 Good morning to everyone. My name is Sahana Murthy. I am a faculty member in the interdisciplinary program in educational technology at IIT Bombay. It is a relatively new department. We started about five years ago and it is a department where we do two things. One is the people who it is interdisciplinary. So, we have people from engineering, computer science, basic sciences as well as people from a social science background. Primarily education and psychology. We develop technology tools like tutoring systems or virtual world simulations and all for the purpose of teaching and learning in various domains. And also develop pedagogical methods, instructional strategies and student centric active learning techniques to be used along with these technology tools. Right now, we only have a PhD program. I should have put the URL of a department, but maybe later. So, before we start with the core part of today's talk, this session. There is a little bit I would like to know about you and maybe you have been answering this in all the sessions, but I was in presence. So, just bear with me. I just want to know the distribution of your background. So, you can just raise your hand 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So, are you from an engineering, basic science, humanities, social science or some other background? Yeah, just pointing your fingers. Whether your choice is 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. I do not want exact numbers. I just want a rough distribution. I want to see who is sitting next to whom, whether it is mixed. Okay, just keep it there for a minute. 1, 3, 4. Alright. Fine. See, for example, let me tell you what all I got from this very quick exercise. I got that there is a fair distribution, not exactly equal, but a fair representation in all the first four categories. Actually, I had a slight idea because Professor Sundar had told us a couple of days ago who all are here. And one of our PhD students, she knew people from her college who are coming here. And she said that there are people who teach business communication and who are from the humanities and social sciences. And I would not have known before that. So, a quick exercise like this gives an idea of who is there in the class. A couple of more like this. They may have smaller. So, yeah, this is a course for coordinators. We know that. But do you plan to teach? Are you teaching or do you plan to teach? Yes. How many knows? Okay, there are a few people who don't teach also. But there are people in your college who will teach this course. And you will go to them with the takeaways from this session. Okay. Last question. In your professional work, do you need to talk about your research? Just say, yes, I want to see how many? One, two, three. Yes, one. No, no, one, two, three. One is, you have to talk about research often. Two is sometimes, three is not at all. Two, two, two, two, one, two, three. There are some threes. Okay, great. Thanks. So it looks like mostly ones and twos. And the reason, again, I'd like to know all of this is this is a really odd course in some sense. You know, it's about technical communication. So who are you going to teach? Most likely engineering students. Who are we teaching? It's teachers who will teach engineering students, but they're from a different background. It may also be useful for your own research. So knowing the context is a little useful here. Okay, so let's look at two scenarios. And it's good if you have some paper and pencil in front of you right now. So this session is going to be useful. I just said this. If you teach a plan to teach a communications course or if you found that you have to talk about your research. So if you're in one or both categories, it will be useful for you. And hopefully people will belong to one of these. The other place where it will be useful is if you need to mentor students for their careers. So, you know, some student might come to you and say, I'm appearing for a job interview tomorrow. Or you may have to coach students through some projects for their future careers. So this session, in fact, this entire workshop will be useful for you even from that perspective. And in our role as teachers, I think all of us sometime or the other have to do fall into this category. Okay, so here is a scenario. So consider that your student now, your student is appearing for a job interview. And a typical question that the interviewer asks the student is tell me about yourself. It's a very standard opening statement in an interview. And usually the students have one minute to answer. So just jot down a few points that you would advise your students to say. Jot it down and keep it with you. We won't do much about it right now. Okay, if you're done with that, a very similar scenario. And we'll be taking what you wrote and refining it and over the course of the session. So imagine now you're in the other role. You are attending a research conference and you have to talk about your poster. Maybe you're giving a presentation or there is a poster and you have to talk about your research. Or you meet a senior colleague who says, so what are you working on? It's a dreaded question of all researchers because you have to, it's also a very powerful and excellent question. But you have one minute to give a coherent response. And before the one minute is up, the senior member will go get chai and will lose interest. Okay, so what will you say at that point? So assume the senior member is in your broad field but you don't exactly know who he or she is. Now they may not be in your subspeciality but it's a broad research conference in your field. Again, two to three sentences, 50 to 100 words, no more. So it's not very easy. Okay, so if you have a few points here, what you all just did in either the first or the second scenario was create what's called the elevator pitch. Okay, so the answer to any of the such questions, tell me about yourself. What are you working on? Let's introduce ourselves. You may be at some professional social meeting, maybe you're sitting around a table during some business lunch. Or what's your research about? Or for your students a more formal situation where they're interviewing. Such questions will be asked. Your students and you have to be prepared with such answers. So why is this called an elevator pitch and what does it really mean? Let's look at this. So this is one formal definition I believe it's from Wikipedia. It's a short summary and it's used to define either a person or a product or an organization, an event along with its value proposition. So we'll come back to what's meant by a value proposition. It's called an elevator pitch because it's a little light hearted there. You meet somebody in an elevator on the ground floor and by the time the elevator reaches the top floor you should be able to deliver your pitch. And that span is 30 seconds usually. Sometimes very rarely if you're in, you know, some towers in South Bombay it may be 2 minutes, but 2 minutes is also a bit too much there. Okay, little more about this. So to create an elevator pitch, I think this is something we already discussed. If you have to present your research at a conference, if your students are going for a job interview, any of you are enrolled for a PhD? Few of you are. So as PhD research scholars it's very important to develop this pitch. Because as PhD research scholars you often have to talk about this in various settings. And obviously many times you have to talk an hour about this, sometimes half an hour. But you will find several opportunities and several places where you have to be able to say my PhD is about. And there goes your elevator pitch. And the introducing yourself and so on. So especially for PhD students and even otherwise just go take a look at this. I've just put a screenshot here. There are several contests for PhD students called two-minute thesis or three-minute thesis where they're supposed to either talk about or create a video or some presentation on their PhD in three minutes. It's a lot of fun and you get to learn about a number of fields in this manner. There is a whole culture. It's called PhD comics. You may have seen it, some of you. So the PhD comic strip also, that group also had advertised for an elevator pitch. And I believe in IIT Bombay last year the research scholars forum was planning to do it. Did it happen? Not yet. So why should you care to make this elevator pitch? The main point is you have only one chance to make a good first impression. And what is meant by a value proposition that was there on an earlier slide is that you have to sum up what is so unique about yourself and your work. You have to make the other person care about your work. You have to excite the other person. And clearly this is one of the key communication skills. That in a short time how do you say something that, so it began in mostly in the business world where people had to sell an idea or a product. So initially in the academic world people were saying things like, oh well you know these are things that's done in industry and in the business world. But the moment you think about the research you have to always be able to sell your research. And by sell I mean you have to get other people excited about your research. Including the lay public because we are using taxpayer money to do our research. So it has importance, it has value in both industry settings as well as academic settings. And your students are going to go into both places. So I'm going to skip over this. So let's do an activity at this point. So I'm going to show text here. Later we'll do some videos. I'm going to show text of two elevator pitches. One example on the left and one on the right. And I'd like you to first again do a voting after you read it on which you think is better. In whatever way you define better. And this time instead of giving out your answers one, two and three here, one and both are equally good. Instead of giving your answers here I'd like you to vote right, put your finger right in front of you. Because at one level I don't want anybody else to see your answers initially and then you can talk and so on. I'll tell you when to put up your hands. It will require a few minutes, maybe 30 seconds of reading. So is the activity here? Just read through it and judge what you think is better. Okay, ready to vote? Okay, one, two, three let's see your vote. The only thing here is you can't abstain. There's no right or wrong answer really for many of these questions. But you have to say something. So this entire row seems to be okay, now people are. Okay, so it looks like a large majority of you are saying two. I saw a few people saying three and I didn't see any one. One, some people said one. Okay, do one thing. Do two things here. Firstly, you can now start talking to your neighbor. And what I'd like you to do, and I'm going to write this down, is why you think whatever you saw one or two, whichever you thought was better, why do you think that's better? What were features in it that made it better? So talk to your neighbor. Firstly check if you and your neighbor had a different answer. There were very few places where I saw discrepancy between neighbors. If there's a discrepancy, resolve it. So let's look like there was some lively discussion here. Let me just hear what you're saying. You can just say one by one and wait till the mic comes to you. Say one point and then we'll give somebody else a chance and the mic might come back to you. So just say one point. Firstly, say which one you thought was better and one point as to why. Second one is better. And point is in first sentence, what is the expertise, what he learned in an expertise form. In second, he says that what he applied that particular knowledge in the college itself. And third one, he's ready to apply it. One by one, let's just pick one point. Your first point was this particular elevator pitch starts with the expertise of the students. So let's hear, why is it so important? What makes this good? Okay, they talk about their expertise. So what? It shows confidence. It's very precise. That's what somebody said. It's very precise and to the point that it's focused. So let's just write a few of these ones. So this is focused. So a good elevator pitch is focused. It is precise. What about the impression? In the very first sentence, the key unique point that this person wanted to apply. Project is a much better word than sell. I was going to say sell, but wanted to project about themselves is there. Okay, so good. Ma'am. According to me, the sequence of information is also important. According to me, second example is the better one. Because in first example, the way he started, he or she started is like graduated from this college. So somebody always graduates from some or the other college. So I'm going to say a couple of more words about this. Everybody has graduated from some college or the other. So it's not something very unique or important. More importantly, this information is always there on the resume or CV of every job applicant. Okay, on the other hand, maybe at some point you want to just let's say the student graduated from some fancy college. And they want to throw it in without making a big deal about yourself. See how this person has slipped it in here. Okay. That they are saying that they're letting the interviewer know that I'm from this college, which information is there, but they're saying what they did there. Okay, let's focus a little bit on the parts of the bottom. Why is this important here? Achievement by the person. So what does so everybody has achievements? Okay, let's go. Okay, so there are two points you're making both are important. First, let's look at the last sentence. This is what the listener cares about because the student is telling the listener, this is what I can provide you. And the evidence that he or she can do it in the next few years is there in the previous sentence. Okay, good. I think this discussion brings out all the key features that are necessary in the elevator pitch. I have a summary slide here and let me just put this up. I think most of your points are here. If not, I'll add a few more. So a good elevator pitch. The vision is one point. The vision of what the person wants to do in the next coming months or years for the organization is clear. You can use the word vision. Usually when we think of vision, we think of something big and broad, but for a person, sure. I think that what I'm going to do, you actually, that is more important than that. That's the last paragraph that he's telling about. So he's having something else. The interior will expect something. Oh, he's going to do something for me. Okay, so taking, yeah. Why should we hire you or how do you fit in our company? These two are common questions. So now with this elevator pitch, it opens up. See, an elevator pitch actually should set the stage and set the tone for further conversation, further discussion. It's really to get the listener interested in what I'm doing. So with the second elevator pitch, the listener wants to ask more. Oh, okay, you've done this tool in Facebook. Tell me more about it. That's where the conversation is going to go. And the moment I'm asked about, tell me what you did for Facebook. I'm in my comfort zone because this is about my project. So I've steered the conversation into, about my strengths, but it's come there because the interviewer wants to know what I can do for them. Okay, so there are all these points. Yeah. Last line. Yes, so actually let's look at this one also. The last line here is very general as you mentioned. So which student does not want to do anything interesting? Okay. And if a student, so it is a good thing. We clearly are looking for, actually the point you make is that we are looking for somebody who wants to use his or her skills and who wants to move to an interesting platform. Definitely we are looking for such people. But saying that I want to use my skills is not going to give that impression. The next question will be, okay, what will you do with your skills? What do you mean by interesting? I don't know. Right. Somewhere, that's another point. Look at the difference between this sentence I've spent last three years in market research. What were you doing in that company? That's the question. You have experience, I agree, but in what? Whereas the second person has said something very similar through three years of market research experience, but specifically in research design modeling and so on. So this is really how to take most of us start from somewhere here because this is really what we want to say. But each sentence is being illustrated with specific examples which are unique to that person in the second example. So it's more of a show rather than telling. First person is saying I want to do something interesting. Second person is showing what is meant by interesting. Okay. One last comment then we'll move on. In the example too, marketing programs generally will not be prepared for non-profit organizations. Okay. So above points really giving is strength, but the second one if he is trying to talk to a job interviewer. So job interviewer, if it is only non-profit organization then it's... So I'm assuming that the company he or she is interviewing for is a non-profit organization, otherwise they wouldn't say that. But generally marketing programs will not be there. We might not, but see again, if a person with analytical marketing background goes to a non-profit organization and says I want to work there, this person is really unique. I mean this has to be valid, this has to be true, okay, to... Okay, one last comment from the back. Actually it's not a comment actually, it says a supplement. That when he is saying that marketing program for non-profit organization, that may include so many things like branding, promotion of the non-profit organizations, their works. So there they can add values. I mean I understood the previous comment that non-profit organizations also need marketing. They need to go get people to support them. Yeah, funding, they need to... To sustain themselves. Marketing is thought of broadly in that sense. It's not about selling any product, but about their image or what they do and so on. Okay, so let's look at these points and then I want you to look back at couple of more examples. So you know one way to do this is look at your own elevator pitches that you wrote in the first scenario. Have you? Just make a quick check about if you have all these points. If not, think about which point you may want to add related to this. Have you explained what you are doing and more importantly why? Do you have some unique thing in your pitch? What is the hook? It's not exactly a long list of criteria, it's sort of a loose checklist. See if you have some of these points. Later, maybe in the homework you can refine it. Does anybody want to share any new point they added? One new point, yes. Do not have enough time, so we should be more direct in answering, right? So I just want to bring to your notice one point. The two examples that you saw, they were almost the same length. World count, it was not exactly the same, the one on the left was 47 words and the one on the right was 51. So it was more but it was nearly the same. So it's not that when you say something but still the second one looked very dense. You got a lot more focused information. Okay, is there any point, any interesting point somebody added? You don't have to, just if you think you added some new point based on this, yeah. Ma'am, one difference of notice is in the two speeches, the second one is started from most recent one. And the people are basically, what recently you are doing, then telling about what you didn't learn before five years back? For the most part, yes. For the most part, okay. You're right, especially you don't want to go chronologically. This is important, we see this a lot with novice students, BTECs who come to interview and even people who come to our PhD program. So if we say, tell me about your background. They say, I went to kindergarten, I was a, you know, my father was in the army, so I went to school in this place. Then I went to college there, they give a chronological view. So it's a good idea to caution students that that is not what people are looking for. And it goes, it ties to your point that it's not what happened 20 years ago or maybe even five years ago. The recent thing is more important. However, if there is something key that was done five years ago and as your experience grows, that might happen. So let's say you're 50 years old and you want to change jobs. And when you were 30, you had a PhD. The job requires our PhD sort of important for the job. Even though it happened decade ago, it's an important thing it needs to come in. All right. Ma'am, I had just one point. One more point they can add is describing one personality using three adjectives. I have inducted a loyal and active like this. He has to describe his personality the last line in one way of writing this thing. So the suggestion here is use first, I'm going to add one more sentence to what you said. It's a good idea. Think of what describes you. Maybe you're industrious, maybe you're a loyal person, maybe you have a lot of energy. First, you have to think a lot, you have to reflect and see which adjective really describes you. But then come up with one example, maybe four words or a phrase that actually shows your loyalty. My friends think I'm loyal because I did this. I have been known to be highly energetic because in the college I did ABCDA, EFG. So illustrating the adjective that you want to describe about yourself through an example is more effective. Ma'am, I had just one point. Ma'am here. In the first example it looks like the student is in search of the job or the organization. But in the second it looks like organization is in search of this kind of person. So that goes back to the value proposition that the person can project and give to the organization. Actually both are true in both cases. The interviewer is also looking for a good person and the student is also looking for a job. Let me show you one more example. Let's not do any, now that we know what is a good elevator pitch we all agree. This has to do with research and especially if you are doing your PhD or if you are guiding students, mentoring students. It's quite useful. So just read the two and we'll do a short discussion here. So this is more detailed than the previous one. Both have details. So simply saying that the elevator pitch must have details is not sufficient because in some way in this one, the first one seems to be a little more detailed than the second one whereas in numbers and all are there. So the detail part by itself doesn't make or break a good elevator pitch. But what I want you to think about is who is the central actor in the first one and in the second one. The second one is easier. Who or what is the central actor? The PhD work and how the person has done the work. The first one is kind of going all over the place in some sense. So while it's important to give acknowledgement, it is very important to give acknowledgement to your guide, to your institute, to the technical RA who has helped. They are not the central people or central actors in the elevator pitch. So the first one, it almost seems like this person is telling her guide's story. Starts with this is what my guide is doing. My guide has this project. My institute has this facility and I'm working in it. It's a very typical thing for novice PhD students to have this mindset. But once the student starts taking ownership of her work, it becomes her work and even though she's working in a larger project with a guide, she could not have done this project without the technical RA's help. So there is due acknowledgement given there. But there are also irrelevant details here. I mean this technical RA went on to do ME. Who cares? Now the fact that she has a background in electrical engineering was important. So she wanted to say that I have a strong background in electrical engineering. Hence I can create teaching interventions for electrical engineering. But here it's being stated. Here that background, the importance of that background is being brought up. So it's not just, it's not a mere play on words. It's also why you want to give certain information. So when she wrote this at some point three or four years ago, I asked her, why are you telling me about this last sentence? Why should somebody care? She said, no, look, I want to tell people I have a doubly background and I come from a strong doubly background. Like, okay, let's put that in. Any other comments? One or two comments about this one? I showed you this because if you're in the research field as opposed to the other one, something like this may be useful. There are a lot of examples. If you look for elevator pitches for research or elevator pitches for engineering students, you'll find a lot of examples. I'll show you one or two later. Other comments, questions? Yes. Make a focus on, I have not completed my EE only or the degree of electrical engineering. It's time to say, I'm using my electrical engineering degree in application or bringing it in application for the use of the or for the betterment of the society. Yeah. So in comparison of first, it may be. Maybe five years later, her first sentence will change. She won't say I have a PhD because it's kind of, no, it's done. She'll talk more about her work. At this point, she needed, this was in a conference. She needed to tell, she was looking for some postdoc positions. She needed to tell people that I am doing my PhD. I'm about to finish my PhD and this is my work. So the PhD part, even though it's something that's there in her CV, it was important for her in the introduction. So another point here is that the elevator pitch evolves. It doesn't stay static. No, as the, it evolves in time and it also depends on the context. Okay. So let's do one example. Here is some students elevator pitch. I'll tell you what to do. So we'll do an activity called think fair share. The main goal is that you need to strengthen this elevator pitch, but we'll do it in phases. In the first phase individually, do you think this elevator point is elevator pitch is strong or weak? Write down one strong and one weak point. Okay, do this. I'll just put all the three phases and you can work on it. I would say about two minutes or so for this. Once you're done with this, pair with your neighbor. So the first two minutes work individually. A pair with your neighbor after that and come up with two ways to help you help the student. This is your student who's come to you. Help your student revise her pitch. And finally we'll do some full class discussion on the main change that we want to advise the student. So about two minutes for the first and five minutes for the second. As soon as you're done writing one strong and one weak point, pair up and start talking. See, this elevator pitch does have some strong points. Somebody asked her, what does it mean? It's not a terrible one. There are some things that the student has done well. So it's good to identify those and then also point out rooms to improve. So now you can start talking with each other. Okay, so let's see if you want to share. I'm sure you have come up with several things to advise your student. List them in some hierarchy, okay, in your mind or on your paper. What is the main thing? What is one interesting main thing? What and not just, oh, she should do this and not that. But try to give her some very specific feedback. So let's see what ideas you have. Okay, yes. Can we make it like this? I am a fourth year undergrad student in environmental science engineering. I did my primary project in the topic of water pollution chemicals. I'm looking for a position that will allow me to do research in your esteemed organization. Okay, let's... It is not needed to put the word use my combination skills. Okay, let's discuss this a little bit, okay. There are some, again, getting the student to say that there are some strong things and some weak things. So it's similar to what you are saying that's here except the last part, right? Last couple of sentences. Use my combination skills should not be there. Okay, so the first two sentences which you seem to have mentioned are similar to what's here. So do people agree that there is something okay, doesn't have to be terrible, but there's something okay about the first sentence. What is good about... Okay, so one change I'm hearing is that the student can shorten it. She's saying the same thing in too many words. So the content that's here can be shortened. The student can say this way. One second, one by one, let's see. I'm an expert in the water pollution and chemical as my final year project is on that. I'm looking for a place where I could prove myself. I'm going to steer the discussion in a slightly different direction. See, let's actually talk about the weak point here. What's the key weak point in this elevator pitch? He's asking from the companies to create an opportunity for his area actually. So he's not supposed to ask in this manner. What is the weak point? Instead like my focus area is this one and I can able to work in this particular this manner. There is a point that he's mentioning that here the student is not... The student seems to be very generic and open and is putting the owners on the company saying give me a job. You have to start. I'm looking for a position. Okay. He should not explain that I am a fourth year graduate. Okay, let's do one thing. Exact format. What should be the starting point? How should be the phrasing and all? Actually, some of it is a matter of personal choice. Let's talk a little bit more about the content in this, not just the style and the format. What is missing here? Yes, please. Madam, the repetition part is the negative part of this because the first two sentences and the last two sentences are saying almost the same thing. The strong point is that she has put forward that she wants to do further research. Okay. And I would suggest that she should be more concise and she should... This is just a way of doing it as my final year project for this environmental sciences and engineering. I'm going to talk about water pollution and chemicals. And there is a lot of scope for productive work in this project. And I'm looking forward for an organization that's going to let me work more on this as it has a lot of scope. Okay, so I'm going to make one suggestion here for you to continue. All these phrases, I'm looking for a position that allows... So try to be a little more specific, like in the examples that you saw earlier. And I'm going to show you one example. I'm not saying what is on the next slide is the best. And you can have quibbles with that. But look at the... It's more about saying things like, I want to use my skills or I want to work for your organization. I want to use my training. More than that, this is a little longer, I agree. But she's put in a lot more content here. There may be problems with this one also, other kinds of problems. But why is the second line, first line is the same? Why is the second line, I found it more interesting. Personally, me, why? I'm interested in it. Sundar is interested in it. I'm not sure about you. It talks about Pawai Lake and IITB, which we face, we see problems of it every single day. So the thing is this person has done some homework about the company. So we're kind of moving to the next stage. That's why I said the previous one is not terrible. But it's good to know what the company is really looking for. She knows, okay, Pawai Lake, water hyacinth is a big problem. I can fit well because my project was on that. That's one thing. One point which was missing in this one, but it was there in the earlier examples, was what specifically the person can do for the organization. So eventually she wants to develop something. So try to get your students to think about what they can take into it. Yes, everybody has great skills. Everybody is interesting. They work hard and all. But how can they translate that for themselves? So another way of saying it is, let's say you have two students. Both have graduated from the same university, same department. Their elevator pitches should look different. This one is too generic. Two students from that department, same year. Both of them will write something very similar. So try to make it the uniqueness aspect is what's missing here. Okay, let's move on a little bit. We can talk about this. Your next session, Dr. Leena Jha also will tell you a little more about how to present yourself in such situations. Like I'm a novice, I'm just a fresh person. And then because my project was related to say particular, I'm from electrical background. So I might be applying for a maintenance job. I might be a design job. So every time I have to develop a new elevator pitch or object. This is a very interesting question. So what the experts recommend here? The part about, let's look at this slide. Let's look at which parts here stay the same and which parts might change when you apply in different contexts. So explain what you do and why is it important. This is about yourself, your uniqueness, your selling point. It won't change drastically because in your 20 years or 40 years there are a few unique things you've done. So there are the parts which are core about yourself may stay the same. On the other hand, what do you want the listener to remember? What can you offer the listener? You're making a bridge between what you have and what they want or what you think they want at this stage. So that may need to change. Am I right? We will need to change them because simply because we are looking for a different respect. We need something more from life, we need something more out of work. And that is why we have to present a different elevator pitch whenever we apply. I think three to four years, five years down the lane, it should change. Not drastically as she said, not drastically. This month if I'm applying for four companies, even that would change. What I would say is that the perspective would change. The core content of what you have done will be the same. But the way, why is it important to the listener? That question you have to change. And now he's applying for a job in a company. And he's applying for a job as a faculty position. Very different. But what she said is, fourth year student applying one for a design job, one for a maintenance job, even there. So that means elevator pitch may change according to the... Good question. So let's, if you have to now come up with some heuristic guidelines. These are loose guidelines about how to create it or how to help your students create it. So the first point is exactly related to your question. Decide what's the purpose of the elevator pitch? Is it to introduce your research? Is it a job interview? Is it to start your own startup consultancy and so on? Once you've decided, you have to, this is hard. You have to decide what is your engaging hope? What's your selling point? And give you one or two examples later. This has to be something... In this example, I think the engaging hope was... I analyzed how chemicals relate to the growth of water hyacinth. Because it's such a big problem here. We all care about a DP and somebody says, Oh, I've solved it or I've worked on it. That's the hope. This is practical but important. Write it. 50 to 200 is the range I've seen. 100 is somewhere in the middle. 3 to 4 sentences. Then practice it, practice it, practice it in front of a mirror, in front of a wall, your friends, your mother, your colleagues, strangers. The more you practice, you'll just get confident. That's the main reason. Again, this time limit is about a minute and this is about a hundred words. So you try to balance those two. This one. What the last one means? Device multi-resolution elevator pitch. So look at this cartoon here. If you can't read it, it says, I've got an elevator pitch, an escalator pitch, and just to be safe, a stairway pitch. What's different in the three? Length, time. So it's good to have a 30-second two-sentence statement. It's good to have a three-minute statement. As a PhD student, you also need a 15-minute talk and a one-hour talk. So it's good to have it, but it'll gradually develop. I mean, when you're advising your students, let them start with one good one and then you make them practice in different situations how it works. For research here are just some tips. I'm just going to state them. You can use them. This is specifically if you're talking about research most science and engineering research are abstract and esoteric and if you're telling, it should be something that if you meet your aunt or grandmother, they should care about it. You should be able to explain it to them. Of course the elevator pitch to your grandmother might be different than the elevator pitch to inner conference. But you have to develop the skill. So the way it works is if you state the problem that needs to be solved or that you're solving. People are always interested in common problems. So see if your problem can be related to real-life scenario or something larger. This doesn't have to be done too much because then it gets fluffy and thin. But topics like power, climate, food, education, disease everybody is interested in one of these topics. It's what as human beings we care about. So if you make five jumps, where do you connect to? This is important not so much in a research conference. In a research conference everybody knows the field. But let's say you're giving a public talk. But still it's a good idea to have some connection especially if you're going cross department. So when I meet my colleague from some other department these are the common areas that we both understand. And if my colleague starts from one of these and then jumps to his research, I'm more likely to listen. So you have to take this with a little bit of caution because I've seen some people who kind of talk very big and large and then you don't know what the substance is. That's the other extreme. But it's good to keep these in mind. Then the last one, I actually found this in some one biology professor. He was advising this. He said, tell something counter-intuitive or unexpected about your research. So his example is do you know that blind people also gesture? I think he was a psychologist studying vision and perception. Do you know that blind people also gesture even when one blind person is talking to another blind person on the phone? So you'll say why does a blind person need to gesture that on a phone? So that's the hook. See if you can connect your research to something of this nature. So this person was doing research on perception and gestures and vision and so on. So it was a good, it was something useful to this. So let me show you a couple of examples. So how, more about how. So Elevator Pitch doesn't have to be only written. You can create a presentation. So what we have our PhD students do is create a screen cast, which is a voice, a narration, plus screen capture. There are a lot of software available. It's there on the next page. I'll come back to the previous page. Many of these, Jing allows you to create five minute pitches free of cost. It's a two minute download. It's very easy to operate, many of these. And the moment you have visuals and pictures as well as voice, there is a personalization. Just create it, tell your students to put it on their mobile phone or some device. Everybody carries them. And you can show your research. 30 second clips, no more than that. All of these have very easy to follow tutorials. Some of them are paid. So Camtasia and Cam Studio, if you want the full version, it's paid. And it's a little costly. Your college may want to purchase it. But to create small, the first two I believe are, the first one I've used. Second one also one of my students has used. So let me show you a couple of examples. Atheritis is a very common disease and progresses with age. But what most people don't realize is that arthritis is more common than heart disease, more common than diabetes and more common than all the cancers put together. We are trying to coax stem cells to regrow the lost cartilage inside osteoarthritic knees. If we are successful, this will be the first time, the first treatment ever, to change the progression of this chronic disease. Very broad, but sometimes you do need very broad pitches. Did you get the first sentence? He says that arthritis is more common than heart disease, diabetes. So that's the hook. When we think of what are the more common diseases, we think heart diseases, sort of hear about it all the time, cancer. But this guy starts by saying, no, it's arthritis. And then you want to know what they have done to address it. So this institute, it's an organization that does work in stem cells. They had a contest where all senior, some 30 senior professors were asked to create elevator pitches for their own labs. And they went and created it. So most of them are like this. It's 30 second clips of the person speaking. So this is one way your students can do something like that. Go take a look, whichever ones you like, you can simply mimic them. The other example, let me tell you what this is. So this was a conference and the person, this is only a screencast and narration. The person who's speaking, first person couple, he's our, he was a PhD student, I mean he's still our PhD student. At this time, this year, I think he was in his second or third year, I don't remember. So he had to give, what we had done in the conference was that every speaker had to create a 30 second clip. And then our team here just put all of it together. We called them teasers. And then we played a 20 minute movie at the beginning of the conference so that the audience got an overview of the entire conference. So this is couple's elevator pitch. And what I want you to pay attention to here is the examples he gives in the beginning. 3D visualization skills are important in the various fields. Here is one, engineering drawing task. Even a top and side view of an object can visualize an object in 3D. Most people imagine this. Some might imagine this. And someone might also imagine this. This means that different people have different visualization skills. And it can be improved using blender. Let me just stop there. So what was his, what was his stock on? Can you get from here? Improving 3D visualization skills in engineering drawing. And how did he do it? Came in the last five seconds. He created, this is a software blender. It's an open source 3D software so he had created some training program with it. That was all he wanted to tell the audience at that point. So for 30 second clips, it has to be at this broad level. It can't be anything more detailed than this. Okay, any questions at this point? So there is one more activity. Do you want to create your own elevator pitch? Are you interested in having some rough outline? Want to start at least? Some yeses, one no and so on. Okay, let's do one thing. Let's work on it for about a short time. And then there is a full blown homework where you can do it later. Why it's good to do it here and when others are there is you will get a lot of ideas. Okay, and feedback about your own pitch. So again let's, you can do this as a think-pair share. And what, you can start with what you had earlier. The first scenario. Pick any one of these, don't pick both. So either you have to introduce your research at a conference. The other attendees are in your broad field but they don't know your specific research subfield. Or you personally are applying for a job at a new college. You don't like this college. Don't tell your principal I said that. But for some reason you know there is a better opening and you want to teach business communication or technical communication. Or something else. So individually write down those hundred words. You can take what you had earlier and you can refine it based on the good features that we discussed. The unique point, the specific details. Writing something which makes the listener care. Then pair with your neighbor and give each other feedback. And if you want one or two samples we can see. Spend a little bit time refining yours. This is, it's a difficult exercise. We made all our students do it. Then my colleague and I realized we had to do our own and it was really painful. But it was a good exercise because each time we have to introduce our department. Our pictures were more like our department pictures. So it's really worth spending ten minutes or so working on this. I have just picked one. It's just one that I liked. We'll do two examples. One is this, one more but you're not allowed to read out your own. You have to, if you like your neighbors you can nominate it and read it. Just look at your neighbors and I'll just randomly choose. We don't have much time, that's why. I'm sure all of you have really good ones. Look at what your neighbor has written if you like that. And not just if you like, you have to say what you like about it. So here is one. Most people who purchase, you listen? Most people who purchase mobile products. Go through online reviews before they purchase it. It is difficult for them to study all reviews as it is time consuming. We have developed an algorithm which gets user specifications and accordingly our system will generate results which gives optimal solution to the end user. So if you don't get the exact, I didn't say it very well either. The interesting context is first stated that people have to go through a lot of reviews. It's time consuming, problem is stated. It's common. Most of us when we are buying a product we have to read 16 reviews. What you want is, you want somebody to give you reviews? That's what they have done which are tailored to you. Something like this. Okay. One more example. Then we can conclude after that. You have to read your neighbors. You can't read your own. Your neighbor has to analyze it and see that, say why they like it. Not just that. Yeah, go ahead please. I'll be reading the speech we did for presenting a research in the conference. Okay. There's one example there. This is from my neighbor here in Patil. The pitch is like this. Facebook and Twitter nowadays need no introduction. More technically, they are the examples of huge data sharing on the cloud. You would not like to like someone to change your tweet or delete your personal communication with your friend. We call it a security loophole. We work on the developing data storage security model which assures the user for safety of his or her data. So I'm assuming that you have developed some code. Some security model which can ensure the security of your tweets which are publicly available. See in all these examples what you will see is that what you've seen is that the initial part is something which most of us can relate to and are interested in. Professor Sundar here mentioned one important point when you were writing it. That the unique, the USB or the uniqueness that you have to write in the research pitch should be more about your research. It's not about you as a person. Whereas when students are going for a job interview, it's a person who's more important because the person is being hired. But academia really has these very odd rules and more than rules it's these cultural guidelines that we all follow. We don't ever say how great I am. But you can say that look this research is exciting because so you speak through your research. So if you're talking about your research, the USB has to be about the research. On the other hand for students who are going for interviews, it can be about themselves as a person etc. So what next is, so when we will do this course again in the online part of the course and then the December workshop when you'll do it in your college. There'll be a home assignment for this session where I just want you to get familiar with it. You don't have to do anything where we ask the participants to basically choose a tool and create a video or a screencast. So if you're interested, go look through these links and download some of the software. If you're interested you can play with it. Conclusion, your pitch is not static. It refines over time. It's good to do video projects. And this is really not the last slide. Nobody asked me questions so I have to ask you questions. That's the way it works. So what were your takeaways from this session? Say one thing. The word elevator pitch. What else? You learnt how to start making your own. How to project yourself. How to remain focused. How to remain focused. How to stay focused, okay. How to make it crisp, okay. Okay. How to be crisp and up to the point. Okay. How to help them create their own elevator pitch. Focus on the benefit. How to impress others. Impress, okay. The goal of the elevator pitch is not necessarily to impress them, but to get them interested in your work. One more. So now I'm taking the discussion in a slightly different point. And this is especially for those who will be teaching this course or who need to teach other people how to teach this course. So you may want to include this as part of your session, maybe compressed one or so. So what are takeaways for you, not just in terms of content, but also in terms of teaching this topic. So what will you, I mean, you see the point of us doing the co-ordinators workshop here, I think Professor Cunnan mentioned it on day one, that it's not just the content, because if it's content, we can just give you links or videos. It's the pedagogy, the learning and the interactivity and all. So is there anything specific that you would like to use from this session? Yeah, not anything vague. You can say something like I'm going to use this activity or I'm going to, you are going to use exercises, okay? What I like is the new concept think, parent, share. Think, share is a very powerful group discussion or classroom discussion to strategy. I will also put a link to, we have given lots of tutorials on how to do think, share for domain related and other subjects. I can put a link, it's a long video. And we also created what's called activity constructors. So if you want to create your own think, share, you can just, it's like a worksheet. You put in your text in it and you are good to go. Some guidelines also on how many minutes for each. And similarly, another strategy which really works in a large classroom, when you want people to both work on their own as well as bring them out in a group discussion is the voting part. You have to have challenging questions. So the first questions were just for me to get to know you. I'm not talking of those. Those help if you want to get to know your students. But something like this one. This question, in this case, I mean, I did see one person somewhere there who had said that one is the correct answer. But if you want to get a debate going about something, sometimes you do want people to explore all angles. Give two pitches which are roughly this at the same level, but both have different strong points and different weak points. Half the people will say half your students will say one, half your students will say two. And that's a great way to go to the next slide, which is what makes a good elevator pitch. So both these classroom techniques you can use in any of your classes. Okay, I think our time is up. So I'll be around for the next 15 minutes or so if you have any other questions. Thank you for your lively participation.