The debut of the new brief
Friday, January 9, 2009 at 2:42AM I write this from Reagan National Airport, finding myself suddenly exhausted from the lengthy push of the last week to get the new brief done.
Recapping: I was sick with a sinus infection over New Year's, so I didn't really get at it until late on Friday. From that point on I worked nearly non-stop for five days straight. I worked so hard I got a weird blister/callus at the bottom of my right palm from--CANUBELIEVEIT!--actually moving my mouse around for about 12-14 hours a day. Right now, besides being mentally toasted (I still plan to work out physically before a monster martini tonight), I am really beat up to my elbows. My fingers and palms feel like lead, and my forearms are throbbing lightly. There's the usual pain inside the right shoulder blade, but I feel that, without the attendant Bowflex sessions, I'd be bent over and in real pain. This feels more like the day after a marathon. No Ambien required tonight (which I've had to take to slow down my brain enough these past few nights to enable sleep). The intellectual fever has passed.
I was so blitzed as I wrote this that I had to call Sean and have him reconstruct the past week by skimming the blog for me. It reminded me of the first few hours after the Marine Corps marathon when I was suffering this memory blackout on the last three miles of the race that I couldn't get passed until late the next day (it was like my mind simply wouldn't let me revisit it until the trauma passed).
Basically, on Friday I sort of dicked around, cutting up all my hard-copy mini-slides (4 per page printouts) and laying them out on my desk. That was a mistake because I had something like 200 slides and it was impossible to think through anything with that much visual stimulation sitting in front of me. But I did get this far: I decided the twelve sections I was going to do (where we are now, US history 19th C, US foreign policy 20th C, the eyes-on-the-prize bit on future emerging global middle class, the force-v-friction reworking of PNM classics, a what-went-wrong-with-Bush, the five realignments, and then a closer that covers my principles of grand strategy and previews my March piece in Esquire), with the big breakthrough being the "from scratch" new starter section, which actually begins with my old "Austin Powers" yeah baby yeah! slide about the Global Transaction Strategy (from PNM--it's the slide that led Jaffe to mentioning my "Austin Powers on Soundtrack" in the subtitle on his front-page WSJ profile in May 2004--still framed in my basement). Typical for me, I declared "victory" early, worked out, and then watched a movie with my kids (can't remember what--maybe . . . blacked-out) that night.
Saturday I started late because of some bunch of stuff I needed to fix in the house (can't remember), so I didn't get going until early afternoon. That day was consumed by the creation of the 25 new slides in the opening section (probably only 8 once fully layered). Worked out again (just Bowflex) and then watched something in the home theater (can't remember).
Sunday I started plowing into the next section, but then I felt the need to do the divvying up of slides (this time, electronically vice hard copies), so I ended up reprinting the 200 or so slides nine per page (that worked well, because I could scan them visually with ease--I have a great visual memory, or what my grandpa called a "lock and key" memory where I can actually remember where on a page in a newspaper or book that a concept or term of quote appears; I will, however, forget your name the instant after you've introduced yourself to me--a skill I carry to this day). So the big accomplishment on Sunday was building the rough version of the total brief: 300 slides. By the end of Sunday, I had cut it down to 235 (the easy pruning).
Monday I was going full bore starting at about 1100, cutting down the full work-up brief to 120-125 slides.
Tuesday was the same push, and I finished up with the first 25 slides fully animated. I remember thinking I was short a day's worth of effort to get ready for the brief.
Working Wednesday from 0800 to 1700, I got 55 more slides fully animated. Then I drive myself to the airport and knock off four more before boarding. The flight to DCA was smooth up and then frightening turbulent on the way down: I mean, gut-wrenching deep turbulence of the sort that you usually experience only in 1-2 minute increments. This one went 25 minutes straight. It was so bizarre the pilot got on and talked us through it damn non-stop (you could tell he could tell how scary it was). I was so focused those, that I just kept working even though I truly feared my laptop would fly up and smack me upside the head at several points. That was really weird. When we landed fine at DCA, everyone on the plane couldn't help but consistently give off these exaggerated sighs. When we land, I am working on slide 96.
I grab my bag at DCA and get on the metro, knocking off four more on the Blue Line to Metro Center. I also check out the slides at the end of the brief and decide the last 13 are good to go, leaving me nine more to animate and three to build). I go out and over to the Marriott there, only to discover I'm really staying at the JW Marriott on Penn Ave (really on 14th), so I walk six blocks there. Once in my room, I bang out the nine between 2130 and 2230. Then I build the last three by 1100 and I'm done.
Then I give myself 30 minutes to toss out 30 slides--just like that (none are truly tossed--just not used for this audience). It's a weird process, but the flow just starts becoming clear to me. The breakthrough: I simply move some slides out of their implied chapter (meaning, by the book) and it leads to obvious redundancies. It's like killing your intellectual offspring, but you have to be brutal and since I've done this countless times, it's actually pretty easy. That's good, because I'm feeling depressingly tired (like I want to lay down on the floor and expire). But once I have my 95 total (15 "black" transitions and 80 "white" content slides), I engineer a pattern of transitions and apply it to all 95 slides. Then I get the clothes ready, watch something on TV for 30 minutes (sitcom, I think) and then crash at 0045.
Wake-up call at 0645, giving me only 11 hours sleep over the past two nights (okay, but not great, because I hate to brief tired as things can really fall apart if you're not careful). Shower and dress and walk 15 minutes to Reagan Building, wandering through the many bleachers already set up on Penn Ave.
Register for conference, which is classified enough that even the agenda is FOUO (for official use only, which is the lightest classification--hand-slap level), and then go into gorgeous Reagan Amphitheater, only to learn a number of bad things.
First, I have spoken at Reagan maybe six times (all unclass) and each time I did my Mac connection at the lectern on-stage, using my own clicker and a wireless mike. It's a great stage with a very immediate connection to the two-tiered audience. The only bitch is the high screen (bottom is maybe 12 feet off ground) and I knew I'd be looking up a lot (the feedback monitor was attached to the f--king podium and I have a thing about not being stuck at podiums).
First bad news: since conference is overall classified (intell community), the regular Reagan AV guys not there, only the community's people. Second, they say no way, no how can I do Mac off podium and that I must connect in AV room (glassed in, in back of theater). Third, because of class situation, the "wireless" mike comes with this 20-foot heavy cord (the leash, I call it).
I'm thinking: At least I get to keep it on my Mac and they say they have a direct clicker that's fool proof, so I'll struggle with the leash and use their clicker.
Then the crappy bombshell: their clicker is actually a hard-wire all the way from the podium to the AV room, and the endpoint physical clicker is attached to the podium and thus immovable!
Now, at this point, I'm pretty tense and tired, but I've actually had all these problems more times than I can remember. Still, none of these conditions bode well.
So I talk to the Reagan AV guy brought in special to deal with me and he has lengthy extender cord so that my RF clicker-receiver can be taped to the one of the AV room windows. I tee up the brief, take my clicker and head down to the stage. The bad news then is that the clicker coverage is right at its limit. I should have changed batteries but my head wasn't clicking right then. If I could have walked off-stage, I only needed to be about 3-5 feet closer for a very sure click zone. As it was, I could tell I'd be clicking 4-5 times per actual advance, only to find myself tormented with consistent delays that were unpredictable in their resolution.
But I think, you're a pro and you'll handle it. Despite being a total freak-out artist in my private life (my wife will attest), where I let all sorts of stupid small stuff bug me (especially bugs), onstage I can handle virtually anything. So I tell myself, "You're going to speak more slowly, like you're in a foreign country, to deal with the latency issue and because I'm doing the brief for the first time."
So the brief is basically teed up and ready to go and I have my sequence of source-switching figured out with the AV guys. I head out to the Atrium and start power chugging coffee. Since I hadn't eaten anything on Wednesday except a Big Mac meal I wolfed down at Indy, I got the caffeine rush rather quickly. After some small talk with host (saw me at ICAF last year--not a great perf due to fatigue), I head back into booth while first 45 minutes of speakers goes on. I'm finding that the 3-D transitions are sticking on the Mac. Not sure if that will translate onscreen or not and cannot test right then, so I switch out all 95 slides by hand into a combo of dissolves, pushes, and uncovers. I get done about 5 minutes before my intro. There are various nits I spot but I resist the temptation. Frankly, at 65 mega-bytes, I'm not sure how well my laptop will handle it.
Head back into Atrium to ask organizing staff to rustle me up a bottle of water. Waiter has to get one special from kitchen. It was a smart move, given the dry mouth. Water was on stage in pitcher with glasses, but much safer to use bottle.
Guy who intros me does it quickly. Previous lead-in went over, so I start at 0915 instead of 0900, meaning once I go 75 minutes I'll be running over their sked (I hate to do that to a conference--bad juju), so I suck it up and dive in.
The clicker latency/miss problem is far worse than I anticipated, creating doubt every other minute that the Mac had crashed or something. But I just deal with it and kept it to myself, save for one passing reference.
As I get going, I'm fine after about two minutes in. I have to go far slower than I care to, but I try to present a sense of deliberateness. The laughs come and I start getting pumped, despite the clicker issue (I have to point my arm--basically line-of-sight style--to connect). I get through 72 slides in 75 minutes, and I'm moving like molasses (in relative terms compared to my blistering, mature-brief pace). I get through the security alignment, ending with AFRICOM.
Then I quit and open for questions. Nice solid round of applause, then--to my surprise--35 minutes of Q&A, which went pretty well (actually, better than normal for new brief). We cut off at 1050. I get a memento from the host and wander out amidst the crowd, nervous about what I'll actually hear.
I shouldn't have been. The response was great: the usual stream of people who simply insist on shaking hands, offering compliments, etc., and asking for cards. The hosts were greatly pleased, and I made a number of the great contacts you'll always looking for ("We have got to get you to X [person/office"). I am told that this group is likely to ask me back.
It was a huge relief but exactly the response I wanted. I felt like George Costanza in one of his manic epiphanies: "I'm back! Baby, I'm back!"
I stand out in Atrium passing out lotsa cards and taking plenty, shaking a lot of hands. Then a nice feedback session with senior hosts. Then it's 1130 and I've got to walk in order to check out of hotel in time. Walking back to hotel, I'm totally pumped and feeling no pain. Call Vonne and Jen.
After I get to Reagan, the euphoria is gone and I'm feeling all the pain and the blank-headedness. It takes me two hours to write these 2300 words. I buy a Five Guys burger because I can't manage the interpersonal process required to purchase anything else. I don't think I'll talk the rest of the day.
I read my one-and-only hardcover copy of Great Powers on the flight home. I have a superstition that my plane will never crash if I'm reading one of my own books, because it would be so cheesy to die like that.
I can feel my heartbeat through the tips of my fingers, but it was all completely worth it. I told myself last weekend: don't be such an ass that you refuse to enjoy the uncertainty and fear about building a new brief and selling it for the first time. I may only do this a dozen or so times again in my life.
I know it's a weird, singularly peculiar existence, but I do love it.
Reader Comments (6)
Ahh, the dreaded weak clicker signal issue, I prefer to think of it as "Phaser Marksmanship Practice".
We are not surprised you got good responses. Way to go ...