July 10, 2005 – Confronting My Fear in London

July 10, 2005 – Confronting My Fear in London

It’s Sunday February 14th 1982. I’ve just checked into the Royal Lancaster Hotel located on Bayswater Road at Lancaster Gate across from Hyde Park. I’m wearing jeans, sports shirt and running shoes and boy am I under dressed. The flight arrived around 1400 hours and I’ve gotten to the hotel a little before 1600 hours. Settled into my room, I get a call from RB, a lecturer at the Polytechnic of North London on Holloway Road. He’s in the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering. He lives in Guildford with his wife WB and little boy, who I never got to meet. I’ve been trying to remember how I came to know RB, but my failing memory has hidden it from me. For a few years in the early 80s, RB and I corresponded and hung during his frequent visits to Silicon Valley. RB asks about my flight and after we exchange pleasantries, he asks if I’m up to dinner, to which I respond that I am and he says he’ll call at around 1900 hours.

I’m in London because RB invited me to speak at a conference on Computer Technology he’s producing at the Royal Lancaster conference facility next Tuesday. Frankly the prospect scares me to death, but I’m here because I’m trying to transcend my past. Since I can remember, the thought of public speaking has caused me no end of anxiety. In my first year of high school French, we are required to recite before the class and it takes every ounce of self-control to keep from throwing up and to get through the minute of reading French before a room full of classmates who are refrained from cat calls and boos by the stern demeanor of our French teacher, a five foot four inch, model-thin beauty in her early 30s with a lovely, rarely smiling face, beautiful brown hair always pulled into a bun. When I’m in front of the class, not wanting to disappoint her is the only reason I’m able to muddle through with an at best average recitation—with her constant exhortation to speak louder. Later, I took two speech classes, required to graduate: in high school in my teens and in college in my early 20s. Suppressing the urge to vomit had evolved into butterflies in my stomach but I still had to be reminded to speak louder—a job that has since fallen to my wife IM, who constantly reminds me that it is difficult to hear me in conversation.

One traumatic public speaking assignment that caused me great anguish was my last economics class before I graduated from the University of Texas. The final examination required a presentation of our final written paper to the class including overhead slides. Writing the paper was easy; putting together the presentation was a nightmare, made even more daunting by having to present before a class of my peers, most of whom I hardly knew at all. I practiced the presentation each night for three days before the final presentation even remembering to speak up. I saw some great presentations on the day I made mine and I realized that this was the way economists communicated their ideas to the world: building a case for your point of view, making your arguments, and defending your findings against a skeptical audience. When I first got my job as an editor at a technical magazine, I thought I had the best of all worlds. I could make my case in print and was never called upon to defend my findings except to the editorial desk. Now, in London I was looking at my economics final all over again.

RB arrives for dinner and we walk to a wine bar—a pub that sells wine instead of beer and also serves meals. It’s near the hotel and on the way we catch up on goings on in our separate parts of the world. RB is an aspiring entrepreneur who hopes to start a company and sell some of his designs for computer add on devices. He’s dabbling in robotics and asks me about some personal robots that Androbot, Inc.—the creation of Nolan Bushnell—was about to unleash on the world. They could be programmed with their own attitude—surly to obsequious. I had heard of the company but had no occasion to cover it since it was a consumer product out of the editorial charter of my magazine. He tells me he’s planning a trip to the Valley in the fall to meet with Bushnell.

Over dinner I convey my concerns about how I’ll do in my presentation to the audience on Tuesday. He assures me that the British audience will not be rude or dismissive and that I have nothing to worry about. He does it all the time and it’s no different than the two of us exchanging ideas. Everyone will have come to hear what you have to tell them he assures me. Hidden behind the wall of paper and the printed word, I have no trouble telling readers what I know, it’s getting up before them to tell them to do the same thing. All that self-confidence that the paper barrier affords me is shaken before a live audience. When I was in high school, I took a drama class and ended up an under study to one of the actors in the Thornton Wilder play The Long Christmas Dinner. I so wanted to conquer my fear and stand up in front of that audience and act my part, but the teacher wisely realized that though I could memorize my lines, I would have a difficult time selling my character to the audience.

Meanwhile, on Monday, I’m visiting Elsevier International Bulletins in Oxford, also the result of a recommendation from RB, to discuss a book on hard disk drives. Back then they were called Winchester Disk Drives after the IBM project for the product that ultimately spawned the industry. I’m to meet TP at Elsevier. I’ve known TP through correspondence and phone conversations for nearly a year. I contribute content for one of TP’s many newsletters.

Tuesday does arrive and I do take the stage with microphone so I can be heard. The audience is just over 50 people who have come to hear what technology developments were going on in the Valley and I do my best explaining what I know. Remarkably, I know a great deal about what’s happening at a whole new crop of microcomputer and peripherals companies and I get going and before I know what has happened I’m being given a notice that I have only five more minutes to talk. I conclude my remarks and take a couple of questions before RB, the moderator, thanks me for my contribution and calls the next speaker. Remarkably the anticipation of the event created far more anxiety than the actual event itself. The conference appearance marked a turning point for me. It made me aware that I had something to say and that I could articulate it clearly to an audience. I would learn over time, that this ability creates more to one’s personal success than being able to communicate the same thoughts on paper.