Interred: Toy Story

I promised I would tell the story of the "Whizzo Toys"...

In 1999 our client had just appointed a new IT director Tim H. My boss, Martyn L, had a regular meeting with him to discuss innovation and IT Strategy. One day he came back from his meeting and said, "Get your thinking caps on, guys. Tim wants us to come up with some ideas on technology we can provide for members of the board. He wants to impress them with what IT can do for them".

Interesting challenge. I thought I'd enlist the help of others using the company's Request for Assistance (RFA) database - a company-wide bulletin board for raising job-related questions. Now responses to questions on the RFA can be a bit variable - sometimes you can get nothing at all, sometimes you can get ten or more, and sometimes they can generate an interesting thread of discussion. So I thought I would try and grab attention with the title and make the question interesting, so I could get as many ideas as possible...

Whizzo Electronic Toys for Travelling Executives

A new, young, enthusiastic IT Director of an international organisation asks his IT strategist "What super whizzo gizmo stuff can you give me?"
(Well I admit I have paraphrased the question somewhat). The question is how can he earn brownie points by equipping his fellow board members with the latest and greatest technology. What would you suggest a travelling executive might find useful?

That should do it. I posted it. Little did I know what I had unleashed! Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised; there had been a couple of threads that had got quite interesting at the time - one about International English and another about navicular disease. Yes, I did want more than just a couple of answers, but I wasn't expecting what I got...

After 3 or 4 days, I had quite a few responses. Actually, in retrospect, it's interesting how accurate some contributions were about predicting the future - the convergence of computing, multi-media and mobile phones, satellite navigation, wearable computers are all now reality, and some are still to come, such as head-up displays while driving. Mind you, there were also a few less reverent answers, including furbies, etch-o-sketches and Star Wars light sabres. After a week or so, though, I had enough to put together a pretty good answer.

But then something strange happened. Some of the responses generated sub-threads that went off in their own directions. For example,

Better than your common or garden tacky electronic agenda, might I suggest a Directly Integrated Active Rich Yuppie device or DIARY

...led to a whole string of clever acronyms for BOOK, COMIC, MAGAZINE and ADVERTS.

I started having to make a cup of tea before reading the daily updates. After about two weeks Martyn asked how it was getting on. I showed him. "B****y H**l, John. You'll get sacked!", he said, jokingly (I hope!). But then I started thinking about how many people had been contributing to the discussion and how much time it must be totalling. I decided I'd better try and stop it, by posting the answer we had put together for Tim. But it was no good, it had taken on a life of it's own. Denis G said...

Please don't amend your request. It is helping me get through the day, or hopefully many weeks to come.

Topics covered included US Euphemisms (with a whole sub-thread of lavatorial humour), Science-fiction, Shakespeare, Anagrams, Children's television programmes and "the best thing since sliced bread".

Then people started competing for the deepest nested and last message. One response to the question "Who is going to get the last word in this thread"...

erm .... Just to say that this is the 300th message in the thread. Here's to the next 300?

...wasn't too far out. In the end it totalled about 700 messagesand kept going for over 2 1/2 months. Along the way to finding a "last word" we learned, among other things...

... "zyzzyva" - defined as "Any of various tropical American weevils of the genus Zyzzyva, often destructive to plants."

But the best sub-thread of them all, to my mind, was the one discussing mobile phones. About 7 levels in we got...

About a year ago, down here in Plymouth, the buses were advertising a mobile phone shaped and coloured like a Cornish Pasty, aka Tiggy-Oggy. I understand they sold many of them.

Well. Being a global company, not everybody knows what a pasty is...

In America, a pasty is something worn by an "exotic" dancer.

..said Ralph M in the US. After some explanation, Kevin C in the UK chipped in with...

In Bedfordshire, where I live, the traditional meal is called a 'Clanger' which is a pasty with meat and vegtables at one end and a sweet filling like jam ( or jelly for our American friends) at the other end. Never tried one sounds too disgusting especially in the middle where the gravy meets the jam YUK!!!!!

I never knew that. But it was the response to that from Bob N in Australia that made me laugh so hard that I spilt my tea all over my trousers...