Directions for Astronomy on Tap Speakers

The speakers are the main draw for the Astronomy on Tap events. See our AstronomyOnTap page for more information on how these events occur.

General Responsibilities

• Prepare and present some astronomy-related talk to the public audience
• Pick a title and send it to Cameron way in advance of the talk for advertising and poster creation

Topic Choice/Title Talk Preparation

I recommend you prepare your presentation as though you are explaining an astronomical topic to someone seated next to you on an airplane with no background in science. When choosing a topic for a lecture, make sure it is a subject that intrigues you, a subject that will potentially intrigue a layperson, and it is a topic on which you are knowledgeable. Oftentimes the best topics are not related to your own research. I usually try to give the audience one major takeaway out of the whole talk. Please choose a talk title that laypeople will be able to understand, nothing too jargony or cryptic. Also, shorter is better for talk titles. Since there is no abstract for your talk, the audience will only have the title as reference to what you'll be talking about, so try not to be too clever with it. You can see a list of talk titles by looking over our previous AoT events.

Venue and Parking

We are now hosting our events at the Dog Haus Biergarten in Old Town Pasadena. Our activities are entirely outside in their back patio area, which seats about 100, but has space for people to spill out into the alley way and can host an additional 100. For views of past events at this bar, see our Flickr Page. There is inexpensive public parking lot one block away, where the first two hours cost $1, and then it's $2 for every additional hour, and it caps at $6 total for the day. There is also some street parking you may find in the vicinity, which is $1.25 / hr, but on a Monday night, parking meter fees end at 8:00PM.

A/V System and Projection

The bar has two large screen TVs that we connect to, which will broadcast any slides you may have. I have an HDMI splitter and cable, which broadcasts to these two TVs, so all you need is an HDMI output port on your laptop, or alternatively, a USB-C output on your laptop. Please let me know if you do not have these, so we can figure out an alternative solution. I'll also have a speaker system and wireless microphone for broadcasting what we say to the audience. I'll have a cord for connecting your computer to the speaker system in case you have sound you want to play from your presentation for everyone to hear.

Audience

We anticipate anywhere from 50-150 attendees. I think we have a pretty broad cross-section of audience members, along with some pretty science-focused people who can ask some pretty technical and advanced questions sometimes. The audience came to enjoy a drink and hear some science, so the format is pretty forgiving. Feel free to talk as you normally do informally like you would with colleagues or at a bar--I know I do. Just use good judgement, as you are representing your institutions and our field.

Drinking

Drinking alcohol is encouraged for both the speaker and the audience. The host(s) are typically drinking, and I just find it makes everyone a little more approachable and makes these events less formal/traditional. Enjoy your drink(s) and your talk, but don't turn this into an episode of Drunk History. Or do, but no vomiting. I don't want to clean that up. hahahah.

Talk Duration

Prepare to talk for about 15-20 minutes, and we'll take a few questions at the end making the entire talk slot for 20-25 minutes. It's all pretty fluid, but 15-20 minutes appears to be a maximum amount of time that people want to listen to someone talk about science in this context. If you go over that, you risk people just starting to talk over you.

Arriving/Setup

The talks start at 7:30, so please arrive by 7:00 to order a drink and test your setup.

Outreach Presentation Best Practices

• The purpose of these events is to educate the public to be more aware and appreciative of the science around them. So keep that in mind while assembling your presentation.
• Please refrain from injecting politics into the talk, particularly by denigrating specific politicians or groups as it can interfere with our ability as scientists to educate people. In fact, injecting politics into the talk can turn some audience members off to the scientific enterprise entirely, when these are precisely the people we need to be reaching. Please just use your best judgement in keeping your talk professional and for a wide audience.
• Please minimize any scientific jargon from your talk, or if you must use it, introduce it substantially. Remember, these are members of the public, not a colloquium audience. Pretend you're talking to someone you're seated next to on a plane, or your Uber driver, or an uncle from a family reunion.
• Please do not use a colloquium slide deck and turn it into a public talk. These are very different audiences and usually have very little overlap in their slides.
• Try to keep slides relatively simple--not a lot of text, and use images where it will enhance the point you're making. Oftentimes, I'll even use blank slides to get the audience to focus back on me and my message instead of being distracted by something on my slides.
• For the text you use on your slides, assure that it is large so that everyone can read it OK, even people seated in the back.
• Don't freak out about not knowing the answer to all questions--that's perfectly reasonable. If someone asks you a question you cannot answer, take a moment, think about it, and if you don't know, admit it. You can potentially offer up resources where they can find out more, or talk after the lecture, or tell them that no one knows the answer. Or we can all talk about it amongst the guests and hosts. People just like hearing how we think about stuff and try to figure it out on the fly.
• Don't worry too much about the talk. Prepare, but it's going to go OK. The audience is one who wants to be there and is excited to hear about your science. It's a fun experience and most speakers come away from it energized!

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