To thine own self be true

The title of this post uses the words written in the ceiling of the Conway Hall in London.You can see it at the top of the photo.

There’s quite a lot going on in this photo, in fact.

In the foreground of the frame and going back is a collection of people who have paid £20 each to attend a conference called Boring, during which this photo was taken.

I don’t need to tell you as to why the conference is called Boring. You can read that elsewhere. Obviously, it’s anything but.

“To thine own self be true” is a maxim to which Boring’s speakers subscribe. Boring gives them a chance to celebrate the subjects which they otherwise would not have been able to talk about to such a large and diverse audience. The conference is a celebration of the mundane, a halleujah of the hobby, a bravo of the boring.

On the stage is its organiser, James Ward, introducing the speakers prior to giving a hilarious, line-by-line analysis of an Abba song, The Day Before You Came.

Below is the running order of the conference.

I am in this list; fifth, in fact. I come before the excellence of Kathryn Ferry’s really lovely talk on Crinoline ladies, and in advance of the genuinely awesome Sophie Scott’s forensic analysis of the Watergate tapes.

Note that the subjects of each talk are not on the running order. This is, perhaps, one of the beautiful things about Boring: you don’t know what to expect until its speaker is literally on the stage.

My talk is based on an obsession with cars — the bodies, the manufacturers, the models, but not their internal workings — which started when I was very young. I can still recall exactly who owned which car and which specific colour and/or model it was, around my block.

A few years back, I asked James if I could talk at Boring. His roster was full (well, that’s what he said) and so I had furiously put fingers to keyboard and wrote my talk out as a longform article which was published by Advertising Week. I had also presented my backup subject to a Pecha Kucha event, A deconstruction of the Colgate-Palmolive Ajax TV advert of 1983 which reinforced my boring credentials.

Earlier this year, I asked James again about speaking at Boring, and he said yes. I thought that he was joking.

But he meant it.

And I was on stage, at Conway Hall, on Saturday, in a conference which was absolutely, wonderfully, beautifully entertaining, esoteric, hilarious, fascinating, subtle, analytical and… everything else. It’s just lovely. And that’s why you should go next time.

There’s an excellent writeup of all of the talks, by courtesy of Diamond Geezer. He said nice words about mine, so thanks Diamond.

James is creating a Boring book, through Unbound, of which you should pledge towards to see it happen. There is also a mini-Boring (“Listless”?) coming up at the British Library.

Here are the slides from my talk. Thank you to everyone in the audience who politely looked as if they were being entertained, whilst I jumped up and down in a fit of incandescence whilst harping on about why British Leyland’s Sherpa van had three manufacturer brands at the same time, and why the Princess also had three manufacturer brands, but only for a period of 6 months.

Thanks again to James, to the audience, and I’m sorry if I borrowed a photo or two for the presentation (I was beavering away at it until 1.30am the night before). If anything needs crediting, please let me know. I could have talked for another hour at least on this topic — so thanks James for the call for brevity. Much more information on British Leyland’s crazy, funny, weird and just plain daft brand strategy is at AROnline.