As scientists, we are professional communicators, with a large and often very varied audience. In an increasingly fragmented scientific world, knowing our audience is key to success. We want our publications to be read, understood and cited. We want our grant applications to be funded. We want our outreach to successful. Each endeavour has a different audience and each audience has different demands. But how can we know our audiences? And how can answering this question help us communicate?

With our deliberately provocative title as a foundation, we will construct our town hall debate around the challenges of knowing an audience. We’ll see that it’s not as easy as we may first envisage.

Our experienced panel -comprised of experienced scientists and science communicators- will discuss how we can learn to better understand our audiences, and the benefits that this can bring. The panellists will draw on their own expertise and experiences during the discussion.

We’ll encourage questions and comments from the audience both before and during the discussion, and we’ll round off with a short presentation about ClimateSnack: a community approach to improving writing skills among early career scientists.

For more information about the event and the panellists: www.climatesnack.com/townhall_egu2014