User talk:Howard C. Berkowitz/Herding cats

The {{subpages}} template is designed to be used within article clusters and their related pages.
It will not function on User talk pages.

The video

Computer consulting company EDS did a great video on herding cats as a Superbowl commercial. Managing programmers is of course an exercise akin to cat-herding, inherently difficult. Guys on horseback, dressed as if for a Marlborough commercial, open range country, lots of felines. This should be in external links.

Ideally, the whole series of EDS ads would get its own article linked from here. The cat herding one is most famous, but others were also brilliant. One had a gang of riveters and such changing aluminium panels on an aircraft in flight, as a metaphor for upgrading software systems without stopping business.

Google turns up many links to it, but I'm in China, so YouTube and other video sites are blocked. Also, the thing is copyrighted, so I am not sure what a legitimate link would be. Can someone turn one up and link it? Sandy Harris 01:06, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I thought I had EDS cat herding bookmarked on YouTube, but it's not where I thought it was. On the other hand, I just noticed I have two "humor" folders in my bookmarks. Very strange.

It's probably worth trying to track down an article I saw on the production. While the commercial appears to have huge numbers of cats, it was actually done with a relatively small number -- 8 or so. To put "small" in perspective, I have, several times today, had to go around five on the stairs.

While I miss my late Clifford for many reasons, he was a born clown, at a time before video was conveniently at hand. Some of his performances were deliberate, but, on other occasions, he reprised the Alex Karras role in "Blazing Saddles" with "Clifford is pawn in game of life." I have some of his stories on Facebook, but I realize that I didn't write up the definition of "catapult" based on his climbing a rather limber Christmas tree, attempting to become the Cat of Bathlehem, and finding the trunk bending and then launching him.

Howard C. Berkowitz 01:21, 17 March 2011 (UTC)