Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Make meetings memorable

1. Install karaoke machines in all meeting rooms and change the bylaws so that no one can amend a motion without first singing a selection from Dave Barry's list of all-time worst rock songs. Anyone attempting to amend an amendment would be required to sing "Stuck in the Middle with You" all the way through.

2. Stock up on duct tape. Used judiciously, it can prevent all manner of meaningless blather.

3. Hire a local actor to burst into the room and sobbingly accuse the chairperson of unspeakable acts involving shrimp forks, absinthe, and a clown named Doodles.

4. Write the agenda in code and toss a few decoder rings into a large vat of green Jello. Start the meeting with a game of Bobbing for Decoders. The loser is required to read the minutes of the previous meeting in pig-Latin.

5. Rig up a cellphone with an inappropriate and immature ringtone: the sound of bleating sheep, for instance, or a couple experiencing sexual ecstasy. Before the meeting starts, hide the phone in the chairperson's briefcase. The minute the chair utters the words "This isn't on the agenda, but--," dial the number.

6. When there is no question, call the question; when there's no motion on the table, move to table the motion. This ought to provide a good old-fashioned squabble among those attendees who know (or think they know) Robert's Rules of Order. Onlookers can amuse themselves by placing bets on the outcome.

7. Insist that untenured committee members address the Chair as "O Great and Exalted Fount of All Wisdom" while the Chair addresses each untenured attendee as "Wart."

8. Provide scissors and paste so that attendees can cut up multi-color handouts and glue them together to make colorful garlands of interlocking rings--or go all out with glitter, paint, and macaroni.

9. Install chairs equipped with electrodes that will administer small electrical shocks to attendees' keisters. Have attendees take turns running the controller.

10. Focus on a specific purpose; hear only from those people who can contribute relevant information in pursuit of that purpose; and when the purpose is achieved, go home.

Nah, it'll never work.

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