From Science Made Cool: On her blog, anatomist Diane Kelly explores her thought process as she prepares to give a serious talk about science — in 12 minutes. The key? Careful editing and a good story. From the piece:

Classes and department seminars usually take about 45 minutes. The TEDMED limit? 12 minutes. Obviously, as Carl Zimmer pointed out in a recent Download the Universe post, that’s not enough time to craft an extended argument. When your audience doesn’t have any prior experience with your subject, 12 minutes is barely enough time to introduce it. And unlike a class, where you’d get the same audience 3 times a week, you have only one shot to get your point across. So when I planned my talk, I had to pick exactly one result from my research and build the talk around it. No graphs, no statistics, just the story leading up to that result and the reason it was meaningful.

Read the whole post: “Your Humble Correspondent speaks at TEDMED” >>

Watch Diane’s Kelly’s TEDTalk, “What We Didn’t Know About Penis Anatomy” >>