Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:06PM ARTICLE: China could block sanctions against Iran, By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, February 5, 2010
What a shocker. Nobody could have seen this coming.
(Via WPR's Media Roundup)
Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:03PM ARTICLE: Turkish army surrenders right to rule the street, By Thomas Seibert, The National, February 8. 2010
Serious sign of Turkey's maturation as a great power: the army gives up its right to intervene in domestic politics at will.
(Via WPR's Media Roundup)
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 11:23PM MARKETS NEWS & COMMENT: "China's influence on markets is growing: Commodity and currency moves increasingly hinge on Beijing," by Jennifer Hughes and Robert Cookson, Financial Times, 25 January 2010.
I started using the phrase, "China as the global demand center" in briefs back in 2000, thanks to my education by Cantor Fitzgerald. Now, ten years later, the notion is becoming an undeniable fact.
Good example is the price of iron ore. It pretty much rises and falls in concert with Chinese industrial demand. And once the market notices, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Neat chart accompanies the story: Back in 1820, in terms of shares of global GDP, it was China #1, Europe #2, Asia (other) at #3, Japan #4, US #5. Europe peaks in the Victorian age, as Asia in general drops (colonialism is a bitch). It's all downhill from there for the colonial powers. The US is a skyrocket, straight-line riser right through 1950, when it hits an artificial peak--thanks to WWII. Since then it slowly loses share as it helps Europe stabilize, then encourages Japan's rise, and finally Asia's rise in general--with no world wars.
What you notice: China's is a huge U-shaped recovery from colonialism (all downhill) and all the self-inflicted insanities of the murderous Mao, whose presided over China's total, flatline bottoming out from 1950 all the way through 1990 (basically no improvement at 5% over four decades), when Deng's reforms began to pay off big-time in global GDP share. Since 1990, China's straight-line rise from about 5% to a projected 23% in 2015 mirrors America's late-19th century trajectory almost exactly.
America's role in peacefully--in terms of the absence of great-power war--presiding over so much rebalancing of the world's productive power and wealth is really amazing.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 11:21PM COMPANIES & MARKETS: "Shell to shift away from tar sands as chief targets conventional fields," by Ed Crooks, Financial Times, 25 January 2010.
COMPANIES | INTERNATIONAL: "Shell ready to ride next wave: Interview | Peter Voser, Chief executive, Royal Dutch Shell; The oil chief tells where he feels the group's opportunities lie," by Ed Crooks, Financial Times, 25 January 2010.
Not because of the hassle or the environment, Shell says it'll slow down its tar sands work in Canada because there are too many easier and still good conventional opportunities to boost reserves elsewhere.
New CEO Peter Voser, for example, says many of the newer techniques used to tap unconventional natural gas reserves in the U.S. in recent years should no longer be considered "unconventional" because their use has become widespread globally.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 10:29PM ARTICLE: Kabul Attack Shows Resilience of Afghan Militants, By DEXTER FILKINS, New York Times, January 18, 2010
Granted, the attacks in the middle of Kabul showed the daring of the Afghan militants, but I think the resilience part was displayed more on the Afghan government side, to wit:
The attack began at 9:30 a.m., when the streets of downtown Kabul were jammed with traffic. A man wearing a suicide belt approached the gates of the Central Bank, which regulates the flow of currency in the country, and tried to push past the guards. The guards shot him, but not before the bomber managed to detonate his explosives in the street.
The other militants, who were apparently intending to follow the suicide bomber into the bank, took cover in the Faroshga market, a five-story building next door. They expelled the shoppers and shopkeepers, ran to the higher floors, and began shooting. Other fighters slipped into the Ministry of Justice and the Ariana theater, the police said, but a survey of both sites revealed no evidence of that.
Within minutes, hundreds of Afghan commandos, soldiers and police officers surrounded Pashtunistan Square and attacked. Some of the Afghan fighters were part of specially formed antiterrorism squads. Monday's gun battle was notable for the absence of United States soldiers: a small group of commandos from New Zealand were the only Western soldiers on the scene.(italics mine)
One group of Afghan commandos said they had come straight from a training class.
"We were going through drills when we got the word," said Bawahuddin, a young member of an antiterrorism squad, standing behind a wall as he prepared to join the fight. Bawahuddin flashed a thumbs-up sign. "We're ready -- we're ready."
And then his unit got the word -- "Go now, go now!" -- and the men began to run. Bawahuddin's eyes flashed with fear.
"Either we are going to kill them, or they are going to kill us," said Saifullah Sarhadi, a commando on the edge of the fight.
Bullets flew in every direction, thousands of them. The militants, holed up on the upper floors of the market, fired and fought as their building exploded and burned. A blast sounded, and then another -- the sounds of heavy guns firing inside.
When you think of Afghanistan, the suicide bombers part is easy enough to imagine/expect, but the notion that hundreds of government commandos, soldiers and police officers can appear somewhere "within minutes" is not something you'd expect or easily imagine, likewise the absence of US soldiers.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 10:24PM ARTICLE: Resilience: The Grand Strategy, By Philip J. Palin, HOMELAND SECURITY AFFAIRS, VOLUME VI, NO. 1 (JANUARY 2010)
A rather elaborate copycatting of Kennan's "Long Telegram" to try and discern a logical grand strategic goal statement for Homeland Security. My definition of the threat of "disconnectedness" is employed up front in the threat-definition section.
The a-ha moment about half-way through:
A bit more than a year after sending the Long Telegram, George Kennan reworked his analysis of Soviet neuroses and published "Sources of Soviet Conduct" as an unsigned piece in Foreign Affairs magazine. This revised and expanded text included a
top contender for the most important single sentence of any strategy document of the Cold War: In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.31I have been trying to argue that in our current circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the risks we face must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant extension of the boundaries within which we can achieve a kind of equilibrium. If this sounds odd, listen again to Brian Walker's seven-minute explanation of resilience [Tom: embedded in the document is a link to the 7-minute talk].
This strategy is fully cognizant of our limitations, which I argue can best be approached by embracing the tragic. This is also a strategy that recognizes the potential of complex adaptive systems to preserve core identity in the midst of profound flux.
While depending on your mastery of the previous literary analysis and the insights drawn from the study of the commons and complexity, I will take the risk of translating these arcane analogies into a direct - if very wonkish - statement of homeland
security strategy.A STRATEGY OF RESILIENCE
(With an Operational Example)The United States faces a range of natural, accidental, and intentional threats that cannot always be accurately predicted; as a result these threats cannot always be prevented.
Accordingly, the homeland security strategy of the United States seeks to maximize individual, local, regional, and national capacity to:
1. Absorb or buffer disaster while preserving and, if possible, advancing physical, psychological, social, economic, and constitutional integrity.
2. Effectively observe and adapt to change while preserving or advancing physical, psychological, social, economic and constitutional integrity.
3. Learn and increase capacity to adapt to changes experienced at the local, regional, and national level and across social and economic sectors.
I think the translation of the resilience concept to homeland security is fine.
What caught my eye was the translation of Kennan's containment today to the notion that we must pursue a "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant extension of the boundaries within which we can achieve a kind of equilibrium" of resilient capacity versus the vulnerability of severe instability/disequilibrium. For long-time readers, this sounds like growing the Core (with its denser connectivity and hence resilience) and--by extension--shrinking the Gap (and its less dense connectivity and hence lower resilience), with the primary generic threat being vast bouts of disequilibrium--or what I identified as the signature generic crisis model of the age, the System Perturbation.
My point: when you think through the logic as carefully (even anally) as this guy does, there's no great surprise that you come up with something like the New Map's logic (which he apparently read). That's not to suggest that exposure made his logic happen. All you have to do is read this guy's piece and you'll recognize that he's working his own logic very expansively and simply arriving at basically the same endpoint. In doing so, he tends to overestimate, in my mind, the "vulnerability" and "instability" and "unpredictability" of today, but it fits reasonably enough with his strong focus on resilience (extend it and we "win," so to speak, while watch it contract and our enemies "win").
Again, to my reading eyes, a logic that resonates very well with my definition of grand strategy across my three books. Also underscores the logic of why I ended up migrating toward Steve DeAngelis and Enterra Solutions.
The rest of the report dives down, a bit weedishly, to how to move toward this goal by advancing some new DHS policies designed to prime the pump of thinking on resilience within our national system.
(Thanks: vacationlanegrp)
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 10:14PM FILM: "World Turns on Bigger B.O.: 3D titles add to int'l record year," Variety, 18-24 January 2010.
FILM: "Top Worldwide Grossers 2009," Variety, 18-24 January 2010.
FILM: "Box Office Report," Variety, 18-24 January 2010.
FILM: "O'Seas, 'Avatar' In Line to Sink 'Titanic,'" by Pamela McClintock, Variety, 18-24 January 2010.
FILM: "International Box Office," Variety, 18-24 January 2010.
FILM: "South Rises as Bollywood Withers," by Naman Ramachandran, Variety< 18-24 January 2010.
International box office (B.O.) soared 9% in 2009 for Hollywood, largely because 3D is now catching on, and global auds--in Variety's vernacular--have warmed up more to American-style sci-fi and comedies (both of which I'm sure have likewise adapted themselves a bit to global tastes).
Overseas sales tallied $16B. The U.S. market is somewhere around $10B, so overseas accounts for just over 60% of Hollywood's market. I remember reading earlier in the decade when the overseas just surpassed the U.S. market.
China led the way in growth at 44%.
Japan is #1 at $2.0B, then France, UK, Germany, Spain (about a billion), China, Italy, Australia, Russia and Brazil. So only India not included among the BRICs.
Inside India, it's interesting to realize that Bollywood (Mumbai) is being surpassed in overall popularity by the South Indian film industry, which did "boffo" in 2009, according to the mag. Bollywood makes film in the Hindi language, while the South is apparently heavy in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam language pics. The South is home to 50% of the theaters, and features what Variety calls a highly film-literate aud. Bollywood is alleged to suffer from too many formula films, with "3 Idiots" the big winner in 2009.
Sounds like a formula film, does it not?
Top dozen global films are all U.S.:
1) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (US= 302m, For=632m) @ 934m
2) Avatar (352 + 547) @ 899m in only about a week!
3) Ice Age 3 (197 + 691) @ 888m
4) Transformers II (402 + 433) @ 835m
5) 2012 (163 + 591) @ 754m
6) Up (293 + 417) @ 710m
7) New Moon (288 + 400) @ 688m
8) Angels and Demons (133 + 352) @ 485m
9) The Hangover (277 + 190) @ 467m
10) Night at the Museum II (177 + 238) @ 415m
11) Star Trek (258 + 128) @ 386m
12) Monsters v Aliens (198 + 183) @ 381m
Okay, I only went to 12 to get "Star Trek" in.
Used to be, total B.O. over $100m was a blockbuster. Thanks to overseas sales, 51 films hit that mark (51 being the "Time Traveler's Wife"). Without the overseas' addition, that number would have been only 29.
Nowadays, $200m is considered a true blockbuster. 25 films qualified for that with total B.O., but without the overseas, only 8 would have.
Of the top 12, you saw 9 do better overseas than in the U.S.
When "carryovers" are included (films that debuted in 2008 but did extensive B.O. in 2009, you get 11 more above $100m (in 2009 portion of sales) and 3 more above $200m (Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button and Gran Torino).
The #100 film (The Uninvited) made $29m US and 14m overseas for $43m. When I was a kid, $43 million was considered a blockbuster. With inflation, that probably isn't so much of a change.
The current B.O. shows how much overseas auds made "Avatar" huge: $430m at home and $931m abroad (through 1/10). Right now the movie is closing in on $2.0b and it'll be the first film ever to do so, thanks a lot to higher 3D/Imax prices.
"Avatar" is leading in just about every big market: Japan, Germany, UK/Ireland, France, Spain, Australia and Russia. Nowhere to be found in Italy, and China, of course, yanked it from screens because it was killing domestic pix.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 11:14PM EDITORIAL: "China's challenge: People's Republic must press ahead with structural reform," Financial Times, 25 January 2010.
Some suggestions on boosting domestic consumption:
Beijing could start by forcing state-owned companies to disburse retained earnings through dividends and encourage higher wages in the economy generally. It should also allow farmers to sell their land or use it as collateral, which would help boost lagging rural incomes. Finally, it should reform the "hukou" system of urban registration so that more migrant workers can become legal residents of China's mushrooming cities.
Based on my readings, that's a fairly wide-consensus list, although I remain a bit slow on the dividends issue. To whom do those go?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 11:12PM WORLD NEWS: "China admits to 'open attitude' on global warming debate," by Amy Kazmin, Financial Times, 25 January 2010.
Big show by Hu at Copenhagen, but now we get the backtracking back home in Beijing, which can't decide if global warming is all that real or just a Western plot to derail China's rise. Of course, if it isn't a plot, it's still all our fault for past pollution.
The alternative position suggested is the most popular one: current warming is just part of a larger cyclical trend in Earth's long history.
I would expect more such hedging, not because China truly doubts anything, but because it does not want to be tied down too much by treaties.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:22PM POST: Haiti, anarchy and the collapse of societies, By Michael, A Brief History..., January 14th, 2010
Neat post I stumbled across. Retired doc does a quick history of Haiti, leveraging various sources (Diamond in particular). Not a professional take, but impressed me.
Like this observation particularly:
Today, The Dominican Republic, while quite poor, has five times the average annual income of Haiti and Barbados, with a similar post-slavery background, is prosperous and has a booming tourist economy.
Big caveat? The DR is the wet side of the island, and Haiti is the dry side. That excuses some things, but not a lack of ingenuity and entrepreneurship.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:20PM ARTICLE: Republican Brown beats Coakley in special Senate election in Massachusetts, By Paul Kane and Karl Vick, Washington Post, January 20, 2010
I think this will be a good thing. Single-party domination of both houses and the White House isn't a good thing in such a deeply and evenly divided political situation. Democratic ambitions will be curtailed and more realistic legislation should result. Better for everyone involved.
Ironically, a more Teddy Kennedy-like dynamic.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:11PM FIRST LOOK: "Lynch pins crix picks," by Justin Chang, Variety, 18-24 January 2010.
Apparently, David Lynch's "Mullohand Drive" has been named film of the decade by Film Comment, Indiewire, the Village Voice/LA Weekly, Cahiers du Cinema and--with this top ten list--the LA Film Critics Association. It debuted in 2001.
I like the LAFCA list (with directors):
1) Mullholland Drive (David Lynch)
2) There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
4) Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
5t) No Country For Old Men (Cohen brothers)
5t) Zodia (David Fincher)
6) Yi yi (Edward Yang)
7) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
8) Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki
9) Y tu mama tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
10) Sideways (Alexander Payne)
Loved 8 of them, especially "Spirited Away," which I've seen maybe 25 times. It's the best animated movie I've ever seen.
Got "Yi yi" in the queue. Never really heard of the "4 Months ..." one.
With any such list, you always want a counter list of prominent films allegedly "snubbed."
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 11:59PM This one was logistically grueling, but incredibly well set-up by Jenn. The locals were fabulous, as it was one well-run conference, and I performed about as well as ever, given the discombobulating distance (e.g., more word flubs than usual but overall a very strong performance).
Mining Indaba (South African indigenous phrase meaning "meeting") is a huge (several thousand attendees) event held each year at Cape Town. It is THE gathering of mining companies regarding Africa (about one-third of world's mining resources), so every huge global mining company was there.
For me, it was a fascinating event on several levels:
1) I had modeled the business processes of the mining industry years ago for a hedge fund and had profiled all the big players (etc., BHP, Anglo American, Rio Tinto), so I was fairly familiar with the industry. And yet, there is nothing like meeting the professionals F2F and hearing them talking about the industry at an industry gathering.
2) After meeting lots of Africans at military/aid events both here and on the continent (this was my fourth speech on the continent, but the first outside the defense and aid communities; I spoke at Cairo at a multinational mil exercise and Nairobi at the defense college there, plus I spoke to a professional development audience at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi), this was the first time I spoke to a purely business audience in Africa. It is really different. What you hear at the mil events and aid conferences is all disturbing and depressing and highly misleading in the large sense, since much of Africa works just fine. Indeed, many economies there are doing incredibly well, and we're talking a dozen and a half democracies where only 3 existed roughly a generation ago. More specifically, the commodities world is booming and will continue to boom for a long time, thanks to globalization and especially the Chinese. So it was fabulous to spend time with so many professional Africans talking about the future with such gusto. Globalization is not a dirty word in this venue and across Africa in general (I have found). They want more--not less.
3) This was my first trip to South Africa, which is simultaneously (no surprise for such a Seam State) highly first-world and highly third-world but all over a place where citizens take an enormous pride in their country, especially with the World Cup coming up. This was also only my second trip below the equator (Australia was #1). South Africa is now the 37th country I've visited on an academic/business basis (after Canada, Panama, UK, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, France, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Greece, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, Egypt, UAE, India, Australia, Jordan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus, China and Japan). The only continent (other than Antarctica) that I've really missed out on is South America.
4) This was my first overseas audience for the Great Powers-edition brief, and the reception was more than I had dared hope for, especially from Africans, so that was hugely validating.
5) This was my first trip to Africa since we decided to adopt from Ethiopia, and it was great to talk about that with so many people there.
6) Any big industry event like this is a goldmine (pun intended), because you're simultaneously briefing so many companies (potential future audiences) and this is one flush industry.
7) Finally, you couldn't come up with a more difficult stress test for my post-surgical sinuses, and I passed it with great ease. Indeed, I was stunned at how well my head took the travel (about 55 hours in planes over six days). I really wasn't at all burned out by this trip, despite the extremity in sleep deprivation in places (to include going through two nights in a row on the trip out with no appreciable sleep).
In sum, I had a blast, made tons of useful biz connections, and hopefully laid the groundwork for future speaking opportunities in that industry, plus I learned a ton and went someplace I never visited before.
Frankly, it don't get any better than this.
Trip and talk were months in the planning. As always, Jenn earned her commission and then some, and her advance work here was much appreciated by both sides. I fielded numerous unsolicited and very positive comments from Indaba personnel about working with her. Her fabulous work and my outstanding perf, in combination with all the opportunity exploited, made this arguably our most outstanding collaboration together to date.
I got up Saturday morn, the 30th, feeling nothing special. Just got back late Thursday from a combined US mil/Enterra trip that ran three days, so had only Friday and Sat morn to catch up with family/house/blog/work in general, and my extremely bad sleep pattern of the previous several weeks (recovering from surgery and accumulated bad habits from all those months of non-stop infections) seemed to be hitting its apogee. So I headed out feeling pretty dragged down by life and the prospect of this stunning amount of travel packed into 120 hours (roughly half travel of some sort, when driving included).
Vonne and I head out to Indy airport at 1pm and I'm all checked in by 1:45 for my planned 2:38pm flight to Dulles, but a big snow storm there means I need to phone Jenn and re-plot the trip to Cape Town. The United flight from Dulles takes off four hours late, so its return trip there (with me on it) missed the once-a-day connecting South African Airlines flight into Johannesburg. I can't wait for the next day, because that would have me arriving only a few short hours before my talk, totally blitzed out of my mind. So Jenn, working her magic, gets me switched to a 10pm flight out of Dulles to Frankfort, then a quick hop to London on Lufthansa, then a SA flight direct to Cape Town. Sounds tough and extravagant, but honestly, I was going to do four flights going there no matter what, because my Dulles flight would have gone to Dakar, then to Joburg, and then to Cape Town.
We finally take off from Indy at 7pm, four hours late. When we land in Dulles, there's snow everywhere, and I was a bit surprised to see planes moving, given how much was on the tarmac and strips.
When I get to Dulles, I'm still pretty worried about getting out of there. No huge surprise as the United flight to Frankfort gets off four hours late, essentially erasing my layover there and causing me to miss my Lufthansa connector to London. The flight over was nice enough, as I sat next to a young Egyptian woman heading home (she works at the US embassy). I watched the "Sopranos" fifth season going over, not sleeping a wink and not even trying. We took off 2am local time and landed 3:15 Frankfort time. Add six hours and it's a bit over seven hours. We spent 9 in the plane, thanks to the de-icing, etc.
Once in Frankfort, I had to get my ass through that place's stunningly slow security (security is very tight now in both Europe and America and every flight coming into those regions). Frankfort's set-up is so bad that it makes most big American airports seem super-efficient in comparison. I always hate going through there. I finally get to the counter of the flight to London that I missed. Good fortune: Lufthansa flies to London basically every two hours, so my four-hour layover in Heathrow was safe. I catch the 5:15pm to make up for my missed 3:45pm. I even manage to refuel my laptop some.
The late afternoon flight to Heathrow was nice enough: nice snack meal and plenty of legroom because I'm in the first economy row. I focus on reading more of my Jean Edward Smith bio of U.S. Grant. It an amazingly good book, and Grant is a thoroughly fascinating and huge figure (first serving four-star flag in U.S. history, redefines U.S. warfare, really pulled the otherwise largely incompetent U.S. Union military leadership through to victory, narrowly missed sitting next to his beloved Lincoln at Ford Theater that night of the assassination, essentially commanded Reconstruction through his oversight of military commanders in the south during Johnson administration and, in many ways, single-handedly stood up to that racist bastard, and then was the youngest elected president--til JFK--and ran a highly talented cabinet that managed a lot of crucial firsts and constituted the only two-full-term presidency between Jackson and Wilson)--truly a vastly underappreciated figure in U.S. history).
Once in Heathrow, I get my butt over to the SA flight gate. Per the norm of this trip, it leaves two hours late. Why? We're out on the strip and just about to take off when pilot on plane behind us notices too much sheen on the wings and we need to go back and de-ice.
On this flight, I was lucky because I was a last-hour addition. Got an aisle seat in way-back row where, because of the plane's tapering, the middle section goes from 4 to three seats. Only problems: no individual entertainment system and the guy next to me on the right is a behemoth. Nice gimme: liquor is free on SA. I don't indulge but it does provide me with a mental release as the big guy goes zombie about three hours in. I just focus on my "Sopranos" til my second battery dies, and then I switch to "Futurama" and "Star Trek" on my iPod. When that dies, it's more "Grant" and then I finally succumb and watch a documentary on the platypus on the jet's system. Good dinner after takeoff and a decent breakfast. There's also as many bottles of water as you want. I sleep, I think, about 90 minutes on the 11-hour(!) flight. Stunning to consider, but it is one long way when you fly the entire "height" of Africa, starting from the UK.
This trip down to Cape Town was also the first time I flew over two consecutive nights and the first time I've ever flown three separate airlines on one journey. We land locally at noon, moving back to GMT +2 (or 7 hours ahead of Indy time).
Getting through customs not bad, and my one checked bag is there (I always wear all black on overseas trips and keep everything with me needed to give the talk). Nice local guy (life-long C.T. resident) picks me up at airport and drives me into the downtown where the giant Westin sits attached to the equally giant Cape Town International Convention Center (CTICC). I admire the "table top" mountain hanging over the city (which reminds me a lot of San Fran with its up and down streets and vast sea views) and the guy drives me way up into the city so I can get some nicer photos. He regales me big time on local history. I ask him if his gig is covered and he says everyone he's picking up for the conference is paying him direct. While I discovered later that this was untrue for me (Indaba had pre-paid), I was a bit surprised and told him I needed to go inside and change money to pay him the 200 rand (plus tip). So he parked outside and I went in with my bags, checked in, and got the money changed. Then I went back outside and spent 45 mins looking for him. Cabs were everywhere and the place was jammed with conventioneers, plus the security was high, so I had no luck in finding him again and figured maybe he drove off because he knew he'd catch me on the backside. Later, upon finding out he was wrong about my gig, I figure he may have called in to his dispatch and discovered his error. Anyway, it weirded me out a bit, giving my trip that continued feeling of being slightly cursed.
But, despite my great fatigue, I checked my garment bag (because my room was unavailable til 3pm and it was only 1pm) and wheeled over my briefcase (which I never surrender to anybody ever on trips) to the big convention center across the street. I check in and get my stuff (logo bag stuffed with docs, badge with gift thumb drive, and ticket to gala dinner the next night). I then head into AV central, where the techs tell me that I can't use the Mac--no way no how. Everything is run off a server at the AV center and piped into the various halls. Okay, I say, and I pull out my dead Mac and ask for a power strip. Now, I had bought one of those funky three-round-prong South African adapters at the Brookstone store at Indy airport before I left, but the techs take one look at it and laugh, saying it's a weird miniature version of the real plugs. I am stunned, but sure enough, it's too small for the power strip.
Luckily, the strip has one classic Euro hole and I'm carrying one of those adapters, so I plug in and start working on the brief even though I didn't want to try anything prior to sleeping. But the techs want it by 6pm local and say they'll only open up on Tuesday about an hour before my early morning keynote, and that's too little time if something goes wrong. So I try, but my brain is so fried, I cannot even begin to work the brief, which I know I'm going to adapt more than usual for the specifics of the mining industry and Africa (plus there's always 1-2 slides I want to build up, based on some recent news or data I've come across). So when it strikes 3pm I unplug, having accomplished virtually nothing, and make my excuses (which do not please them), telling them I'll return sharp at 0700 Tuesday.
I get into my hotel room and try to plug in my Mac. The wall sockets include one Euro plug and I shove in my surge protector. When I hook up my laptop, the surge protector blows all its fuses! Now I'm s--t out of luck and back to feeling cursed on this trip. I call the desk and they're happy to send up a proper South African adapter. So I set about closing the curtains to make the room dark when I notice this lamp plugged into the wall. Its prong seems smaller than the other ones and--sure enough--so too is the wall socket. My Brookstone mini model fits just fine! I feel like my luck is turning.
So I then shower, take an Ambien and crash. I sleep from 4pm local time til 0100, when I wake up feeling amazing rested. Knowing this would happen and knowing I'd be burned out on video and the book, I had reserved this block of time to work the brief. So I spent two hours staring at all my slides, trying to select the 20 or so I'd use and sequence them in the way I feel would work for the crowd. Around 3am, I have my sequence set, and take time to call home on Skype, which is really fun because the kids love being on the video feed and seeing me in response.
Thirty minutes later I'm working the slides, making a ton of adaptations. I work right up to 0630, finalizing the transitions, which I must change because I know my customary cube-shifts won't work on a PC.
I always work up to the last minute, but this time it's not bad, because my grey Hugo Boss is newly pressed and I don't need to work the shirt because it's one of those super-thin fabrics that does not wrinkle. So I'm all suited up by 0650 and waiting for the techs at the AV center when they show up.
I put the brief on the given thumb drive before I left my hotel room, so I now hand it over to the techs. It comes up fine on one of the local laptops.
The head tech then takes me over to the venue. It is a huge convention space with maybe 1500 seats in front of a huge stage with a screen that towers above and stretches maybe 60 feet wide and 30 feet high. The set-up is very professional and there's about twenty techies on site. They pull up the brief and we test the clip-on mike. The clicker, provided by them, does not work. Mine is the first brief of the day, so this is their shake-out cruise. Turns out they need to deconflict the hertz-wave signal from others being used in the center.
When we get that figured out, and everyone is happy on all scores, to include the guy who will film me live for projection up on the big screen (a window next to my slides on the big screen), it's 0745 and I head back to the AV center to fiddle with the brief. Why? The switch to a PC means a bunch of fonts will be changed and certain visual images dumped. You can never predict where this will happen and it's different on every G.D. PC; you simply have to fix on the spot.
I do my best to patch the few bad spots, having to cannibalize from the brief itself because the client I'm working on is not connected to the Web. I get it done and look at my watch. It's 8:15. I'm supposed to be on at 8:21, but I figure, "What if they're running early?" Typically, it's the opposite, but I think, best to go.
I grab my bag and zip out, grabbing a cup of joe and a Danish to stuff in my mouth. I walk the 60 yards to the giant hall and then enter in the back. You have to go about 30 yards before you hit the temp back wall. I walk into the darkened chamber and turn to the AV guys on the right, getting ready to tell them to be sure to use the new version.
Then I hear the speaker: it's the host introducing me and I can tell he's not far from the end! I set my coffee on the floor and starting running toward the front of the space. It's a good 50-60 yards and I racing down the center aisle. As the speaker says, "And without further ado . . . " I make it just short of the stage. I can tell everybody's looking around for me. The anxious AV guy clips on the mike and I shove the battery pack in my back pocket.
I'm up on the stage as the applause dies out. Then I glance up at the screen and it looks totally f--ked, like the monitor in the back must be showing a freeze! I stand there with the host for a good 30-40 seconds, which feels like an hour onstage. Then the title slide appears!
I press the clicker. Nothing.
I start pressing it like crazy. Nothing.
I say out loud, "Not getting any response here on the clicker."
I can sense the AV guys scrambling like crazy. Meanwhile, I contemplate speaking with no slides.
My mind is racing now, and I'm thinking, this is the last straw in a cursed gig! Why didn't I see this coming?
The better part of a minute passes, and I can feel the crowd getting restless while I vaguely hear myself uttering some bland opening stuff (it's a truly out-of-body sensation when you feel a talk heading south). That's nothing compared to me.
Then the first image appears! I click again. No latency!
I awkwardly exit my first slide, but by the first "Law and Order" ka-chung, I'm relaxed and the map slide goes really well. I glance down at the warning clock. I've used only 2 minutes of my 45.
The rest goes really well. The only trick--as always with convention centers--is that the laughs take forever to make to you onstage. It just bounces around the walls before ricocheting to your ears at the end of the vast space. You learn to listen for the beginning rumble in the distance and then pause just a bit before proceeding.
I finish 30 slides with seven minutes left! I'm stunned at how smoothly they roll, because I don't truncate the verbal delivery whatsoever and I'm not going fast. Apparently, it was the right 20 white slides (my content ones, with 8 cut-to-black scene-setters and the opening and closing slides).
They open for questions, but as I discover, nobody asks any questions in the big sessions. Individuals just don't want to get up and speak in front of that many people. So my host asks a couple, which I drive home nicely enough. I'm very relaxed at this point.
Big round of applause.
Thing I suddenly note: this place is SRO, with maybe 200 crammed in the back and around the sides. I spoke to somewhere around 1,700 people, according to the conference handlers. The whole rest of the day, the place comes nowhere near close to being that full. The expo is too big and there's so many side meetings going on all over the place.
The rest of the day is perfect: people coming up throughout and complimenting me on the talk and exchanging biz cards. My favorite fielded question repeated time and again: "Would you be willing to give this talk to X?"
I meet a load of interesting people, including the government head of the mining industry in Zimbabwe. I give him a paperback. He asks if I've ever been, and, as is my rule, I say, "No, but I'd love to be invited." We'll see on that one.
I sit through a bunch of CEO talks, then do the lunch in the huge hall next door (buffet lines and you eat standing up). It's a good meal, considering the circumstances. I'm not alone for more than a few minutes, as people are eager to step up and strike up conversations.
Afterward, I cruise the ginormous expo hall. Well over a hundred booths and several big pavilions (one by the gov of Canada, a mining presence of great note). I lost count after a while.
Around three, I feel my body crashing and pass up the last talks. I did catch one great one on China's unprecedented rising presence in the industry and especially in Africa. It was by a very good presenter from a consulting group called Beijing Axis.
I head back to my room and do 50 mins of yoga, pausing to Skype with my wife for a while. After a shower, I iron a new shirt and grab a new tie and suit up, heading back down to the cocktail hour.
Twenty minutes later I'm on one of the huge touring buses that take about a thousand people to a special gala dinner hosted by Anglo American. It's at this very famous century-plus old plantation that one of the original Dutch colonial giants built. It sits about 30 miles out of town, to the north (I think), in their version of Napa Valley. I shoot photos of the interior as we pass through the big house. Dinner's out back in a huge tent. Music performed onstage throughout. Fab dinner. I sit with the Indaba people. The head of the organization comes up and congratulates me, saying he was sorry to be engaged during my presentation but reporting that damn near everybody he's met afterward has asked him the same question, "Did you hear the Barnett talk?" He says my presentation is clearly the talk of the convention, and seems very pleased.
This is music to my ears. I can tell I was the rare paid speaker at this event, because everyone is there presenting for their company to the industry, and those are not paying gigs but instead gigs you pay for (your dues to the organization and what not). With that mind, I HAVE to knock people's socks off. Otherwise I'm looking at one unhappy sponsor and host organization.
Judging by the follow-up email from my host Tim the next day, the talk was deemed a grand slam by everyone involved, based on voluminous audience feedback. Naturally, I couldn't have been more pleased as I hit the hay around midnight Tuesday night.
Up at 0900 on Wednesday (2am back home), I hit the hotel breakfast, and then head up to pack. Unfortunately, I suffer one of these bad nosebleeds that I've been having since the surgery (something not quite totally healed up yet) and end up spending much of my remaining minutes icing my head to stop that. I've got just a few minutes to pack up, shower, and race downstairs to catch my ride back to the airport.
I get to the Cape Town airport and find the airline, for some reason, switched my reservation to Johannesburg to an earlier flight, which I just missed! Makes no sense to me, but there it is. I'm put on the next flight in 90 minutes. I still make it to Joburg with four hours of layover. Nice meal on the short, 90-min flight--like going back in time.
The Joburg airport is very cool. I shop and get a souvenir for myself (mini rugby ball with SA logo) and something for Vonne for Valentine's Day. I keep having to buy bottles of water because every time I go through a security screen, I lose them. Once through what I think is the last one, turns out there's a special last screen on any U.S. flights. My last bottles of water are confiscated. Turns out I'm s--t out of luck because the only store behind the final security screen is closed. So I face an 18.5 hour flight with no water. Fortunately, as I mentioned earlier, SA Airline leaves bottles out for customers throughout the flight.
The mega-flight, with an hour stopover in Senegal (Dakar), isn't too full so I get a pair of seats on the right to myself. I just chug water and watch "Sopranos" episodes (much of the last season) the whole way, pausing every so often for a stretch with "Grant." It's 8.5 hours, then Dakar, then another 8.5 hours.
Flying over Africa, you really can see the village fires. The light is distinctly orange versus the usual electric yellow. Dakar is a fascinating landscape, jutting out at the western-most point of the big hump that is West Africa. It's amazing to think you fly over eight hours just to get from the bottom to about two-thirds of the way up, but you're traveling as far west as you would if flying from our East Coast to the West Coast.
Flying over from Dakar takes so long because you're flying the entire Atlantic AND coming up from as far south, in equivalent terms, as Honduras, meaning you basically fly through the Bermuda Triangle (yes, I felt it).
I land in DC at 7:15 am, and my flight to Indy starts boarding in 44 minutes. I do my best to zip through passport (following one of those unique Dulles transport rides), luggage, customs and luggage drop-off. Then I must run for a real length to catch the new train to the A terminal. Long run up to the actual terminal, and then I get the joy of running the length of the entire terminal to #1. The whole dash is maybe half a mile, and I'm digging it like any international traveler after 20-plus hours of flying.
I get inside the plane about 3 minutes before they close up.
I'm home by noon, and spend the afternoon chilling.
Last night I get a solid 13 hours and today (Friday) I felt great, which was good, because we had to shovel multiple times through this big snowstorm.
In the end, a really good trip.
Photos to follow.
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 11:07PM OP-ED: We need a new capitalism to take on China, By Anatole Kaletsky, (London) Times, February 4, 2010
As analysis goes, a bit backasswards. Politics derives from underlying economics, not vice versa. So it's not a matter of choosing your politics to facilitate your economics, but maturing your politics in response to your economic trajectory.
Two undeniable data points kill this guy's argument:
1) Once an economy matures (shifts from extensive to intensive growth), democracies consistently outperform authoritarian regimes on annual GDP growth; and
2) there are no rich, large-scale economies on the planet that are not democracies.
So please ignore this most common of pants-wetting exercises.
(Thanks: Gareth Williams)
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:22PM PROJECT: Charting the Beatles, By Michael Deal
Interesting. The break point is roughly Epstein's death. Lotsa collaboration before, much less after.
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:20PM EUROPE: "'Eastern Europe': Wrongly labeled; The economic downturn has made it harder to speak sensibly of a region called 'eastern Europe,'" The Economist, 9 January 2010.
Nice opening line:
It was never a very coherent idea and it is becoming a damaging one.
The notion basically refers to those states caught behind the Iron Curtain but not trapped within the USSR itself (although, now, the three Baltic states seem to be casually included while a Ukraine is not). Within that crew, as the article argues, we saw planned economies, the softer "goulash" version (Hungary) and the self-managed sort of Yugoslavia (and to a lesser extent, Romania).
Problem is, the fortunes of these states have diverged dramatically since 1989: Estonia and Slovenia rank in Europe's upper half. Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia more in the middle, Bulgaria and Romania more at the bottom.
In geographic terms, it seems that the northern EE states have been far more integrated into the West than the southern ones.
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:19PM MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA: "Somalia's pirates: A long war of the waters; Thanks to greater vigilance and naval patrols, the seas off Somalia may be a bit less dangerous than they were. But they are still the riskiest in the world," The Economist, 9 January 2010.
The usual piece on the subject. Why I cite: it reminds me that this is a problem easily solved by collaboration among the world's great power militaries--if they wanted to throw enough resources at the problem.
But the larger reality is that all of them, while devoting modest naval resources in this direction, still view the situation as a lesser-included that shouldn't seriously derail larger preparations for, and hedges against, one another.
And that's a pretty accurate capture of where we stand today: the world's great powers remain an uneasy bunch, with some fretting over their relative decline and others getting used to their absolute rise.
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:17PM ARTICLE: China's Zeal for 'Avatar' Crowds Out 'Confucius', By SHARON LaFRANIERE, New York Times, January 29, 2010
Hollywood, the Chinese, and I all need to admit: Cameron really is king of the world!
Saw "Avatar" a second time in DC last week, small screen but 3D.
The politics is heavy handed ("The sacred land!"), but it is compelling spectacle.
I liked it even more, and I can just imagine how "Confucius" ranks up against its action.
Monday, February 8, 2010 at 10:15PM ARTICLE: Engineering Peace, BY Susan Karlin, IEEE Spectrum, January 2010
Saw a story on this a while ago.
It is a cool little tale of connectivity.
(Thanks: Greg Welch)
