Mickey and the trees
My five-year-old daughter got her wish this summer with a family trip to the Magic Kingdom to visit Mickey, Goofy, and the gang. By the time we were two hours south of Atlanta on Interstate 75 South, the signs were already proclaiming the wonders of Orlando, Fla. It is a mecca for worldwide vacationers, and you can see the relief on people’s faces as they arrive (and even more so as they leave).
Disney—the corporation—knows how to entertain every member of the family, and since its inception in the 1970s, Walt Disney World has grown into a massive complex dedicated to amusement and diversion. Along the way, the company has also made an effort to inform and educate on such topics as science, nature, space, communication, etc.
“TOTAL TREEVIA?” Although I knew I couldn’t expense my family vacation, I did have one work-related mission during the several days we spent at the multiple theme parks. Through press releases and personal communications, I knew that TAPPI had teamed with Disney’s Epcot Center in an Innoventions display called, “Forests For Our Future.”
Innoventions is a series of exhibits housed in Epcot’s Future World, and it highlights some of the cutting edge thinking of such companies as IBM, Motorola, Sega, Xerox, and General Motors. I vowed that I would spend a little time finding out if there were forests for our future. One hot afternoon while our daughter napped with her grandmother (who came along on the trip), my wife and I visited Innoventions.
The welcome coolness inside the Innoventions building was a benefit, and as we rounded a corner, we walked right onto the forest floor, suddenly surrounded by trees and rocks made from—you guessed it—hard plastic. It would be easy to make jokes with the combination of words “forests,” “future,” and “plastic,” but to be fair it’s not surprising that the materials of construction might be dictated by Disney and its need for safety. Most of the trees and rocks included video screens set into them, and there are very few computer monitors, if any, constructed of wood.
A few people were milling about in this future forest. At one of the screens, I was able to design my own forest and chose mostly correctly for something that would balance good yield with a stable ecosystem. Just before the top of the hour, a booming voice called out to folks, that the game show, “TAPPI’s Total Tree-via,” would begin.
That voice belonged to Disney cast member Robert Moszenberg, a hyperactive game show host dressed in something that looked much like a Forest Service uniform. In the next 15 minutes, Moszenberg walked 20-25 people through a trivia game that covered questions from recycling to biotechnology.
The Q&A sounded much like a quick-witted AF&PA brochure delivered by Moszenberg and his electronic pre-recorded correspondent, with both cracking jokes at the audience’s expense. But this is Disney, where fast-paced is the rule and sound bites reign supreme. Very seldom does the costumed Mickey speak for more than a minute.
By the time Moszenberg ended his presentation, the younger members of the audience were already scrambling to find the Sega Games area, but several in the audience hung around to find out a little more. My wife and I moved on to see the house of the future and to send an e-postcard to our friends
A NOBLE EFFORT. In this space through the years, we at Pulp & Paper have urged leadership in the industry not to preach to the choir (that’s typically our job) but to communicate about the industry and its relevance in everyday life. Through “Forest For Our Future,” TAPPI has done just that.
It’s hard to get specific numbers about how many people might move through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, but TAPPI has chosen a forum that reaches a massive global audience. Yes, the messages delivered during this brief stop in the Epcot forest are elementary, but they are consistent and delivered in a style that vacationers would find appealing. We salute TAPPI for this monumental effort at in-forming the masses about the paper industry.
Now if we could just get I-P to partner with Sega on a “Forest For Our Future—The Video Game.”
|
