259: Quieting The Crowd

<p>When a presentation event unintentionally turns into comedic relief, you know you have a major credibility problem.  Imagine it is after work, a cavernous hall filled with hundreds of people, the booze and small talk all free flowing.  The MC attempts to introduce the main host of the event, to make some worthy remarks.  The hum continues as people are more riveted by their own conversation than anything the crew on stage has to say.  In a stroke of pathos, the MC starts shooshing the audience to attempt to quieten them down. </p> <p> </p> <p>The audience aren’t buying any of this Mother stuff from the MC and keep chatting regardless.  This leads to even more ridiculous shooshing, only louder and more strident this time.  The MC doesn’t appear to have had any presentation training.  So they have reverted to parental authority over the naughty boys and girls in the audience, to restore some semblance of order.  We have now descended into comedy, but more a comedy of errors.</p> <p> </p> <p>Almost giving up, the main speaker is now trotted out by the MC for more of the same.  This speaker thankfully didn’t try any shooshing of their own, but the MC was on a roll and unhelpfully weighed in from the sidelines, with more shooshing, during the speech.  The main speaker was not skilled, interesting or commanding, so their words were subsumed into the general low drone echoing across the hall from all the crowd hubbub.  There were other subsequent speakers and they also were buffeted by the strong winds of disinterest.</p> <p> </p> <p>Should we blame the speakers for being unskilled and boring or the audience for being ignorant and rude or both?  Well I don’t think we can blame the audience and even if we did, what difference would it make?  Should we have burly security guards on hand, to frog march noisy offenders out of the hall.  We could try this to spread the general idea that we the organisers can’t be brooked and require better manners from the assembled rabble.</p> <p> </p> <p>In reality, I think we have to a