There's a slide we've all sat through. A table lifted straight from the paper, axis labels too small to read from row three, a red box drawn around the number the presenter actually wants you to notice. What's in the box? They say the same thing every time. You don't need to read all this, just look at the red box. Except you try anyway. You can't not. Your eyes go to the numbers while your ears try to keep pace with the sentence being spoken over them. You manage this for about four seconds,...
4 days ago • 2 min read
The paramedic on the screen has a glow. Not sweat. Not stage light. Something under the skin, orange-red, like a Ready Brek advert built by someone with better software than Weetabix ever had. The speaker is talking about cognitive overload during resuscitation. The flood of information a clinician has to filter in the worst four minutes of someone's life. Every slide behind them is doing the opposite of what the words are asking for. I lean forward. Not because I'm gripped. Because I want to...
11 days ago • 3 min read
The speaker pack was cheerful. Dates, timings, AV specs. And then one line I haven't been able to put down: "You'll need a theme song to walk out to — we can help with that." A theme song. Like a boxer. Like a wrestler bursting through smoke and pyrotechnics. I'm going to be standing on that stage talking about the death of my daughter. What the hell would I choose? 💡 ONE IDEA WELL I started the way anyone would. I scrolled through songs I love, auditioning them for a job I couldn't describe....
18 days ago • 3 min read
Somewhere in your camera roll, there's a photo of a slide you are never going to look at again. You took it in a conference hall, half-following a talk by someone who clearly knew everything about their subject. The slide went up. Your brain buffered. So you did what we all do. You took the photo. You told yourself "Later". You moved on. Later never comes. 💡 ONE IDEA WELL The speaker knows more about their subject than anyone in the room. Probably more than everyone in the room combined....
25 days ago • 2 min read
There is a particular kind of speaker who does everything right. They move with purpose. Their hands are expressive but controlled. Their voice is warm, their slides are clean, their timing is on point. They have clearly prepared. They are, by every measurable standard, excellent. And something in the room doesn't quite feel right. You can't point to what's missing. There are no filler words to fix, no awkward pauses to smooth over, no slides to simplify. The technique is sound. But somewhere...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
I was today years old when I realised my daughter doesn't see the world the same way I do. My youngest is nine. She loves wolves and dragons, and for some reason, her fourth favourite animal is a worm. She also loves graphic novels. Her mum noticed she always preferred them to regular books and asked her why. She said it was easier to see the characters that way. It turns out she has aphantasia. If I ask her to picture a camel in a pink tutu, she doesn't see a camel in a pink tutu. She sees...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
There is a right way to make a cream tea. There are, in fact, two of them, and they live forty minutes apart. In Devon, you split the scone, spread the cream, then add the jam. In Cornwall, the jam goes first. Both counties are completely certain. Neither has any doubts. I spent two weeks in the West Country recently and ate the wrong cream tea twice. This is not a piece about cream teas. 💡 ONE IDEA WELL Most medical presentations start the same way. Title slide. Speaker's name and...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Rusty put his hands on my shoulders before he asked. We were in the middle of the auditorium, the session just finished, people filing past us towards the doors. He leaned forward from the row behind, hands on my shoulders, and asked if he could give me some feedback. I said yes. People usually do, then immediately wish they hadn't. "It might not be neuro-inclusive," he said. He meant the stage. Every session at DFTB, since the very first one, we've had all three speakers and the chair sit up...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Ten years ago this week, I flew 17,000 kilometres to attend a medical conference in Dublin. I am not someone who loves large crowds. Which is a little ironic because I have spent the last decade co-organising a paediatric conference that deliberately fills a room with them. I also arrived in Dublin with a pocket full of stickers and a sheet of temporary tattoos, because my colleagues and I were trying to advertise the very first conference for a small paediatric education website we had built...
2 months ago • 3 min read
The room was full of ear, nose and throat surgeons. Not medical students. Not trainees finding their feet. Paediatric ENT specialists: people who had spent careers peering into small ears and whipping out obstinate tonsils. And I was about to tell them things about paediatric ENT. I felt it when I saw my name on the programme. Again, when I walked into the room. Again, when I stepped onto the stage. That specific, stomach-tightening variety of doubt that asks: what the hell am I doing here? I...
2 months ago • 2 min read