Without a hitch

Last week’s ADDY Awards Gala almost came off without a hitch. Everything was going really well. We had a great turnout. The gallery looked fantastic. Michael’s On East did an excellent job with the food. Everyone settled in for the awards program.  The lights went down, and the presentation froze up.

Our emcee, Jimmy Dean from Harbor Style Magazine, began the program talking about some humorous ads from his long career in the business. He set up a bit about unrealistic client expectations and was ready to show the end result – a bazaar ad with a cow on a roof.

When his punch line didn’t appear on the screen the entire audience started to squirm, but none more than Alex Stafford, AAF Suncoast’s president, who had prepared the presentation and was manning his laptop at the projector.

Jimmy is an excellent public speaker. He took the snafu in stride, skipped all of his jokes, and quickly moved the program along to the student awards. Unfortunately the screen was still dark. Alex, desperately trying to fix the presentation, was rebooting his computer.

Vivian Owen from Ringling College of Art and Design was on the stage with Jimmy to co-present the student awards. She saw that Alex was struggling and tried to improvise calling for a short bar break. Of course it seemed like an eternity, but the whole process only dragged on for about five minutes.

You might be thinking this was an awful experience for the audience, but it wasn’t. Everyone was quite entertained because in addition to the slideshow we had a live twitter feed shown on two flat screens. As you might imagine with a room full of creative people armed with their mobile phones, the commentary was relentless.

Until next week,

Matthew Anderson, President
Milestone Marketing Associates, Inc.