“Lightning Presentations” Learning Object

• Raise awareness of individuals’ expertise and skills, ongoing projects and research, and needs or gaps
• Reveal opportunities for collaboration, both within and across disciplines

Consider whether the networking event will be held in-person or online. Preparation of the materials is identical for both settings, though reservation of a room and technology to enable projection of a slide presentation will need to be arranged for an in-person event. Both event settings follow the same steps outlined below.

1. Typically, events like these are best organized around a broad topic that has points of entry for individuals across disciplines. “Grand challenges,” “wicked problems,” and other major societal issues serve as ideal topics as they typically need multiple expert perspectives to propose solutions. An overarching topic may also be chosen if it is an area of strength or targeted area for growth at an institution. Once the topic is chosen it can be used to market the themed event to potential participants. (See note in next step if there is not a central topic/theme.)
2. During marketing for the event—or recruitment for a program, whichever is relevant—it is best to collect the key information to be used to populate the slide at the time of registration. Then, an organizer can easily populate each slide using the registration information and the standardized template, programming the slide transition time into the presentation so it advances every two-three minutes. (Two minutes is a “sweet spot” for presenting these slides, with one minute being too short and three minutes typically not being necessary.) Alternatively, participants can download the template and upload a completed slide at the point of registration to save organizing staff the additional step.
   • Sections of the slide include: key participant information (name, title, department, institution, contact information), discipline, expertise relevant to the topic, current research and projects, how the participant can help others, and how the participant would like to be helped by others. See an example slide below and link to a downloadable slide template here.
   • If there is not a central topic or theme for the event, the section titled “Expertise Relevant to [TOPIC]” can be repurposed and renamed more broadly to “Expertise/Interests.”
   • Important instructions to include when collecting this information: Give some guidelines to individuals providing information for each of the slide sections, or else people have a tendency to copy and paste too much information. Instructions that can be helpful are: “Provide a single statement each for up to three current research projects” or “Provide 3-5 key words or phrases to describe your expertise.”
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3. It is helpful to program a 30-second warning slide to display during the last 30 seconds of each presenter’s time slot, along with text that indicates which presenter is next. As such, the next person is queued to be ready to present, and the person currently presenting knows to wrap up their presentation.
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4. If desired, the slides can be bundled and shared with participants ahead of the event or at the start of the event (through a printed booklet, if in person), and attendees can review and take notes on the slides while presentations occur to facilitate later discussions.
5. An optional step is to include time (15-30 minutes) for smaller, breakout discussions after presentations are done. There is added value in arranging time for breakout discussions immediately after presentations to capture participants’ excitement and desire to make connections. To organize the breakouts, subtopics within the overarching topic for the event may be selected and used to label breakout groups. Participants can choose which topic (or topics) to engage in and either join the relevant table (if in person) or enter the relevant breakout room (if virtual). If 15 minutes is chosen for this time, participants will likely only be able to speak with others in one subtopic. However, if 30 minutes are afforded, then it is possible to have two rounds of 15-minute breakout sessions, where individuals have the opportunity to join a new subtopic for the second session.

An efficient overview of relevant expertise “in the room,” along with noted needs of participants that can lead to future collaborations.

An artifact in the form of a participant “slide book” (i.e., series of profile slides) that can be referenced in the future by participants and staff facilitators, such as for researcher “matchmaking.”

A Virtual Networking Event

Researcher networking events to spark collaborations are common in higher education settings. They take many forms, including researcher speed networking and elevator pitch sessions, though they usually happen in person. The proposed activity is an evolution of these events that formalizes the format into one that is efficiently delivered online, though is equally effective in person.

In the virtual space, each participant populates a slide template before the event, transitions between slides are automated, and researchers present while their slide is screenshared. This event is an efficient way to understand the breadth of interest in a topic across a campus and creates a profile book valuable to both faculty participants and the research or faculty development staff who often hold such events. For faculty, the value is in finding potential collaborators; and for staff, they gain a reference guide for researchers with interests in a topical area that can be used to direct future funding opportunities to and in the creation of interdisciplinary teams.

Facilitating Team Formation

The slide format used in this activity is helpful for building teams, especially with its inclusion of the section focused on “How I Can Help You” and “How You Can Help Me.” Additionally, it is particularly useful for forming interdisciplinary teams in the following way. Once the slide presentations conclude, faculty can be given a copy of the slide printouts and be prompted to group themselves with individuals in disciplines different from theirs. As the “Discipline” bar is prominently displayed across the top of each slide, the booklet of slide printouts can be quickly scanned through for finding diverse partners. If the booklets are given to participants before the presentations begin, they can review them before the event and/or take notes on the slides during the event, noting individuals they see connections with to facilitate the later stage of forming teams. The step of forming of interdisciplinary teams may be helpful for institutions aiming to start or grow diverse centers and institutes.

This activity is best used to stimulate new collaborations. It can be conducted within a department or college, across an institution, or across multiple institutions and partner organizations. It is particularly helpful in cases where potential collaborators are geographically dispersed as the event can be conducted fully online.

The event can be embedded in larger events, such as new faculty orientations or research symposiums, to help faculty make connections with colleagues.

While the event itself can be conducted fully online, it likely benefits from follow-up opportunities for individuals to get together in person, either once teams have formed or to continue collaborative discussions. If in-person assembly is not possible, follow-up meetings should still be scheduled to continue discussions. As such, this event should not be seen as a one-off with no follow-up, but rather as a starting place for team formation.

As noted in response to the prior question, follow up is important if collaborations are going to develop. In addition to distributing a “profile slide book” (digital or printed) of the compiled slides to event attendees, it may be helpful to have additional sessions for collaborative discussion around subtopics, host journal clubs to continue contact between participants, or distribute themed funding opportunity lists to those with relevant topical expertise (especially those opportunities that encourage interdisciplinary collaboration).

A follow up activity may be the Question Brainstorms activity, where groups of individuals interested in common topics generate questions around a topic to continue exploring opportunities for collaborative investigation. Alternatively, the Problem Tree exercise is another way to continue exploring a topic and create a shared mental model of the problem space that the team is interested in.

Once a team is formed, outreach to other individuals may be helpful to fill gaps on the team. In this case, researcher profile databases that exist within an institution, or searches through journals and publications (looking at authors), may be productive in identifying needed experts. An example of a database for finding collaborators is “My Dream Team."

The slide and presentation format is adapted from Florida State University’s (FSU) long-running “Collaborative Collision” event series. Access this event website for examples of broad topics to theme events around as well as information about how FSU’s event series has evolved over time.

Ideas for networking events are numerous. Find below some alternative examples of how to structure these sessions.

• Ideas from Temple University
• Ideas from Marquette University