Alan Alda is featured in the Science section of the New York Times discussing how he has been helping scientists tell their story.
He notes:
.. scientists often don’t speak to the rest of us the way they would if we were standing there full of curiosity. They sometimes spray information at us without making that contact that I think is crucial. If a scientist doesn’t have someone next to them, drawing them out, they can easily go into lecture mode. There can be a lot of insider’s jargon.
If they can’t make clear what their work involves, the public will resist advances. They won’t fund science. How are scientists going to get money from policy makers, if our leaders and legislators can’t understand what they do?
He goes on to explain how his foundation for Communicating Science helps with media training, learning to speak on panels and other exercises that force people to make contact with each other.
As a B2B agency in technology, healthcare and oil&gas we often run into the same issues. Our clients are industry leaders in their field. They are smart and have created fantastic products that solve real world problems. But they often have a big challenge communicating what they are doing and how they do it. So we spend a lot of time on message creation to make sure their audience will understand them. We help them with media training. Or we edit the articles their specialists write to make them accessible to a broader audience.
So wether it is explaining lightning protection, cleaning fracking water or making sure your gauges all work, we work with scientists everyday to make sure their story gets told!