In this week’s Science Communication post I thought I would focus on Introductions.
Your introduction establishes not only the topic your show is about but also who you are and the theme or key message you plan to deliver about that topic.
It’s your opportunity to let the audience know the nature of the journey you are going to take them on and engage them right from the start.
There are variety of ways to engage your audience in your introduction
I’m going to focus on just three today
The first is from a Royal Society lecture on antimatter by Tara Shears. Note the strong eye contact with the audience, the structured outline of what is to follow and the emphasis on the fact she will be explaining the relevance of what she will cover.

The second is by climate scientist James Hansen. Here he uses a strong question as an attention grabbing tool and goes on to introduce the science via anecdotes from his own personal journey.
This speaker relies heavily on reading his script. Do you find this style more or less engaging than that of Tara Spears? Imagine how much more engaging he would be if he were to abandon reading every single word of his script as written, step out and face the audience with strong eye contact as he relates his own personal story. He knows his own story. Does he really need a script for that? Would it not be that much stronger adopting a more conversational tone along the lines of what you would use when relating a story from your past to a friend or colleague?

The 3rd is Dr. Jenny Germano a dear colleague from my days as Volunteer co-ordinator at Department of Conservation.  Jenny went on to study urinary frog hormones here at University of Otago. On the day she submitted her PhD thesis she entered the ` 3min Thesis’ speech competition with a talk entitled “Taking the Piss out of Endangered Frogs” …..and won the competition!
A number of things to note with Jen’s introduction. Her passion for her subject hits you from the word go, her use of hand gestures builds on that engaging passion and is even used to good effect in clarifying a couple of semi-technical terms- cardiac puncture and orbital sinus – simply by pointing to her heart and eye in mid-stream without having to pause. Note, no notes or script. She knows the stuff so she can talk from the heart and focus on the audience and not on trying to remember what comes next.
(Note that the graphic in the body of her talk is targeted at an audience of entirely academics as opposed to  the general public audience you will be presenting to in July. So bear that in mind when composing your own graphic support material. The less technical the better for our audience in July)

Have a look at some other science communicators in action and if you find one with an  introductory style you find engaging send me the link and I’ll post it for others to view.