ANOTHER KEYNOTE CATASTROPHY

Colleagues are not naturally great actors and we should beware of conference organisers with brilliant snappy ideas.?A delicious catastrophe I recall was, on paper, the great idea of “The Starship Good Enterprise” (get it?)?On stage however things became a little complicated but this was a multi-national technology company and the rule is if you chuck enough cash at the crew they can organise anything.?The idea was this:?the set would be the Bridge of the Starship Good Enterprise, its mission was to cringe-makingly go where no colleague had gone before, to delight the customer and embrace change, ?whilst being agile.?The colleagues would be dressed as starship crew and would ‘beam’ guests aboard to be asked pertinent, pre-prepared questions in a natural galactic mid-atlantic accent.?(First fail, just because Gordon from Accounts Received is diligent and loyal doesn’t mean he can act).?‘Matter transport’ ?however big the budget, could have been a problem, but there is an ancient conjurors’ trick called ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ where a combination of mirrors, light and glass, can make people appear and disappear.?So now we are ready, the audience is in, the ‘crew’ are on the Bridge with their list of pertinent questions and announcements.

“Captain, permission to beam our expert business speaker aboard?”

“Permission granted.”

Ok, a little wooden in the delivery but we’re getting there.?The secret was a trap door in the stage underneath which I stood on a sort of tea tray and when the lights were right, accompanied with a lot of woo-wooing and other appropriate sci fi noises, I was hoisted through the hole to the stage by a??burly biker where I materialised ready to give my talk.?

????????????????Following me was the Chief Executive who had in a past life been a prominent athlete and body builder.?Now facing middle age he was still six feet tall but had bulked out considerably particularly around the middle.

“Captain, permission to beam the Chief Executive aboard”

“Permission granted.”

Woo!?Woo!?Woo!?As eighteen stone of meat and muscle climbed aboard the tea tray. The biker, muscles tensing, hoisted away and this was where the Chief Executive’s shoulders jammed firmly in the hole whilst something in the biker snapped leaving him looking a little like Quasimodo.?When the lights went up what had beamed aboard was just a head, a very florid angry head, that was at floor level like a kind of furious soccer ball.?Without breaking step the colleagues went into their set question routine.

“How will we benefit from the new software development centre?”

The football’s reply, despite its status, was anything but polite and consisted mostly of expletives of quite an anatomical and personal nature – the translation of which seemed to suggest a requirement for assistance with escape from its current position.?Finally, a colleague with a little more courage and a lot more initiative than the others, placed a foot on the Chief Executive and pressed him gently but firmly back to the planet’s surface, whereupon he reappeared from a fire exit and as the biker was carted off to hospital the Chief Executive continued his Q & A but I must admit the magic was lost.?

???????????????Message:?the more ambitious the set, the more opportunities for disaster and, if you want people to act, hire actors.