Escape
Monday, August 13th, 2007Phew! That was close! I nearly got landed with delivering Riva’s paper, Understanding the New Realities of Metrics, Audience Measurement and Research in the Digital Age, a subject about which I know diddly-squat.
That’s not quite true. I had listened to her rehearsing the 30-minute talk on a dozen occasions, each one slightly different, and God help me if I didn’t notice the changes.
But my fear was that delegates at the Asia Pacific Publishing Convention in Kuala Lumpur would ask technical questions I would be incapable of answering. You can only fall back on the uncontrollable coughing and spluttering technique once.
Riva’s mother is 97. She has heart and kidney problems, diabetes and a GP’s nightmare of secondary ailments. When we flew to KL, we knew Diana was unwell. But on the taxi to the hotel, Riva got a bad-news email. Could be only a couple of days, said the GP. Riva chewed her nails for a bit but got the next flight back – to discover her mother had stabilised, was sitting up, talking happily and doing crosswords again.
Back in KL, it looked like I would be landed with her plenary session. Hundreds of senior people from all over Asia listening to me bumbling about something I clearly didn’t understand. Fortunately Cyril Pereira, the convention’s chairman, saw me suffering. He knows something of the subject, took Riva’s notes and Powerpoint, and bravely stepped in.
Could I have done it, in extremis? No. But it didn’t stop me asking a really tough question in the post-talk session: “Cyril, how long do you think it will be before these methodologies catch up with consumer behaviour?”
Would I have dared to ask the same question of Riva? You’ve gotta be kidding.