Tea with McNair

• writers in the redwoods

This week is the 2013 Mount Hermon Christrian Writers Confernecer on the western slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains—about an a 90 minute drive south of San Francisco. We are in the heart of California's amazing coastal redwoods.

It is sunny, warm (60's), and idelic—at about 42' above sea level. (I can breathe!) Something is bound to go swrong. The photo is the HEnry Cowell Redwoods State park, about two minutes down the road.

The faculty is top notch and easily approachable. An entire wing of the dining room  has been given over to becoming the conference bookstore—in addition to Mount Hermon's regular bookshop. [In one section, on three long tables, they have more than fifty different tiles on the craft, nuts-n-bolts, structure, style. ...of writing. 

Along with my newest book—HATCH! : Brianstorming Secrets of a Theme Park Designer—they carry (on my recommendation):

• Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper, SARK

• Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie

• Walking on Water, Madeleine L'Engle

• Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale, Fredrick Buechner

Plus I brought a few used copies of two of my now-out-of-print books:

• Everyone Wants to Go To Heaven, But ...

• Raised In Captivity, Memoir of a life Long Churchaholic

There are several tables of other books penned and/or recommended by faculty.

The main conference began yesterday, Friday 22 March and runs through Tuesday lunch—26 Mar. The day is wall-to-wall, morning-to-night seminars, workshops, one-on-one appointments with agents, publishers, editors (books and periodicals), and writing critiques.

Each evening I am presenting a keynote address, beginning last night with "Recapturing Your Creative Spirit." (One down, four to go.) A couple of my presentations are brand new. One is rework from the one and only time I gave it two years ago, and one will be a dialogue with the entire conference: "Tackling the Roadblocks to Creativity."  

As we are the only conference on the hill this week (and not huge in number), it's rather quiet here in the coffee house, lounge in the heart of camp. (It's also one of very few wifi hot spots in the forest.) Our guest rooms, while spacious and comfy, are black holes for wifi. Aaargh!

As I was preparing for my five keynotes it becaming more and more evident that the major themes and supporting illustrations for the week will find a place in my next book—Book No.2—in the three book series that began with HATCH!

I am still playing with the title, but hope to anounce it this Summer, in advance of its Autumnal release. I will be posting a brief survey here (www.TeaWithMcNair.com), and on the "Hatch-by-McNair-Wilson" Facebook page soon. Hope you will join in.

I continiue to be impressed and inspire by the remarkable array of people who attend these writing conferences. They are not all experienced, published authors. Yet from the dozen or so teens, to a physician I met, teachers, pastors, moms, and more, all have come to learn the craft of writing and the business of getting published and marketing their work. 

The common thread: all seem to have been ifected with the passion to write.

Start there and write, write, write.                                                         

• a warehouse of innovation

From the outside it is your standard twenty-foot high, very long, concrete walls, and scores of loading docks warehouse. The giant roll up doors are now locked and sealed. The grey, unpainted concrete floors remain. Only a small suite of glass-walled offices are carpeted ("the Coop). Their brick walls painted white but the texture is better, more inviting than the finest, most expensive grass wallpaper from a high-end interior design catalogue. I was there a few months ago—as the transformation was still in progress. They gave me one of the offices to camp in while I was there (see photo.) Behind the desk a thick pain of glass substitutes for a white board in each office. (Those large glass panes have sine been taken down, a sheet of white backing added, and re-BOLTED to the wall. Better.)

This is all in the new innovation center in Atlanta, GA., owned, operated, and developed by Chick-fil-A. It is just a couple of minutes down the road from their primary corporate campus. The new center is available to any group in CFA needing a place to create (brainstorm), design (prototype), test (validate)...innovate any part of their business, but not (as I understand) to use as just another meeting room.

When I arrived, last Wednesday, they had brought in several dozen folks from the general public for a "free lunch" in one of two, on-site model restaurants. Most of the interior walls, counters, and room dividers were black foam core. They might be test as many as five new condiment counter configurations through out the day. Tables and chairs are real and the food (from one of two, complete test kitchens) is exactly as available in 1700 Chick-fil-A restaurants. (And ...they might be test a new sandwich, dessert, or spicy batter for their signature chicken fil-A sandwich.) Overhead, several small (not obvious) TV cameras capture everything live. In a large room, adjacent, is a large team of execs watching how people are moving through the space. Viewing is on a giant, 20' x 20' wall. After lunch the guests will be asked about all facets of their experience.

This is all part of deciding how to improve the speed of service, comfort of guests, flow of human traffic, and efficiency of the entire operation. There are six new CFA restaurants under construction using innovations created here. One has already opened (I visited it a few months ago and it looks like no convenience food place you have ever visited.) They will build and test as many as fifteen new front counter designs in a single day. The model CFA restaurants are just one corner of the new innovation center.

By the way, the name of Chick-fil-A's new innovation barn is ...Hatch.

In the photo, I am standing by the massive wall of old , "up-cycled" wood in the reception area. It is the first thing you see upon entering Hatch.

LAST WEEK'S trip (one of several visits over last couple years) was to participate in the first of their quarterly "innovation speaker series." The day began with a basic introduction to innovation (including a Hatch tour.) Then, the first guest speaker, Joe Alves. In a word, Joe is ...remarkable. He designed the shark (a.k.a."Bruce") for the JAWS movies (One through 3-D.) Joe is a legendary Hollywood production designer, art director, and second unit director, his resume begins with the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet (1956.) Joe also directed JAWS 3-D and created some of the greatest film images (sets and locations) in modern film history. He was nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA (British Oscar) for his production design on Close Encounters of a Third Kind. To realize the enormous set of the final sequence—the "landing site"—Joe created the largest movie sets ever in a pair of airplane hangars that were each 300' x 300'—the length of a football field, squared. But these Mobile, AL, hangars were still not big enough. Joe Alves added 150' to the open end of one hangar to enclose the set, below. It appears to take place outdoors, at the base of Devils Tower National monument in Wyoming, but was filmed on an interior set in Alabama. (Have I spoiled the magic for you? Sorry. Sometimes how the magic is made can be quite magical.)

For this design feat, Joe was nominated for Best Achievement in Production Design for both an Oscar and British BAFTA.  STAR WARS took the Oscar that year (1977) in the U.S. But "accross the pond" in England, Joe received the BAFTA, beating out Star Wars with it's all-British design team and crew.

In his one-hour plus presentation at Hatch, Joe told behind-the-scenes stories, showed film clips and share elements of his original storyboard and production design sketches for JAWS. A lively Q&A session ensued and spilled over into lunch in "the Feeder" (Hatch's in-house cafe.) 

Following lunch we shifted to the vast no walls flex space in the heart of Hatch, the "Incubator." I presented my signature "Recapturing Your Creative Spirit" to an audience of mostly Chick-fil-A staffers. Next I facilitated the interactive session "Tackling the Roadblocks to Creativity." Then a time to sign copies of my new book, HATCH!: Brainstorming Secrets of a Theme Park Designer. [Toy can download a FREE PDF of the complete first chapter—I Love the Smell of Felt Pens in the Morning— in the "What's Brewing" area at the top of this column.]

[ Photo: McNair, Joe Alves, and my long-time friend and filmaker, MaxPaul Franklin of IMS Productions.]

The day concluded with my new friend, Steve Nedvidek, Hatch's "Innovator in Residence" delivering an overview of the CFA Hatch innovation process.

A rich, full remarkable day. I am excited about partnering with this highly motivated organization in the months and years ahead.

I am inspired the commitment Chick-fil-A has to innovation by creating this 80 thousand square foot facility completely devoted to the tasks, purpose, and goal of creativity and innovation.

Here is a short video on the process of brainstorming, prototyping, and testing new Chick-fil-A restaurant designs in the "Pen" of their new innovation center, Hatch.