Charles Apple

Wow. Today was about as perfect a day you can possibly have if you’re a presenter.

And as much as I’d love to claim credit for it all, I have to say: Much of our success here today was because of the generous and supportive crowd the SNPA folks attracted. That and the wonderful hospitality I’ve enjoyed from the wonderful people of The Dallas Morning News, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Belo and the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association.

Again, my assigned task today was to somehow take my Art of Being Brilliant show — which has been swell-received the six times I’ve presented it before — and then build upon it to make a six-hour seminar.

I spent a lot of time figuring out the most lively and inventive ways I could think of to make the points I wanted to make and to show the inspiring pages I’ve been collecting over the years. I’m guessing roughly 60 percent of the slides I showed today was work from The Virginian-Pilot and another 20 percent was graphics work from The Des Moines Register. The rest came from papers all over the country.

I was particularly proud of a few parts. One section I called “Ten ideas you can steal… right now.” I’ve done that before, but I can’t work a riff like that into most of my shows, which are usually 45 minutes to an hour. So it had been a while.

I did a segment on the recent NCAA basketball tournament sections, thanks to PDFs I obtained via the SportsDesigner site. I showed a large selection of wonderful work from tiny papers from all over, including another large selection of stuff by Doug Jessmer of The Pinellas (Fla.) News.

And the oddest thing had happened earlier, as I was rebuilding this part of my show: I tried to beef up the number of recent slides of great pages by small papers. I searched a bit but couldn’t find quite what I wanted.

So Monday — just as I’m applying my final polish to my show — a designer from Bellingham, Wash., asked me to critique a few of his pages.

Bellingham? Never heard of it. But sure, I told him; send ‘em on. As soon as I’m done in Dallas, I’ll write you up a critique.

As the PDFs began rolling in, I stashed them in a folder. But then — out of pure curiosity — I happened to open one. And — Boom! – my socks were knocked off. Man, this guy rocks!

Tony Briggmin of The Bellingham Herald. Tony; dude; I think I ended up showing five or six of your pages. And my audience was knocked over by them, too. There’s your critique, dude, in a nutshell. I’ll send you a message later.

The crowd — I think we had about 40, at one point — was very kind. They laughed at all my stale, dumb jokes. And I’m told they gave me glowing appraisals afterward.

A couple of shots of my audience. A very nice crowd.
—

I was worried about lunch. Longtime readers of this blog — or, perhaps of some of my previous blog work at other sites — will recall that I’ve struggled off-and-on with diabetes. Sometimes, I’ll get tired or dehydrated or — this happens a lot when I travel — I’ll miss a scheduled meal and begin to feel downright awful.

That didn’t happen today. When I asked Rob Schenider — my wonderful host for Tuesday — for advice on where to grab a quick lunch, he said he’d get someone to take my order, run down to Subway and buy me a sandwich.

Well, Rob got tied up in meetings today and couldn’t make my sessions. But he did pop in during a break and asked me what I wanted. A few minutes later, he reappeared with food.

Rob apparently left his busy, busy day at work, walked down the street to buy me lunch, delivered it and then went back to his meetings.

What an incredibly generous gesture. That Rob is one in a million.

Naturally, his competitors from down the road suggested I should have tipped him. Ha!

At one point, I got a little behind in my timing. I considered hacking whole sections out of my afternoon topics. It really should have timed out fine — in theory — but unlike my shorter shows, it’s simply not feasible to perform a timed dry run of a six-hour session like this.

But at the very end — even after I wrapped up with the most moving motivational pep talk I could muster — I tried to make a joke about how little we had run over. So I made a broad, cartoon-like grab for my travel alarm… and then did a double-take myself. It was 4:30 on the dot.

Perfect. How did that happen? Sometimes, ya just gets lucky.

I made a lot of new friends today. A few remembered to bring their business cards; several took mine and promised to contact me later. I’m hoping we can keep in touch.

Matt Pinkney and his fine colleagues in Fort Worth had to leave a little early, but it was an honor having them attend my show. And with a couple hours left in the day, Star-Telegram artist Steve Wilson — fresh from teaching Lightwave 3D sessions last week in San Francisco — drove all the way in to take me to dinner tonight.

Steve Wilson and me. Even without his trade-
mark ponytail — recently donated to charity,
by the way — I have to say here: “Steve’s the
one with hair. Dammit.”
—

Steve and DMN artist Kyle Alcott — who recently moved here from The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville — and I went out to this very local, very colorful little barbecue establishment, not far from downtown. We enjoyed Texas-style ribs.

Or, at least, I presume they were Texas-style. Admittedly, the evidence was purely circumstantial. Perhaps it was the joint’s vinyl seats, each colored to look like a Texas state flag.

Man, I wish I had taken a picture of that place.

And then we went down the street to a country-and-western bar for beer. Kyle pointed out the building in which the Coyote Ugly Saloon had been. Sadly, it’s closed now.

Today was a very long day. I worked hard. My legs are killing me — the Advil’s not helping much — and at one point, I damn near lost my voice. (And for me, that’s a real tragedy!) But overall, I actually feel pretty good. Tired, but good.

And I think today was a huge success. I’m already receiving enthusiastic e-mails from my audience as they’re getting home this evening.

I’m really enjoy this teaching thing. If you can’t tell.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Workshops, Innovative ideas, News design, Charles Apple, Newspapers, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.