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Tom Berry |
Two Passions, One Cause
Tom Berry
August 2006
Movies and airplanes. The most noteworthy man to be obsessed with
both was billionaire Howard Hughes. Tom Berry's similar passions
have not led him to a life of wealth, starlets, and germaphobia.
Instead, they have led him to MITRE, where he combines his interest
in movies and airplanes for our Center for Advanced Aviation Systems
Development. The center is sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA).
Berry's job title is principal economics and business analyst.
"That's a horrible title, isn't it?" sighs Berry. "What I'd like
to change it to is 'Storyteller.'" That's because Berry's specialty
is using narrative and visual presentation techniques to educate
MITRE sponsors and partners on complex aviation issues. "MITRE is
using storytelling as a way to convey our more complex technical
engineering ideas to sponsors, so that they can understand them
without being required to go into great depth."
A Spoonful of Sugar
The need for a more narrative approach to MITRE presentations became
obvious to Berry when he created a 15-minute video outlining the
future of traffic flow management. "It had all the details," he
says, "and explained how everything would work, but it was just
deadly boring. Audiences reacted to it like they were taking their
medicine."
Meanwhile, for fun, Berry took bits and pieces of the 15-minute
video at home and spliced them into a one-minute fake movie trailer.
He was shocked to discover that those who saw both the 15-minute
video and the joke trailer actually remembered more details about
traffic flow management from the trailer. "And we thought, 'Wait
a minute, I think we're on to something here.'"
The Analyst as a Young Man
Berry is no stranger to splicing quirky home movies together. When
he was eight years old, he filmed stop-action war movies with his
toy soldiers. As he grew older, he and his buddies would borrow
filmmaking equipment from their parents and roam around shooting
footage. Berry's gang even bought their own equipment after winning
$10,000 in a video production contest sponsored by a local radio
station. (Their winning entry involved splashing the radio station's
logo onto the Washington Monument using movie projectors, a stunt
whose statute of limitations Berry prays has expired.)
Despite his passion for filmmaking and his talent at it, after
graduating high school Berry did not hitchhike to Hollywood or enroll
in NYU. Instead, he took a job as a baggage handler for Piedmont
Airlines. Why? "Well, airplanes are cool. There's nothing like being
out there standing underneath a big 737, pushing it back and watching
it go. They're just cool."
While filmmaking was a hobby, airplanes were in his blood. His
father was a pilot in the army whose love for aviation he was more
than pleased to share. When Berry decided to get a college degree
in aviation management after a few years at Piedmont, his father
volunteered to pay his way.
Opportunity Bangs
After earning his degree, Berry went to work for USAir (which had
bought Piedmont) as an operations analyst. It was not too long before
Berry was presented an opportunity to marry his two passions—and
learned a valuable lesson in storytelling.
"One of my first management jobs at USAir was operations procedures
analyst," he says. "I was responsible for procedures related
to operating the jetway, the movable tunnel that passengers walk
through from the terminal to the plane. USAir was cancelling too
many flights because our people were banging the jetways into the
doors of the planes. We needed a way to show them how to do it right,
so I decided to make a training video."
The producer Berry hired to create the video came to him and said,
"I have this odd idea." The producer wanted to capitalize on the
popularity of General Schwarzkopf's Desert Storm briefings by having
the video's narrator present his training points while standing
stiffly dressed in camouflage. Berry's reaction? "I thought, 'This
is great! We should do this!'"
The result? "Oh, our people hated all the other training videos,
but they loved that one."
MITRE & Vine
Berry's embrace of creative storytelling helped him rise in the
ranks of U.S. Airways until he was the director of express operations.
When an acquaintance who worked at MITRE mentioned to Berry that
MITRE was searching for talented people with airline experience,
Berry jumped at the opportunity for a new challenge that would keep
him involved in aviation. Once at his new job, Berry's talent for
visual storytelling again found a chance to shine. And it has been
illuminating the way for MITRE's sponsors and partners since.
Berry's recent projects (in which he often collaborates with colleague
Greg Nelson) have included a multimedia presentation to brief FAA
personnel on a project related to improving air traffic controller
productivity and a video for the Air Transportation Association
of America designed to educate airline CEOs on the urgent need to
transform the nation's air traffic control system.
When asked if he misses driving baggage trucks underneath the outstretched
wings of a 737, Berry admits he does at times. "When you work for
the airlines, you realize each plane is filled with people going
for job interviews, going to visit their grandmas, going for medical
treatment, going to close deals on the other side of the country—and
they're all depending on you to make the plane go.
"But where I used to help get the planes into the air by fixing
the little problems, now at MITRE I do it by helping with the big
problems."
—by Christopher Lockheardt
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