One idea a week to help you teach and present with more clarity, confidence, and calm. No fluff. No scripts. Just practical tools that land.
No slides. No problem.
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We spend so much time making things look polished - obsessing over slides, animations, transitions. But sometimes, clarity comes from stripping things away. 💡 ONE IDEA WELLWhen the projector failed, everything worked better. I was mid-way through an ALS course, ready to deliver the “Cardiac Arrest in Special Circumstances” lecture. I’d done it many times. The generic slide deck was burned into my brain - blue background, yellow Comic Sans, and all. But then the slide projector failed. No visuals. No bullet points. No fallback. So I just… talked. I told stories. I leaned on experience. I brought the nuances to life - the little things that don’t fit neatly on a slide but do stick in people’s memories. And it flowed. When the tech was stripped away, the connection came through. The session landed more deeply than any previous one. It taught me something: sometimes the best slides are the ones that never show up. 🧰 LESS MESS, MORE MESSAGEHere’s a challenge: If the answer is no, try this:
🧭 ASK YOURSELF THISIf your slides disappeared, would your audience still understand the key takeaways? |
GIVE TALKS PEOPLE ACTUALLY REMEMBER.
One idea a week to help you teach and present with more clarity, confidence, and calm. No fluff. No scripts. Just practical tools that land.
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...
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...
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...