Posts in: Conference Tips

The COMPASS team has led a lot of workshops over the years—600 and counting! And as you might expect, during those workshops we get plenty of questions, including some that come up over and over. One of those regularly repeating questions: how to handle needing to communicate with multiple audiences, at the same time. Like a lot of questions about communicatio...

Conferences can be daunting as a new scientist in the field, especially for underrepresented people. As a recent grad who is starting out on a research path, attending conferences is an important aspect of building the foundations of my career. In-person conferences were hard enough to navigate, with their labyrinthine halls and countless sessions at the crack of d...

Over the years, we’ve been asked for tips on how we create presentations. A key thing that we always try to remember is to use the same principles that we talk about with the Message Box (knowing your audience, crafting your messages with them in mind, limiting your key points to 3-5 things, sharing the ‘So What?’), but to apply them visually, as well as with...

In our trainings, and on this blog, we talk a lot about the importance of getting to know your audience. As science communication trainers, we also need tools that help us get to know our audience! But sometimes it’s just not possible to gather that information ahead of time. We know that this is something that many scientists struggle with as well—whether you ...

Prepping for meetings is important in helping you to have a constructive conversation - especially when the person you’re meeting with may have very little time or knowledge of your field of study. Another way to help your information stick, even after the meeting is over, is to leave behind a one-pager. A great one-pager catches their attention, starts a convers...

Have you ever found yourself at a conference, and noticed that the person sitting next to you in a session or waiting in line behind you at the coffee station had “PRESS” on their name tag? Next time you do, introduce yourself! It’s a pleasant change for journalists to have scientists actually approach them. Even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to coverage o...