Power to the Patient!
On the e-patients.net blog, I just posted an important update about the OpenNotes project, which is letting patients see what their doctors wrote – online. Look: over a million patients and families are getting access now.
Please click this screen capture (or click here) to go read the post. And ask your doctors and hospitals to get with the program! If you don’t ask, they won’t know you want it.:-)
As this series has progressed and I’ve chatted with some of you, I’ve thought we really ought to get to know each other. So, this post is a “lecture,” and the exercise will be to discuss in the comments. To participate:
Don’t hold back thinking your current status isn’t good enough – that’s why you’re in school! Empowered people act, knowing they may need to learn and adjust.
Some tips on your intro as a conference speaker:
Here’s an important tip my dad (VP of Sales at a division of 3M) taught me about resumes:
[Read more…]
Don’t do this. Just don’t.
Not only do you look dopey in person, you look permanently dopey on video.
This was a pretty good talk, but look. This is the equivalent of having spinach in your teeth and not knowing it. So this will never be a high-value video.
Before you take the stage, take off your stupid badge!
Next in the series: #11: Introducing ourselves (workshop begins!)
In yesterday’s post (Speaker Academy 9), I meant to include a question. Here it is.
The post said you gotta have a sample video on your site so shoppers can know what they’re buying. Well, Speaker Academy cadet Randi Oster does have a video of a speech she gave, but it’s on DVD, and (as far as I know) sites like YouTube and Vimeo don’t accept those files. The sites want file formats like .MP4, with the whole thing in one file, but DVDs consist of multiple files. Randi’s, for instance, has:
VIDEO_TS.VOB 114K
VTS_01_0.BUP 28K
VTS_01_0.IFO 28K
VTS_01_0.VOB 5422K
There must be a way to convert DVD to something YouTube-compatible, but I haven’t found it, at least not free and usable. (I’ve found some horrible ultra-geeky ugly utilities but nothing like what I think we SHOULD have.)
Help?
Edited a day later: This entry has advice but see also related post wondering how to convert DVD to YouTube.
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People ask me constantly how I get gigs – how I approach conference organizers, which events they should approach, to apply as a speaker. I don’t know, because I don’t approach them – I have never had success doing that. (I’m not saying you shouldn’t – I’m just saying I have no answers, because it never worked for me.)
I’ll have more to say about the website in the future but here are the fundamentals.
Why? [Read more…]
So far this series hasn’t looked at specific speaking methods, but it will. This short entry touches on that, and one other point.
The other point is that my approach is not the only way to get there. Anything that works for you is fine with me.
Among patient speakers, the most conspicuous example of not-Dave is the amazing Regina Holliday, who among other things is giving a master class in September at the Stanford Medicine X conference.
Regina’s method’s different from mine, but she brought an essential skill: she’s an accomplished storyteller (which shows up in her blog posts) and had extensive speaking experience in high school. Reviewing a draft of this post, she wrote:
My senior year in high school I qualified for regional competition in Lincoln Douglas debate, domestic extemp, foreign extemp, original oratory, poetry, humorous interp, dramatic interp, monologue, humorous duet and dramatic duet.
Two takeaways:
Other successful speakers: were you trained or mentored? By whom? Or did it just come naturally to you?
Next in the series: #9: Your website, with video