On 9/11, I was boarding a plane in Minneapolis, headed to speak at a conference in Texas. On the jetway, we were instructed to head back to the gate. The first thing I noticed was that all the TVs in the terminal - which had been airing CNN - had been turned off. I had an OmniSky modem for my Palm V, called up Yahoo! News' rudimentary green-screen homepage and saw a headline that a plane had struck the World Trade Center - with few details beyond that. As I and my fellow road warriors idled at the gate, my PDA became our only lifeline to news, so I handed it around like I was sharing the Sports section in a barber shop. Later, when we were instructed to leave the airport, we found that the L.L. Bean store in the retail/restaurant hub had tuned all the screens in its window display to CNN. A mob of us huddled there, silently watching smoke pour out of the towers, until airport security forced us to leave.
On 9/11, I was boarding a plane in Minneapolis, headed to speak at a conference in Texas. On the jetway, we were instructed to head back to the gate. The first thing I noticed was that all the TVs in the terminal - which had been airing CNN - had been turned off. I had an OmniSky modem for my Palm V, called up Yahoo! News' rudimentary green-screen homepage and saw a headline that a plane had struck the World Trade Center - with few details beyond that. As I and my fellow road warriors idled at the gate, my PDA became our only lifeline to news, so I handed it around like I was sharing the Sports section in a barber shop. Later, when we were instructed to leave the airport, we found that the L.L. Bean store in the retail/restaurant hub had tuned all the screens in its window display to CNN. A mob of us huddled there, silently watching smoke pour out of the towers, until airport security forced us to leave.