I ran into an interesting story in an employee publication yesterday. I sort of had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Here was the headline:

Can you haiku? Vent your technology frustrations with a verse

That’s right . . . the editor was asking readers to take time out from work to write haikus about the struggles with technology—using the standard 5-7-5 syllables-per-verse haiku formula.

She even gives them an example! Here it is:

No, say it's not so
Frozen words on screen, help me
The day’s work, hanging.

Of course, the problem with running these sorts of contests inside organizations is that you’re not going to get any really edgy haikus. Everybody will be polite and safe and . . . well, boring.

For example, you’re not going to get anything like this:

Mister I.T. Man
Trousers soaked dark with urine
Won’t answer my calls

And you’re not going to get anything interesting like this:

IT Department
Steaming sinkhole of liars
It’s not the bandwidth

But I sort of like the idea of writing haikus about corporate topics . . . so I thought maybe we could have a contest out here on Corporate Hallucinations. Anyone who submits a haiku on any corporate, government, or organizational topic will go into a drawing for a free registration to this year’s Corporate Communicator’s Conference!

Just remember to stick to the 5-7-5 syllable format for haikus.

And you don’t have to write about IT or technology. You can do any topic, and any department. For example, you might want to do HR:

Human Resources
Why do they hate all humans?
They don’t talk normal

Or maybe accounting:

Bean counters count beans
They don’t make any money
Where is their power?

Anything is fair game . . . so let’s have some fun! And I'll buy the winner seven drinks in Chicago at CCC.

Okay . . . first of all, THANK YOU to everyone who submitted a haiku. I enjoyed reading them . . . in fact, it's the most I've ever enjoyed doing this blog, and I've enjoyed lots of things out there over the years.

Now, for the winner. It was done fairly, and with no bias. Again, it was not judged on quality, because that would be too hard. I picked one person at random, with multiple people having more of a chance.

AND THE WINNER IS . . . . .

Chuck "The Goose" Gose. Which is approriate, I guess, since he was one of the first ones to submit, and submit several excellent specimens.

So, Congratulations, Chuck!!! For those of you who don't know Chuck, he is from Indiana. So this is a real treat for him to come to the big city . . . Chuck, we have restaurants here, and theater, and all sorts of neat things.

But if you start missing the run-down areas of Indiana, you can always go to the South Side, which is Indiana-like.

I'll make sure the good people at Ragan know you're the winner. Of course, I never asked them if I could do this contest, so they may tell me to go to hell. But probably not.

See you in Chicago in May. As for the seven drinks, we should probably break them up a bit, since you're from Indiana, and are only used to drinking weak moonshine. We'll probably have three or four on the first night, three or four more on the second night.

And please bring your wife. She's nice.

Again, thanks to everyone who played!!

Steve C.