Jen here –
Lightning or elevator talks are a great way to practice quickly sharing your research or work. Elevator talks are just as they sound, use the amount of time an elevator ride takes to share your research with another person. This is usually about 1-3 minutes, sometimes less! You can think of it sort of like a TV or radio commercial about what you do.
So, you want to make sure to share your science in a way that is not confusing to people in other scientific or academic fields. You want your research to be understandable to everyone, not just people that work on the same stuff as you. I find it helpful to pretend I’m talking to my mom who has a general understanding of what I work on but doesn’t particularly need to understand all of the minute details.
Below is my first official lightning talk. Since this is a video, I was able to include additional images and even an extra supporting additional video clip. I plan to produce a few a semester to practice communicating whatever my current research may be!
Here are some tools to begin crafting your own elevator talk!