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...
6 days 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...
13 days 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...
20 days ago • 2 min read
At my yearly review last week, I was asked when I last went to a conference just to be in the audience. I had to think about it longer than I expected. The honest answer was: not recently. Not really. For the last several years, every conference I've attended has come with a slot on the programme. A talk to prepare. Slides to finish on the plane. That particular low-grade anxiety that sits in your chest from the moment you land until the moment you walk off stage. Which means I haven't just...
25 days ago • 5 min read
I keep seeing adverts for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. There are ships. Storms. Swords. Matt Damon looking as though he has been having an exceptionally difficult commute. But the character I keep thinking about is not Odysseus. It is Telemachus. Played by Tom Holland, Telemachus is the son left behind. His father has gone to war and failed to return. His home is being overrun by men who assume Odysseus is dead. He is young, uncertain, and waiting for someone else to make things right....
27 days ago • 4 min read
You know the poster. A bald eagle glides across a bruised blue sky, wings outstretched above the shadow of a pine forest. Beneath it, in silver capital letters, is a single instruction: DARE TO SOAR There is a quotation underneath, in writing too small to read from any useful distance, about attitude and altitude. The whole thing is surrounded by a heavy black frame. You may have seen it in the corridor of a conference centre. Or on the wall of a manager’s office. Or in a meeting room where...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
I used to hate facial hair.But then it grew on me. That joke only works if you leave a gap. Not a dramatic silence.Not a raised eyebrow, step forward, Netflix-special sort of pause. Just enough space for the audience to catch up. The first line sets them off in one direction.The second line turns the corner. But if you rush from one to the other, the joke collapses before anyone has time to enjoy it. Comedians know this instinctively. They don’t just write punchlines.They leave room for the...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Like him or loathe him, Jimmy Carr understands something many presenters don’t. The brain is a difference detector. For ninety minutes, the room moved at speed. Rapid-fire jokes. Setup. Punchline. Setup. Punchline. The audience barely had time to recover before the next gag arrived. And then, suddenly, he slowed down. He started talking about male loneliness. About suicide. About how men often struggle to ask for help directly because they feel the need to feel useful first. The jokes...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Most presenters don’t realise when they disappear. It usually happens the moment they step behind the lectern. Not their voice. Their presence. Because nothing obvious changes. The slides are still there. The microphone still works. The words still come out. From the audience’s point of view, the talk continues. But something else quietly drops away. The energy.The connection.The sense that this is a person… not just a presentation. And often, it’s not deliberate. It’s instinct. When the room...
2 months ago • 1 min read