All Dressed Up and No Place to Go

Look at that poster.
Look at it again.
Now, gut reaction -- is it eye-catching?
How about this: is it eye-catching enough to make you read it?
And finally: After reading it, would you consider attending the event?

I thought so, too. I'd been working for months to bring two of my favorite crime writers, Chicago-based Marcus Sakey and Sean Chercover, to come to U of I. I was thrilled to meet them, and figured I'm a normal enough college student with normal enough interests to be an accurate gauge of what other college students liked.

No, they might not have read these guys' books, but what better way to start than to meet the makers themselves?

Well, ten people showed up. Total. Including my brother and I, who had organized the event. I broke into cold embarrassed sweat as I smiled and "addressed the elephant" -- or lack of one -- in the room. Piles of books sat near us as we began to talk with the writers.

The conversation was incredible. We talked for two hours about everything -- college majors to why English courses worship boring books to writing quirks; everything -- but I was still in shock that no one showed up.

I emailed some of my writer friends. College students are f'ing stupid, one of them said. You made lemonade out of lemons, my mom said. Plus, a confounding variable was the time: smack dab in the middle of the day of the day of the week in the middle of mid-term week.

But goodness, the English Building was across the street from the venue of the event. Couldn't someone stop by? One professor? One creative writing student?

Okay: I'll tie a bow on the rant and troubleshoot my own actions.

I think my error in advertising this event was not the lack of the event's visibility on campus, but the lack of a human connection in personalizing an invitation. The poster was cool. I advertised it to a bunch of groups that dug this stuff -- Campus Honors Program, English and Creative Writing students, etc. But people who saw the poster didn't come because even a flashy visual is not enough to bridge the gap between interest and action, between thought and response. We think of lots of things we don't act on. The world our minds inhabits has freer range than the physical world we inhabit, which is constrained by things like transportation, weather, time, and health. I'm sure many people were interested in going, but interest does not equal action. And a poster was not enough to bridge this gap.

Just like special effects in movies: they're not memorable if there's no reason for them other than to look pretty. Likewise, in our class, we're learning glitzy ways to present information. But we can have all the cool fade-ins and fade-outs, explosions and alakazams that we want...but if there is no human element behind the presentation of information, then it's a forgettable display of fireworks...most of them duds.