During our very short foray into some key techniques for engaging a public audience I emphasized the importance of moving beyond merely having a `topic’ for your talk and developing a ` theme’, or key message, that you want to convey about your topic in the 5-6 minutes that you will have for your science shows in July.
It’s great to see some of you moving in this direction in your closed Google Community groups. I strongly encourage you to use the three sentence approach to taking a topic to a theme developed by interpretation specialist Sam Ham. Namely:

 

Step 1.                Select a general topic

“Generally my presentation is about……

Step 2.                State your topic in more specific terms

“Specifically, however, I want to tell my audience about…”

Step 3.                Now, express your theme.

“After my presentation, I want my audience to understand that…..”

Complete each line as one complete sentence.

This will not only give you presentation a focus it will make researching for your show that much more manageable.

A worked example

Grace posted this as part of  the Medical Science group discussion

“What is antimicrobial resistance and how do we combat these new resistance mechanisms that are emerging and spreading on a global scale”   

Step 1.                Select a general topic

“Generally my presentation is about……      Antimicrobial Resistance

Step 2.                State your topic in more specific terms

“Specifically, however, I want to tell my audience about…   

..what antimicrobial resistance is, how it is emerging and spreading on a global scale, and how we might combat it”

Step 3.                Now, express your theme.

“After my presentation, I want my audience to understand that……………..”

This, your overall theme for the show, will come out of the research you do to address the  3 sub-topics in Step 2 above

Sub-topic 1:  What is Antimicrobial resistance?

Sub-topic 2a: How it is emerging.

                2b: How it is spreading.

Sub-topic 3: How we might combat antimicrobial resistance?

A key message or sub-theme can then also be developed for each of the sub-topics above

e.g

The sub-theme or key message around sub-topic 1: What is Antimicrobial resistance? might be something like:

• Antimicrobial resistance is a bigger threat than many realise

or

• Antimicrobial resistance is a beautiful and extreme example of adaptation  in action.

You then do the same with sub-topics 2 and 3 and come up with the key message you want to convey at that part of your talk. Out of which will come an over-all theme for your whole presentation which you can use to develop Step 3

“After my presentation, I want my audience to understand that……………..”

After you’ve done this and only after you’ve done this you can then distil a snappy theme title for your show.

It really is that simple, but like science itself you have to apply some rigour and consistency to the steps.

Give it a go and email me your  first crack at ` 3 sentence theme development sentences’ by March 13^th.

Don’t worry if Step 3 is not quite refined.  Your final theme statement will emerge from the research on the body of your presentation (Step 2).

Look forward to reading your topics and themes.