Good data isn’t enough to move every audience, even if paired with flawless visualizations and stories. This is because there are deeply entrenched reasons people resist facts. Fortunately, there are also data communication strategies tailored to breaking through each area of resistance so that even the most stubborn audience can embrace your data, allowing your numbers to have maximum impact. This presentation explains why audiences push back against solid evidence and demonstrates practical, research-based communication strategies to work around those defenses. With underdog stories and science-driven techniques, it focuses on the mental barriers that can make people reject compelling data and helps speakers present their own numbers in ways that are more likely to connect and have impact.

Even people who are highly resistant to you and your ideas can lower their guard and embrace your information if you use communication strategies that specifically target the reasons your audience is otherwise primed to oppose you. This presentation will help you understand what is happening in the brain of someone who disagrees with you and will arm you with surprising-yet-practical strategies for persuading even the most averse audience. Even in these highly divided times where disagreements quickly become contentious, you will soon enjoy interactions that are more logic-focused, amicable, and productive.

No matter who you’re speaking to, there will be some who simply don’t want to accept what you have to share. However, even people who are predisposed to dislike a point you are trying to make can instead embrace what you have to say if you use research-backed communication strategies that specifically target various reasons for audience resistance. This captivating and vivacious presentation will (a) help you understand what is happening in the brain of someone who disagrees with you (spoiler alert: resistance is often illogical) and (b) arm you with surprising-yet-practical strategies for persuading even the most averse audiences that they should be open to what you have to say.

For our research to have impact, our findings must transcend the usual ways in which researchers have traditionally disseminated knowledge. For example, rather than letting important findings languish on a single webpage or in a single journal, we can get our findings into the news and other media to inform public opinion, field dialogue, target populations, politicians’ priorities and policies, organizations’ stances and actions, and more. Attendees will learn the latest resources (including those specifically for LGBT+, women, and People of Color); opportunities (including gaining journalists’ support, responding to their latest and most appropriate queries, and joining the free databases that reporters and event planners use for experts to profile), branding (websites, social media, pitch), speaking (TED Talks, conferences, media interviews, NPR, BBC, CBC, etc.), writing (books, journals, magazines, etc.), and more. These approaches will reflect a time-saving emphasis so as not to detract from your busy schedules. This lively session will help you land opportunities to share your work widely, and to maximize those opportunities by moving audiences to care about, understand, remember, tell others about, and apply your work in order to increase the impact of the important work you do.

There are countless little-known ways to gain visibility for you, your content, and your ideas that are quick and easy yet completely off most people's radar. Sure, you can compete with millions of other posts on social media or network your brains out to gain exposure, but you can more easily get yourself and your products into the news and other media that position you as an expert, embed you in stories that cement memorability and care, and lead to customers and connections. Attendees will learn the latest resources (including those specifically for LGBT+, women, and People of Color), opportunities (including gaining journalists’ support, responding to their latest and most appropriate queries, and joining the free databases that reporters and event planners use for experts to profile), avenues for speaking (TED Talks, conferences, media interviews, NPR, BBC, CBC, etc.), fast and practical ways to break into writing (books, journals, magazines, etc.), and more.

We want data to have a positive impact on our decisions, endeavors, and people we want to help. Whether we’re discussing data with those collecting it, analyzing it, considering findings, or playing another role in data’s journey, we can maximize data’s influence with a keen understanding of audience, display practices, and delivery strategies. This presentation will demonstrate what happens in people’s brains when we talk about data and will sharpen attendees visualization and storytelling skills so that data can be quickly and easily understood by varied stakeholders. Through an interactive and lively presentation that weaves storytelling throughout, attendees will be inspired and primed to use data in ways that can benefit others and society.