You Cannot Download Experience

 

We event dinosaurs—who've witnessed and dealt with the long- and short-term effects on face-to-face marketing of recessions, travel-bans, terrorism, pandemics and the web—are frustrated by the industry's vivid demonstration of inaction and incompetence in reacting to Covid-19.

Experience stems from bad judgments. 

But in a youth-oriented, know-it-all society like ours, the lessons learned from bad judgments made in the past are considered trivial; and the dinosaurs who made them, annoying.

It's too bad you cannot download experience with a click.

Wierdo

An artist must regulate his life.

— Erik Satie

Fin-de-siècle composer Erik Satie, best known for his "Gymnopédies Suite of 1888," was, to be blunt, a wierdo. To wit:

• Satie carried a hammer with him wherever he went, a lifetime habit he acquired while living in Montmartre as a young bohemian. He also slept with one eye open.

• He wore only a grey velvet suit and kept over 100 umbrellas in his apartment.

• He detested the sun and only ventured outside on cloudy days.
  
  
• He washed only with a pumice stone, never using soap. 

• He ate only white food: eggs, sugar, salt, rice, cheese (white varieties only), fish, chicken, veal, animal fat and ground bones, turnips, pastries, and coconut.

• He regulated his daily life to the minute. Every day, Satie awoke at 7:18 am; composed from 10:23 to 11:47 am; ate lunch at 12:11 pm; rode a horse from 1:19 to 2:53 pm; composed again from 3:12 to 4:07 pm; relaxed from 4:27 to 6:47 pm; ate dinner at 7:16 pm; read aloud from 8:09 to 9:59 pm; and went to bed at 10:37 pm.
  
  
• He founded an occult religion with one follower—himself. He named it the "Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor."
  
  
• He composed a surreal ballet that caused riots outside the concert hall during the premiere. The ballet landed Satie in a Parisian jail cell for eight days. The charge: "cultural anarchy."

• He had only one girlfriend his entire life, Suzanne Valadon, a beautiful painter of portraits who lived in the apartment next door to his for six months. Satie's penury and compulsive nature drove her nuts and she left him and married a stockbroker. 

Satie barely graduated music school and throughout his life suffered rebuke from critics, who labelled him a "clown" and called his music "worthless." 

Satie called his compositions "furniture music"—what today we'd call "Muzak"—and would scatter his ensemble throughout the room during performances, commingled with the listening audience.

The public liked what it heard—and still does.

You can hear Satie's greatest hits here.

Gamifying Masks

Event producers who want to encourage mask-wearing at conferences and trade shows should consider what won't work.

Behavioral scientists at the University of London analyzed 65 studies of "failed interventions"—failed attempts to influence behavior—conducted over the past decade.

The researchers found:

• 40% of failed interventions relied on attempted "social norming"—on encouragements to adopt a behavior simply because it's "expected"
  
  
• 24% of failed interventions relied on messaging that was delivered on printed flyers and texts
  
  
• 15% of failed interventions relied on simple "defaults"—opt-in or opt-out
  
  
• 12% of failed interventions relied on product labelling

The findings suggest incentives may be required to persuade attendees to wear masks.

Gamifying mask-wearing—randomly rewarding attendees for wearing their masks—might do the trick.

And sponsors would love to underwrite it.

Mask Politics: Another Threat to Live Events

An association executive, writing on LinkedIn, points out that many of the businesspeople at a live event she attended recently refused to wear masks.

"Masks are politicized," she writes. "Plain and simple. Many, many adults did not wear them. 

The exec sees others' insistence to go without masks ironic, given the purpose of the live event was to cheer on the reopening of live events.  

"For all of the rallying cries of 'working together to get us back to work' in the meetings industry, there were a lot of people who apparently felt their right to not wear a mask trumped everyone else’s shared expectations for safety.”

As long as mask-wearing is political, live events are threatened.

Perhaps eventpeeps should plan two editions of every live event in the future: Coastal (Safe Edition) and Flyover (Superspreader Edition).

Or should they consider my other solution? 

Herbert Hoover 2.0

In America today we are nearer a final triumph over
poverty than in any land.

— Herbert Hoover

We’re turning the corner. Look at this, it’s perfect.

— Donald Trump

In a campaign speech in October 1932, Herbert Hoover celebrated America's triumph over poverty, even though 15 million citizens were jobless and 1.2 million homeless.

In a campaign speech in October 2020, Donald Trump celebrated America's triumph over Covid-19, even though 12 million citizens were jobless, 34 million faced homelessness, and 225 thousand lay in fresh graves.

And Hoover's campaign slogan in 1932?

"We are turning the corner."

Nihil novi sub sole.

UPDATE, JANUARY 8, 2021:  This week, Trump has joined Hoover in losing the presidency and both chambers of Congress. No president since Hoover has done that.