ABSTRACT
At the annual conference of a professional society, a guest presenter gave an outstanding talk. This scientist spoke for an hour on a hot topic in that profession. Unlike most other presenters at this conference, he was a dynamic speaker. He grabbed the audience’s attention right from the beginning by telling a funny personal story of his blunders in his early career. He used video clips to show exciting new discoveries that were happening at his laboratory. Everyone in attendance was impressed! In the audience was the president of a local chapter of the society. She figured that members of her chapter would be interested to learn more about this topic and its application in their professional practice, so she invited the scientist to deliver a training course at the chapter’s next meeting. At that meeting six months later, the scientist presented a four-hour training course. He was as engaging as before, but the impression was that he gave four presentations during the four hours. The materials were disorganized and disjointed. His jokes and video clips were entertaining; however, there was little audience interaction as he spoke almost nonstop. At the end of the day, attendees felt that they had watched a good performance but learned little.
