My castles stand on pillars of Salt
Life is getting pretty complicated. It seems that the more advanced technology gets, the more difficult it is to impress people. The term state-of-the-art is a powerful one these days. In this flurry of progress, it certainly is easy to forget the simple foundation, what some might consider a given.
This afternoon I attended an Indian Classical dance performance at a local community theater. It has been years since I have had the opportunity to enjoy local and international professionals come together to literally, grace the stage. Needless to say, my expectations were high. And their performance did not fail to impress. Surprisingly, the dancing is not what was discussed during my many run-ins with acquaintances and friends at intermission. The recurring theme? A non-functioning air conditioner. Pushing one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Over seven hundred chairs packed shoulder-to-shoulder into the room. The unappetizing aroma of fried Indian foods penetrating the auditorium from the lobby. Synthetic silk clothing plastered to my body (Read: sweat). If the organizers were trying to recreate Chennai, they were pretty damn successful. Let's just say that I was less than pleased.
Throwing half a dozen professional dancers on stage can't impress the average Joe (or the average Ro for that matter). If your audience, your customers, are not comfortable, they can't take the next step into thinking about, let alone enjoying, whatever you are presenting or providing. It's that whole sensory adaptation thing. If my shirt tag is itchy, I'm going to feel it throughout the day (Compare to a non-itchy tag. Three minutes after putting on your shirt you can hardly feel it! Hell you have to look down every now and then just to make sure you're still wearing it...). An itchy tag is a bedevilling distraction, and today, through the performance, the heat was my itchy tag...and that of most everyone else in the audience as well. When you are paying good money to see good performing, you have great expectations.
Ironically, as technology progresses, people look for the "small things." A simple experience is the foundation, the expectation. It's not extra credit. The feat is to leave your consumer feeling as if the product is state-of-the-art, when the process or experience is as simple and non-distracted as can be.
The bells and whistles may have been fashioned with the newest in blacksmith technology. But if the bell doesn't ring and the whistle doesn't blow, you have nothing.
This afternoon I attended an Indian Classical dance performance at a local community theater. It has been years since I have had the opportunity to enjoy local and international professionals come together to literally, grace the stage. Needless to say, my expectations were high. And their performance did not fail to impress. Surprisingly, the dancing is not what was discussed during my many run-ins with acquaintances and friends at intermission. The recurring theme? A non-functioning air conditioner. Pushing one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Over seven hundred chairs packed shoulder-to-shoulder into the room. The unappetizing aroma of fried Indian foods penetrating the auditorium from the lobby. Synthetic silk clothing plastered to my body (Read: sweat). If the organizers were trying to recreate Chennai, they were pretty damn successful. Let's just say that I was less than pleased.
Throwing half a dozen professional dancers on stage can't impress the average Joe (or the average Ro for that matter). If your audience, your customers, are not comfortable, they can't take the next step into thinking about, let alone enjoying, whatever you are presenting or providing. It's that whole sensory adaptation thing. If my shirt tag is itchy, I'm going to feel it throughout the day (Compare to a non-itchy tag. Three minutes after putting on your shirt you can hardly feel it! Hell you have to look down every now and then just to make sure you're still wearing it...). An itchy tag is a bedevilling distraction, and today, through the performance, the heat was my itchy tag...and that of most everyone else in the audience as well. When you are paying good money to see good performing, you have great expectations.
Ironically, as technology progresses, people look for the "small things." A simple experience is the foundation, the expectation. It's not extra credit. The feat is to leave your consumer feeling as if the product is state-of-the-art, when the process or experience is as simple and non-distracted as can be.
The bells and whistles may have been fashioned with the newest in blacksmith technology. But if the bell doesn't ring and the whistle doesn't blow, you have nothing.
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