The WISIWYG Blog

This is the speech I delivered at last Monday's morning meeting, with the exception of realization number 5, which was omitted to prevent any commotion inside the office. :p

In less than one year, I have been involved in three performances.  The first was on the AWS Christmas Party last December; the second was on the Company Outing last May; and the last was on the cheer dancing competition of the recently concluded AWS Sports Fest.  We won on two; we’ve lost in one.  And from those wins and loses, I have realized five things that I would want to share with you.

1. “Many” works better than “few”

A group of people swaying altogether rhythmically, no matter how simple the dance steps, looks far better than two or three people performing the best they can on stage.  On our two wins, the number of people who planned out the act equaled the number of people who performed the act.  And the result was far better than what we had on our only loss, where a lot of minds planned the act but only a few were willing to do the act itself.  There is magic in “many” that can never be achieved by a few.

2. Don’t complicate things too much

Stick with the simple and everybody understands.  Stick with the intricate and everybody gets bored, if not confused.  On both of our winning performances, we did nothing but the basic stuff.  Simple dance steps that everyone can perform, a plot that everybody can understand, and a shower of comic moves that everybody can laugh at.  It’s the simple things that matter. It’s the simple things that people appreciate.

3. The audiences’ satisfaction is your goal, not the prize

To win the grand prize—that was our goal during the planning stage of the company outing presentation.  And we never did get any closer to that goal.  On the contrary, we never planned to win on the cheer dance and Christmas party performances.  What was our goal during those two instances?  Our goal was that sometime during our performance, we would hear a few laughs, a few cheers, and a few claps.  On both cases, we achieved our goal.  The grand prize was just the bonus.

4. Prioritize enjoying over winning

We were too stressed out during our performance in Dos Palmas.  We were targeting the first place, and that in itself is enough to pressure us.  The pressure got even higher when after a minute of our performance, we could hear nothing but the deafening silence of the crowd.  No laughs, no claps, no nothing.  All of this is the exact opposite of the two other performances we did.  During both the Christmas party presentation and the cheer dance competition, all of us were enjoying.  All of us were pleased with what we were doing.

5. Basta Dev1, iba!

And as for this last realization, you can’t pretty much do anything about it if you’re not one of us. :p