Six tips for talking to people outside your area

Build relationships

If this is an ongoing area of work, can you keep core people on both sides to build up a shared language, experience and trust.

Give people permission and a space to ask "stupid" questions

It might be easier, less scary to suggest a side channel outside of your meeting for people to ask questions privately. Or point people to primers or background reading to read in their own time.

Do you need acronyms and jargon?

If you do have to use jargon or acronyms - explain them the first time you use them in each conversation/presentation/article.

What is the key message you want your audience to take away?

Can you write it in one or two sentences?  Perhaps include this as a TLDR (too long didn't read) summary in your notes/slides/report.

Think about who are you speaking to

What do they want to know? 

Practise beforehand, practise after

Ask colleagues for feedback, ask your audience for feedback.  Take time to think about this feedback - what went well, what didn't, what would you do differently

Use these tips every time you are communicating your work, no matter who you are talking to

This advice came out of discussions of the mathsci-comm – network of those working in, and with a stake in, communicating complex mathematics and data science to a variety of non-expert audiences. This includes researchers, media and communications professionals, those working in policy in government and non-government organisations. The network is funded by a Network Grant from the Isaac Newton Institute.