Each year I have to present to our directors at their conference on a subject concerning the forthcoming budget. Working for a law firm I have always tried to use the 'lay-man' speak as lawyers invariably think they know it all but actually don't!!

One year I played a variation of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' with them, with each level and monetary value being represented by an item on the proposed budget. The questions in between were also ICT related and I even set up a 'phone a friend' to my systems manager, which was used (and he did get it right)!!

Last year I talked about Virtualisation. So I got 10 directos to stand at the end of the room each with a sign stating which one of our servers they represented and how much 'utilisation' the server represented. To get the feel for how little they were doing I got each one to either march with their left, right arm, right leg, left leg or nod their head. So i had 10 of my senior directors up in a room semi marching. To represent what virtualisation meant I then got the new MD and FD forward and passed each movement from the others to them, so eventually both of them were fully marching on the spot and nodding their heads (by this point they were starting to sweat a bit....they are not the healthiest). Whilist pointing out that we now had two servers which were working harder and doign exactly the same jobs I then flicked on to the screen behind them and up came the following (apologies to our American friends as they may not know who this is .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YoACJo4-XY
(the bit with Mr Blobby and Jim Bowen)
Needless to say they do now appreciate what virtualisation is, even if they havent given any budget to start the project !!!