Steve Martin is remarkable. I was invited to join Steve in a keynote session on April 9, 2013 (my birthday). We addressed a small group of 30 some business leaders from around the world working in the C-suite of firms like Waste Managment, Coke-a-Cola and Baidu, China’s Google. Steve opened the dinner as Fortune Magazine reporter lead him through a Q & A around harnessing creativity, about following creative instincts. He was funny and deadly serious. He was charming and to the point about the need to be honest about challenging their corporations leadership – themselves – creatively.
I spoke after dinner about the creative endeavors around building San Francisco’s bridges. The dinner took place with views of The Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. After desert I spoke to them form a balcony overlooking The Bay Bridge. The superstructure had only recently (March 5, 2013) been lit up with 25,000 LED lights spreads out over 4 miles of the Bay Bridge’s West Span (That’s like 2 Golden Gates or 8 Eiffel Towers on their sides. This $8 million dollar light sculpture that my friend and colleague Ben Davis raised the funds for, is now the world’s largest artistic light display called The Bay Lights (Google it).
The message was clearly about creativity matters – even in – especially in – infrastructure. I concluded with a descriptor of the Dire States tour (not called that then!) –
Dan McNichol is a number-one bestselling author and an award-winning journalist. His published books, articles, thought-leadership papers and speaking events focus on mega construction projects in the United States and The Peoples Republic of China.
McNichol recently contributed to a front page story in The New York Times titled, “Trump-Sized Idea for a New President: Build Stuff”. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) / Boston Chapter named McNichol as one of nation’s outstanding journalists in 2014 and again in 2003. McNichol contributes to worldwide media outlets including: The New York Times, Engineering News Record (ENR), ABC World News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) network, China Central Television (CCTV), TV Tokyo, MSNBC and PBS’s The NewsHour, National Geographic Channel, Discovery Channel, History Channel. McNichol is a frequent voice on National Public Radio (NPR).
ENR Magazine recently tapped McNichol as the magazine’s national correspondent for a cross country tour. McNichol and Aileen Cho, ENR’s senior transportation editor, drove in a 1949 Hudson Commodore with the tagline, “America’s infrastructure is as old, rusty and energy defunct as our original Detroit lead-sled.” The journalists wrote ENR print and online cover stories about the nation’s ailing infrastructure.
A former White House appointee, McNichol served the President on US policy issues surrounding transportation and infrastructure between 1991-1993. McNichol has worked in official capacities on the nation’s largest infrastructure projects: California High Speed Rail (2017), San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Replacement (2013) and The Big Dig, a.k.a. The Central Artery / Third Harbor Tunnel Project (2000).