Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Andrew Zolli, the organizer, wanted to try something very different this year, so he asked a bunch of past favorite speakers to do special, intimate sessions with smaller numbers--around 30. He set these special-access events for the afternoon prior to Pop!Tech proper (the short talks and panels at the Opera House, which I've done twice, once for PNM and once for BFA).

I was psyched for the session in the following sense: audience members could have chosen several other sessions at the same time, and mine sold out very quickly and had a waiting list. My main competition was one where the speaker was giving away a Nokia GPS/camera/bunch-of-other-stuff (maybe even a phone?) to every attendee, something worth about $800.

I still outdrew this guy, I was told, despite only giving out signed PNM poster maps.

Since it was designed to be more Q&A and less straight presentation, I thought I'd take a different tack and use the chance to try out ideas and structure from the next book. So I slapped together a brief of about 17 slides. Half were ones I've used before but never at Pop!Tech, and about half were the presentation of my thinking re: the next book.

All of it was preliminary, as I've come to understand my creative process: I head into a chapter with a plan and I write my way through that plan and when I'm done, it sort of looks like that plan but it's really quite different, because that's what it took to actually write it out versus tossing up bumper stickers on the screen.

Still, it was fascinating to give a brief I've never given before. In fact, I was typing furiously right up to the last minute before standing up and beginning the talk. Doing that is sort of scary, because you're fumbling for words and really not giving the brief so much as taking it out for its paces. Typically, when you do this, you're semi-presenting and semi-talking about what you think you're presenting (both talking at the audience and to the audience in broadcast and feedback-trolling mode). That's something I've traditionally done in-house with colleagues versus a raw audience, but I figured it would be fun to try at Pop!Tech--you know, it's good to scare yourself and make yourself uncomfortable every so often. Keeps the blade sharp.

What I basically did was present a conceptual model of global change prior to 9/11, what happens with 9/11 and its associated perturbations, how America goes one way with new rules and how the rest of the world accelerates in another way. Question then is, How do we realign and what is the resulting situation?

After giving that basic model, I ran six sectors through it: economics, politics, military, technology/nets, social/spiritual, and enviro. My column next week hints at some of the dynamics, which I'm still working out creatively in my head.

The talk seemed to go well. I promised 35 mins and went 55, which is typical for me. Then we broke for five and went 60 on Q&A/discussion, which was great. After the session I got a surprisingly loud (for that size) amount of applause, so people seemed happy. Clearly, I hoped they got what they expected: an update on my thinking and a chance to interact with me at length over current issues. Spoke with a lot of them off-line both before, during break, and after, and those people were clearly engaged, but I'll let Jenn follow up for feedback.

It was an experiment that I took advantage of to push my thinking on the next book, and it worked for me. For the audience, my working assumption is simply that anyone who thinks systematically about the future provides interesting analysis, especially if that systematic approach helps the thinker avoid the usual tallying up of worst-casing scenarios, which is a popular form, even as the analysis it creates is complete crap.

Anyway, I had fun, and I love the collection of high-tech do-dads that I got in my swag bag (actually, the backpack itself is superb), and yes, I will immediately begin playing with my new Nokia thingamabob.

I hope to go back to PopTech next with the new brief from the new book. Til then, I've made my mark there and I'll see what feedback follows.