So, I think it's really important when we're talking about giving presentations, being able to keep you engaged, mostly when it's a webinar, it's so hard and hopefully everybody is like, you know, watching and not on the phones and this is part of our mission here trying to keep you engaged and this is like a lot of the goals that we have of how to give an effective presentation and it's, we can go from very expert talks to what we're doing right now and understanding the basics of an effective presentation is going to give you success. We have to master the art of storytelling. What does that mean? Anything we do, either from technical stuff to very basic things as we're talking right now, we have to be able to tell a story so we can engage. We're giving facts or just going off, you know, talking and repeating things just as Dr. Rush said, it's going to become very boring and the education is going to be minimal because we're just there trying to survive through the presentation. So visual aids are key. You can see how we all are different as we present. You can see our different aspects and backgrounds that's going to help us actually communicate, maybe the same message in different ways and that's the beauty of, you know, having a diverse group and even within our women group. Enhancing the verbal and nonverbal communication skills are also key and it's very difficult as we are on a virtual world now more often than not and engaging you all when I cannot see you is very hard, but when we're in person is very, very easy as you can see people's faces if you feel not too nervous doing that. So let me go here next. If I'm going to talk to you about congenital heart disease, which I know that most of you are structural or like in any other way adult cardiology, as we call it in pediatrics, you'll be very bored to see this slide. So don't do that. That's not going to catch anybody's attention. You have nobody learning about congenital heart disease. What if you show graphics and explain what you're going through, like what the abnormality is. You can give some contrast on the slides and also just write very few words and context that you can give some explanation as you go through. So this to me is more effective than a lot of words and again you don't have to say it all in one presentation. There's more. You can divide your slides and you can give more information with more graphics, mostly if you know that your people that are listening to your presentation have different specialties. Sometimes you're going to go to a med school or even more complex presentations. Having more graphs and videos are going to help more. You can still have the same content in the same amount of slides, but just make it more dynamic. So how do you start? They give you a topic and then you have to develop that. We all have different techniques, but we have to know the audience and we have to consider their interests and how much do they need to know about the topic to start building that and have a structure in your head of what things do you need to communicate and what other things would be nice to communicate and then you can cut the content to make sure that you're not overdoing it, especially if you get 10 minutes, 7 minutes to present. You have to be concise, but the best part of all, tell a story and it's not, you know, as I said before, it's just building the whole context in a way that flows. So, for example, you can have a personal highlight. So you have pictures with your patients or a story or just distract people. So if you add a personal touch, it can be humbling, allows having like the audience engaged, what you're talking about now, what is that about? If you have relevant narratives that allow just a refresher in the presentation, just you have a long talk, very complex stats and I'm going to say complex, but really we know it's boring. Sometimes they're relevant and we all take pictures sometimes of that slide that we can refer to and we never see them again. It's very important to just highlight important topics and then if you're not one to share stories, just add a light slide in between all this just to catch people again into your presentation and then you can continue with what you're talking about. So, when we do these presentations, we're all very busy and we may need to practice and I think the more we practice, the better it is. We know what we're talking about and then you can read through your slides, pick on mistakes and maybe realize I don't need that, like we don't need to say that. So it's very good to just practice, practice, practice, but also use your body language, be able to communicate with good posture, be confident and I think that's something that we'll learn as we go. And we all have different styles and everything, the most important thing is transmitting the message and for all of us, it's going to be very, very different. We don't want that. So, PowerPoint is fantastic, but we don't want everybody done, like, you know, it's horrible to see this. You may be doing it right now and I cannot tell, which is very good. But what if we go to the other extreme and have like these very dynamic PowerPoints that are very difficult to follow. They just keep moving. That's great. And I can tell you for a webinar, which is difficult to see people's reactions as we're talking about, it's easier to be interrupted. You know, you want to, like somebody wants to ask a question or is less personal and less interactive. And I don't even know if people are here right now. In person, you have more interactive, you know, interactions with people. You can change the pace or the tone in case I see people getting bored or the reactions are not the best I could expect. It's easier to know how many people are there or guide the audience through the presentation. And also the way that I can move or stand is going to be more helpful. So, we have to be careful not going to this craziness either. And then realize that virtual right now is what we're doing, but the future is what we're seeing there. This is truly what's happening now. And this is something that we do with in congenital heart disease. We're collaborating and having a real virtual world discussion with this is one of my colleagues in Columbus, Ohio. So, we're talking about a case and we're virtually there interacting with things. Being able to present this and all be in the same immersion world is going to be the future. So, we cannot be able to communicate in the current virtual world. That's going to be even harder when we don't see each other at all. So, having these skills is important. But the most important thing is having the ability to explain very complex topics in an easy way. Then you know that you have reached that level of expertise that allows everyone to understand even the most complicated topics. Because really, we don't need to show off how much we know. Rather, make sure that other people get to the level of understanding mostly in these very complex topics. So, in that level of discussion, I would say that I see presentations go by the stage of our career and we all go through these stages. The first one is when we are in training, right? We need to build that knowledge that we will share. It's a lot of work. We need to make sure that we're making sense. Mostly, we're presenting in front of mentors and people with a lot of experience. Then the next stage is early career. We are expected to have the knowledge or I think we think we should have that knowledge and we don't have the experience. So, we again, go by facts. We have to research. Stage three, we're building that expertise and we already have the knowledge and we have to make sure to keep it up to date. And then we can add the personal experience to the content, saying this is what is out there, but I've had this experience. That feels very good. And the last stage is an expert level where you go by your experience and you have mastered the topic, but then you need to keep your presentation skills and you have to keep people engaged. You cannot just be, you know, this is how I do it and this is how it has to be done or not be up to speed. So, having presentation skills at this level is important to make sure that the expertise is transmitted to the new generations. So, I think getting all these stages together is going to allow us to get a very effective presentation. And remember, you can be brilliant, you can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere. Thank you very much. Thank you. That was a great presentation. Some really, really good points. I think what's particularly interesting is that no matter which stage you're at in your career, it's really important to make sure you keep your presentation skills up.

engaging presentations

virtual setting

storytelling

audience engagement

communication skills