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. We request a title (not an abstract) for your talk at the beginning of the semester (June or December) so we can sufficiently advertise your event and create posters for it. Please choose a talk title that laypeople will be able to understand, nothing too jargony or cryptic. Also, shorter is better for talk titles. You can see a list of previous talk titles by looking over previous AoT posters or our previous events listed on the Astronomy on Tap website.

Audience

We anticipate anywhere from 80-200 virtual attendees on Youtube Live and Facebook Live, and we typically have 1-2k viewers in the weeks after the broadcast. Because of the online format, it's impossible to know exactly the demographics of our audience, but I think we have a pretty broad cross-section of viewers, 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.

Broadcast

These events are all held through Zoom, but I broadcast that live to Youtube Live and Facebook Live. From your perspective, it just means connecting to Zoom and sharing your screen to give a presentation the way you would for any other meeting, but I will be broadcasting to our larger audience. Thus, we don't need to worry about Zoom bombing, because the only people on our Zoom meeting will be the 1-2 hosts and the 2 speakers. The audience will interact with us by messaging in the live chat on Facebook and Youtube, and we usually have a pretty good response from our audience. Keep in mind, there is about a 5-10 second delay between when you say something in Zoom and when it actually gets broadcast to our viewers. I encourage you to just interact with Zoom the way you would and only occasionally look at the broadcast, if at all. As host, I will monitor the chats and relay relevant questions back to you in our live discussion.

You can look at videos of all of our previous events to get a feel for what how this will go.

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, but I guess this is virtual so I don't have to clean it up.

Talk Duration

Prepare to talk for about 10-15 minutes, and we'll take a few questions at the end making the entire talk slot for 15-20 minutes. It's all pretty fluid, but 15 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 disconnecting.

Arriving/Setup

The talks start at 7:30, so please connect to the zoom session by 7:10 so we can iron out the kinks.

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 connecting on phones and such.
• 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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