Thursday, April 28, 2005
On a slow boat to... Norway
Jon von Tetzchner, the chief executive of Opera, a Norwegian software company, promised last week that he would swim from Norway to the US if his latest software release, Opera 8 was downloaded a million times in its first four days. When the target was exceeded, it fell to his public relations department to devise a plan to extract the CEO's foot from his big mouth. Their little scheme was to have him start his trans-Atlantic swim outside Oslo, with a PR manager following him on an inflatable canoe. By plan, after they had gone a short distance, the canoe "accidentally" developed a puncture, putting the PR guy in danger of drowning, and the heroic CEO had to intervene to save him, thus aborting the swim. The whole thing was about as lame as can be.
Actually I am not really that upset about it. But I'll make this counterproposal: If the CEO ever completes his swim to the US, I'll return the favor by swimming from New York to Norway. And once I get there, I'll eat a large plate of rakfisk and swim all the way back. I promise.
The CEO and his soon-to-be-all-wet PR man
- posted by Woofwoof @ 10:27 PM
