A good yarn has always been worth cash money, no? Cheeni
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/travel/escapes/01Lecture.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=6d0cd0d754c72b7c&ex=1180843200&pagewanted=print June 1, 2007 If Adventure Is the Topic, the Talk Isn't Cheap By JOE ROBINSON THE 19th-century British explorer Richard Burton once said that the reason he tempted death in searching for the source of the Nile or by penetrating the inner reaches of Arabia disguised as a Pathan was because "the devil drives." Today, the response might be: "Need material for the next lecture." Though Columbus and Vasco da Gama were too early to cash in, adventurers in more recent times have found that the risks they take on far-flung exploits can pay off — if they live to tell the tale. For Henry Morton Stanley, Ernest Shackleton and contemporary risk takers like the climber Ed Viesturs, having a tangle with the back of beyond can be a gateway to the adventure lecture circuit, a tradition that has become especially lucrative in recent years. While most of the blank spots on the map have been filled in since Stanley lectured about his expedition that found the Scottish missionary David Livingstone in Africa in 1871, demand for vicarious thrills from the outer edge of adventure has grown — along with the production values. Shackleton regaled thousands at the Royal Albert Hall with primitive black-and-white lantern slides to chronicle his remarkable escape from Antarctica in the early years of the 20th century, but today's adventurers can punch up the presentation with video clips, animated PowerPoint displays and digital mapping. The arsenal allows explorers to transport audiences to polar blizzards or Himalayan summits with the touch of a laptop. Armed with business presentation tools, adventurers have been able to blaze a trail into the world of corporate conferences and paydays that Burton surely never imagined. The top names in the field can make $10,000 to $40,000 a talk — a long way from the token honorariums of musty explorers' clubs. There are a few speakers' bureaus that book only spinners of adventure yarns. At the Everest Speakers Bureau in Knoxville, Tenn., 90 percent of the talent has climbed Mount Everest. "Every year we're doing more events and growing in gross dollars," said Todd Greene, who with George Martin started Everest four years ago and whose clients include Peter Hillary, son of Edmund Hillary and himself a climber, and Mr. Viesturs, the first American to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter (that's nearly 26,300 feet) peaks. Demands from businesses for life-or-death lessons on overcoming adversity and successful risk taking have transformed the adventure lecture circuit from a sideline to a financial mainline for the professional explorer, a career that has not been a route to gainful employment in the past. "Speaking is pretty much how I make my living," said the polar explorer Ann Bancroft, who can command $20,000 for a talk and has done presentations for companies like General Mills, Pfizer and Best Buy. In 2001, Ms. Bancroft and Liv Arnesen became the first women to ski and sail across the Antarctic landmass. "How successful you're going to be as a professional explorer is a function of how well you can share the experience with others — the visceral adventure of it and the wisdom and knowledge you can distill out of it," said Dan Buettner, a Minneapolis-based cyclist who turned epic journeys from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and around the perimeter of Africa into an adventure-fueled education company. In February Mr. Buettner led an expedition to Nicoya, Costa Rica, where he and a team of scientists backed by National Geographic uncovered a local population with the longest average lifespan (people there in their 60's can reasonably expect to see 90) in the Western Hemisphere. The journey was part of the Blue Zones project to seek out places where people live the longest and healthiest. It has expanded Mr. Buettner's range as a speaker into the world of health and longevity. Mr. Buettner has been equally intrepid in melding exploration with technology. Educators were posting his expedition dispatches on the Internet as early as 1992, and in the middle of the decade, he began a series of interactive journeys that allowed schoolchildren to participate in his trips via class computers, voting on routes and delving into ancient riddles like the demise of the Mayan civilization. "I think the days where you show up with a slide projector are over," Mr. Buettner said. The adventurer has to bring the full complement of production values to compete with the TV, Imax films and Web feeds. Mr. Buettner uses a professional programmer to produce his presentations, which include images from National Geographic photographers and video clips. In Stanley's day, it was enough to come back with the stories and all or most limbs attached and a few grainy, highly posed black-and-whites from impossibly distant lands. His lecture tours fell distinctly into an oral storytelling tradition that let his audience's imagination fill in the blanks. The entertainment values of the lecture circuit were punched up considerably when Martin and Osa Johnson hit mining camps, warehouses and theaters with their vaudeville take on adventure in the 1920s and '30s. Mr. Johnson, who had been a crew member on Jack London's ill-fated 1907 voyage on the Snark, was the P. T. Barnum of the lecture circuit and one of the earliest adventure-film makers. The Johnsons used the full spectrum of available technology and showbiz — black-and-white lantern slides of wild characters and beasts, song-and-dance numbers by Mrs. Johnson and their films, like "Headhunters of the South Seas" and "Wonders of the Congo" — to take audiences from Borneo to Africa. The curtain would open "with an introduction from Martin, then a showing of their silent film, with perhaps a phonograph playing or a band and stopping at intermission and discussing what had gone on," said Jacquelyn Borgeson, curator at the Safari Museum in Chanute, Kan., a repository of Johnson memorabilia in Mrs. Johnson's hometown. Sometimes, she added, Mr. Johnson would read a script over it. By the 1970s, adventure lectures used a more straightforward presentation, with color-slide carousels as the prime technology. It was an imperfect medium, prone to stuck, overheated and upside-down images. The polar explorer Will Steger started his lecture career then, chronicling kayak adventures with 35-millimeter slides and 16-millimeter films. His talks at libraries and at meetings of the Izaak Walton League conservation group didn't make him much money, but he didn't seem to mind. WHEN I got paid for my presentations, to me it was always very good money, even $25," recalled Mr. Steger, who in 1986 led the first dog-sled team to journey unsupported to the North Pole. "These days you have PowerPoints instead of slide projectors," said Mr. Steger, who recently led a 1,200-mile sled expedition across Baffin Island with Mr. Viesturs for a documentary on the effects of global warming, a focus of his presentations these days. "The PowerPoint makes it a lot easier," Mr. Steger said. "You're still doing the same thing — one picture, then another. I do a jazzed-up version of what Admiral Peary used 100 years ago." There may be more bells and whistles, but today's adventure lecture still comes down to story, pictures, inspiration and escape. The recipe for a thrilling presentation remains a dramatic narrative with scrapes barely survived, setbacks overcome and a presentation that inspires armchair travelers to reach for the extraordinary and overcome obstacles. "Start with a bang, end with a bang and bring them up and down throughout," Ms. Bancroft said. The lessons of risk and perseverance carry a special motivational currency in the business world. "Getting to the top is not a goal most people can see. For us, getting to the top is really getting to the summit," said Mr. Viesturs, co-author of "No Shortcuts to the Top," the story of his 18-year effort to climb the world's 8,000-meter peaks. Using video clips and images shot in the so-called death zone above 26,000 feet, where merely lifting a camera is a feat of strength, he is able to put a face on the impossible goal. "Everyone has their own Annapurna to conquer," he said, referring to a peak in Nepal he climbed in 2004 to complete the cycle. The best presentations are still told, not by the tools, but by the talker. "I think people still crave the human contact," said Jonathan Breckon, head of public affairs at the Royal Geographical Society in London, one of the most venerable of all explorer stages and whose audio-visual equipment has received a full electronic upgrade from digital mapping to sound clips. The society's most popular presenter recently was the travel writer Colin Thubron, whose latest presentation about the Silk Road generated so much interest that hundreds of people had to be turned away. "I think he didn't have a single slide," Mr. Breckon said.
