OddThinking

Knowing that I am a juggler and a geek, Aristotle Pagaltzis asked in a recent comment if I had seen the Raspyni Brothers performance at TED, Welcome to Vaudeville 2.0.

The short answer is “No, I hadn’t. Thanks for the link.”

Here’s the longer answer:

In the late nineties, in the midst of the Dot Com bubble, I was sent on a work trip to the USA. The first leg was to Las Vegas, to staff a booth at Networld+Interop Las Vegas and get customer feedback on some vapourware product prototype we were demonstrating.

When I returned to Australia after that experience, I gave a couple of very different trip reports.

First, I updated my managers and the rest of my team. I explained how the customers reacted to our product ideas and other features that they would need to make a sale. I gave a professional assessment of some of the products I saw at our competitors stands, and where we might need to change direction in response to them. I carefully reported the responses I received from other members of our organisation, and suggested strategies to maximise our chances of leveraging our synergies.

Then, I met with my juggler friends, and reported breathlessly “Oh, my god! Vegas was amazing!”

In Sydney, Cirque du Soleil had toured the country only once. In Vegas, I had trouble choosing which of their concurrent shows to watch.

Circus Circus had free acts; I just wandered across!

With some careful planning, I managed to squeeze into a late-night trad magic show one night after a corporate dinner.

I even visited the local Las Vegas juggling meet, which turned out to be a mixed experience. The talent wasn’t strong that night; the only juggler there who was good enough to pass clubs with was a guy who had moved to Las Vegas from Melbourne, Australia! He had a cool job in Vegas, though. He designed laser guns for one of those laser tag companies.

But, most exciting of all, I stumbled across the Raspyni Brothers on the tradeshow floor. The Raspyni Brothers! Two time International-Juggling-Association Team champions! Right there, 5 metres in front of me, giving a free act to twenty or thirty people, on an small open stage in the middle of a giant hall, while they plugged the services of some ISP.

I only saw a couple of minutes of their show before it ended, so I wandered up afterwards to ask them when the next show started. I got to talking with Dan Holzman who was very friendly and was killing time between acts. Before I knew it, I was up on the stage passing juggling clubs with both of them, just jamming away, while still wearing my suit and badge.

Me! I got to juggle with the Raspyni Brothers! Wow!

I returned back to take my shift on our booth, clutching some schwag they had given me, and tried to work out how to explain to my colleagues what had just happened.

I never did get them to understand.