No 166: Poster Boy

My face has been used fairly widely over the past few weeks to advertise Utility Week. I have lost track of the number of times people have come up to me and said that my grinning mug has appeared on their internet feed. I can only assume that earlier this year someone in a dark basement at the publishing firm Faversham House decided that my face was the perfect image to epitomise the water sector: a balding, middle aged, male looking ever-so-slightly smug. That, they no doubt confidently told themselves, that is the face of the UK water industry today.

I am of course delighted to be the Utility Week poster boy. It is a great event, and was held at Birmingham NEC earlier this week, in a space about the size of 10 football pitches. I estimate 10,000 people attended. The real game changer that made Utility Week 2017 stand head and shoulders above others were the multiple parallel conference sessions, all held on the main expo floor. This made it incredibly easy for the delegates to flex between different sessions/the expo, enhancing the whole experience for both attendees and presenters. To avoid unnecessary noise the delegates had headphones which meant they could lock into the conference speaker of their choice.

Aside from the fact that most of the attendees were over 35 and dressed in suits, it gave the conference the feel of a headphone disco at an open air festival after the noise curfew. (When I was presenting I definitely saw some of my audience rocking back and forth in their chairs.)

Perhaps the strangest person to comment on my image appearing in their internet feed was a friend at my local church. He works in the prison sector and has nothing to do with water. Upon learning that my friend had been targeted I wondered if Mr Google had got a sneaky insight into my religious beliefs and had decided to target similarly minded individuals. Realising this was unlikely I wondered instead if my recent driving ban (one month to go now!) had put me on an HMRC watch list.

I finally realised that the more likely explanation was that he was targeted because we had emailed in the past and Google never forgets a link. I am now hoping I will get adverts to attend exciting conferences in the prison sector. If they are going to use our data then this really should be a two way street.  

Once you get past the fact that I look like I am supressing flatulence it is actually quite a nice photo. My wife likes it,  but that is possibly because I don’t normally supress wind in her presence. She is used to the full, glorious, unedited Piers experience. Lucky lady.