Telling Your Story

I attended a wonderful workshop hosted today by Kate Knuth of the Boreas Environment Leadership Program and the Office of Interdisciplinary Initiatives at the UMN. It was about how stories matter and that how to communicate content. The goals were to tell your story, to explain your research or study area, and how to tell the story of your organization/school. Its often hard to be brief and get your point across (and if you are me, not go off on some crazy tangent). The workshop was to help graduate students tell the story of their research, to work on their elevator pitch (who you are and what you do in 20-30 seconds and they need to be interesting, memorable, and succinct). We also did a ‘Ig Nobel 24/7 Lecture’ which is where you have to explain your research in 24 seconds and in 7 words. I talked about my Twitter research and despite being a talker (and one who talks really fast), I talked under 24 seconds and my 7 words were ‘I tweet you tweet leaders tweet kindof.’