e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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Speaker Academy 9b: How do you convert DVD to YouTube??

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?

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Speaker Academy #9: Your website, with video

Screen grab of NeHC talk on my site
The first video of a talk I gave (click to visit on my site)

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.)

100% of my marketing has been:

  • this website, plus
  • word-of-mouth testimonials:
    “This guy was good. Hire him.”

I’ll have more to say about the website in the future but here are the fundamentals.

You need a website, or at least a blog, or at least a web page somewhere.

Why? [Read more…]

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Speaker Academy #8: My way’s not the only way, but speaking skills matter.

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 Medicine-X graphic

Speaking skills count

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:

  • Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t be who you are. If something works for you, good!
  • If you haven’t had training or mentoring, see if you can get some, to develop yourself.
    • As I said yesterday, I had to attend forty events before I got paid a cent – let’s see if we can shorten that! The point is that no matter how “right” your message is, you’re responsible for delivering it effectively.

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

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Speaker Academy #7: “Building a career as a public patient” (March 2011)

This is the latest in the Speaker Academy series, which started with this post seven weeks ago. It’s been much delayed by family and summer – all good! Before I resume here’s a blast from the past. Turns out I tried to do something similar back then.

I recently rediscovered this on my original blog, “The New Life of e-Patient Dave,” dated March 9, 2011. It had been 18 months since I’d had a full-time job, a year since I’d had even a part-time paycheck, and ten months since my first paid speaking engagement (May 2010 at the ICSI/IHI Colloquium).

The Past Events section of my Schedule page shows how many events I attended and spoke at, unpaid, before I started getting paid. That’s because back then hardly anyone saw value in a patient voice; in those days it was considered a favor to a patient to even listen to one. Some paid for travel costs, but that’s all. I’d been to forty events without a penny of pay.

Today things are different but we have much work to do. That’s a large part of the cause of this series.

This post mentions that we need a Patient Speakers Bureau. The website SpeakerLink is a start but it’s very young and it’s just a place for listings – it’s not a speaker’s bureau.
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“Building a career as a public patient” (March 2011)

Two years ago, when I was just starting to build a career in public speaking, I was constantly stymied by the fact that nobody wanted to pay for patients to speak – and, at least as importantly, if a conference organizerdid want a patient speaker, they had nowhere to turn. I posted A Call for a Patients Speakers Bureau. Excerpt:

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Cheeseburger in Paradise … Lost

Parrothead specimen. Photo: ConchTV.com

Regular readers know that in May, just before giving a dinner speech, I learned that my younger brother Steve had died that day. I blogged about how I’d hardly known him, and my sister Suede (much closer to his age) replied about what a loss that was. Lots of you commented, here and on Facebook and email.

Separately, last week I posted that after years of wanting to be a Parrothead, I’m finally going to my first Jimmy Buffett concert Tuesday night.  I blogged about wanting to learn everything I could about Parrothead culture.

Suede wrote again – and guess who was a bigtime Parrothead:

Photo of him
Steve

You will have a blast. Too bad stevo isn’t around…he was a huge, huge buffett fan and knew every single piece of exactly what came with it. … he loved having all the back story and history on everything that got his attention, researched that tirelessly, then loved to tell all of it to anyone willing to listen. He knew all there is to know about jimmy buffett, I’m pretty sure … have a blast.

What do we lose when we don’t speak our wants to our families? And when we don’t listen to them? One of Buffett’s biggest songs is “Cheeseburger in Paradise” – and I thought, “Paradise Lost.” What I’d longed for (in silence) was under my nose, and now it’s gone.

Well Stevo, here’s to you – here’s to the tailgating we never shared. I’ll make it a good one and think of the elbows we never bent.

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Partnering WITH Patients: the IOM gets it right! (And I have a suggestion.)

IOM logoI often compare the “listen to patients” movement to other social movements from my delightfully long life. :-) One of the folk songs of my adolescent years was Bob Dylan’s “The times, they are a-changin’.”

And so they are.

Last fall the Institute of Medicine – the pinnacle of academic medicine – published a major report, Best Care at Lower Cost, which I’ve mentioned here repeatedly. Assembled by an absolutely blue-ribbon team, it has many quotable items, but my favorites is this: (Page S-11, page 34 of the PDF)

Patients Included badgePatient-Clinician Partnerships

Engaged, empowered patients – a learning health care system is anchored in patient needs and perspectives and promotes the inclusion of patients, families, and other caregivers as vital members of the continuously learning care team.

Read that carefully. A lot of people who work in medicine don’t yet know about this report, and many who do haven’t yet had it sink in. A perfect example is Medicare, with their well-meaning paternalistic project “Partnership for Patients.” Note: it’s a partnership for patients, which is not something you’d say if you thought of patients as someone who’s on your team.

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