April 1st, 2010 by Glenn

What a bizarre 24 hours I’ve just had. The strange headline above is actually not a metaphor, it’s 100% true. In fact, the headline would be more accurate if it read, ‘How disco, Chinese food, social media, Microsoft Word, my ex-wife and a hug from the principal saved the Easter Bunny’.

And believe it or not, the whole story is even stranger than the headline.

WARNING: This post is long & contains little business value

The main reason for this post is… well… I couldn’t resist. I just had to write about my weird day. And I’ll be honest: It’s long, and contains none of my usual ‘scintillating’ and astute business insights ;-). The social media connection is tenuous at best, so don’t bother reading if you’re after any real business value.

It all started at a crazy-socks disco

Ok. Here goes…

It all started last night. As some of you know, I was helping out at my 5 yr old son’s school disco. (His first at ‘big school. Mine too. ‘Funny Socks’ theme. :-) Toward the end of the night, I got chatting with the school principal, Wendy. During our chat, it came up that I’m a copywriter, and her eyes lit up. (I remember the moment well, because it doesn’t happen very often. Most people glaze over instantly.) As it turns out, Wendy had been struggling with the school’s Annual Report, and was excited to have someone to share her woes with. (We all know that feeling, don’t we?)

The principal was having trouble with her Annual Report

It wasn’t actually the writing she was struggling with, though, it was Microsoft Word. (And I know we all know THAT feeling!) Wendy made a terrible, terrible mistake: She inserted photos. 22 of ‘em, to be precise, each about 4cm x 3cm on the page. Tiny little pics, but somehow the document was more than the department’s 25meg upload limit. And she needed to upload by COB today. (Yes, you guessed it, she inserted big photos and resized them in the document, instead of resizing them first. We’ve all done it.)

I offered to help, as I knew immediately what the problem was, and knew I could fix it in a flash. She said she might call on me, but she already had their tech booked to take a look.

And she wanted to improve the school newsletter

Then we got talking about the school newsletter. Currently it’s delivered (or not) via print-out and PDF (downloadable from a static News page on the school’s website). Wendy was wondering how to make the newsletter available in audio format, via the phone, for those parents who don’t like to read, don’t have the time to read, or aren’t that good at reading. She didn’t want to record it as a greeting on the message bank of one of the school’s landlines, because she didn’t want to tie up the line. And the audio is always too long for the greeting facility to accommodate anyway.

I didn’t have an answer to that one. I suggested, instead, that she think about simply recording and publishing an audio podcast of it. She said that sounded great, but I saw her smile falter, and the familiar glazed look was creeping in around the edges. So I left it at that, gave her my card, and said if she wanted me to help out, just give me a call.

My son ate an Easter egg; My wife & I ate Chinese

The rest of the night proceeded much as expected. My son won an Easter egg for his (*ahem*) dancing. We left. I left his sweater behind. We returned, retrieved his sweater, and left again. Once home, we put the kids to bed and ordered Chinese for dinner. Very nice it was, too. Unfortunately, that was merely because of its near-toxic levels of MSG, and the results were predictable.

I couldn’t sleep

After heading to bed at 10pm, we were both awake by midnight, and still awake at 1am. And I couldn’t stop my mind from chasing the school newsletter issue.

Now I don’t know about you, but I have a very strict 1 hour ‘lying-in-bed-furiously-thinking’ time limit. At 1 am sharp, I stumbled, bleary-eyed, into the office, so I could stop chasing my mind’s tail, and start chasing some answers.

So I hit the office…

First port of call was whether it’s possible to access, by landline, an online audio version of the newsletter. Or something like that. This led me to Podlinez, but no further. (Note this tweet from the wee hours.) There I changed tack…

…and investigated overhauling their entire newsletter approach

Podcasts. And while we’re at it, why not ditch the current static News page and PDF, and replace it with a WordPress blog, fully loaded with the Podcasting plugin? And what’s this? You can publish direct to blog from Word?! (I must have been asleep when that was announced.) It does a surprisingly nice job of it too. Just put the logo and any print boilerplate material in the header and footer, and hey-presto, it’s ignored, and the blog post contains only the content of the newsletter.

So there we’ll have a newsletter that can be printed, blogged, and (most importantly) pushed out to parents, all from a single master Word document, without any major change in workflow. Then we can record an audio version of the newsletter with Audacity (FREE) or ePodcast Producer (US $199), import it into WordPress with a bit of help from the Podcasting plugin, and voila, we have a podcast, complete with RSS feed and in-built media player!

So after a few hours playing around with Word’s blogging feature, and discussing the finer points with the ever helpful (and ever awake) Angie Nikoleychuk, from Angie’s Copywriting, I was able to go to bed with enough peace of mind to manage a quick hour of shut-eye.

So what’s all this have to do with my ex-wife and the Easter Bunny?

Rest assured, it’s coming… Right now, in fact.

I fixed the Word doc & we started talking newsletters

Today was Easter Hat Parade at school. And the one day of the week when I drop my son off. I thought I’d ‘pop in’ for a quick chat with Principal Wendy, to discuss my insomnia-inspired thoughts and findings of the night before. And to fix the bloating Word document problem, if I happened to get there before their tech.

An hour later, the Word doc was down to 6 meg. Not ideal, but well under the department limit of 25 meg. So we moved onto the newsletter discussion.

But the Easter Bunny went missing

No sooner had we started, however, than we were interrupted by one of the office ladies announcing that the Easter Bunny outfit was missing. It wasn’t where Wendy remembered storing it, and it was suddenly a priority. The students had been promised an Easter Bunny at the Easter Hat Parade, and it simply wouldn’t do to disappoint them. (I know my son would have been devastated.)

That was when Wendy realized she’d taken it home to wash after LAST Easter, and had forgotten to return it. And now she HAD to retrieve it.

And we BOTH had to go find him… at Wendy’s house!

BUT she was also very excited about the prospect of overhauling the school’s newsletter, so she invited me to take the discussion on the road. I was to keep her company on the 45 minute round-trip to her house!

But I kept talking about blogging

I talked about blogging, the whole way, of course. I talked about blogging as she searched the garage where she knew the suit was waiting. I talked about blogging as she searched the living room cupboards, where it must be, since it wasn’t in the garage. I talked about blogging as she ransacked her bedroom cupboards, where it absolutely HAD to be, as it certainly wasn’t anywhere else.

I talked about blogging when, FINALLY, after much searching, Wendy discovered that the costume was, in fact, nowhere to be found.

Until it was time to talk costume hire

The Easter Bunny was gone!

That was when I stopped talking about blogging, and started calling the local party shops. I called Erina; Wendy called Tuggerah. Both Easter Bunnied out. “The Gosford Musical Society might have one,” they suggested, but we knew we couldn’t make it there and back to school, in time.

Then I stopped talking altogether

So we stopped talking altogether. And we silently pondered the disaster we’d found ourselves in. Silent the way only two relative strangers can be, when they realize swearing is their only recourse, but they don’t yet know if the relationship is ready for it.

Then a brainwave: Of course! Call your ex-wife

And THAT, my friends, was when I did what any reasonable man would do in this situation. I called my ex-wife.

As it happens, my ex-wife (Jill) is the fundraising coordinator for a neighboring school’s P&C Association. She had recently told me if I ever needed help, I should give her a call. Well, if I ever needed help, it was now — sitting in awkward silence, shoulder-to-shoulder with my son’s principal, in her car, still puffing from a good house-ransacking!

Fortunately, I communicate eloquently and clearly in an emergency: “Jill? I’m in the car with Kieren’s principal. She’s lost her Easter Bunny costume. You don’t happen to have one handy, do you?”

Hmmmm…

Needless to say, hilarity ensued. At least at her end of the line. You see, she was on a driving holiday with her husband. (Hi Matt!) They were on their way to Yamba. You can imagine what HE made of the conversation! (At least he knows he doesn’t have big shoes to fill!)

Funnily enough, my  ex-wife didn’t have a bunny suit either

Anyway, as the laughter abated, Jill replied with a very unexpected, “No, I don’t have an Easter Bunny costume. Have you tried the party shop at Erina? Or the one at Tuggerah? What about the Gosford Musical Society?”

Aaaaaaaaaaaannd back to square one.

Silence. In our car, anyway. (I’m sure I heard Matt stifle a giggle in theirs.)

“Call Kazbar”

Then a long shot…. Jill: “Perhaps try Kazbar Fabrics at The Entrance. They have the strangest eclectic collection of… stuff… there.” Only Jill would know that. Just as she probably knows every antique dealer on the Central Coast. By their first names.

Dutifully, I called, and an 8 yr old girl answered the phone…

Girl: “Hello?”
Me: “Hi. I was wondering if you hire out fancy dress costumes?”
Girl: “Yes.”
Me: “Um. Excellent. Do you happen to have an Easter Bunny costume?”
Girl: “MUM! DO WE HAVE AN EASTER BUNNY COSTUME?”
Mum: <mumble mumble mumble>.
Girl: “No, we don’t.”
Me: “Ah, ok… Thanks anyway.”
Girl: “Do you want to speak to my Mum?”
Me: “Um… Well… Yeah, okaaaayyyy?”
Mum: “Hello!”
Me: “*nervous giggle* Hello?”
Mum: “You’re after an Easter Bunny costume?”
Me: “Yes.”
Mum: “Well I’m actually making one right now for a lady who ordered it. But I’ve been trying to call her, and can’t get in touch. When do you need it?”
Me: “In 1 hour.”
Mum: “For how long?”
Me: “10 minutes.”
Mum: “Does it matter if it doesn’t have hands and feet? I can probably get the zipper and the tail sewed on in an hour, but definitely won’t be able to manage the hands and feet.”
Me: “No, that’s fine. We can do without the hands and feet.”
Mum: “Well, you can have it, so long as you keep it clean and get it back to me immediately, so I can finish it.”
Me: “Really?! That’d be great. Thanks. Wendy will be there in an hour to pick it up.”

And that’s how we saved the Easter Bunny!

Mission accomplished! Now let’s talk blogging again

From there, I started talking about blogging again. (It’s hard to stop me when I get going.) Then, when we got back to school, I demo’d some blogs over a coffee, and Wendy was suitably impressed with the whole thing. So impressed that she gave me a hug!

Understandable in the circumstances. We’d been through a lot together.

So after a very long, chaotic morning, it looks like my son’s school will soon be entering the blogosphere. Bizarre, huh?

What did you do today?

But we weren’t fooling anyone

PS. After all that, it turns out we DIDN’T save the Easter Bunny, at all. Friend’s 3 yr old: “That’s not the real Easter Bunny. There’s a person inside. I can see his hands and feet.” Perhaps we needed the costume’s hands and feet, after all…

PPS. Some of the names above have been changed 'to protect the innocent'.

---