Had the day off writing yesterday to deliver a presentation at the National Security College. I was talking about developing scenarios, and how to use some of the structural tricks of novelists and screenwriters to plan out more engaging hypotheticals for policymakers and actors within natsec agencies. I was on after lunch so I wanted the session to be fun as well as useful. It seemed to go well.
It was my first time using Webex and I had a few heart-in-mouth moments just before the session when I realised I had to download and install the app. I wasn’t even sure one would run on the iMac. It did. But I ended up using the browser link anyway. NSC asked if I wanted to use slides for the presentation and I thought about it for all of two seconds before deciding that trying to do a keynote session over an NBN link using a piece of software I’d never seen before was asking for trouble.
Instead, I just wrote up a one-page outline on Word, with space for note-taking, and emailed that down separately. They printed it out and handed it to the participants. Sometimes analogue is just better.
Probably shouldn’t discuss the content of the class beyond vague generalities, but I can assure you the Australian government is thoroughly prepared to deal with an alien invasion.
I, for one, welcome our new lords and masters as they are no doubt reading this now and invested in the Men in Black series. Probably a documentary really.
I also like that allegory of preparing for a zombie apocalypse being used for evacuation preparedness - gets engagement and breaks through those boring lecture type situations. Although if you tell us you made them get into groups and try to make the tallest tower out of spaghetti pieces and jelly beans as a bonding exercise i may have to get violent.
Apparently they’ve done exactly that in the USA. There’s a military think tank that got a guy called Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks!) to brief them on this, based on some of the zombie books he’s written.
I think they are all prepared for an alien invasion..... which will basically be a speech about the new landlords and how rent will likely be going up. But we may get to stay around
If cows do get abducted, does that mean the steaks are high? Sorry, i'll show myself out :)
Alien invasion? I'd be surprised if anyone noticed
I, for one, welcome our new lords and masters as they are no doubt reading this now and invested in the Men in Black series. Probably a documentary really.
Maybe I should change my label to Currently known as Simon as opposed to formerly.
Done I think.
Oh good to know
I also like that allegory of preparing for a zombie apocalypse being used for evacuation preparedness - gets engagement and breaks through those boring lecture type situations. Although if you tell us you made them get into groups and try to make the tallest tower out of spaghetti pieces and jelly beans as a bonding exercise i may have to get violent.
Apparently they’ve done exactly that in the USA. There’s a military think tank that got a guy called Max Brooks (son of Mel Brooks!) to brief them on this, based on some of the zombie books he’s written.
Ha! I can’t go into deets but I’m currently doing something with that same outfit.
I think they are all prepared for an alien invasion..... which will basically be a speech about the new landlords and how rent will likely be going up. But we may get to stay around
Surely we've already had an alien invasion? It's the only thing I can think of to explain the last few years.
Any particular sort of alien invasion? Slime, bugs or robots?
Good thing about (space) aliens is that they're probably not going to arrive by sea.