"Meshing Styles"
The event: Lunch address to a pre-conference "executive workshop" at the Internet Commerce Expo in Los Angeles in September 1998.
The audience: Several dozen upper-level executives -- the dot-com bubble was still on "full inflate."
The speaker: An executive VP in Hewlett-Packard's Internet Software business unit.
The title: What's Coming for E-business.
The story: I never got "brain dump" time with the speaker, only with his assistant. She gave me the basic messaging points and told me her boss's personal style was "informal, relaxed, with a good sense of humor." An hour after I emailed her the script, she emailed me back "Okay, how did you clone him without even talking to him? This is exactly how he would say it." And apparently it was: the speech never went through revision.