My trip to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL) has been a great success. On the flight from Chicago, I sat with a very successful salesman of industrial boilers. Since part of my job is sales (selling FAST to potential members, partners and donors), I asked for the secret of his success. It is asking the right questions and then listening to understand their interests and needs. There are many reasons why a company may want a new boiler (legal regulations, public image, energy efficiency, safety, company growth), and you need to present the advantages of your boiler in their terms.

I thought about this during my two days of meetings with deans and faculty at UNL. As a new organzation, the Fulbright Academy can go in many directions - and so I need to balance our vision with the needs and interests of our members. UNL has nearly 22,000 students, and so there are many different avenues for collaboration between our organization and members and their factulty and students. They have a strong Office of International Affairs, and every year several students get a Fulbright.

Some memories.
As part of their branding effort, the University has been giving out lapel pins that are a large red "N" Everywhere you go, you see the N.
It has a great collection of outdoor sculptures and also a nice art gallery. In the permanent collection, they have an exhibit of Marsen Hartley, who apparently was a leading American modernist painter around 1910-1940. He was born in Maine and the exibit includes a painting of Mt. Katahdin (Maine's tallest mountain and also the location of the northern end of the Appalachian Trail). So even in Nebraska, I can't get away from my home state.
I visited the State House and saw groups of visiting elementary school kids on a field trip to see government in action. The building is full of images of corn cobs - from the walnut wood ceiling of the Supreme Court chamber to the brass light fixtures in the basement. It also has wonderful mosaics in the floors, with images of various plant and animal life.
On my jog this morning, I went by the train depot. Amtrak's California Zephyr was waiting to depart. It left Chicago yesterday at 1:50 in the afternoon and will get to San Francisco tomorrow at 5:00 pm - a 53 hour trip. Back in 1982 - the summer I graduated from high school - I took the Greyhound from Boston to Los Angeles and back - that was something like 85 hours each way (3.5 days). I had not been back to Nebraska since that summer.
I have discovered that I will need to come again - I did not have a chance to visit the "Telephone Historical Museum" or the "National Museum of Roller Skating," which the hotel information booklet tells me is considered to be "the definitive source of roller sports history."

Time to go to this morning's meetings, then a flight home. Yesterday it was sunny and 70 degrees in Lincoln. In the evening, I called home - it had been snowing all afternoon.