Last week at this time I was presenting at the New York State Volunteer Ambulance And Rescue Association Pulse Check EMS Conference in Suffern, NY. The topic I had proposed and was chosen for was “Telling Our Own Story: Using Social Media To Connect To Our Communities“.
Now I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure what type of crowd I was going to get because I was scheduled to present simultaneously as the New York State Department of Health Director of EMS Lee Burns. I mean really, if you had the choice of listening to the head of the regulatory agency talk about EMS vs. some guy talk about Facebook, who would you choose?
Overall, I like to think it was a pretty good presentation. The crowd was about three times larger than I had expected, and that was both a pleasant surprise and a bit intimidating. When all was said and done I walked away with 3 important lessons to remember if there’s a next time…
- The order if topics can change from submission to presentation – when I presented the summary and outline, it was Christmas week and I was in a trailer in Tennessee. I had already done a rough outline of what I wanted to do, but when I started working on the actual presentation I realized that it was a bit like most other presentations I had been to. I wanted mine to be different, and so in doing that I inadvertently changed the outline. Although I still covered all the points, they weren’t in the order I had originally listed them
- Bringing your own audience can be more intimidating – because this was a local conference, a number of members from my own squad were there and came to see the presentation. At first I was all for this, because I really thought I would end up talking to a room by myself. Once I actually got up there, seeing the familiar faces was almost more unnerving because I felt like I had to deliver something way superior. Most of them had attended either my CEVO lecture or my Crew Chief 101 presentation, which for a small agency was good enough. But this was a conference, so I suddenly felt immense pressure to exceed those familiar and almost routine sessions with all new material in a new setting
- Practice makes perfect – I did practice run throughs during the presentation build, the night before the conference, and the morning of the presentation. This gave me time to make some final edits, fix any transitions that may have slipped by, and most importantly practice my timing. Timing was really my biggest challenge, and in the end I think I would have ended with some question time, but I failed to account for the intro and in depth questions during the presentation. Now that I’ve done it live, I know I need to account for that time as well
Admittedly, presenting really isn’t my forte. I’m nowhere near the level of fantastic presenters like Greg Friese, Rommie Duckworth, and Kelly Grayson. It was an extremely satisfying experience, and I don’t think I’m too terrible at it… otherwise I probably would have gotten some poor reviews (which from what I understand I didn’t) and I probably wouldn’t have had nearly as good a time.
All good observations, Dave. I end up doing multiple run throughs the night before and the morning of. Indeed, I end up adding or deleting slides right up until the end so I’m comfortable. Congrats on the presentation. Rich Huff
One of the hard parts was taking out two slides the night before, only to put them back in the next morning. That somewhat tortured me throughout the rest of the conference, until someone mentioned that one of those two slides was their favorite… which was way more than I expected.
I am, to a large extent, my own worst critic but I’m okay with that!
I would choose you over the State Director!
I am glad you are getting these speaking opportunities. The more you do it the better you will get. Plus you are presenting on a topic that people are really interested in and your perspective is common sense, practical, and knowledgeable.
Well of course you SHOULD choose me over the New York Director, but if it was the Wisconsin Director I would totally understand. Oddly enough, quite a few people said her presentation wasn’t what they thought it would be. So at least in that area, at least I delivered on topic.
It’s definitely a different perspective when your speaking about the subject matter as opposed to blogging about it, and it’s a helpful perspective to have since it seems to attract people who are on the very fringes of the subject and looking to go deeper. It’s that never-ending September effect again.
I’m sorry that I completely missed you up there. I had thought that you were up only the day BEFORE I was.
If I had a dollar for every time I revised a presentation to make it better only to look back and realize that I was starting to move away from my original proposal. Yeesh. Glad that you’re up on stage too Dave!
Lol, I’m sorry I entirely missed YOU! I had hoped to catch your Cardiac Arrest Management session, but alas the forces of evil (the diner down the road’s cook) aligned against me.
The thing that really changed, at least from my perspective, was the work flow best practice… which just happened to clash with the outline I proposed. I think that ultimately, the way I presented it was the right way it should have been presented and the clashing with the outline was just something I decided to accept rather than force upon the content. If I had to pay a dollar to do it, I’d gladly do so.
And yeah… even though I had originally set out not to… I totally used the Socialnomics video.