I believe that when trying to convey the importance of your work to a more general audience one of the most important things to be wary of is the use of technical jargon. By making the choice to use jargon instead of explaining what the terms mean you may leave many listeners in the dark as to what it exactly is you are talking about. The potential for the audience to have any interest in the research decreases markedly when they cannot understand what you are saying. Another important strategy is to make sure you keep your description succinct. By getting right to the point you decrease the chance that you lose the audience’s attention with the addition of less important details or methodology that isn’t integral to understanding the core purpose of the research.
The most obvious audience outside of my own professional audience that I will have to interact with when pursuing my professional goals will be the general public. It is my hope to have a future career in conservation and land management. I could see part of my career including environmental education and if that is the case I will have to be able to effectively explain the conservation techniques used as well as informing people on the dangers of invasive species, etc. As a conservationist I could also see myself having to interact with the business world. This would most likely come about if individuals were planning to build on areas that were either protected land or just poor areas to build on such as wetlands. It would be my job to explain to them why this would be a poor decision to build and/or legally why they could not build on those lands.