Wrapping up the spring speech tour

Gave a speech to a big conference of Navy supply corps reservists, the second such time I've done their huge, every-other-year event (I did one in Baltimore in 07, if I remember correctly).  Big audience of close to one thousand crammed into a wide ballroom.  Three huge screens, though, with great projectors.  Sound was also great (nothing like a great lapel mike to put me at ease).  The speech was broadcast globally throughout the Navy's supply corps community.  

Simplified the brief a bit by making the "map" sequence" less cluttered, and got through the 29 slides in about 65 mins. Answered questions for about 5 mins, and then held court outside for about 30 more, where I met a lot of great people.  It was a very lively audience that got a great performance out of me (the audience gets what it gives, as always). I came off the stage decidedly buzzed, despite the allergies (this place is blooming). Having now spoken in Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh, I consider my post-Super Bowl speaking tour complete.

The hidden benefit of reservist conferences:  all have civilian jobs and a surprising number are in all sorts of industries that like to have me in for speeches, so it's a double-win. 

Off now til the fall schedule kicks in - come September, and that's looking good, with big speeches already lined up to a financial group in Chicago, a bankers group in Pensacola, and some big strategy gathering at Disney World (Grand Floridian) in early December.

Big treat on this trip was getting to spend a lot of face time with my long-time manager, Jennifer Posda, who is a close friend of our family.  One intriguing topic was how to exploit the Emily Updates' eBooks to launch an orthogonal speaking career on that subject.  Goal there would be to tap the wide medical market, motivational, etc.  I just know there would be a great brief coming out of the Updates, and it would definitely be the one I'd try in Keynote, since I'd be building from scratch and looking to use a lot of photos, video, etc.  More fun is considering the possibility of getting either my spouse Vonne or daughter Emily involved in certain venues.

But first, of course, we've got to get the eBook series out (4 volumes) and write the from-today's-perspective fifth volume before Em heads back to college.  On that front, the edited four volumes of Emily Updates (each about 50,000 words) now sit with my literary agency, which is using the project to launch a new eBook service within the agency.  First they take the Word docs and create special eBook-friendly PDFs, and then a German company is brought in to crank the eBook versions in the various formats desired by the iBookstore (iPad), Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes and Noble (Nook, I believe).  All in all, the schedule suggest we get out Vol I in Sept or Oct and then release the subsequent volumes in sequence (maybe one a month).  Then we just need to get enough word out to trigger the first speaking engagement, and boom!  The new "brief" will be born.

I can't wait.