GEOG8260.3 Understanding your audience

Exercise!Write a haiku that encapsulates the main idea of one of your research projects.

Accuracy VS. Boredom

SIMPLICITY IS THE

ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION

“

”Leonardo da Vinci

... most scientists start with the engaging quality of enthusiasm — to get through a degree course, the PhD and all the research-council hoops, you would need it — and enthusiasm is derived from a Greek term that means divinely intoxicated.

“

”— Tim Radford

“...to be effective communicators, scientists have to learn to stand back from their own work and see it as strangers might do.”

— Tim Radford

...designing a presentation without an audience in mind is like writing a love le!er and addressing it ‘to whom it may concern’.

“”— Ken Haemer

5Qsto help understand your audience

QUESTIONWhat’s the se!ing of your presentation?

community

scientists policy makers

studentswho’s yourAUDIENCE?

QUESTIONWhat do they already know about your topic?

QUESTIONWhat sources do they get their information from?

QUESTIONWhat’s important to them? What keeps them awake at night?

Photograph: BrotherMagneto

Advance discovery and understanding

Broaden participation

Enhance infrastructure

Broaden dissemination

Benefits to society

QUESTIONWhat pre-conceptions will you have to work against?

stationarity is the idea that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability.

Source: Milly et al., Science, 2008

5Qsto help understand your audience

Exercise!Compose a biographical sketch of your target audience. Try to answer our discussion questions as best you can.

What’s the setting?What do they already know?Where do they get their information from?What’s important to them?What preconceptions will you need to fight?

“Source-oriented” communicators

“Receiver-oriented” communicators

One last thing.

Charles Anderson Dragonflies that cross oceans