You can tell it’s almost the last quarter of the year by the sudden surge in conferences, summits, fairs and expos that stare out from the diary and demand some sort of attention. My assistant Alex is convinced that when he closes his chunky desk diary the various global gatherings that are scribbled in pencil leap off the page and start to reproduce long after the lights have been switched off and we’ve all headed home.

In the wee hours, strange hybrid beasts start growing on the page and will lie in hiding for months before springing off and creating planning chaos. “I swear there was no branding summit in Buenos Aires marked in the diary when I looked yesterday,” he’ll say. Perched on the edge of his chair, diary in lap and pencil and eraser at the ready, Alex will survey the “week to view” pages, pull a face or two and then run through the upcoming conferences that he’s confirmed me to speak at or thinks I might want to attend. Within arm’s reach he usually has a small sheaf of requests for conferences he doesn’t think are worth attending but likes to go through them for the sheer enjoyment.

“Do you want to go to a design conference in South Africa? They’ll even fly you there and feed you.” I usually pretend I’m not listening to his pitches. “It says here that you’ll get to go on a night safari,” he continues. “You love night safaris, so I think I’ll say yes to this.”

At this point I look up, smile and there’s much laughter as we read the line-ups for summits worthy and others absurd.

This is always the warm-up act to the more serious game of figuring out what we’re going to do with the conferences that are already confirmed in the diary.

It’s quite easy to get caught up in the excitement of speaking at a symposium on urbanism in the Netherlands when there’s a handsome fee attached and the promise that I can be back in London by dinner-time.

If the request is for a date 18 months away it’s all too easy to clear a few days in the book and then fire off a letter of confirmation. As a result we’ve implemented a system of checks and balances to ensure we’re not too hasty in confirming. A transcript might read like a captain and a first officer running through a pre-flight checklist:
Alex: Conference in Belgrade in September 2010.
Me: Never been to Belgrade.
Alex: Subject is “Building a Global Balkan Media Brand”.
Me: Duration?
Alex: I think they’d like you to go for a week?
Me: What?!
Alex: Yes. It seems they want you to teach some classes when you’re out there.
Me: Decline. Next.
Alex: Client is a big US bank.
Me: Mmm.
Alex: It’s just before production for the November issue, so it looks tight.
Me: Topic?
Alex: Oh you’ll like this. You can talk about the state of the market in Japan and it’s in Tokyo.
Me: Confirm.
Alex: Are you very sure? I know you like Tokyo but are you going to be happy when I pack you off and send you on your way? You have to fly on a Sunday and you know how much you hate leaving London on Sunday mornings. Should I just say no?
Me: Confirm.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s (has there ever been a bigger mouthful of a banking brand?) Japan conference was never going to be the liveliest affair but I guess the organisers knew that when they signed me up to do the half-time show and get the delegates feeling good about the new government and all the good things about Japan they didn’t hear in other sessions. Armed with pom-poms and my baton-twirling routine, I took to the stage on Wednesday and did my best to highlight some opportunities and generate a few chuckles.

An hour later it seemed to have gone well and the chat around the podium centred on how Japan can position itself as the world’s best service culture but also find a way of monetising and scaling everything from hotel to global restaurant brands.

When I informed anxious delegates that taking Japanese service concepts global would most likely involve taking legions of Japanese staff global as well, there was a lot of considered nodding and scribbling. “So you don’t think it’s a just a case of taking the concept abroad and staffing it up locally?” asked one.

I suggested that one could always try but part of the reason the service culture is so tight in Japan is that it’s cultural and it would be tricky to get shop assistants to start running to open doors at shops in Brussels or bowing when guests speed away in taxis from hotel forecourts.

With thousands of JAL staff about to get the chop, however, a ready-made battalion of service-minded Japanese are about to enter the global job market.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle
tyler.brule@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/brule