“San Diego has to be the worst place to attend a medical conference,” I thought several years ago as I walked into another big, brightly-lit but gray, windowless room in another big, gray convention center. Outside it was bright and sunny. A wind blew a gentle, warm breeze. It’s hard for those who live in the upper Midwest to not want to be outdoors every single moment in that weather.
“A psychiatrist can never learn too much about suicide assessment,” I told myself as I took a seat, “Let’s see if Dr. Shea has anything new to say,” Like most people, I get a bit anxious about sitting in the front. But nobody forces me to go to medical conferences. And they are not cheap. Once I take those two facts together, I have to sit in the front. There’s just no other option.
The talk on suicide assessment turned out to be one of the best I have ever attended. I learned a few things that were to improve my skills with practice over the years. But the best part wasn’t the content. It was the way the speaker did the presentation. I still can’t get over it.
There were a few hundred people in the room. And behind Dr. Shawn Christopher Shea, the speaker, there was a large screen for a PowerPoint presentation. But it was never turned on. Instead, a big presentation paper pad stood next to him on an easel. From time to time, he would write some key points in huge letters on the paper. Then he would remove the page and stick it to the wall. He was such an engaging speaker that even that writing seemed unnecessary. I had never seen anything like it at a large conference when so many people were in the audience.
I learned after that talk that Dr. Shea had written two books — one on psychiatric interviewing and the other on suicide assessment. They are my favorite books on those topics. But when I got in the line behind a mic for the Q & A, I had only one question.
“Why didn’t you use PowerPoint for this presentation?” I asked.
I could see that some people in the audience were puzzled that I would ask a question about the form and not the content of the talk. But Dr. Shea didn’t have to think for more than a moment.
“Have you ever seen a telecast of an evangelical pastor giving a sermon in a megachurch, sometimes even in a stadium?” He asked me in return.
I said I had.
“How often do they use PowerPoint?”
“Never!”
“That’s right,” he replied, “You don’t need slides to get your message across and to make it stick. If your message is worth it and you deliver it engagingly, you can do without slides and even without paper pads like I did today.”
A few years later, I was at another conference. This time, I paid even more money to attend an optional pre-conference workshop on doing effective presentations. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a well-known forensic psychiatrist, led the workshop. His course included tips on how to get the most out of PowerPoint. He emphasized that “less is more.” He strongly recommended resisting the impulse to overdo slide-design and anything but straightforward slide transitions.
“Animations are a big no,” he said.
He added a few other tips:
Keep the slides simple.
Never include more than 3-4 lines of text or bullet points on any slide.
Have even less text on any slide that has a graphic of any kind.
Whenever I do a presentation with what I learned on those two separate occasions from Shea and Resnick, I have a lot of fun presenting and am well received.
(Featured image by Irina Logra from Pixabay)
