30 October 2015
Today is the day of the Grand CIPA Outing. A group of officers, staff and committee folk are taking a trip to the IP Office in Newport, which is, strictly, an overseas visit and therefore worthy of Great Excitement. (Especially since we don’t have permission, making it also, strictly, an act of rebellion.) For once, my journey is easier than everyone else’s. I can have a lie-in, go for a run and redecorate the front room, all before I need to even think about putting my smart clothes on. The others have to catch the 0815 from Paddington to Deepest Wales, which to be honest still doesn’t sound very onerous to me, though I accept it must be harder travelling against the prevailing winds and battling homesickness all the way. I suspect that they all sit in the same carriage, so that they can sing holiday songs as they go, and share their fizzy pop and the packets of crisps their mums told them to leave until lunch time. When you go to Wales, you have to go trip-trapping across a troll bridge, and just when you think you’ve got away with it, you find yourself at a troll booth and the troll says Who’s that trip-trapping over my bridge? and you have to pay him £6.50 otherwise he will gobble you up. The people on the train avoid the troll by going through a deep dark tunnel under the Severn Estuary. The troll can’t be bothered to say Who’s that swish-swashing in the mud and murky water under my bridge? so he leaves the tunnel alone. When we get to the IPO we play party games and the IPO give us a picnic lunch, and there are more packets of crisps to make up for the ones we ate before we were supposed to, and at the end everyone gets a party bag to take home. We also have some really constructive discussions on the IP issues of the day, and on opportunities for collaboration, and we see some demonstrations of the IPO’s new online tools, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear about those, so let me tell you about the party games instead. The games are run by a Facilitator. A Facilitator is a person who is qualified to turn business meetings into Interactive Discussion Forums through the medium of entertainment. The main party game today is called “What Makes A Good IP System?” It begins with some Elevator Pitches from people who already have some ideas on the subject. In an Elevator Pitch, you are allowed to talk but only for two minutes and only on one subject, which is really tricky for a patent attorney. After the elevator pitches the Facilitator puts us into groups to come up with ideas, and we have to write our ideas onto laminated pictures that he has pinned up around the room. Each picture shows an IP ship trying to sail across the IP seas, with a load of anchors holding it back, and we have to identify what are the anchors holding us back from having a Good IP System, apart from clients being stupid and pretty much everything else being outrageous. Then we have to choose names for our ships. And then we have to vote for which group’s name is the best, and we are given toy money with which to express our preferences. Only a Facilitator could get away with this, I am thinking. But at least he didn’t blindfold us first.
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