A Simulator Exercise: the Elevator Pitch

As previously mentioned in the article of “Spreading the Conceptual Model Virus into Researcher Community”, the last but the most thrilling session in that training for researcher community held on early April 2016 was the "Elevator Pitch” session facilitated by Ardhasena Sopaheluwakan. Aiming to stimulate researchers in BMKG to be “ready at any time” to promote their work, the session challenged the participants to prepare a strictly 3-minutes-talk. Initially considered a dreadful announcement, it had become a wow moment for all 35 participants, when they eventually learned how crucial it is to have this communication skill within their daily work life. After all, one could not expect when he or she would bump into their supervisor in an elevator type of situation and being questioned, or meet with someone else who would ask on the work that he or she is doing at the moment J.

The session started by showing a video of Dos and Don’ts in an elevator conversation, which clearly showed that simple things like body language or gesture, could stimulate interesting conversation and also on the contrary could end a conversation. For this Session, a digital alarm was set automatically to ring loudly after exactly 3 minutes run. We called it “the ring of death.”  

Then the learning process began. Participants, who are researcher in the field of meteorology, climatology, and geophysics, gave their best effort to present their works. There are research posters, 1-slide-presentation, and even a complete research presentation thrown to the audience to fulfill the task. It was completely a new experience for most of them, and pretty much challenging, so everybody paid respect and full attention to whoever came forward to take their turn.

At the end of the session, all participants were very pleased to have learned to present their work in 3 minutes time. Subsequently the participants were invited to reflect together on some of the key lesson-learned from this first time experience of presenting an elevator pitch. To conclude, the session emphasized the importance of having at least these four points during the pitch:

•   Global description of the work, what has been done, and the key highlights / outcomes
•   Who we are, to make people remember us
•   Future target for accomplishment
•   Aiming to have follow-ups with the person we meet

It was also noted that it is important to show proper gestures during presentation, such as touching the screen if he or she feels it necessary. Recognition was given to the five best presenters, in terms of punctuality, clarity and conciseness of the presentations. 

-Ardhasena Sopaheluwakan & Asteria Handayani-