Well, There’s That.
The most important work you’ll ever do will probably never have your name on it.
The morning after, we were standing in a hotel lobby. The funny part is that while I remember this moment so vividly, I honestly don’t remember what city we were in.
Three of us. Veterans in advance, communications, and operations. People who have done this long enough to know that the job isn’t glamorous, it’s surgical. My colleague, the primary lead on the event, had barely slept. The other colleague and I had been pulled in as reinforcement, leapfrogging ahead from other events, because when you’re running events back to back, sometimes you just need more people who already know how to run toward the fire.
We were sleep deprived, running on fumes. And we had just pulled off something extraordinarily complex in front of an audience that had no idea what it took.
That’s the thing about working with people who truly know the job. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to ask twice. Everyone knows their lane, everyone watches the edges, and when something starts to slip, someone’s already moving to catch it before it hits the floor. We weren’t just a team that day. We were a system.
We found a copy of the New York Times.
There it was. Front page. Above the fold. The photo took up most of the front page, and below the fold was the guts of the article.
The event. The confetti. The dignitaries, the celebrities, the crowd, the moment — captured and packaged and delivered to breakfast tables across the country as something that had simply... happened.
We looked at it for a moment.
My colleague, one of the most brilliant operators I’ve ever worked alongside (and I am fully aware I’m biased), looked at the front page and calmly said something to the effect of: “We made the cover of the New York Times… well, there’s that.”
Then we laughed.
Because what else do you do? You are exhausted, sometimes underappreciated, thinking in terms that very few people truly get, and about to go out and do it again.
