Conference corner: Speaker slide woes

By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS

A few weeks ago, I was honored to have presentation accepted for the annual ACDIS conference in San Antonio. It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to larger audiences. My last round of talks was given to healthcare workers in the state of Kansas on Flu Tour 2007 back when I was the director of the division of health and the state health officer. It was a pretty heady time: Touring the state with an entourage of one (the state epidemiologist) and meeting the fans (local health department staff, two conspiracy theorists, and a local reporter if there wasn’t a 4-H meeting that night).

It was really quite fun, even if sometimes I would understand the dilemma of the rock star who has to look at the paper taped on the floor before yelling out, “Hellooooo insert-name-of-city-here.” (Like concert arenas, all high school auditoriums look the same.) All like concert arenas, all high school auditoriums, look the same. The best part about the tour was all the really great small-town, mom-and-pop food. Who knew there was so much pie out there on the high plains?

(I still have friends in Kansas politics from those days, a couple of whom are actually running for governor. I’ve let it be known that if the job of lieutenant governor involves going to all 105 county fairs and eating stuff, I’m their guy.)

One of the fun things about being the headliner is that the show is all about you. If you haven’t figured it out from these columns so far, I’m a frustrated Borscht Belt tummler. I ramble. I tell stories. I show pictures and cartoons. If there’s words on the slides, it’s only to keep me from going too far off track. Every now and then I’ll slip in a fact or two, but only if you’re paying attention.

(Speaking of cartoons, I’m the only guy I know who actually was in a cartoon. Seriously. https://vimeo.com/114280518)

So, when my presentation got accepted, I’m thinking it’s more of the same. And I’m keeping in mind two vital facts about presentations I learned years ago when I first hit the road as part of my academic duties:

1. An expert is nothing more than a guy from out of town with a box of slides.

Now, we all have Power Points.

2. Spend the first five minutes telling jokes about where you live. That’s most of what they’ll remember and you’ll get a good review.

This came in especially handy when I was doing talks on behalf of the state of Kansas because I could not only show off some great tourist slides but make fun of Oklahoma and Nebraska, which is surprisingly easy to do.

So, that’s how I built my lecture. Lots of pictures of Jacksonville. Cartoons. Plenty of prompts for stories. Some words to keep me on track. And when my talk got accepted, I was happy as a clam, if clams have rich emotional lives.

That was, of course, until the reality hit me. When it came time to submit my final presentation and get it onto the standard ACDIS template, it turns out that I was way behind the times. Nowadays, they want far more text than pictures. Because pictures take bandwidth and all the presentations are electronic, they’re limited in number. When you do have a picture, it needs an attribution. Not so much anymore about where you’re from. (True reviewer quote: “Limit the adoration of Jacksonville to one slide. I love it too. Probably not as much as you.”) And they want signposts and information and facts and things that flow together so that someone who’s not at the conference can follow the talk. What’s this world coming to?

So, I dutifully set about revising my talk, and hopefully the attendees will still find it interesting. However, here’s what I had to take out, and what you’re going to miss:

• A photo of a cat asleep in a bowl of food, representing my lecture’s time slot
• An opportunity to compare famous ED doctors in history, including Dr. Doug Ross, Dr. Wayne Fiscus, and me
• A similar chance to contrast Dr. William Osler, Dr. William Halsted, and Doc Vader
• A picture of Clarks Fish Camp on Julington Creek, featuring the Largest Private Taxidermy Collection in the Nation, the Hall of Fish Plates, and Lilly the Alligator living in a glass pen next to the bar
• The official Emblem of the Republic of Emergistan, a buzzard on a field of red, blue, and green with the motto “Semper a Decem” which means “Always a Ten” (like on the pain scale)
• A photograph of Jackson DeVille, the mascot of our beloved Jaguars and the most heavily fined mascot in NFL history, grabbing at his teal-colored underwear
• A graphic of a snowball rolling down a slope, which I was going to use in an expression of sympathy for hospitalists, who really do have to take everything that rolls downhill
• A picture of the Robot from Lost in Space, the 1960s version

It was probably good for me to learn this new way of doing things; I suspect it’s going be a wild ride adapting to this new era. But, because I’m an old guy, there are certain conventions of those new modern groovy hep-cats that I just can’t adopt.

One such trend is calling anything a journey. Granted, the book definition of a journey is simply a traverse between places, but in use the term has some sort of spiritual or adventurous dimension to it. Long Day's Journey into Night, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Steve Perry.

Another is talking about CDI in the context of your hospital’s mission, vision, and values I feel strongly enough about avoiding these clichés that I will bring a bell into my room and if I am caught using any of these phrases, someone in the audience will have to ring it and shout “Shame! Shame!” And I will greet that person with open arms.

So, I’m redoing my slides now. Researching my opinions. Basing them in fact. More text. More information. Fewer pictures. A single sad cartoon looking vainly for its colleagues. I’m going to be organized, authoritative, and try to impart information. And, if we’re not careful we might actually have some fun before it’s done.

Editor’s note: Rodenberg is the adult physician advisor for CDI at Baptist Health in Jacksonville, Florida. Contact him at howard.rodenberg@bmcjax.com. Advice given is general. Readers should consult professional counsel for specific legal, ethical, clinical, or coding questions. Opinions expressed are that of the author and do not represent HCPro or ACDIS.