Don’t f ***ing email the “Evil Mad Scientist”. OK!

So here’s the thing, I’m sat in the garage today in Le-Mesos, or Lemesos, or Limassol depending upon your preference [it’s a real garage where work happens I’ll have you know, not some flimsy pop-up corporate innovation lab thing]…and I submit a LinkedIn search using the keywords…. “instructional design learning technical author”, for the record I possess zero knowledge about instructional design hence the search for people who might assist in my quest for learning leaders, exceptional communicators, and maybe eccentric people. We like to think that we’re not a bunch of average Joes either. I do have a brain in my skull and certainly not offended should someone ask, I’m not trying to blag a freebie, and don’t want to get lost in the noise of trying to ‘connect’ with a stranger.

The search returned [drum roll] in 9th place a so called “Evil Mad Scientist” amongst the usual Directors, Heads of, Exec Vice Presidents, SVPs, Chiefs of Whatever.. naturally this chap caught my eye immediately. Intriguingly arrogant perchance? Let me investigate, and maybe I should get in touch I thought naively.

STOP RIGHT THERE YOU POTENTIAL SPAMMER AND INTERNET ARTERY CLOGGING IMBECILE! READ THIS BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER WAS THE PUBLIC INSTRUCTION:

mmmm….invest some time to communicate with him, think about it, no REALLY think about it.

I’m liking the sound of this guy, because I’m someone who won’t wish you a happy birthday via Facebook*. Right up my street I thought, and if he was up my street, I’d wander up to his front door and knock on it. Wow, imagine that, a human interaction of epic proportions. The communication skill of certified professionals. But alas, giving out your physical address on the internet for unsolicited contact? Suicide. I’d have wrote him a hand written letter and shoved it in the snail mail, unthinkable! unimaginable! So this post is my 3rd choice after I’d reluctantly sent him a cryptic tweet that I’d expect to penetrate his personal firewall filter of separating the wheat from the chaff in just a few characters.

Of course he replied. I followed his strict rules of engagement. But what else has happened? He’s made ME think. He’s made ME invest some of MY time in figuring out how I should communicate effectively with him to first get his attention and earn the right to HIS reply, he quite rightly values his time, yet maybe he’s trying to find a way to connect with [the right] strangers too?

Brilliant. A piece of communication art. Offensive to some? Just like art, it’s a matter of taste.

We were all strangers once, right? In a similar vein, when I hear a tutting adult above the noise of a crying baby on a long haul, I feel like shouting out “you were a crying baby once, have some f***ing consideration and perhaps offer some help to a parent who could do with just a teeny bit of re-assurance on behalf of the collective that it’s perfectly ok if your baby cries”.

Anyway back to the point before the attention span wanders…

This is a simple note of thanks Paco, the “Evil Mad Scientist”, for your personal communication strategy. A breath of fresh air amongst the communication smog. No need to apologise on behalf of the Internet for overload, we just each need to find a better navigation path sometimes than the lazy, obvious one. Precisely how some grads, and other potential hires rush to populate and present their life works on a resume template on MsWord. Crazy, lazy work indeed.

So Paco…I commit to the written word that you’ll never be my Facebook friend. You‘ll never be my LinkedIn connection, and I’ll never follow you on Twitter, and I’ll never email you.

But maybe, just maybe, we’ll connect somewhere ‘in the meso’ between our respective end points, and I can buy you a coffee in person and we can communicate like all good humans should.

Until then, I bid you a good day. Stranger.

p.s. I emailed you earlier a request for permission to use a screen grab from one of your videos in the photo above, but you’ll never read it or reply to it, so given you were happy for such images to be in the public domain I figured you wouldn’t be offended if I published it. You can email me if you want me to remove it!