Last night I went to see Bruce Mau at the launch of his new book, Massive Change, at the Indigo in the Manulife Centre, literally 1 minute from our apartment. I was very keen to hear him talk about the new book and the whole Massive Change project, since I am a big design geek as well as an emergence/complexity theory/social networks enthusiast, and the project seems to address these areas in a very interesting holistic fashion. However, I'm sad to report that the entire evening was rather spoiled for me by the Massive Ego of the host, Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo. I disliked her from the outset, when she introduced herself as "CEO of Indigo, but I prefer to call myself Chief Book Lover". Wow, that sounded spontaneous and unrehearsed, and that explains why all the stores in the ChIndigo juggernaut are increasingly filled with non-book items such as yoga mats, pilates kits and cook ware. See 'the vanishing bookstore' for details.
Being not-Canadian, I had never heard of Ms Heather Reisman until last night, but turns out she is half of one of Toronto's leading 'power couples' who are worth lots of money, and has been hailed - by the business press - as a 'turnaround queen' by repelling the attack of US-based Borders. Only to clone their rapacious business strategies herself, bless her. She's a Canadian success, which explains to me why she has such a vastly inflated self-opinion. I mean, she doesn't really seem very smart to me? How hard is it to build a large, rapacious, evil, independent bookstore killing monolith? Not very, judging by the almost complete lack of any evidence of incisive intellect in her banal, overlong, rambling questions aimed at Bruce Mau, who was hardly able to get a word in edgeways, poor thing.
Anyway, it gets worse - the interview was very tedious, but the bits where Bruce or his colleagues were interesting when they got a chance to speak. And eventually Ms. Reisman opened the discussion to the floor so us peons and non-corporate superstar predators could ask a few questions. I even got to ask one, which was nice! (I wondered why design had recently become much more visible and appreciated by the man in the street - Bruce posited it was the influence of the PC, where for the first time, non-designer folks could choose fonts, etc...Interesting theory). Even this was spoiled by Ms Reisman's frequent interruptions. She even, get this, laughed INTO HER MICROPHONE when someone said something funny. What the?
But wait, it gets even worse. Eventually we got to the book signing part of the evening. I like getting books signed, but I don't get overexcited about it since I used to work in a large bookstore and ended up with books signed by many big names, but it is still fun nonetheless and you get to have a quick chat with the author. As I approached the table I saw with some amazement that Ms Reisman had positioned herself next to Bruce Mau (who she was so very keen to introduce as her personal friend to all and sundry - I'm sure the fact he is a globally renowned designer and she would benefit from her association was the farthest thing from her mind), anyway, she had positioned herself next to Bruce and was wielding a marker pen threateningly. She didn't actually intend to sign books, did she? This book that she had absolutely nothing to do with the conception, creation or production of? Surely not even she could have such off-the-scale egomania? I was very afraid. And then, yes, the customer before me - Bruce signs her book, passes it along, Reisman signs it! Wow!
I was completely distracted, and when it came to my turn, instead of stunning Bruce with my elevator pitch about emergent, collaborative design as the paradigm for the future, or asking him if he thinks that we will attain a state of perfection and immanize the eschaton by 2012, or if he believes, like Christopher Alexander that there is a God and the way God manifests is through the ubiquity of design and pattern throughout all of nature (including us, since we are all in the same matrix together), at which he, impressed by my acuity would offer me a position at his company immediately (which I guess I've blown now by ranting about his personal friend), anyway, instead of saying any of those things, I said "I work around the corner from you". Quite brilliant. Go me.
So, he smiled, said "that's...nice" or something, and passed the book to his right. Whereupon Reisman grabbed it, fixed me with a terrifyingly glassy and malevolent basilisk smile, and signed my book with a flourish! "Thanks, Rik", she said. I think she *must* have seen me rolling my eyes at her soliloquies - I mean, I really rolled them A LOT. And I wasn't the only one. There was a whole wide array of eye rolling going on in that audience, I can tell you. Maybe even some minor eye sprain, I wouldn't be surprised.
She signed my book. How weird is that?
