Blind Prophecy

“Tact is just not saying true stuff. I’ll pass.”
- Cordelia Chase on Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Friday morning started off with our third plenary, featuring some unknown singer with a bit of pitch problems as entertainment and former NBA player John Amaechi as the speaker. Although I did get to speak with him briefly, I spent most of the time at the front of the ballroom trying to figure out how to move around him gracefully (see photo). He’s a big, tall man. So my type. I wanted to flirt, but restrained myself. Y’all know I got a thing for the handsome guys with extra melatonin in their skin.

His speech was rather impressive and was probably my favorite keynote of the whole Summit. Recognizing that most of the people in the room already worked for companies that embraced diversity (“they’ve already figured out that happy cows make better cheese,” in his words), Amaechi focused more on pulling from his psychology background to remind people of the impact they have and the purpose of having a clear vision. He hardly offered anything new in terms of movement direction (last year, this slot was filled by the amazing Richard Florida, who left the crowd buzzing), he did manage to inspire and energize.

After the plenary, the rest of the day was more or less a runaway train headed toward the Gala Awards Dinner, where we present the annual Out & Equal Workplace Awards. The only major thing between the breakfast plenary and the gala for me was stopping by the Executive Reception to snap some photos. Otherwise, my day mostly consisted of tying up odds and ends related to the gala and watching for developments in ENDA. The Hate Crimes bill passed, so that was some good news to celebrate.

While Abercrombie and I were getting dressed for the evening’s formal events, room service showed up. I guess my ED felt that I’d been going above and beyond enough that I deserved a bottle of champagne, some chocolate covered strawberries and a hand-written thank you note. Of course, I hardly had time to stop and enjoy it at that moment, but Abercrombie suggested we pick up orange juice and have mimosas later… a plan that sounded alright by me.

What to say about the Gala? It was hellish. My job was to sit in the tech area and call cues on our awards show PowerPoint (And the nominees are [animation 1 go] Joe Blow from Company X, [animation 2 go] Susie Que from Company Y,… etc.). Because of that I didn’t get to eat with the rest of the staff, but I was really the only person who knew the show well enough to do it.

Unfortunately, that meant that I was also the only guy sitting in the tech area without a headset when the sound didn’t work in part of the ballroom, so I was target number 1 for angry, drunk professionals who couldn’t hear the show. When we took a break for dinner service, the crew did their best to fix the problem, but some people were still upset.

As soon as my responsibilities were over, I slipped away to the nearest bar and slammed 3 Captain & Diets in a row. Yeah, from then on I was doing a decent impression of sober, but not really. Which explains why I chose that moment to tell my immediate supervisor (who was super-busy with the silent auction) that I intended to find a new job within the month. Not my most tactful moment in history, but it was going to come out sooner or later, I’d already talked with our HR director about my frustrations and had told several coworkers that I was putting resumes on the market.

Anyway, so I obviously didn’t get any pictures of the gala show myself (we had our professional photographer on hand to take care of it), but here’s a shot of the whole happy family after the Gala…

With the evening winding down, I dashed over to the corner store for OJ and cigarettes, then got to work on the Daily Bulletin.

I found Abercrombie in the hotel bar, more than a little drunk already, and talking with some folks from one of our regional affiliate. They took this picture of us in our gala attire. Of all the pictures I’ve been in lately, this is my favorite shot. Why can’t all my photos turn out this nice?

Anyway, I headed back up to the room to put the last few touches on the Daily Bulletin. Abercrombie came in just as I was uploading it and I told him I was going to smoke a cigarette then we’d finish the night with the mimosas. Really, I just needed to talk with someone about my slip of the brain in conversation with my supervisor, but he fell asleep before I got back up to the room.

I didn’t sleep at all that night. It was 3pm when I finally turned off the lights, around 5:30 I realized I wasn’t going to sleep so I went for a walk around the neighborhood.

Filed under: DC, work by Jere Keys