What TED Can Teach CME

Most people I know have a favorite TED talk. One that provoked, inspired, moved them. Which raises an interesting question: what percentage of CME presentations, would you guess, move their audiences?

Notice, I didn't say "hold their attention" or "engage them" or "get them to respond to polls". I'm talking about movement, emotional resonance that creates a shift in how they view the topic or in their caring for an idea. I've never seen a post-activity poll that measured this quality directly, but 20 years in the presentation business tells me the answer is less than 10%. Why?

To move an audience, the presenter needs to do three things. First, they need to capture attention. Without focused eyes and ears, nothing else matters. Second, the presenter needs to get the audience to feel the force of her message. Not mere comprehension, but to understand what was so important they had to take 30 or 60 minutes out of their stunningly busy days to hear them. And thirdly, audiences need to connect with the presenter's humanity. If they're going to care about you, they better feel like you care about them.

CME presentations, sans the occasional stellar exceptions, lack all three. And to see why look no further than the slides. Granted, slides are not everything, but they are a pretty honest reflection. CME slides are typically complex which, as we know from cognitive load research, overwhelms and ultimately shuts down learner's attention. CME slides often contain hedged language making it hard to decipher, much less feel the force of the message. And slides are compiled, thrown together in a way the presenter thinks--not in the way the audience needs to see it.

So how can we nudge CME talks in the direction of TED? Slides, again, are not everything, but they are the highest leverage entry point there is. Fix the slides and you can make a boring talk into a moving one, because you remove the things that were blocking the speakers passion, message, and humanity from coming through.

Simple slides that people can process while still attending to the speaker. Bold messaging so the audience can actually agree or disagree with what you have to say. And most importantly, slides that are designed. Ones that look like the presenter cared deeply about this, a precious opportunity to move their colleagues.

Now, I may have lost you a while ago. CME presentations are "technical" presentations, not TED talks, I hear some of you grumbling. And that captures the problem. If you think that a 45-minute session can teach your participants a complicated technical skill, good luck. Your job is to move the audience to care enough about the idea that they dedicate the time necessary to learn it themselves.

Want to take the first step? Fix your slides. It worked for TED. Why not CME?