Reputation Labs: technical storytelling
Reputation Lab: Explain your technology to the people who buy it, fund it and back it
Make the complex clear. Make the brilliant visible.
You've built technology that works. But if the people who buy it, fund it and back it can't understand what it does and why it matters, it might as well not exist. In defence and security, that means military users, policymakers, investors and prime programme managers, and each of them reads a pitch differently.
This is the Lab where you learn to translate.
What you'll work on
You'll bring one real product, service or technology from your own organisation and build the story around it, moving from specification to a narrative that lands with people who don't share your technical background. You'll test it in the room, adapt it for each audience that matters to you, and get direct expert input on your hardest challenge. You'll leave with a messaging framework you can put to work on Monday morning.
How it works
Briefing: Why good technology gets lost in translation, with case studies from defence and security of what works and what doesn't. Frameworks for translating complexity into clarity, without dumbing it down.
Discovery: You work on your own narrative. Experts help you find the story inside the specification, then you pressure-test it against the room.
Application: Adapt your narrative for military users, policymakers, investors and primes. Build a messaging framework that flexes across contexts, and a guide that keeps your whole organisation telling the same story.
The Clinic: Your hardest translation challenge, one at a time, with direct expert input and peer perspectives.
Lab Report: Your tested narrative, your messaging framework, your action plan for rolling it out.
What you leave with
- A tested narrative for one product, service or technology
- A full messaging framework, with your narrative adapted for four audiences
- A team communication guide for consistent messaging across your organisation
- Direct expert input on your hardest translation challenge
- Peer and expert feedback throughout the day
- Lab kit: storytelling frameworks, templates and worked examples
- Lab check-in call (group Q&A, two weeks after the Lab)
- Working lunch and networking
- 10 CIPR CPD points
Who it's for
Communications leads, marketing managers, BD directors and CEOs in technology companies: anyone who has to explain what their organisation makes to people who don't share their technical background. Built for defence and security, and equally relevant for MOD communicators explaining what the military is fielding, and why, to public and political audiences.
Need help getting it signed off? Let us know and we can help you build your business case.
Who's training you?
Helena Holden, Operations Director & Senior Advisor
Before Canny, Helena was Campaign Manager in the Army Communications Branch. As its Innovation lead, she explained why Army modernisation mattered, from writing the strategy through to planning the products that carried it. Her Innovation Campaign earned her Army Communicator of the Year in 2022 and a commendation from the Deputy Chief of the General Staff.
Working on Army Warfighting Experiment, DSEI and Defence Cyber Marvel gave her a close view of how the MOD and industry work together. She gets to grips quickly with new technology and what it will do in the field. At Canny, she builds the processes that get compelling work out on time. Helena also launched Canny's She's the Expert programme, which helps women in STEM be heard in rooms where they are often still the minority.
Lindsay Compton, Founder & CEO
Lindsay helps engineers and scientists explain their technology to the people who buy it, fund it and back it. She studied maths and started in a technical role. She then spent over a decade in industry, including Roke, BAE Systems and AirTanker, among others, so she knows what a technical brief looks like from the inside.
She founded Canny in 2019 out of a simple frustration: too much good technology never reaches the front line, because the people who could have backed it didn't see its full potential. Her Executive MBA research at Warwick Business School found that defence innovation is held back less by technology than by translation. That is the problem this Lab exists to fix.
Lindsay founded Reputation Masterclass, the annual gathering for people who communicate defence and security. She hosts Canny Chats, where the customers, funders and editors Canny's clients want to reach explain what they need to hear. She sits on the Make UK Defence advisory board, and holds a BSc in Business Statistics and a CIPR diploma in crisis communications.
About the organisers
Reputation Labs are run by Canny Comms. We help engineers and scientists explain their technology to the people who buy it, fund it and back it. Our team includes scientists, engineers and former operators, so we understand both the technology and the people it is for.
Location
Porton Science Park, SP4 0DQ