Smoke and Mirrors

Happy squirrel chowing down on snow-flavoured popcorn.

This Week's Picture comes to you from Belleville, where I'm hanging with Kim and Kevan. The pictures come from the Allan Gardens.

The title comes from a meeting I sat - and occasionally napped - through this past week. 

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

About a year ago, I'd met for half an hour with a man, retired from the public service, who had a great concept to pitch. I sat patiently through the pitch, accepted for future reference (not) the materials he handed me and promptly forgot about him and his half-assed concept.

That's why, when he started hounding me earlier this year, I had no idea who he was or why I would want to talk with him. So I ignored him.

He then took stronger measures. He used some of his contacts in another ministry to finagle another meeting with me. Fooled by the subterfuge, I went along with the request.

To prepare for the meeting, I looked up the web presence for the organization - let's call it SwiftToss - and slowly started to connect the dots between SwiftToss and the man I had met with the year before.

The web site featured assertions of empowered communities, sustainable economies and pictures of smiling, apple-cheeked children. The one thing missing was any explanation of how these happy outcomes could be achieved. 

But I figured that my colleagues in the other ministry would not bring me a complete charlatan.

In fact, they brought me two. The man was accompanied by a partner. They took us through a slide presentation so bogus, so full of hot air and so boring that I struggled to stay awake.

I had actually nodded off when they got to their penultimate slide - the one asking for $350,000 taxpayers' dollars to pay for a conference to bring their brilliant idea into the world.

I got a bit less groggy.

I asked if they had any proof of their concept. Had they any case studies they could provide to show that their methods brought about the results they claimed.

Boy were they ever pissed with me. His partner, a middle-aged woman, turned to the man and said, "I wasn't expecting to have to do this at this meeting."

The man explained that they had no actual case studies. Even though their idea was a sure fire winner, no one had taken them up on it in the two years they had been shopping it around.

"Come back when someone does," I said, and ended the meeting.

I got a crabby e-mail from the man the following day, chastising me for having the temerity to ask that he demonstrate his concept works before handing him a haystack of dough.

We should all be grateful that this man is retired from the public service.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen