Wednesday November 3, 2004 – There's No Business Like Show Business

Wednesday November 3, 2004 – There's No Business Like Show Business

Next week I’m putting on a show. Well more like a conference/exhibition and though I’m putting it together, someone else is footing the bill. I’ve been doing this for the past several years and I’ve beginning to wonder if maybe this isn’t what I do. You know, like every one does something. Maybe creating an experience is what I do. I dress up in a nice suit get to carry around a microphone and stand up in front of a large audience and introduce individual performers to take the stage and give us a show.

Humans respond to a gathering in which some one stands up and tells you something. Ideally, you want the stand-up to have something interesting to say and be able to say it in a manner that compels the audience to listen. At the event held in Boston earlier this year, we had just such a speaker. He was our keynote presenter, a bright PhD with a long history in his field, which he knew intimately. He took the stage and from the moment he walked on and began to speak, the audience sat is rapt attention.

I wonder what it is about a “happening” that turns people on. In reality, it’s no different than the traveling circus that comes into town, pitches their tents, and invites everyone to come and see something completely different than anything they have around these parts. An event like ours is very similar in that we come into town, but instead of pitching a tent, we hire out a chi chi hotel meeting facility where we set up our exhibition and our conference rooms.

I was inspecting the facility yesterday. I knew the cavernous hall quite well from having held the event there twice before. There were three groups in attendance at this “walk-through”: our guys, the hotel banquet manager, and the audio-visual guys. Our guys wanted to know that the banquet manager understood how we wanted the rooms set up—how many rows of tables and how many rows of chairs to seat up to 1000 people, where the stage (risers) would be located, where our four huge banners would be hung within the rooms.

The AV guys were there to learn how many microphones would be needed and when, where the back-lit, 14-foot rear projection screens would go. What kind of dressing (pipes and drapes) would be required to create the impression of a stage with back curtains. What lighting would be needed—spots on the presenter and possibly on others sharing the stage with the presenter.

I could not help but imagine this stark unadorned cavern of a room being divided in half with one side containing a huge stage and seating for 100s of warm bodies with expectant expressions. The other half converted into a large hall with exhibit stands lining all four walls with signs, equipment, lights, and people chattering in the language of technical commerce: bandwidth, interface, signal integrity, gigabytes, megahertz, etc.

And everywhere there would be people all engaged in earnest conversation. Familiar faces recognizing one another and catching up on the last time they ran into one another. “Whatever happened to what’s-his-name?….” Most will have a cup of coffee in one hand and a cheese Danish or some such in the other, conversing between bites of Danish and sips of coffee. Somewhere in the conference room near the speaker podium, the individual in tailored suit and conservative tie, looking a bit uneasy as he chats with another well-dressed individual, is getting warmed up for taking the stage first.

Somewhere else in the area, our guys are running around trying to find a power strip for the exhibitor who forgot to bring one of their own. Another of our guys is trying to estimate the size of the crowd so that hotel staff will set the right number of tables and have the correct number of requested meals at lunch. Another of our guys is in conversation with a young man without a business card who wants to register for the event, claiming that he’s with someone else who is registered. And someone else is frantically trying to find me to make a last minute change to the presentations that are all loaded on a computer ready to roll through the day, 30 minutes at a go, stopping only for 10 minute breaks and a mid-day meal. And the show must go on, without interruption.

Our gathering is at a nexus where if we were a brain, there would be large numbers of neurons all firing at one time. Here in this theater a succession of presenters will cram days' worth of information into eight hours. In the process, the audience will be taken out of their day-to-day routine in which everyone falls into a pattern of thinking and problem solving. This gathering is meant to completely disrupt that routine and force everyone in attendance to open up to new ideas and to consider alternative ways of examining and solving problems.

And just as with a muscle that is suddenly vigorously exercised, the mind likewise will be force to accept more information in a short period of time than it is used to handling. Ideally, the result is new insight. For those putting on the event, the outcome is far more commercial. And it’s the same as when a major brand name company produces a happening: everyone in attendance is subjected to hours of branding by the sponsor(s) producing the experience.

And when it’s over and the last glass of wine and beer is consumed at the close of the evening reception, everyone leaves and begins looking forward to the next time. Always leave wanting more. You know they’ll come back as they continue to do.