AAI awards exhibition – suspended?

phrase “couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery/”

basically they arranged for a premises that cannot be opened to the public either due to lack of manpower or insurance…

just ridiculous

I am getting very worried about the AAI myself,
because for one thing it doesn’t benefit from a public online, or otherwise ‘available’ feed back loop system,
whereby someone can submit a genuine and sincere observation, suggestion or comment,
and think, it will not just end up in a dustbin somewhere,
or that you will not insult somebody for opening your mouth.

I think the famous stock market investor summed it up nicely,
while describing the cult of the CEO in the United States,
to criticise the CEO,
even if you were an investor with millions worth of your finance tied up in a company,
felt like ‘Belching at the Table’.

The CEO was seen as a visionary,
someone so brilliant and creative,
you daren’t question their motivations, or strategy.
I notice very much a similar culture bred into the AAI,
and into the Architecture scene as a whole.

While people don’t invest actual large finance into the AAI,
the investment of energy, concentration, and committment,
just to support the AAI in terms of providing an audience shouldn’t be sniffed at.
Something tells me though, the AAI might take that audience,
a little bit for granted,… and should try to involve the audience slightly more,
through organisation of some kind into open workshop nights or something.

I am sadly aware too, that this mono-directional strategy has more or less forced them down a complete back alley.
I think the first step is the publically available, transparent feed-back loop idea,
whereby, the resources, they spend on designing cool looking brochures and posting them out to members,
should also be focused at distributing the comments,
or reactions, or feelings of its members,
good, bad and indifferent.

That includes all the time investment they make in doing this ‘AAI Awards Catalogue’ too,
which is something began as a simple document,
nothing too flash, or trying too hard to be overly ‘presentational’.
Yet that is what it has become today.
But no place in the said publication,
do you find any contributions whatsoever, from the ordinary job soap AAI member.

The AAI could act as a kind of net, for an awful lot of interesting stuff,
happening only in peoples’ minds out there all the time.
Yet, the AAI have never explored that avenue,
in terms of a company, it would be called ‘wasting your knowledge resources’.
There is enormous wealth of knowledge resources sitting in the membership of the AAI,
yet 0% percent of that gets harvested year in, year out.

I mean, the start of a lecture, when everyone is busy sitting down scratching themselves,
in a seat, waiting for a talk to begin, could be another ‘space’ that could be exploited,
to read out some more comments, feedback etc, etc.
Even members observations, or comments on previous lectures.
Something, anything,… just to invoke a kind of two-way process,
rather than a strongly mono-directional one.

In any TV Show, which is a commercial environment, where they actually,
place a monetary value on listerners, or viewers,
the effort is always made to include the audience,
via reading out something,
or whatever… even the late late show reads out text messages/emails etc, etc.
I know it is a bit of a skit,… but still it adds ‘something’, however small.

When one decent CEO, Steve Jobs returned to the Apple Computer Company,
the one he founded in the 1970s,
one of the first things he did, was reduce, the amount of products they did.
I have noticed myself, that the AAI’s very limited man power,
is spread out very, very thinly over many different products, projects, events and branches,
at this stage.
I think there is a lot of potential to reign that in,
and just do a smaller number of products, but do them to a much, much higher stanard.

Then perhaps, introduce some new products, approaches, ideas,
that are right for the AAI,
and its considerable audience,
to consume.
(Apologises for the Sonnet-like format of this post)

Brian O’ Hanlon.