37 hours, 3 Talks, 1 Microphone, 0 Visual Aids

37 Hours, 3 Talks, 1 Microphone, 0 Visual Aids

John Paul Derryberry

It's 6 a.m., and after fueling up with gas, and grabbing a coffee to inject some much needed get-up-and-go energy into my system, I'm off. I have three presentations in three different Iowa cities over the next 37 hours: two for my public speaking and one for my agency starting its community ask leg of fundraising for our expansion projects. First stop is Independence, Iowa to work with their junior and high school students during their mental health awareness week. But every presentation came with the same message ahead of time: what type of screen do you need to set up your presentation. 

My response as always was, nothing needed- it will be just me, a microphone and my stories. There is always a clarifying email to make sure my first answer was, in fact, factual. I always chuckle and say, yes, just consider me old school. But there is actually more depth to the idea of a no-screen presentation. Visual presentations are important; it is how we get most of our information in 2023. This is not an out-of-touch-with-technology guy's attempt to bemoan the use of technology, screens, and power points to convey information. It's an acknowledgment that we have possibly forgotten other tools, that can create other important factors that help us make choices.

So yes, factual information can sway us, but probably a more important sway on our decision-making processes is our emotions. Creating connective tissue between our hearts and heads, our hearts and other people's hearts, and our heads with other people's heads is some of the most powerful ways we can sway people. Seeing other people, even people we disagree with, as folks just like us, is the key to cracking the invisible walls we put up between, conservative and liberal, rich and poor, the religious and the non-religious, the student and the teacher, the leaders vs the front line and that list goes on and on and on. 

Visuals have a way of giving us a gateway to escape the room, to dismiss the point that is being made. I don't want people to have that option. For 90 minutes, I want people to be in an intimate setting, thinking: I do have the same doubts as other humans. I have the same happiness, same experiences at work. I too, had a boss I hated, or I too, nailed it on a work day. See, we often just project out, and say no one has ever been as sad as me, or only that group has a sub-par effort at work. We forget the day we talked down to employees beneath us on the organizational chart. We forget the day we didn't put forth a healthy effort in our relationships. I will forever push the idea that we are more alike than we will ever want to admit. 

How do I know this? Because from junior high school kids, to a professional conference, to a fundraiser, I raced from Independence, Iowa to Coralvilee, Iowa to Mason City and connected with young and old about culture, emotions, dating, parents, failure, and wanting to quit, to wanting to find success and everything in between. No fancy visuals, no extra flashy step program to hook people. Just stories about people being people. And every talk went off without a hitch. Not because I do anything fancy, other than trust that people in a room can connect over life experiences, if we dare to allow it to happen. 

Seven p.m. the following day and I'm spent. I couldn't tell another story if someone offered me a million dollars. That's probably a lie- I would have mustered up the energy. But for all practical purposes I'm spent. Not from the travel, but from the energy created by people in intimate settings discussing the more difficult things about life. Holding all that energy, for all that time, is exhausting. But, trust me, it's a good exhaustion, like I had lived life the way more people should. No screens, no escape from the human experience that makes life the best: interacting. Just a guy trying to make the world a better place through stories, who found confirmation that no visuals, all stories, is the right course of action. We need it now, we will need it in the future. If we want the world to move to being more compassionate, we have to be willing to enter into a space with others and strip away what's in our way.  And sometimes, what's in our way is what we are looking at, because it is stopping us from examining how we feel.