A note for anyone who has been watching the online discussion about whether “influencers” should be speaking at veterinary conferences
There were some interesting grumbles in the online world this week about whether online influencers should be delivering continuing education (CE) lectures at veterinary conferences. The basic premise is that people with large online followings are now presenting at conferences, and maybe that’s not good for the quality of education veterinary professionals are receiving. After all, dancing on TikTok doesn’t really qualify someone to teach others cardiology or even exam room communication skills (unless that communication is done in the universal language: dance). Is it possible that we are headed to a place where the overall quality of available education is going to be reduced by these popular online people delivering education?
I have to say, I do question a bit if there is an actual problem occurring here. Are people doing viral instagram trends in lecture halls instead of delivering the content they were RACE approved for? Is there a specific example that can be pointed to where a very popular person packed an auditorium and then gave categorically bad advice? Are there people whose entire expertise is makeup tutorials teaching complex surgeries? Given that there are literally free CE webinars available every single day online, is anyone really being deprived of quality education due to the selection of an influencer as a conference presenter? How many actual “veterinary influencers” are there, anyway?
Putting those questions aside, there are two points I’d like to make for those veterinary professionals who have large online followings (whether they are on TikTok or somewhere else). Here goes:
- The paths of the past are obsolete.
Ten years ago, someone told me “The next Oprah Winfrey won’t come from TV. They’ll come from YouTube.” At the time, that blew my mind. All of the top entertainment talent I had ever known had come from three places: radio, tv, and movies. The idea that there would be a larger-than-life superstar who didn’t use any of those platforms was simply a tough concept to grasp back then. It’s obviously not anymore.
I got my start speaking in my first year of practice. A round table discussion on student debt was happening at a big conference and I went to it. During the session, I said one or two things and when I was leaving a man I didn’t know gave me his business card and asked me to call him. He was the editor for what was then known as DVM Newsmagazine (now DVM360). When I called him, he said he was looking for some fresh voices in the magazine and asked me if I wanted to try writing a column.
That was my big break. I bumped into a stranger, wrote a couple of articles, and then got invited to be on a panel at a conference because of something I’d written. From there, I got asked to speak and then speak again and so on. My understanding is that this was quite common in the old school. The path to delivering continuing education was through writing.
Well, people don’t seem to read anymore (present company excluded, of course). Magazines are all but dead. Blogs are ancient history to popular culture. Book publishers are shriveling and putting out fewer books than ever before. Relatedly, broadcast and cable television have had substantial declines in viewership (especially with younger demographics) over the last 10-20 years. Radio listenership is also declining. The mode of mass communication today is in self-produced video; specifically short video that works on social media.
I’m not making the point that people who have something to say are now choosing new mediums to do it. I’m saying that the traditional mediums aren’t even viable pathways to reach people the way that they used to be. When we look for the voices of the future in our profession, it simply doesn’t make sense to write people off because they are using the most popular and effective mediums for reaching people that are available.
- Education is about two things.
Education is about information and resonance. Information is the educational material that someone delivers. It’s the take-home point that people will (hopefully) use when they get home. Resonance is how that information strikes the learner. It is the part of education that makes people think “Wow! This is for me! I needed to hear this!” If you’ve ever felt like a teacher was talking directly to you and your experience, it’s because that teacher was delivering a message that resonated. Without resonance, education is simply people reading bullet-points of information to an audience.
Good educators need both quality information to share and an ability to resonate so that people want to listen. I have seen educators who are brilliant and have incredible information to share but put the room immediately to sleep, and I’ve seen wildly charismatic teachers that didn’t know what they were talking about. Mostly though, I see people who have a mixture of these two attributes.
When we consider inviting a successful influencer to deliver CE, we only know one thing about them: they have in some way figured out how to resonate with people. We have no idea if they will deliver good information. But here’s the thing, we never know if anyone will deliver good information until we give them a chance to do it.
If the goal of conferences is to find people who have good information to share and who resonate with the audience, starting with someone who has a track record of resonating doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
So what do we do when we see influencers on the program?
The simple answer is to treat them like any other presenter. We should consider listening to what they have to say rather than judging them based on the fact that they have been labeled as an “influencer.” We should always question the source and quality of the information we are being given. We should expect first-rate information from the conferences we attend and we should be clear with our feedback to those conferences if we aren’t getting it. I don’t think influencers should get (or are getting) a pass in any of these regards.
In the end, the old guard (myself included) needs to recognize that the world is changing. How people share ideas and what is required to get peoples’ attention is very different than it used to be. It’s not the way I personally wish it was (BRING BACK BLOGS!) but it is the reality of our day. There will always be people saying things that we don’t like, and it’s fine to decide not to support those people. However, we shouldn’t take an immediate negative view on anyone based solely on the fact that they have been successful in modern communication.
Some people are going to be excellent educators but struggle with social media. Others will be excellent at social media but struggle with teaching. Additionally, some educators will be able to use their skills to create great social media content, and some influencers will be able to use their skills to create great educational content. I think the future of veterinary education is bright, and I hope to see people in all of these categories succeeding.
