Make Them Care

Abstract

Having worked hard to streamline your talk and create an engaging beginning and a strong ending, it is now time to ask yourself once again: Why should anyone care about this research? Does your talk answer this question? If not, more effort may be required to explain why your work is relevant to your audience members. To some scientists and scholars, selling their work is considered dirty and belittling. After all, if the work is great why does one need to sell it? It should sell itself. It should be obvious why it is important. The answers to these questions require us to overcome the “curse of knowledge” (Heath & Heath, 2007). It may be easy for you to connect the dots and recognize the implications of your research on a grander scale, but a typical audience member will need some help. Certainly there is a risk of overselling your work. Underselling your work by not connecting the dots for your audience is also a problem. You may need to experiment to get the balance of your message just right.