The second installment in my scicomm series is “scope.” How much information do you need to share to get your point across clearly? As the expert in your chosen subject, it can be tempting to give your audience ALL the information – it’s just so cool and fun and exciting! Right? Most of the time, your audience thinks it’s neat, but doesn’t want to hear about the nitty gritty details. Obviously, this generalization can change depending on who your audience is. A group of like-minded academics may want to know exactly how you performed an experiment or calculated a value, but the general public probably finds that overwhelming.
If you’re presenting to the general public, try to stick with just enough background info to understand how you did your work, and focus on the results, what they mean, and how they might affect your audience. If you’re presenting to academics, you’ll want to include a little more background information, details, and methods, so that your work can be reproduced (science!).
In either case, don’t pile too much information onto your audience. Pick three (or fewer!) main ideas or takeaways and build your narrative around those.
Stay tuned for the next 10 tips!
