Reason #3 Why I love Puggles: Unity

Anyone who gives presentations to groups of people knows that capturing the audience's attention, getting their mind off what happened in their day before they walked through the conference room door, and creating interest and excitement in the topic is crucial to success-- and so much of that is determined in the initial moments of the presentation. We all look for that collective "chill" of the group, so that their brains are positioned to accept the information we are about to share.

Well, I have a secret weapon in the conference room. And it is.... wait for it...... The Puggle.

I happened to realize this untapped power of the Puggle recently, in a serendipitious way, during a presentation where the attendees all walked in, very, very stressed, and anxiety-ridden. What had wound their nerves back at their desk had not been forgotten, and any anxiety over our topic was staring them in the face.

Within a minute of entering the room, what also was staring them in the face was my computer wall-paper image of Bruschi (shown above) projected onto a large screen. A simple glance at that perfectly cute little wrinkly forehead elicited a collective "awwwww" across the room. Tensions were released, and conversation quickly turned from "did you get that email" to "oh, what kind of dog is that?" "How old is he?" "Did you take that photo?" "My goodness that is the perfect photo."

I now had the attention, and interest of everyone in the room, from the CEO who had to make decisions to the intern taking notes. I was ready to move forward. The picture of the Puggle did in less than 10 seconds what no average human could do in 20 minutes, if at all.

Was Bruschi really was the catalyst for what ended up being a ridiculously successful meeting. I do believe that his image provided the group with a "brain break" of sorts, along with creating a common ground-- everyone in the room was able to agree on something-- that this dog was cute. The dog created a sense or sort of unity of opinion among those around the table that was lacking at the start.

A while ago, I started working images and references to my dogs into presentations, either as clip-art, or to illustrate a point, or simply as an ice-breaker. More recently, I set my wallpaper to this image of Bruschi that I took one morning. He was sitting in a sun spot, I was running late for work, searching for my favorite Charles David shoe. The shoe could not be found, but the camera was sitting on the ironing board. It made me smile in the morning when I booted up, even more than my previous image of Brad Pitt and George Clooney in Oceans 11.

What was so great about the wallpaper doing the work for me, vs. a slide in the presentation, is that I had the room's attention before that first slide ever appeared. They now were excited about the deck, and approaching the material with true interest-- because they had the opportunity to forget the baggage that followed them in to the meeting.

I could talk tons about the emotional and psychological effects that all pets have on humans, the endorphines that their images can stimulate, and studies that show simply petting a dog can lower blood pressure (and conversely, how a puggle stealing a sandwich can make it rise to new heights)... but....

...That's a 'wuff' for now!

(former wallpaper)