Kind: captions
Language: en
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More than anyone else, the right speaker
at a cafe is crucial to creating an open
and engaging event. A speaker is there
really to uh kind of facilitate
discussion, introduce the topic to the
crowd, kind of go over the basics of of
a big idea in science, and then start a
discussion with with everybody.
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Common places to find potential speakers
include universities, government
institutions, museums, and professional
associations. If you've already held a
cafe, try asking past cafe speakers to
recommend
others. Finally, check out
sciencecaf.org for additional links to
organizations that can provide speakers.
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While some scientists might be happy to
share their work, not every scientist
would make a good cafe speaker. It's
okay to be selective.
Have your cafe coordinator look out for
candidates who
are friendly and
enthusiastic, knowledgeable about the
topic, comfortable answering
questions, and able to discuss their
material in a casual and accessible
manner. This this will work like this.
For the first minute, I'm going to be a
little nervous, so my voice is going to
be a little jittery. My accent is going
to come out a little bit stronger, and
I'm going to be all like Latino and
stuff. And then and then after that I'm
just going to start relaxing and I'm
going to just talking to you and I'm
going to see that you guys are nodding
as though you're understanding what I'm
saying and I'm just going to go like
okay okay I'm warming up today. You know
I would always encourage people to meet
with a potential speaker or at least set
up a phone call with them to go into
more detail about how the event is going
to be run and specifically what they
might be able to talk about. Um, I think
a lot of speakers really enjoy talking
to the general public about their
research and getting some of that
information out there. And usually the
speaker that you're going to have come
is really interested in doing this type
of
work. After booking a speaker, make sure
your moderator lays down a few ground
rules. First, show up early. Ask the
speaker to show up around 30 minutes
prior to the cafe for a run through.
Second, keep it short. A 10 to 12 minute
off-the-cuff presentation is all that's
needed before opening up to the
audience. Remember, this shouldn't feel
like a classroom
lecture. Third, no
jargon. The cafe shouldn't alienate
audience members. Redirect the
conversation if it gets too technical.
And finally, rather than depend on
slides, the best speakers engage the
audience on a personal level by trying
to answer the question, why should
anyone
care? Talking to a known scientist
public really puts you on the spot. Um
because you you can't take anything for
granted, but at the same time, you can't
talk to people like they're dumb or
anything like that because they're
incredibly
clever. I thought it was challenging.
Uh, but it's it it also helps a lot
because it puts it makes me think of the
importance of what I'm doing and and how
to relate it to other
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people. For more information on finding
and working with speakers, visit
sciencecaf.org.
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