The Pony Videos

The Pony Videos

I’m in my forties sitting in front of my laptop at home.

I’m creating a little movie for my product team. I’m in a happy mood as work had been fantastic today.

I and many important people like me from IPG had gone to a technology startup. The product was from Minority Report and they had taken the visual language of looking like a tool and made it real. You could put on gloves with lights on and control and move and other things that didn’t involve flossing.

The showpiece was like the movie and Tom Cruise’s OSHA-disapproved workstation. Make a fist and lose a file. There were many things it could do for you if you’d like to express yourself with large gestures. Opera folks would be a natural fit here. I could see the power of what’s in front of me. An airline had a live feed of every damn plane in the air right now. We could see lines going everywhere and so we all learned that airlines fly to many places. This is something many of us knew and that made this so powerful.

You see, when it’s time to buy some, I don’t know, 20-million-dollar piece of hardware, you need to look at many factors, but this already had the key requirement nailed. Since it was unlikely that anyone exposed to what it was showing would know something that they didn’t already know, there was no chance of antisocial behavior like analysis, debate, or even discussions. This tool only promotes positive social behavior like consensus and synergy/mana or whatever magic word is driving your business.

I’d been told to think — not usually something asked of me — and try to integrate this into my offshore Indian ETL team. This is a task I am made for. So let’s design a solution to use glowing finger gloves, a bunch of monitors, and as many Indians as I would need. So we’re set on the materials to work with. Let’s start designing.

First, let’s create a gesture to push data into a table. Obviously, both hands forward feels like push. Now we need to get the next record. So, pull hands back? Seems efficient. Now we don’t have many records, but it’s still in the billions. So I think we’ll need about a hundred Indians and we should keep them close together because real estate costs can kill any good project. That means when you push, you might hit somebody in front of you; lean forward to make room in that action, please. Or better yet, put a big guy in front with a drum, keep time like you’re using a floppy drive, and in any minute your data should be in that table.

I’m not interested in making a great movie but just one to make sure that everyone knew that I was excited about what I saw but was thinking there might be another way to get data into a table. I’d try something else before using my design. But I had it ready, in case someone demanded it. Never can tell what people might need so I thought it was good to be prepared.

Perfect design and I’m ready to celebrate by making a small movie to show everyone how excited I am to build my solution. There’s a faddy website perfect for what I need. You can pick a scene, some actors, lay it all out, and start animating. The voices and faces are almost human which aligns well with the target audience. So we’re all good and are starting now.

One of the key reasons to potentially buy this software is that it will make us be able to say we are “bleeding edge.” It sounds like a threat and maybe should scare our competitors. So I’m trying to find a “bleeding edge” to put in my video. It’s key right and should be the star! Hm. I don’t know what a “bleeding edge” should look like. I mean, if it’s just been slicing dino heads, it’d just be bloody and not bleeding. Think. Think. Oh, maybe small tube through the handle and bulb in han… I realize you could only use people in the videos; my “bleeding edge” master hits the cutting room floor before being shot.

Pivot. Look at a full, already created template. Let me see what they have. Perfect, it’s all typical office scenarios with master-slave relationship established in the visual language. That’ll work for me and I’m getting more efficient. I have two characters sitting in an office. Let’s meet them.

[MASTER] Steeeeeeeeeeve. Almost a person. Blue eyes wearing a tie. You can tell he’s the master as he is behind a name plate with his own name on it. MASTER. This is a common convenience masters give slaves in case they suddenly forget who they are talking to and need a hint. I, too, enjoy opera far better with supertitles.

[SLAVE] A person of unknown ethnic background. He is not a master so it’s not important to know more about him. Just know that he must try to satisfy master’s aspirations to keep him from being eaten.

Now the robotic dialog of almost person [MASTER] and who cares if he’s a person [SLAVE]:

[MASTER] I need a dashboard.

[SLAVE] Why?

[MASTER] Irrelevant. We need a dashboard for our client that can bend the space-time continuum so that we can change our bad decisions in the past. Our clients will never underdeliver again.

[SLAVE] Would you accept a pie chart, instead?

[MASTER] Yes, and here’s an example of a report we’ve built that the client likes. Here, take a look.

[SLAVE] [SLAVE SEES A PICTURE OF A PONY] This is a picture of a pony.

[MASTER] Yes, the client likes ponies. We’ve learned that early but pivoted to something much better. Try this instead.

[SLAVE] [SLAVE SEES A PICTURE OF TWO PONIES]

…it goes like that. I think there was some talk about offshore efficiency and the joys of estimation and status meetings. I’m sure we’ll all laugh and then we can get back to finding that bloody knife somewhere.