The Makings of a Good RRNW Presentation

The Makings of a Good RRNW Presentation

By Board Member, Nick Cook

This year I am serving as symposium coordinator on the RRNW board and am already getting excited for RRNW 2026! As our restoration in-water work window beckons, start thinking about your amazing work and how it might benefit our community to hear about it! 

First step is to decide how your information would best present – is it a poster, abstract, or organizing a whole session? Need help?

Below are some best practice tips based on the abstracts we receive:

  1. Remember our ranking criteria that relate to content and use those words to explain how your presentation is awesome (relevance to river restoration, innovation and originality, impacts and applications). In short, how does your work contribute to the science and practice of restoration? 
  2. Figure out how to say what you’re saying with the fewest words possible. If a sentence is three lines long – can you say it in one? State it in simple terms for clarity, then string those ideas together in a sequence that tells your story to maximize coherence! Google “transition words” to get a list of great phrases for going from one idea to another! 
  3. Don’t forget about the community! Some projects don’t necessarily have a large community component and that’s ok. If you DO have that component, make sure to talk about it! 
  4. Think about your structure. State what you did, how you did it, then what we can all learn from it – the best abstracts bring learning and understanding that benefits our whole community! Don’t spend too many of your valuable words describing the location.

To know where we’re going you have to know where we’ve been! Check out past symposia content to see where you stand along the evolution of our practice in the context of a history of amazing people! https://www.rrnw.org/past-symposia/