Did I mention I had the best job in the world? When I say I ‘deployed’ many assume I did what is seen on CNN – holster a gun, lead convoys, exchange small arms fire with the enemy and occasionally maneuver around an IED attack. Or actually, since I am in the Air Force, I should probably fly a plane and drop bombs for my day job.

Although I have friends that do all of the above, I got to do quite the opposite side of spectrum – work USO type events in an effort to regenerate our workforce. It meant I got to spend 6 months thinking of creative ways people could have fun (think concerts, card games and cardboard water relays) to decompress in an often stressful, high-paced work environment. This is my dream job – party planning, for a living.

Although I could throw a really sweet event, one aspect of the job that I had never done before was to work with the entertainment industry to host large scale concerts (think 1K+ people). I learned what a tech rider was, how to book a well-known artist and how much it really costs to do so. As I often told people, ‘they never taught me how to do this in officer school’.

Out of all the crazy stories I could tell from doing this job, the pinnacle of my 6 months in Doha was hosting the First Lady of United states (FLOTUS) and taping a live Conan O’Brien show.

I had 10 days notice. FLOTUS would be in town speaking at a conference encouraging women in STEM and wanted to swing by the base for a morale visit. She wanted to spend time with a small group of Airmen and then bring out an artist to entertain the base population – so she called Conan O’Brien.

I’ll spare you the prep work details, the lack of sleep, security concerns involved and speed forward to picking up the head producer, writers, talent manager and camera crew from the Doha airport. While they flew via ‘normal’ first class tickets, Conan got to come a day later via Air Force one with the First Lady.

Having skipped the normal paperwork procedures, (I normally needed a minimum of 30 days to process customs paperwork through the Qatari government) we started off the evening stuck at the entrance of Al Udeid Air Base, which is wholly owned by the Qatari government; a political stance we were reminded of while we waited for over two hours while foreign guards went through every piece of video equipment.

Normally I have a fairly negative stereotype of anyone who is part of the industry of L.A., let alone a group of people who by all accounts were famous and successful in the industry. Having this stigma on my mind, I was pleasantly surprised by the entire groups calm nature, patience and general pleasant company – keeping in mind that they also had 10 days notice on this trip and hadn’t slept in 24+ hours. It was at this point I started to realize I was with a truly great group of people; given a unique opportunity to peak under the curtain of the entertainment industry.

And what I saw was a dedicated team of professionals who were able to come-up with funny, situationally-appropriate material in under 24 hours. Later I learned the short timeline was something the team was used to; being a daily show, your best or worst show only lasts for 24 hours or until your next show. So if you mess up, no big, yet if you go big and win, the reward is short lived. This, to me, allows for great creative writing where you constantly have to reinvent yourself to maintain entertaining material. What was more refreshing is that they didn’t care what the local leadership thought of their oh-so-true-to-the-Deid jokes.

Show time

Getting as much B-roll as possible the day prior, I went with the head producer + driver to transfer Conan from the First Ladies team of White House staff to Al Udeid Air base.

Little known fact (well maybe just by me): Conan actually went to Harvard and is pretty much hilarious all the time, but amazingly, can still have a normal, serious conversation. Hanging out with the Conan O’Brien + team is like hanging out with an old group of friends. The guys had been working together for nearly 20 years, and it shows. Rather than feeling like the guy that just showed up 20 minutes ago, you feel like you were with them all along.

 Side note: It is interesting to see how dynamics change when you have access to someone famous. I chose to hook-up a friend as the driver who was a fan, but in doing so pissed off another friend. Not without good reason, but was another lesson learned; things change when you have exclusive access to someone famous. You suddenly become either more or less desirable depending on what people want and who you chose reward.

Behind the scenes with Conan O’Brien? Like working with a well-oiled machine that felt both refreshing and comforting all at the same time.

The clips in the below link  show pretty much everything to the trip. To the many selfies, excited troops and quirky moments that make up filming in both the challenging environment of the desert and a foreign military installation.

http://teamcoco.com/video/conan-entertains-the-troops-at-al-udeid-air-base