Sitting at SFO, about to fly to Miami via Charlotte in order to give a speech on technology, product development, and transformation to a small group of senior executives. Although I gave talks for EMI, I haven’t built an original keynote in a while, so this has been an enjoyable exercise.

The client, to their credit, actually pushed hard to get an outline early, which kept procrastination to lower levels than I am used to. The themes that are emerging tie technological innovation, corporate transformation, and disruption together through community engagement and agile processes, so this should be a lot of fun. Since it is only a 25 person audience, the talk will be very interactive and allow for extensive discussions.

In particular, I look forward to kicking around who executives feel are the first to know when innovation has changed the market they operate in — employees? customers? partners? competitors? — and who within the organization is responsible for making sure that group is found and listened to.

Deciding whether or not to take speaking gigs was a difficult call, since I have enough interesting projects to mull over and being home has been so nice. However, with the economy beginning to recover and a regular flow of speaking requests starting up, I find that it is an efficient way to broaden my network and lets me produce (reasonably) coherent thoughts on diverse topics.

Need to get back to the talk. Kindle is telling me that Dan Brown’s new novel, The Lost Symbol has just downloaded, so need to finish talk before I can crack the book.

Or, more correctly, turn on Kindle and hit next page button. “Cracking the book” is much more evocative, but I am glad that I’m carrying bits not atoms.