Don’t you hate it when you say that your presentation is going to start at 12PM sharp, but when the time comes hardly anyone is there? Instead everyone figures that everyone else is going to be late and shows up at 12:05 instead. So you can start on time to be fair for the early bird people and then have your speech get disrupted, or you can wait an extra five minutes and penalize the early birds and make it more likely that they’ll join the late comers in the future.

The Neighborhood Enhancement Program (NEP) meeting I recently attended showed an interesting way of dealing with this. On the sheets they mailed out announcing the program, in very big letters it said something to the affect of “Neighborhood Meeting at 7PM in Spiritridge Elementary.” “OK,” I thought. “I’ll show up around 7 - or maybe 7:05, since there’s no way they’ll start on time.” But they thought of that. In much smaller print on the same sheet, it said that the actual presentation itself would start at 7:15. It was large enough that I noticed it, but not so large that I mentally made it a 7:15 start time that slid to 7:20.

There is a danger in this. If people show up at 7:05, they wouldn’t have anything to do until 7:15. Our bureaucrats thought of that, too. First, they had a number of brochures on a table right by the door so that at a minimum we had some reading material. The people running the program were also there to schmooze around.

They did better than that. Since the purpose of the NEP meeting was to discuss the thirteen possible neighborhood enhancement projects that will be on the ballots, on tables and along the walls they had very large sheets (I’d guess three feet by four feet) providing information about each project. The sheets were full color, had pictures of the existing condition, artist renderings of what the project would produce, and a map showing where the work would be done. They were spaced so that people could congregate around each sheet. Not only did all the information keep us busy, it provided a natural conversation point for talking to other folks there, “find my house on the map”, and so on. I’m glad I got there “early” so I could finally meet some of my neighbors.

I’m betting that the bureaucrats didn’t think of the information sheets in terms of “conversation points.” Then again, maybe our city officials aren’t as incompetent as we make them out to be. In either event, they taught us some really good lessons. Tell your audience to get there early (7PM in bold), but don’t lie about what time the main presentation is going to start (the 7:15PM in smaller print, not fine print). Create attractive material that will keep them entertained while waiting that also provides the chance for them to socialize.

If they had thrown in free food it would’ve been perfect, but as I’m a taxpayer the food wouldn’t have been free, would it?