For most of the last 25 summers, I have volunteered as a tour guide in the historic district of Philadelphia as part of the Independence Historical Trust’s Twilight Tour program. I started doing it in my much younger days as a way to get out and do something different upon my move back East following the fizzling out of my newspaper career. While I’m not as introverted as Derek (or at least, I wasn’t back then), being in the spotlight isn’t necessarily something that comes naturally to me, so leading these historical tours has been a good way to do something that makes me uncomfortable. Yes, there are still times when I’m walking to the start of the tour and quietly wishing, “Please don’t let anyone show up tonight so I can just go home without having to talk to anyone,” but yet, once I get going, I’m usually OK.
Over the years, I have developed a number of ways to connect with a fairly diverse audience. Many weeks, the audience will include foreigners who know nothing about the founding of our country (sadly, many Americans fall into this boat too), kids who are being dragged along by mom and dad, visitors who are only there because they have an hour to kill and the buildings are all closed for the day, and everything in between. I’ve managed to strike up conversations with all kinds of interesting people from interesting places, and can confidently say my life would be very, very different if I hadn’t taken up the challenge of being a tour guide in the first place (it’s where I met my wife – not the “Meet Cute” story you hear every day).
We’re a little more than halfway through the current touring season. The tours run every night from mid-May through the middle of September – I will typically do one tour a week. By now, I have my script down pretty cold. Year after year, I walk the same route through the park, tell a lot of the same stories, and rely on a lot of the same jokes (“I would tell you about all that the state of New Jersey contributed to the history of our great nation… but I wouldn’t want to waste 30 seconds of your time” works week after week, year after year) (note from Derek: I laughed.) I’ll throw in a few new tidbits that I’ve learned each year just to keep myself engaged, but I would bet 75% of the material I share today is the same material I started with 25 years ago. History is history after all – people, places, and dates don’t change.
After doing these tours for so long, you’d think that every week would be more or less the same, but that is absolutely not true. Every group that comes along with me has a different vibe. Sometimes, things come easily – I get into a good rhythm with my storytelling, I know the answers to the questions people ask, and I can see on the faces of my audience that they are paying attention and seem interested in what I am saying (this is the best feeling of all). But then there are the weeks when I lose people, either because it’s too hot, they are too tired, or I am just boring them to death (this is the worst feeling of all).
Let me briefly illustrate.
THE BAD: I had one tour in early June that was perhaps my worst in a decade. There was only one woman who showed up – she was a librarian from Puerto Rico who didn’t speak or understand much English (and she was wearing a mask, so I could barely hear what she was trying to say). Since my Spanish petered out in high school, I was stuck trying my best to share information with her in English that she may or may not have understood, about a topic she may or may not have cared anything about. I could tell about 10 minutes in that she wanted to leave, but she probably felt bad because no one else had shown up for the evening. So, we both persevered as we walked through the park for an hour. I did my best to keep up appearances, but I skipped certain anecdotes and probably got some names and dates wrong because I just wanted to be done with it. I have actually given some really good tours to group of 1 or 2 people over the years — this happens maybe once or twice each summer – but this one was just awful. I was admittedly a bit dejected afterward.
THE GOOD: Let’s contrast this with last week’s tour, where amongst about a dozen or so people on the tour was a family from Los Angeles. They were on their way home from a 6-week whirlwind trip throughout Asia and Europe and had taken an Uber into Philadelphia during a 5-hour layover because they wanted to “do something besides just sit in the airport.” Well, mom and dad wanted to do something. Their 10-year-old daughter looked exhausted and was totally disinterested at the start of the tour. I usually don’t engage much with family members who seem like they are being dragged along, but since it wasn’t a large tour group, I made an effort early on to connect with this girl. I don’t even remember how it started – I asked her some question about someone’s name and she guessed with clear disinterest, “John.” Well, the answer wasn’t John. But wouldn’t you know, there was someone named John at my next stop that I talked about (hatmaker John Thompson), and then another John right around the corner (Commodore John Barry), and then another (Colonel John Nixon), and then another (John Todd), and another (John Adams). Every time I came to a story about one of these men, I paused to let this girl tell everyone what their first name absolutely, positively had to be. She seemed mildly amused the first time this happened, but then she started to get excited. By the second or third “John” story, I had managed to hook this girl who only wanted to go home 20 minutes ago in a completely unplanned and unrehearsed manner. I eventually ran out of Johns to talk about, but the whole group had a good laugh when I cued up my comedy partner near the end of the tour and gave her the Family Feud buzzer when, alas, my story was about Bishop William White. When the tour was over, she came up and shook my hand before hopping into an Uber to head back to the airport. “That was fun,” she said. It’s one of my favorite compliments I’ve ever had.
In the CME world, we are all educators. If you’ve been in this field for any length of time, you’ve seen faculty who are able to make connections with their audience and those who simply fall flat. The materials undoubtedly matter, but you can give two faculty an identical slide deck with the same data and see very different results. Heck, I have seen the very same faculty with the very same educational materials give presentations on consecutive evenings and witness wildly different levels of interest. Sometimes, you just get an audience of “librarians from Puerto Rico” who are only there for the free food or because they need the credits. They are impossible to engage. Sometimes, you get people who really, truly want to learn and who come with lots of really good questions. They are easy to engage. But then sometimes you get those people who are there after a long day at work and need that hook to bring them into the education. If you can find faculty who are able to reel those sorts of people in, those are the ones who you want to invite back again.
A CMEpalooza side note: On my historic tours, my unique schtick is that I ask trivia questions and give away money for the correct answers. Because Derek and I also like trivia and giving away money, we debuted CMEpalooza Trivia night last September during the Alliance Industry Summit (AIS). Since the first year was so much fun, we were invited by the AIS powers-that-be to bring it back in 2025. We’re happy to announce that Year 2 of CMEpalooza Trivia Night will be happening from 6-7:30 pm on Tuesday, Sept. 9, at the Hilton at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia. There will be trivia (some CME related, some not), some prizes ($500 up for grabs), and perhaps a few jokes as well. More details coming later, but if you are going to be at AIS (or if you live nearby and want to sneak in – shh, we won’t tell), please come join us. Lastly, a huge thank you to our friends at AcademicCME for sponsoring this year’s CMEpalooza Trivia night!
CMEPALOOZA 