engage the community, inspire students, promote your research, and/or advertise your brilliant web-based innovation so more people use it. How can you do this? What are the best ways to promote your project? And maybe most importantly, how do you measure your impact so you can report your successes and seek further financial support? First, you define a communication strategy, and then you use all the tools available to you to achieve those goals. I will discuss ways to go about doing these things.
you can watch the below or check out the slick player on the website that also shows tweets as they happened and various links i referred to throughout.
Amanda Bauer - Communication Strategies: How do you Organize a Party in Space? - .Astronomy 5 from Robert Simpson on Vimeo.
the points i'd like to stress most:
- tell the story of whatever you are trying to convey to the audience; don't just give facts and conclusions.
- consider the audience - it's not about you, it's about your audience! giving a presentation is your opportunity to share your fascination about a topic with the audience and empower them to wonder "why?" about the same questions. but taking the audience along the journey of the same result should most likely be presented differently for groups of different levels. it's not appropriate to recycle the same old talk for every audience!
- do not use jargon or words/terms/acronyms that only specialists will understand.
- use appropriate technology to tell the story you want to tell. while certainly fun sometimes, the question is not always "how can i use this fancy new technology?" the question should be "i have this great story to tell about my work, which technology will best help me visualise what i want them to see?"
Title: How Do You Organize a Party in Space? You Planet.
Abstract: So you want to engage the community, inspire students, promote your research, and/or advertise your brilliant web-based innovation so more people use it. How can you do this? What are the best ways to promote your project? And maybe most importantly, how do you measure your impact so you can report your successes and seek further financial support? First, you define a communication strategy, and then you use all the tools available to you to achieve those goals. I will discuss ways to go about doing these things.
you can watch the below or check out the slick player on the website that also shows tweets as they happened and various links i referred to throughout.
Amanda Bauer - Communication Strategies: How do you Organize a Party in Space? - .Astronomy 5 from Robert Simpson on Vimeo.
the points i'd like to stress most:
- tell the story of whatever you are trying to convey to the audience; don't just give facts and conclusions.
- consider the audience - it's not about you, it's about your audience! giving a presentation is your opportunity to share your fascination about a topic with the audience and empower them to wonder "why?" about the same questions. but taking the audience along the journey of the same result should most likely be presented differently for groups of different levels. it's not appropriate to recycle the same old talk for every audience!
- do not use jargon or words/terms/acronyms that only specialists will understand.
- use appropriate technology to tell the story you want to tell. while certainly fun sometimes, the question is not always "how can i use this fancy new technology?" the question should be "i have this great story to tell about my work, which technology will best help me visualise what i want them to see?"
