Motivation is Concentric Circles

After the debacle that was Evar’s attempt at a motivational seminar in the ‘Rat & Ferret’, a group of us decided that we would help him out by adding ‘structure’ to his technique.

I was the first to arrive and I sat nursing a pint of Nightswerve’s Velvet Cudgel while I waited for the others. Evar turned up a short time later quickly followed by Lillian Flotelitely, who had offered to enhance Evar’s limited wardrobe by donating some of her late brother’s clothes. (see Note 1) .

A little while later, the roar of a fleet of Mercedes cars signalled the arrival of a bafflement of Management Consultants (see Note 2) we had secured for the occasion with a little help from Padstow (see Note 3).

The bafflement entered the lounge and immediately agreed that, in the spirit of standardisation, they should all order the same drink. They then stood at the bar and argued over exactly what that drink would be for a good ten minutes before Mattress Madge intervened and gave them all a pint of Velvet Cudgel explaining it was the local standard. Thus placated, they joined me at my table as Lillian led in Evar.

At first, the bafflement nodded and muttered, before one of them decided Evar’s tie needed to be upgraded to silk. Another announced that it wasn’t an upgrade that was needed, but a replacement bow tie was required. The third immediately declared that the tie was an overhead and needed to be dispensed with. They squabbled amongst themselves before Lillian suggested that the tie be blue instead of green. They muttered a bit before all nodding and agreeing that a blue tie would be acceptable.

There was then a period of unexpected unanimity. All agreed that what Evar needed was a PowerPoint slideshow and that pictures and videos (see Note 4) would be spliced into some slides showing the latest management thinking gleaned from 10 minutes on Google.

When we tried to assemble the actual presentation, things started to get heated. Throgmorton Cranfield insisted that the presentation had to start with a slide consisting of concentric circles. Evander Waterhouse, immediately countered that this was against ISO43277/B and that all presentations must open with a two by two matrices. For a while, Abraham Logica said nothing and sat there thumbing through a leather bound folder before suddenly launching into a tirade claiming that both were wrong because of the template being used.

It looked like they would come to blows and try as we might, we could not calm the increasingly heated debate. In the end, Mattress Madge, Evar and I retired to the snug bar and decided to do the presentation ourselves.

When we returned an hour later, the argument was still in full swing and the walls had been covered in yellow post-it notes. I tried the polite cough to gain their attention and was totally ignored. Mattress Madge slammed a fist down onto the table causing glasses, blackberries and folders to jump several inches into the air.

The room went silent. The Management Consultants looked at Mattress Madge with their jaws hanging open.

We showed them our presentation.

Whether it was the quality of our offering or the sight of Mattress Madge all a quiver in pent up frustration, I don’t know, but the bafflement accepted it with fulsome praise.

After agreeing that Evar would give his first run through of his presentation at ‘MacWhirtles Widgets and Flanges’ next week, we all handed the Management Consultants our watches, they declared it was 22:37 (see Note 5) and we all left happy.

Note 1: The unfortunate Stanley Flotelitely will be sorely missed. A rather eccentric engineer, he travelled around the town in his patented steam powered car. His lifelong ambition was achieved last year when he developed the world’s first steam powered, fully automated Hurdy Gurdy orchestra and performed an open air concert in the local park. Sadly, while attempting to incorporate bagpipes into the orchestra, a poorly manufactured non-return valve resulted in his demise and the complete destruction of his workshop.

Note 2: I am reliably informed that bafflement is the correct collective noun when describing more than one Management Consultant. As everyone knows, a single Management Consultant is described as a flim-flam.

Note 3: Padstow had been stalking a minor soap star who had been booked to open their annual conference in Scarborough, it was our good fortune that he had decided to go for a walk on the hills and managed to get the pictures. The consultants claim they were playing charades and trying to act out Bo Peep and who am I to contradict them?

Note 4: All of us were particularly taken by one video of Evar and Yvette shot on a break from one of his competitions. In another unexpected show of unanimity we all agreed that for a big girl, Yvette is surprisingly flexible and that the video could not be shown without fear of arrest.

Note 5: I’m unsure whether or not this note is needed or if I should even include it. If you believe that it is surplus to requirements, then read no further. For as everyone knows, a Management Consultants job is to go into a company, borrow your watch, tell you the time and keep the watch.

 

Group Therapy

It was sometime in the mi-90s that I first started to write for pleasure. There I was, happily sliding towards my 40s when I met Mike. I’m not quite clear on how it happened, but somehow, under the editorial leadership of Mike, a magazine came into being that satirised the official company magazine.

Calling our offering a magazine was probably stretching the point. While the company magazine was glossy and slick, ours consisted of a few sheets of A4 paper stapled together. While the company had access to an editor, ours went out typos and all. The company used professional photographers. We cut cartoons from back copies of ‘Punch’ magazine and changed the text underneath. The company undoubtedly had access to tools that ensured it was laid out impeccably. We would sit with bits of paper and glue, stick the contributions to the A4 sheet and photocopy them.

Despite this, our offering was surprisingly popular. For ‘Children in Need’ we produced special editions, charged the princely sum of 50p and sold out before lunch. (see Note 1) Above all, I found the act of writing bits of it highly therapeutic.

Mike moved on and by popular demand I carried on with the magazine. Then came the unfortunate incident of the new kitten. One of the (female) managers came into possession of a kitten. She may have let slip that she hadn’t thought of a good name, so naturally, I sought to help. In one edition we ran a competition, ‘Guess the name of X’s pussy!’ It didn’t go down well and management introduced censorship and the edginess and feeling of fun was lost. The magazine faded away.

Back then my writing wasn’t up to much. My effulgent yeomen may be thinking that nothing much changes, but hard as it is to believe, my writing has improved since then.

At the time, I was already using the Internet. I started off with a CompuServe account using the mosaic browser and a 19.6K modem. With my creative outlet gone, I started to explore the internet for other outlets. I started off going to newsgroups, eventually graduating to messageboards before discovering a few sites on the web that catered for writers.

Eventually, I grew bored with the writing sites and decided to write a blog instead. Now, virtually all my writing is either in a blog or is reworked from one of my ramblings that started as a blog. I find that this gives me the therapy I crave without having to commit to heavily.

The blog gives a lot of creative freedom and allows you to do all sorts of clever things with other media, but I essentially use it as a written word tool. However, there seems to be a limit to just how much I can read in a blog and how much I can interact with the writer or as a writer. In my eyes at least, it has been a shortcoming of the internet that reading off a screen is difficult. Reading from a book or a piece of paper is so much easier (see Note 2).  It is almost as if going onto the internet immediately sets your attention span to a lower setting.

For all of the advances in technology and the Internet, the position of the book has never been challenged.  For interaction and presentation, you cannot beat the Internet.

Then there is the issue of putting writers together on a site. There always seemed to be ‘issues’ amongst writers on an internet site. It was fine when all of the writers were happily praising each other like luvvies on the red carpet at the Oscars, but that never lasted. Sooner or later constructive critiques would be asked for and received signalling tears before bedtime. As I think one great wit once put it, ‘You can stroke some of the egos all of the time, all of the egos some of the time, but not all of the egos all of the time.’

There was no better example of this than the collaborative story. One writer would write a paragraph or two and hand over to another writer to add a bit, who would hand over to another. The trouble was that you would write a bit setting up a later contribution only to have your ideas stamped upon by some guy who believed that all stories needed to contain at least one herd of flying, killer gerbils.

I loved the collaborative story; it was just so rare that one ever got finished.

The other day I was doing my news junkie bit on the BBC Technology site and I came across the story covering the South by Southwest Web Awards, in Austin, Texas. (See Note 3) Seeing that the winner was British, obviously I felt I should take a look.

The ‘We Tell Stories’ site was a really pleasant surprise. For the last few days I have been poking around an enjoying the way the new modern takes on classics were presented making the most of the interactive nature of the Internet. I keep finding myself going back to have another look and a little play.

Yet, I somehow doubt that this is another Flickr, Facebook or Twitter. You see it lacks one rather important element – the ability of the masses to contribute to the story. At the moment, all it does is provide content and once that content is exhausted, people will stop coming and the site will languish on some backwater of the Interweb.

If this site is to become ‘the next big thing’, it really needs to make tools available to the masses that will allow them to provide content into the site, which in turn will ensure that there is always something there for the returning visitor.

Consider the story posted called ‘The (Former) General’. You navigate through the narrative by clicking on the arrow keys, you choose the direction you want the story to move in. Now consider if the tools were there to allow a group to collaborate on the story, to add routes, to branch off one plot and into another, to add new nodes and their own prose or poetry (or pictures or video). Suddenly you have a tool to allow people to be creative, generate content and above all a commitment to the site and returning foot fall (see Note 4). It would even give those with the desire to control armies of flying, killer gerbils the ability to create their own plot line without upsetting the egos of other writers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this site, I just would love to play with the tools and produce my own interactive stories using them.

Note 1: There is absolutely no truth in the rumour that, to ensure sales success, we had removed all of the toilet rolls from the toilets.

Note 2: I wonder if it has something to do with you look down to read a book and straight ahead to read a screen? I wonder if there is some primeval trigger in the brain that has conditioned the human race to equate looking ahead with adrenaline type activities that require physical action such as hunting or avoiding being hunted, while looking down means you feel secure, and so can relax?

Note 3: I like the idea of an ‘elevator pitch’. It obviously saves the licence payers money by doing away with the need for a studio. I wish that some of the people who give me presentations would learn the technique.

Note 4: I’m not quite sure what the Internet equivalent to ‘foot fall’ would be.

Ocular Impediment for Rick Parfitt

Ocular impediment for Rick Parfitt?

The trouble with Padstow is he has rather got out of the habit of using the front gate and doorbells. (Note 1)There I was, all settled in for a lazy Sunday evening when someone started lobbing handfuls of gravel at my window.

Extricating a very excited Padstow from the shrubbery, I brushed him off and brought him inside.

When I returned from the kitchen after fetching us both some cloudy apple juice, Padstow was going through the drawers in my cabinet. It’s a bit disconcerting, but it is something in his nature. At one time he’d hoped to be a journalist, but felt that having married parents and loving his mother disqualified him.

Padstow turned on the TV. His face lit up like Blackpool in September. The producers of the latest celebrity game show had decided to boost viewing figures with the introduction of another twisted twist. The public were being invited to take part in a vote to nominate a Celebrity who would then have their pet cooked by a top chef and served to the housemates.

Swallowing hard, I turned off the TV as the celebrities were told they were going to have a special meal cooked for them. A rather loud girl who I didn’t recognise bounced up and down and hoped for fowl. (Note 2).

With the TV switched off, Padstow blinked and tried to remember why he had come to see me (Note 3). In the end, after deciding that the weighing of the witch by the pond had been cancelled, he remembered that Mattress Madge had sent him as there was a very important meeting about to start in the ‘Rat and Ferret’.

Now technically, I shouldn’t go to meetings in alternate realities. They are not really my business. Yet in my reality, if you are English you do get to feel that you are not altogether engaged in the political process. By simply slipping into the comfy cardigan which is the reality of the ‘Rat and Ferret’, it’s refreshing to find that politics retains the rough and ready edge of the public meeting and the soapbox. Indeed, I’m pretty sure that Sid and Mattress Madge will be laying on a bit of a do in May to celebrate three centuries of the Act of Union. In this reality I’d imagine they’ll wring their hands in politically correct angst.

Alternate reality meetings have that lovely zing of the how things should be when politicians face their constituents and justify their record or ask their opinion on major issues of the day. (Note 4) There is the unfeasibly absurd as well. In the snug bar they still talk about the time that the French Prime Minister popped in and asked if his country could join the Union. In the world of the ‘Rat and Ferret’ things like that happen, but of course, never in the real world.

You know what? I think that I’ve run out of space for this blog to describe the public meeting itself. So my teased yeomen, I shall leave you with a phrase that I have been using far too much recently. TO BE CONTINUED…

From 14th June 2006, the industry standard Crozzy Standard has been applied to footnotes.

NOTE 1: You have to remember that Padstow is a professional stalker by trade. PR agencies hire young Padstow to stalk their aspiring talent in order to scrape up a bit of publicity. Hardly a week goes by without a picture of Padstow appearing in the Sunday papers. Well, a picture of some starlet trying out her ‘my hero’ eyelash fluttering as several large security staff manhandle a hooded and manacled Padstow towards a large van. Click to return

NOTE 2: Well, I think she was referring to the menu for the evening, but who can really tell. I was suffering a touch of trauma and trying to keep Padstow from taking photographs of my soft furnishings. Click to return

NOTE 3: He struggled at first. He began by testing out my gullibility by telling the most appallingly unbelievable anecdote about a (Welsh) Member of Parliament dating one of the Cheeky Girls. It took several hearty slaps before Pastow agreed that the story must be false. Click to return

NOTE 4: The really sad thing about this is that I think that politicians would like to be able to hold these sort of sessions, yet feel that they couldn’t fill the snug bar of their local pub with enough people to make it worth while. Yet, I can remember going to a public meeting in Bristol hosted by Tony Benn where he not only filled a large hall, he held his audience spellbound. It wasn’t until I was going home that I realised that most of what he said was idealistic and impractical. Click to return

TECHNORATI TAGS : Evar ; satire ;Big Brother ; Act of Union ; France; Lembit Opik.