Notes from a Workshop

I've been working on a voiceover script for a 90 second video since July. Obviously, I haven't been working on it that entire time because that would be insane and no one except my boss is that inefficient at anything. But after months of trying to get draft after draft after draft approved, we took the thing to a recording studio and laid down the VO.

Then the head of Marketing decided he didn't like it so we spent another month re-writing it.

So we recorded THAT script. And we listened to it. Re-recorded parts. Edited the copy. Tweaked lines to make it easier to pronounce. Forced the engineer to stay late even though his buddy was downstairs waiting on a ride to band practice. But finally, after a couple hours of wrangling, we got the nod from our head of Marketing: it was done. It was approved. Send it out to the visual effects people to create the video.

The next day I had an email with notes on the script. From the head of Marketing. He had some changes for the thing that, just 18 hours ago, he'd said was done and sent out the door to a vendor. Worse, he didn't just want me to incorporate his notes. He wanted me to workshop it with my boss, who up until now had not been involved in the process in any way.

These are my notes, written as close to verbatim as I could manage, from that meeting:

Actual Meeting Guidelines

A big annual meeting thingy is coming up. It's a big deal. All the departments are getting together to realign our synergy crystals or whatever. In preparation, we've all been given special tasks (read: meaningless PowerPoint presentations) to complete beforehand. Oh, and we got a list of guidelines that include, and I'm not even shitting you:

• Everything is up for discussion.
• No one is allowed to play devil's advocate or voice any frustrations.
• Let's have a fun, lively discussion.
• Do not interrupt each other.
• If you have any questions or concerns, please wait until after everyone has left the meeting and discuss them with the organizer privately.
• Everything we discuss must be easily attainable.

Oh and the "meeting" is scheduled to take three. fucking. days.