It was most definitely a pleasure to be invited to speak at the National Speaker's Showcase at the METCON meeting in Atlanta. Before METCON I knew no-one who was attending -- not even Marlene, who put the Showcase together. I had joined the National Speaker's Association in the summer of 1997, and had attended events held by the Minnesota Speaker's Association in Minneapolis. I was then thrilled to be selected to speak at the Showcase in Atlanta. Although I had talked on the selected topic a few times before, I carefully worked on it and constructed an entirely new speech and sets of slides for METCON. It underwent several revisions and slide changes before I finally settled on the material, and was ready to go!

It was with both great anticipation and considerable uncertainty that I arrived in Atlanta late Tuesday. However, I quickly got to know Marlene and all of thr speakers on Wednesday, the day of the Showcase, as well as several other conferees at the reception that evening. I would especially grateful to Marlene for that rehearsal session Wednesday morning. It was a substantial aid to speaking at the Showcase, by letting me become familiar with the group and the AV people, by my learning how well I could cope with the environment with my disabilities, and by getting the very positive feedback from people I had never known before. These results in general allowed me give my speech with a lot more confidence.

You might wonder why this boosted my confidence so much. About 4 weeks before I had given a speech with slides in the slide projector, which had worked fine in the test the AV person hastily did before the meeting, but which failed to work when I gave the talk (with the AV person nowhere around). This rattled my speaking a bit since those were an important part of my talk. I have also talked in situations in which my disabilities were a problem because of an AV person failing to pay attention to points I repeatedly made. Thus I naturally had concerns about something going wrong, and after finding an atrocious virus on a brand new notebook computer I purchased last spring (causing me to promptly return it after hours of frustration), I definitely did not want to try using a computer for the presentation. However, in the METCON Showcase Marlene did a great job not only in putting the program together, but in making sure everything was well synchronized, with 4 of the 7 presentations made on a notebook computer. The AV people were also very helpful in making sure everything worked right.

At METCON I got to know interesting and diverse group of people, and it was very educational to learn some of the processes involved in meeting planning. Most conferees were quite friendly, and definitely interested when I introduced myself and offered to exchange business cards. I also learned a lot about web sites for travel planning from the 2 seminars presented by Jeff Rasco and Corbin Ball of HMR Associates. All in all, it was quite an interesting and productive meeting. And quite different from the scientific meetings I normally go to!

After returning to Iowa following my speaking at the NSA Showcase at METCON and attending the rest of the meeting, I listened to Larry King Live on CNN on April 6, in which he was interviewing Al Roker of NBC and others about the effects of El Nino. When a climatologist in that show mention storms on the Sun, Larry King asked several times in astonishment, "The Sun has storms?!" Everyone who attended the Showcase well remembers the 2 slides I showed on the Sun in a discussion of the important effects it has on satellites used for telecommunication, including one slide with a prominent solar flare storm. On the Larry King show Al Roker replied to Larry King's question after about the fourth time he asked it, "Yes, they go out 5 or 6, maybe 10 miles." Al, correct that to 5, 6, or 10 thousand miles! In fact the solar flare storm that I showed in the one slide was well over 100,000 miles high!

So, remember, if you attended the Speaker Showcase you heard it there first. If you did not (or even if you did!), feel most welcome to invite me to speak on this or any related topic on space and/or our move to the twenty-first century.