e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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Speaker Academy #11: Introducing ourselves (workshop begins!)

At six weeks, my granddaughter’s already practicing her confident introductory handshake :-) (Photo: Jon L’Ecuyer. All rights reserved.)

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:

  • If you have an “about” page on your site, or any other description online, link to it in a comment below.
  • If you don’t have one yet, you will. :-) So git to work: draft something in a comment, and we’ll all offer suggestions.

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:

  • The tone can be professional-sounding, academic-sounding, casual, playful, edgy, confrontational – it’s your first impression on people. Be yourself, as you want them to think of you.
  • Start with the single most important thing you want them to know. At first you only have one moment of their attention.
    • It’s no tragedy if they read it and say “Nope”!  You’re not trying to make everyone like you – you’re trying to find a good fit.
  • Then you can flesh it out with more info, if there’s reason to.

Here’s an important tip my dad (VP of Sales at a division of 3M) taught me about resumes:
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Speaker Academy #10: Take off your stupid badge.

Photo with skewed badge, July 2013Don’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!)

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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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