My NEC debut and Public Speaking - a fate worse than death?

I wasn't sure whether to write this in my personal blog or under my RA coach blog.
So it will appear in both. 

  Dental Showcase 2013 - my small part in it.

To be honest I am still a little mentally breathless since returning from the NEC.  I set off from Newbury, for a 2 hour drive, at lunchtime last Wednesday, to have a dry run and set up my presentation audio-visuals on  The RA Medical Services stand F11, Dental Showcase 2013 at the NEC where I had been booked to speak. Not once but eleven times over the three days.
Three times on Thursday and four times each on Friday and Saturday.

As most will know, the NEC is a truly vast arena. The scale of the operation itself within Hall 5 alone is equally dwarfing.

I arrived on site at about 4pm. All around me was organised chaos. Many stands, barely built, most only part built. I take my hats off to the gangs of specialists workers beavering away, building, laying in lighting, cabling and on and on and indeed the stand owners fussing and preening their stands, decorating, laying out equipment, products, information and so on.
I can only imagine many were still there at 2am. Maybe later. Tweaking.

How on earth would all this be ready for opening by mid-morning on Thursday?
Yet it was. Everything looking pristine on Thursday morning. We were on the stand by 9am.

A very impressive and innovative stand I thought too.  Open, accessible, well lit and eye catching.

So I met up with The RA Medical team on Wednesday. A family run business from Yorkshire.
They have been servicing and supplying sedation equipment to me for many years.

As many will know, I have been running full-day, hands-on courses for 8-15 people in small venues, often dental practices, for the last 10 year, specifically focused on my own area of expertise- Inhalation Sedation - a.k.a "R.A."

The mini-lectures

This year for the first time and now that I seemed to have established a good reputation in the dental world (fair enough), the company were prepared to be innovative and designed the stand specifically to give me a platform to speak.

The company were happy for my mini-lectures (20-30 mins) to be patient and practitioner-centred and educational. Naturally anyone wishing to utilise the technique, would need to buy equipment and they are the leading U.K. and Ireland distributors of a number of brand options, as well as having a solid engineering background but none of that was covered in my talks.

This was not about the equipment but how using RA would benefit patients, practitioners and practices.

The re-brand

 

In addition to the one-day course I run with my wife Chris, this year I have been stepping up other speaking activities as well as one to one mentoring and so it seemed a good time to re-brand and my daughter Jen, who is a free-lance graphic designer put together a new A4 brochure for me.
These were delivered hot off the press direct to the stand on Thursday morninig an 2 hours before the show opened and have gone down very well too. Thanks Jen.

 The audio-visual story

To be honest we had some audio-visual issues, despite the close attention of the technicians.
The best laid plans ...

Just one example. I had laboured long hours, sometimes into the night to produce several animated slides to break up the static PowerPoint slides - thereby avoiding , I hoped the dreaded death by ...

I was also determined to finish on a high note and had spent probably 6-10 hours on a single animated slide, synced to a particular music track, so the words and animations co-incided to make a coherent, fun, funky finale. When I have time I might upload that to Youtube!

I was quite excited to show the RA Med. team but when we ran through it, the track sounded muddy.

We played around with the sound deck, so did the a-v technician but the lyrics were never clear.
In the meantime various mic. options were tried. The headset we ordered didn't appear so I was left with a tie-mic. Balancing the volume for this and the music output was tricky too.

Finally someone twigged. The sound engineers had set up for a mono output from my mic. to a single speaker, so the stereo output from my music track was only coming through one channel.
The main vocals being lost on the 2nd channel.
Once the splitter arrived for the 3rd show- all was well. ( pretty much)

Audiences varied

The big risk for all was that few people would pitch up for us. Places were not pre-booked.
The organisers did a god job in promoting my talks but the outcome was in the lap of the gods.

Well numbers did vary. The smallest number was on the first Saturday show at 11.00am.  Then again it takes a good hour once leaving the motorway to queue up  in the traffic, park and make your way to the exhibition hall. Nevertheless the four lovely people who sat through that 8th session were very appreciative.

The next one at 12.30 was a different matter.  Very engaged. This is just one side of the stand.

Sometimes serious and absorbed. The vCPD scanners showed 86 people.

 

Sometimes I kept them amused

 We were packed to the gunnels.  86 people surrounded the stand and some were standing right behind me. Often 2-3 deep, blocking the adjacent isles. What a buzz!

Other shows had 20-40 I believe. I am still awaiting the official count.

I must be honest and say that I loved the experience.

Well the show is over, the team worked very hard to pack-up and load all of their equipment on their van.

I parted company with them to drive south tired but very happy with the outcome.

Today I received a very nice note from Janet Pickles thanking me. " You were magnificent" she said.
Well allowing for a little hyperbole, I think I did a bit better than OK. They were already planning improvements to the stand for 2015 on the assumption that the exercise will be repeated !

My grateful thanks to

1) My wife Chris Charon RDN. She couldn't be with me on this occasion but her tireles work behind the scenes enables me to do this and on our wedding anniversary too.

2)  Jen Charon 

For her brochure production. I'll be uploading this soon.

3) To RA Medical Services

For their invitation and belief in me taking the financial risk of the additional costs incurred in enlarging their stand and kitting it out for my lectures and for making me part of their family for the duration.

4) Chris Barrow, now of 7 connections, 

His inspiration and indeed "permission" to start this journey began about 11-12 years ago in the Dental business School.  I'll be writing more about Chris's influence soon but in the meantime thanks Chris for giving me a few minutes of your time at the show and sharing the importance you now see in practitioners offering sedation services as part of the mix needed to bring new patients to themselves.

5) Ashley Latter, 

Whose tweaking of my presentation skills recently at his one-day course in Bury, I believed helped to oil the wheels to a successful 3 days at the Dental Showcase.

and then ...

I now have two fully booked courses to run in November in London at the Henry Schein showrooms at Marble Arch for which thanks to Patrick Allen.

Another course to be planned for next spring. Date and venue TBA.
Then I am back again at the NEC for The Dentistry Show 2014. speaking to the Dental Nurses forum.

Thanks you for your kind attention.