5 July 2016, 10 am
I am chairing a Plenary Meeting of the diversity task force (da-da-da-DA!!). One of the attendees has expressed excitement at the chance to attend his first ever Plenary Meeting. But actually, a Plenary Meeting is not that exciting: it is just like any other meeting except with a longer list of apologies. In the meeting, we decide what we are going to do next to promote diversity. We do not decide which of us is going to do it, because everyone is too busy doing things like attending plenary meetings. This is a pain, but unavoidable in the modern world. It will not stop me creating some decent-looking minutes which make it seem as though the task force is still gamely tackling the injustices of the IP world. We also look at a poster which we have had designed, for the purpose of promoting careers in IP to schoolchildren and teachers and careers advisers. It has been created by professional designers and before they created it they talked to lots of schoolchildren and teachers and careers advisers and drew on their wealth of experience in designing similar such things for other people. But we are not going to let them off without a fight. It is not masculine enough, say some. It is not techy enough, say others. The writing is too big. Or too small. There is not enough space between the words. The logo is wrong. Various people add helpful suggestions as to how the professionally-designed design could be tweaked, supplemented or indeed completely redrawn. I sense a camel emerging from a committee and it is not going to happen on my watch. We will go with this one, I say. It having been professionally designed and all, on the basis of consultations with our intended audience. On whose wavelength the average IP professional is not. And we will see what kind of feedback we get. And then we can think about redesigning if necessary. Because I say so. I try to look fierce. But it doesn’t come off very well through my new varifocals. I do not point out the irony of wanting to redesign the poster to make it appeal to the people we already have in the IP professions, when what we are trying to do is bring in a more diverse pool of recruits. Subtlety has no place in a Plenary Meeting.
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