Wednesday presentation in Gastonia, N.C.
The plan for today had been to fly into Charlotte Tuesday afternoon, spend all day Wednesday teaching at the Gaston Gazette — as part of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association’s Traveling Campus — and then fly back to Norfolk on Thursday.
Instead, my new job meant that I was only about a half-hour away from the site of my last scheduled speaking event of the summer. Only 72 miles, both ways. Hardly even worth the trouble of pulling out my iPod.
The presentation — my all-day program, The Art of Being Brilliant — went pretty well, I think. I freshened up a few of the slides last night but, for the most part, it was substantially the same show I gave earlier this year in Dallas and Lexington, Ky.
Oops! Caught red-handed, shilling a bit for my
new employer, Sporting News.
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My only real regret: A couple of ill-timed digressions on my part ran us over by ten minutes. So I broke my promise to the crowd to not run over our scheduled ending time of 4:30 p.m.
I was surprised when my wife and daughter showed up at mid-morning. They’ve never seen me teach. Ninety minutes later, we had lunch and then they left. Quickly. Bored shitless, they said.
Oh, well. So much for watching Dad in action.
The crowd seemed to appreciate the presentation. At least they didn’t throw garbage. Folks asked really good questions and seemed interested in finer points. I was delighted that so many word journalists showed up. I usually have a few, but nearly half the room were neither designers nor artists.
A number of reporters came and went, but for
the most part of the day, we had 20 to 25 people.
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A few attendees took me up on my offer to send out CDs containing my slide shows and the handouts I would have, um, handed out if I had printed up any. I’m still in the process of relocating, however, so I’ll be a little slow in sending those out. I still have three or four CDs to send out from my Lexington show a few weeks ago.
Thanks to editor Hunter Bretzius — truly a friend of visual journalism — and her crew at the Gaston Gazette for being such wonderful hosts. Additional thanks to Graham Kimbrough and the classy, classy folks at SNPA. The association has gone way out of its way to provide high-quality instruction to staffers of its member papers for absolutely no cost at all. With training budgets shrinking and disappearing but the need for training greater than ever before, that’s just amazing.
I’ve been proud to play a part in that effort this summer. Thanks for inviting me!
August 6th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Charles, you could have kept going to seven or eight o’clock and I’d probably not even have noticed! What a fantastic day with you at Gastonia. I was so pumped up and motivated after I left that the 2.5 hour drive back to Burlington seemed like it went by way too fast. I got home, sat down and started sketching out ideas inspired by the day’s sessions. Thanks so much.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:17 am
I’d love to get a copy of your presentation. I asked a few questions about sports and, despite only 4 hours of sleep, the time just seemed to stand still. I got a bunch of ideas. I’d like to see them materialize, but we’ll see. Thanks for coming to Gastonia.