I'll be speaking to the local Rotary Club tonight on YKW (You Know What). They're giving me 20 minutes for a preeeeeeesentation and 20 minutes for questions. I'd like to say, "Well, it's just about too late and you're almost certainly hosed. Now, let's get to those questions!" but I know I can't/shouldn't/won't. I've got all kinds of little games/scenarios/analogies for them. One: I'll have them take out their wallets and lay them on the table. Then I'll ask them to pick a number between 1 and 25. I'll then announce the number I've chosen and tell them that whoever has lost has lost ---- not what's in their wallet in cash, but what's in their wallet in the way of family as represented in their pictures. Another is to have them all imagine that they are competitors in the same business and that they know that they themselves will not be compliant come 01/01/2000. I'll then ask them which of them would announce, six months early, that they weren't compliant, knowing that if/when they did, the other competitors in the room would pick their bones dry. Yet another is to have them total up all their insurance premiums for the past five years and ask them: a) how much return they made on those premiums; b) were they upset that they didn't make 100% return on those "investments"; and c) if they knew of any insurance that could be sold, after the fact, for some percentage of face value, say, 50%? I'm hoping to hit them with a good hard ten minutes of facts and have accumulated a little library just in the past week or so from this forum, csy2k and other sources. Any favorites that you'd like to mention as "show stoppers" that have appeared in the last ten days or so? Thanks.

Kurt

-- Kurt Ayau (Ayau@Iwinet.com), October 07, 1999

Answers

Here's what I said to the local Kiwanis. http://www.ib-ent.com/goldenk.htm

You're welcome to any of it. I framed it around "Why are programmers more pessimistic thatn the general public?"

I like your exercises. Here's one I used at another YKW presentation. To illustrate the concept of "88% safe," I played Russian Roulette with an 8-shot cap gun. Click. No problem! If you were playing for real, would you want a helmet?

-BT

-- Brian Towey (brian@ib-ent.com), October 07, 1999.

Kurt, be sure and let us know how it went.

I like your 'exercises'.

-- Wilferd (WilferdW@aol.com), October 07, 1999.

The "you prepare--what do you lose if you're wrong?" vs. "you don't prepare--what do you lose if you're wrong?" approach is the quickest, simplest way I know to get through to people who don't know much about Y2K or who keep thinking about any disaster, "Yeah, stocking-up--that's a good idea, I'll have to stock up one of these days." Remind them that three days of food and water wouldn't have helped the thousands of folks in eastern NC who weren't completely flooded out but live in or near the badly stricken areas and, as we speak, still have contaminated drinking water and no regular food supplies, and nobody knows when things will return to anything like normal. Right--people didn't know how bad Floyd would be. . .

It's not just Y2K.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), October 07, 1999.

Show them the results of the Y2K calculator.

Start with very small increments of expected failure. You could do a simple screen capture using Paint Shop Pro and then print.

Make lots of copies and hand them out personally to each person in attendance. Get good eye contact with each person.

P.S. - If you don't have Paint Shop Pro, you can download it as shareware or there may be another screen capture program available.

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), October 07, 1999.

I'd give them two graphics. People seem to grasp interdependencies pretty well from these.

Dependency Map and Economic Engine

-- bw (home@puget.sound), October 07, 1999.

There is a Y2K version of Pascal's Wager floating around. That has logic so condensed and so inescapable that even full-blown DWGI cases cannot dodge its logic. AFTER presenting the lousy on-time record for large software projects, the huge percentages of small/medium- sized businesses in the U.S. and foreign countries that aren't doing squat in the way of remediation, and the # of suppliers that General Motors has, this ought to make a lasting impression.

This article on Gary North is relevant as well: http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/6412

my site: www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), October 07, 1999.

"There is a Y2K version of Pascal's Wager floating around..." The url for that is: http://www.drivezero.com/herbal/framed/pascal.html

-- Joe (paraflyr@cybernet1.com), October 08, 1999.

From: Y2K, ` la Carte by Dancr (pic), near Monterey, California

Here's an earlier thread on Pascal's Wager and Y2K.

-- Dancr (addy.available@my.webpage), October 08, 1999.