A Banquet Invitation

Dear friends,

Imagine that you are attending a huge dinner party for about 600 people. Although most of the guests come from North America, there are many from other parts of the world too. Most of the guests are women, but there's a good sprinkling of men. The guests have a wide variety of education and income levels. They are employed in almost every kind of work imaginable. Some have extensive medical knowledge; some do not. All races and religions are represented. In fact, a stranger dropping into the party would have trouble figuring out what these people had in common. All of these people have been touched in some way with Inflammatory Breast Cancer--as patients, survivors, caregivers, or professionals working with IBC. They also all have agreed to abide by the rules the host has set for participation at the banquet.

The purpose of this big banquet is to share information about IBC. To do this the host has devised an ingenious system. Each guest has a microphone with two buttons. If she pushes one button, she addresses her comments to the whole group. If she pushes the other, she can speak to individuals in the group without being overheard. There's no after dinner speaker, no program. But amazingly, order prevails. One person asks a question; others give their answers. Someone else just read an article that will help everyone, briefly summarizes it for the group, and tells where to find the whole article. While all of this is going on, the guests continue with their dinner. After all they need nourishment because they have full and busy lives and can't spend all of their time listening to messages from their fellow guests, no matter how helpful they are.

Sometimes though things don't go quite right. That shouldn't be any surprise. Put any 600 people together, and there will be moments of confusion and anger. Sometimes people misunderstand a message because of differences in their home language. Vocabulary terms vary in different parts of North America, not to mention Australia and England. Sometimes people get annoyed when there is a long stream of messages agreeing with a previous speaker, but not adding any new information. They wish the button that directs comments to one individual was used more often. Sometimes people get dissatisfied with one of the rules and says, "Why can't we have a vote? There are 600 of us and just one host and a few helpers." They forget that the host has spent much money and time making the banquet available. Another problem is that guests are always coming and going. It takes a while to figure out that two button system on the microphone. Sometimes people who have been at the party for a while get impatient with new people, forgetting the time when they were new at computers -- oops, I mean microphones -- too. I'm delighted to be able to attend this banquet. The information I have received has helped keep me alive literally, and has made my life easier and better. I'm very grateful to our host who provides the servers and electronic gizmos that make this party work. As his guest, I'll be gracious about following his guidelines for participation. When disagreements arise, I'll realize they are just part of life when 600 people all try to talk at once, and I'll address my comments privately to people if what I have to say might in any way be embarrassing.

Peace,
Phyllis