Today was one of those rare days. It is Telligent's 3rd Anniversary and it was a day when you have an opportunity to do something that is just plain funny! After a month of planning, today was the "unveiling" of Rob's clone/Evil Rob/Rob2... In other words a life size cutout of Rob Howard, CEO of Telligent Systems. When the group had gathered and Rob entered the room his reaction was the payoff that we were waiting for. For those of you that don't know me, I am a bit of a prankster. I like to conduct "social experiments" to see how people respond. With today's experiment we are testing Rob's tolerance to literally laugh at himself.
The planning started a month ago. Rob had recently completed a photo shoot for a cross promotional ad with ComponentArt and our Community Server product. So a high-resolution image was floating around just waiting to be a part of a fun prank. When I initially, innocently inquired about said photo I was met with resistance, so an alternate path had to be taken. Once the photo was in hand it was time to find the perfect printer, and that came in the form of Advanced Graphics. AG specializes in life size cut outs and I highly recommend them. Then the waiting game for the item to arrive. So today the package arrived. We quickly unpacked and reviewed the item. The next thing you know an e-mail is sent out to meet in the ping pong conference room and the team showed up quickly. A camera was ready to capture the reaction and Rob did not disappoint. Once plenty of pictures were taken the "Rob Clone" found a home in the front lobby.
Why is a life size cutout of Rob so funny? Because if you know him you have to know that the last thing in the world that he would do would be to promote himself in that way. It so goes against his personality. So if you happen to catch him at TechEd next week, be sure to ask him how his "clone" is doing and which one is the good Rob and which is the evil one.
