Elevator speeches

The rhetorical dimension. A scientist’s elevator speech in 45
seconds: E.O. Wilson (pdf) – Handout with a series of tasks,
built around the great post by Denise Graveline. For audio, see
podcast clip.

Elevator speech basics “Tell Me a Little About Yourself…”
(pdf) – Handout with a task, taken practically verbatim from the
John A. Hartford Foundation’s website Bandwidth

Elevator speeches, step by step (pdf) – Presentation



The above links are pdfs of my presentation and handouts from the
workshop I gave at the Uni Potsdam Graduiertenkolleg
Geowissenschaften yesterday and today.


This is an extremely interesting challenge for me, as these
scientists are more advanced presenters than the undergraduate
students I’ve normally taught, and not as versed in the world of
marketing as my business clients. As a group, they give a series
of short 2-minute presentations as an invitation to later visit
their science posters in the exhibit area.  Key issues are
how to make their points memorable, and their listeners hungry
for more. This opens up a huge area for micro-storytelling
(adding the personal dimension), but also for memorable
catchphrases that stay safely this side of rhetoric. Work in
progress, I’m looking forward to the rest of the workshop.


Susanne Frölich-Steffen (her website), a scientist now working as
a communcation skills trainer in the academic world (primarily in
Munich and Bavaria) gave me wonderful tips. I’m hoping we can
work together in the future.


Further reading:


Michael Alley: The craft of scientific presentations.
Critical steps to succeed and critical errors to avoid. Springer
NY 2003 ISBN-0-387-95555-0
— Book homepage

Nancy Duarte: Slide:ology. The art and science of creating
great presentations. O’Reilly 2008
ISBN-13:978-0-596-52234-6
— Nancy Duarte’s blog



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