I’ve been typing a lot lately but it hasn’t been on my dozen plus sites. That’s because some clients have actually called me in to create text genius and it’s taken me away from my blogs, Twitter and even my WWJCE.com site.
But an event I covered the other day had my fingers in knots. I tweeted 260 times or so during this event as I covered it for a social media group. It was Gravity Summit and it took place Monday.
Take a look at the pre-event video. I’m in there hamming it up at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, MA.
In the past week I went from moderately famous podcaster, journalist and philanthropist to the echelons of household name…at least when it comes to National Public radio reporting.
That’s right, NPR sent me to the Consumer Electronics Show to report on the gadgets that make Americans drool. I came back with lots of audio, many blisters and a great deal of respect for the cab drivers in Las Vegas.
Further, I came back with content. I’ve sent some to MobileMag.com and some to Technology Review. But the bulk of my research and interviews have been used on the air at Boston’s NPR radio station – WBUR.
If you’re having trouble listening – because they require Real Player, then just click below for the audio of my clips.
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Please realize that WBUR is public radio and they enjoy support from listeners like you. It’s even more important that you give them money now because I loved working with them on this project and look forward to many more adventures. For that to happen, they need your suport.
WBUR.org is the Website and Here-Now.org is where you can find more great stories any day of the week.
At CES, from the prototype cellphone with a video projector in it to the three or four models (no phone) that fit in your hand and put movies on walls at resolution that amazes you, there’s a lot to see – literally.
Steve Garfield and I spent a moment with people from Optoma to put their little projector through it’s paces. I’m working on an article for Gatehouse Media featuring these products, so I’m not going to give you my take yet.
Actually, the Consumer Electronics Show isn’t nearly as bad as my headline. My feet are blistered (as is my wallet), but the people I’ve met and the pieces I’ve put together for various clients have been awe-inspiring and fulfilling, respectively.
From the arrival Sunday – and please realize that we’re only at day two of this massive show – I’ve been at the microphone, on my feet and in the face of anyone with a product to sell and a story to tell.
If you’re not familiar with the machinations of a journalist at a trade event, the blueprint/gameplan/schedule is pretty much as follows…
Set up interviews, meetings, outlines, story ideas, assignments, timelines and leisure plans before you drive to the airport.
People you’ve never met send you literature and pitches asking you to cover their products in your segments. At this point, you don’t even know what the real stories are or in my case, who you’re writing or recording them for, but that doesn’t deter the PR armies from filling your inbox faster than a new Viagra drug note or a god/prayer/Nigeria/hoax email from family, friends and that nice guy named Nigel overseas who wants to give you $40Million.
You then play the planes, trains and automobiles dance to get to your hotel. I’m lucky that mine – reserved sight-unseen (or should that be site-unseen?) – was amazing. See this video for a walk around the estate.
Next you start working. For me, reporting for NPR’s Boston station WBUR meant that interviews and information had to be compiled before the show floor was even open to the media. To this end I had to attend multiple press events and consume large amounts of complimentary refreshments.*
After doing my taping of a program for Here and Now – a syndicated, immensely popular and brilliant show – I had to press the reset button on my soul and go back at it. I have other segments to write and produce for the radio station and also have three other clients in the publishing world who need content.
It’s only Saturday and the show doesn’t end for another 40 hours. If you are keeping score, I’ve met @scobleizer and @jaffejuice in person, I’ve rubbed elbows with Dick DeBartolo, have interviewed really smart people with really silly products, have interviewed really smart people with really great products, have been on high-lust status for the technology I’ve seen that may never make it to market, have lost some money at poker, and I’m still going at it.
I’ll be giving a more comprehensive detail of the things I learned about at CES, the pieces I’ve written and recorded and some of the less professional fun I’ve had out here, soon.
For now, it’s back into the fray with microphone in hand and a smile on my face.
Mine’s short, but I refuse to refer to it as an ADD or ADHD situation as I believe those are mythical conditions created by a lazy physician and parent base. We’ll explore that opinion in another column…if I have enough where-with-all to remember.
My contention today is that it’s time to simplify. Everything. As soon as possible. There are certainly external factors forcing my hand in this decision, not the least of which are family illnesses, the cohabitation situation at my mansion and my completely frantic workload.
I take the blame for these items – except the health issues – because I’ve spent the last month working on my first novel. I finished it and have been quietly gloating the past few days. But now it’s time to get to work.
Find and gobble some pumpkin pie (as nobody thought to bring any to Thanksgiving.
If you have suggestions for any of these tasks, *or are an agent looking for a literary novel – the fictional memoir of a boy whose life was shaped by the influence of his seven sisters, please contact me in the comments here.
If you’re an editor still looking for a reporter on the floor of CES in Las Vegas in January, let’s talk. My dance card is pretty full now, but I might be able to assist you before or after the event with research I’ve already completed or planned meetings.
Talk to you all soon. Head down now, gotta work.
Keep reading!
ILLUSTRATING my complete lack of attention span…the main reason I wrote this was because I have just been looking at the plethora of bookmarks and links to other sites in each of my browsers. I’m headed to clean those up – BEFORE ANY OF THE OTHER TASKS. Wow. Talk about ADD – or don’t!
I’m currently on a Fung Wah bus (bad judgement) from the Consumer Electronics Show Press Briefing (good judgement) and I’m trying to sort out the stuff I learned about this afternoon.
Everything I saw, save two items, was just an improvement on existing technology. If that’s what the world is about, that’s fine, but my editors are asking me to find the next great thing.
Perhaps that’s how all newsrooms operate. And I know that’s how it is after 20 years in the business. But in a down economy that’s seeing venture capital evaporate and layoffs come back at a greater pace than when F&*^%$Company.com was around, I don’t think miracles are going to show up on the CES Exhibit Floor.
Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe the people like Motorola, with dual touchscreen technology will wow consumers and the media. Maybe miniature projectors will become the rage as kids decide to host parties where they can show YouTube videos on gym walls, and maybe headphone technology has taken another leap forward with advances in materials and sound limiter tech. But I’m not sure.
The event tonight promised to give us things to think about, and it did. It was totally worth the bus trip (barring a horrible, skin-scalding, shield your child’s eyes implosion) and the expense of $42 for transportation, $2 for a pretzel and $12 for a meal in Chinatown.
I think I have five solid stories. I have a new contact at Popular Science. I still have a shot at getting Diana Ross tickets. And I’m poised to make CES 2009 a masterpiece of journalistic perfection.
That being said, I am certainly glad I didn’t fly out here from California or even from another country. The paltry hall featuring 50 or so exhibitors was hardly worth a cross-country or international journey. Nor was the weak press conference.
The best info I got from being there early was that the coat check room was free and that CEA did a ton of great research that I’m gonna use for article background in January.
Other than that, the live filming of Jeopardy, the Diana Ross concert, the Silver Summit (seniors need apply), all was info that I could have gotten online from the comfort of my living room.
I’m not faulting the event, but am saying that in a time of fiscal conservativism, maybe this isn’t the way new media will be conducted. The open bar, great food and freebies from exhibitors may dry up again like they did in 2000. So doesn’t it make sense to pull in the reins a little bit now and save the industry than to go out with a monstrous bang?
I’m just asking becuase that seems to be my destiny as I hurtle homeward on Fung Wah.
Not in the election, because by the time most of you read this you’ll have voted. No, words are piling up nicely in my quest to complete NaNoWriMo.
Look over in the right sidebar and see the wordcount widget. It shows you where I stand after four days of participating in the 2008 NaNoWriMo event.
Unfortunately, my novel writing is interfering significantly with my other writing. I’ve let this blog and the others languish a little in the name of creating my first novel.
Yes, I’m already a published non-fiction author, but fiction is different. I’ve create a universe in my head (like that’s any different from how I go through life) and I’m moving the characters around on digital paper.
Unlike reporting on events or interviewing people, fiction taxes your mind because you’re compelled to transport yourself into different shoes with each sentence and piece of dialogue. So far I’ve been a set of parents, an 11-year-old boy (not too hard for me), teenage women, an old lady with a found kitten and a number of other characters. And that’s just four days in. At this rate I’ll compile the experiences of the world by the time they’re done counting the votes in Ohio.
If you’ve got a novel-writing story to share…or a tip on keeping the motivation going for other writing projects while staring down the barrel of something as big as NaNoWriMo…please put it in the comments.
Chat to you sort of soon. Tonight I’m Twittering the election at WBUR Radio in Boston. It’s light writing, but I’m gonna count it as some type of participation.
At my office away from the office (Panera), I tried to see how easy it would be to write 2000 words on a cohesive topic.
The exercise was part of the NaNoWriMo event coming up in less than 15 days. That’s right, National Novel-writing Month is November.
Part of my anxiety – aside from the actual word-count issue – is topic. I’m a font of silly ideas, smart commentary and unique introspective conversation starters. But that’s where it ends.
The stuff I usually write are concise and powerful 600-775 word diatribes. How can I hope to create characters, plot, description and wild action in chunks of 650 words? Further, how will I paste the whole thing together well enough to entice a major agent or publisher to take a flyer on my project?
It can’t be that hard, can it?
I mean, at every Tweet-up, cocktail party, family gathering and trip to the dentist, people bludgeon me with their ideas for books once they learn that I’m a professional writer.
Sure, I get paid to write and have done so since the days of green screens and mimeograph machines. But that doesn’t mean I’m a modern-day literary Midas.
Just look back over this rant and count the number of times I’ve used a hyphenated descriptor. That’s amateur hour, but you must concede me the errors in style as I’m trying to pound out the characters.
Nimble fingers are necessary. Just like a toy boat will tangle your tongue, you should try writing alliteration always. Or don’t.
How many words is that? 900? Not even?
C’mon. I’m going to have to do twice this amount AND make it tell a story. I think what I need is some acid. Or at least a lucid dream.
Thank god it’s Friday and I won’t have to think about this heinous challenge until Monday when I’ll be limbering up my fingers again.
What?
NaNoWriMo requires you to write EVERY day of the week? That means my trip to NYC mid-month will include some frantic banging of the keys.
And TurkeyDay will make me look like Mike Felger in a previous life. Anti-social wanker with his laptop at every family event. But it’s for the greater good.
And whatever I end up with next month better be good. And it better be greater than this collection of words.
Every day.
All month long.
Until I reach 50,000 words.
Yikes.
Keep reading…I’ll keep typing.
*Leave your thoughts on NaNoWriMo in the comments. And let me know if you’d like me to dump my daily words right here on the blog. It will give you a chance to see the novel as it travels along a path from concept to abysmal reality.
The recent admission by Lance Armstrong that he’s planning to try and win an eighth Tour de France title has me reeling. I’ve seen Lance in the Tour IN PERSON twice and would likely make every effort to attend his next attempt if he follows through with this promise.
Here’s are two shots I took of Lance in 2005 on the slopes of the Alps near Courchevel France. One is of the finish on the Alps, one is of the downhill start the next day.
You can see that he’s all alone and is hammering up the hill. OK, you can see only that he’s alone. And he actually came in second on that stage, but it was great to see him in person and to have the ability to take photos and report on the event.
In the other shot you can see he’s in yellow and poised to win his 7th Tour de France.
That’s what I’m thinking about today as I look forward to assignments at CES in January and Spring Training in Florida in February and March.
If you’re at a news outlet and need a versatile freelancer for these types of assignments, gimme a shout in the comments on this post or send me an email… jeff (@) jeffcutler (dot . ) com.
Oh, if you want the full resolution shots I took at the 2005 Tour de France, get in touch. I’m willing to sell one-time rights.
One of my favorite mantras is a kid’s joke about how to eat an elephant. The punchline makes it clear that kids think about problems in a purer way than jaded adults, and it helps me remain on track when overwhelmed by deadlines, projects, aspirations and avocational desires.
Right now I’m sitting in the study at my house writing query letters, drinking Wegmans-brand Gatorade and listening to podcasts. I’m trying to figure out how to get everything done (become a more prominent columnist, get clips in ESPN the Mag, Wired, The Boston Globe, and any Rodale Press publication) without losing my mind and without letting household tasks stagnate.
I’m also wondering when I can fit in time to ride my scooter, swing by my parent’s house to say hi and I love you, hold a yard sale (scheduled for this coming Saturday), concentrate on fitness and participate fully in my ongoing relationships.
Then I think of the elephant and it calms me.
Oh, if you’re not familiar with the joke, the punchline essentially says that you can’t eat an elephant all at once and the best way to eat an elephant is in lots of little bites.
So, if you’re paused or frozen or stagnating, think about the great grey mammal and come up with your favorite recipe. I assure you that you’re never going to find a pan or oven or even an open pit big enough to take care of the entire meal at once.
But just thinking about the approach will calm you and put you back on track to getting things done, one bite at a time.
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