Actually termed an "economic and strategy seminar" for bankers in the fixed income capital markets. Morgan Keegan puts on a number of these events around the country each year - all part of the professional training required by the various industries they service. I spoke last summer at the MK event in upstate NY for pension managers, so this was my second go-around with them.
Over a hundred in the audience, and I got the tough slot: 4pm and I'm the only thing standing between a group that's been going from early in the morning and the end-of-training mixer.
This time I went with the Mac suggestion of creating a separate, cootie-free user account on the laptop and running the brief off the shared hard drive as a way of isolating the program and seeing if that made a difference on latency and/or the crash I suffered in Johnstown (first ever during a talk).
It worked beautifully. No latency whatsoever and I got through the entire brief for the second time.
With nothing to occupy my mind WRT the slides, I was able to give the best performance yet of the new brief. Probably not all that different, as far as the audience is concerned, from the prior three. It just was more mentally relaxing because I got in that unconscious groove when the humor starts spontaneously appearing.
Nice dinner at "Bones" later that night in Atlanta.
The brief now seems set:
- Opening with "map";
- Flow of people, ending with Middle East projection;
- Flow of money, ending with Asia projection;
- Flow of energy, ending with Africa projection;
- Flow of food, ending with Western Hemisphere projection; and
- Flow of security, ending with tripolar projection (US, China, India).
Each flow has me presenting, in yin-yang combination, something we must accept and something we will fight/struggle with. The regionals are presented as evolutions that reflect the interplay. Full-up, it runs 75 mins, which is what I did at MK. Q&A happened in the mixer, which is always nice because then you really have time to get to know people and their concerns. Plus, a martini is really nice after the energy output!
The brief is now loaded so that, no matter how much time I have, I cover things in the order I want, so more important/topical up front, degrading as you go back. If I don't finish, I still feel like I gave everything I could/should in the time allotted. Naturally, I could easily break out additional slides to make them a full-day teaching seminar - and any length in between, which is how I like it. It's also easily updated for topicality. Sad to cut some favorite slides, as so little remains of the original "Great Powers" brief now, but time marches on and one needs to stay abreast with the audience. What I have now is arguably the most easily accessible brief yet for none-Pol/Mil types.
My speeches this May have constituted a Packer victory lap: IL with the cops and firemen (NFC championship v. Bears), Johnstown PA (right next to the Steelers) and now Atlanta (NFC divisional).
Great off-season!