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Category Archives: Communication
What you really need instead of an elevator pitch
I bet you’re feeling a little guilty whenever someone asks you if you have an elevator pitch, you know, those 30 second or 1 minute talks about what you do that can be given in the time it takes to … Continue reading
Improv for scientific communication with Aniek Ivens
How I wish I understood you, but I have no idea what you are talking about. You seem friendly and animated and clearly love your research, but what is your question? Why do you like this figure so much? What … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Creativity, Science writing for the public, Scientific meetings, Talks
Tagged improv, outreach, science communication, talks
1 Comment
Can you answer this crucial scientific question?
“Where did you see that,” may not seem like the most crucial question, but for natural science, history, geography, archaeology, and many other fields, provenance is crucial information. The volunteers that keep eBird useful will challenge you if you claim … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Field work, Research
Tagged accuracy, data, history, location, provenance, sampling
2 Comments
The power of explaining someone else’s idea
In our short evening class we like to have time to think, time to write, time to talk, and time to share. When these go together well, it is transformative. Last week in the last class before spring break, we … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Posters, Presentations and seminars, Uncategorized
Tagged class, communication, explaining, posters
1 Comment
Have you figured out how to make a graphical abstract?
Figures make papers easier to understand. I love it when a paper has a flow diagram of what exactly they did, especially when they also say why. I don’t know why, but figures stick in ways that pure words do … Continue reading
Thinking of starting your paper with a quote? Be careful!
It is a wonderful feeling to start a piece with a quote that means something to you. You can connect to someone famous who has said something much more clearly than you might. From there you can move on to … Continue reading
The best way to summarize your research on your webpage
Will people smile when they go to your research web page? Will they immediately know what you do, broad and narrow? Do you delight? I certainly hope you don’t overwhelm with words. I just opened an investigators web page to … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Presentations and seminars, Public Communication
Tagged drawing, ideas, research illustration, web page
1 Comment
The ambiguity of silence
A friend of mine who works in the oil business once told me about binational meetings that went astray because for one set of people silence meant agreement while for the other it meant disagreement. The agreeing faction got annoyed … Continue reading
Posted in Communication
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Learning German from Jenny Erpenbeck
Jenny Erpenbeck writes a poetic, clear, and sad German. She reads herself on Audible with a crystalline German that reminds me of a young Mosel wine, or the ring of a toast from my grandparents’s hundred year old wine glasses. … Continue reading
Posted in Communication, Travel
Tagged Aller Tage Abend, communication, German, Jenny Erpenbeck, language learning, travel
3 Comments
What is in your email signature?
We all have various things in our email signatures. Title, contact information and links are common. Little trite phrases are too. Since these things seldom get printed out, there is no harm in making them longish. I took the actual … Continue reading
Sociobiology 