Emily Stuckenbruck, a 34-year-old college dean, will be in St. Paul next week to tell an audience how younger and older people can more easily talk with each other. She volunteered that her own style of communication with colleagues is "more informal … than a lot of the faculty who report to me."
As evidence, she later e-mailed a link to a YouTube video of her 2014 presentation to new students at Nicolet College, in Rhinelander, Wis. She had explained that she sometimes wrote funny songs, yet that video clip still managed to drop my jaw off the computer keyboard. The assembled new students saw their dean dance and sing — belt out, really — a parody of the 1981 rock anthem "Don't Stop Believin'."
The 18-year-olds sure loved it. Among the people who thought that style would be great in front of a Twin Cities business audience is 66-year-old Mike Veeck, baseball impresario and president of the St. Paul Saints.
He and his partners in a consulting and training group called Fun Is Good are, for the first time, opening their seminar to all comers here next week at CHS Field in St. Paul. It will also be Stuckenbruck's first appearance alongside Veeck's crew. "Our hidden weapon," Veeck said of her, in our recent conversation. It's likely going to be a show worth taking in.
Entertainment, of course, is only part of what Veeck and his colleagues hope to provide. His approach to educating business audiences on employee engagement and other topics seems a little like the way grandmothers once gave the young ones bitter cough medicine — best with a lot of sugar mixed in. "You can leave with good stuff," Veeck said, in a seminar "that doesn't have to be all drudge, and boring."
In looking through reservations so far for an event coming up on the 24th, Veeck's partner Fran Zeuli (who is actually called chief fun officer, or CFO) said they expected some managers, college professors, law partners and even one ticket buyer who was a finance executive looking to rekindle a passion for creating art.
"Hey, they need to get fired," Veeck interjected, in a tone that sounded at least partly helpful.
Zeuli has a background in corporate management including the cable TV industry and is, according to Veeck, worth paying to hear speak. So is author, consultant and advertising entrepreneur Allen Fahden. Veeck plans to speak too, of course, and he described how he never expected to stand in front of a business audience and talk about anything particularly serious.