Good morning. It’s nice to be back in your inbox after last Sunday’s somewhat curtailed edition.

Well, that edition was curtailed because I was busy preparing for The Ken’s very first live subscriber event, which was scheduled for 5 pm on Monday. It did not happen, as we had to cancel it literally at the last hour (note to my millennial editor Jonathan: we cancelled it with less than 60 minutes remaining for the event to start, hence my use of the word, “literally”). One of our guest speakers became unavailable because of some unforeseen event he had to attend to.

So, about a dozen of my colleagues set themselves up into a crisis response unit over the next hour to individually call and email everyone who had bought a ticket. We had nearly sold out the beautiful 180-seater BIC auditorium, so it took a while. Some of us stood near the entrance to personally meet attendees who had already started arriving by 4.30 pm.

To our pleasant surprise, almost all of them were not just very understanding of our cancellation, they were empathetic.

“This was your first event. It must feel really bad?”

“Please don’t apologize. This couldn’t have been in your control. It happens.”

“Wow. 30 minutes to go. How are all of you handling it?”

From being defensive and disappointed, we started to get energised.

“Thanks for calling, but I’m already on my way. If you don’t mind, I’ll drop in any way and meet you folks,” said a few of the folks we called.

Divyashree Bhat, one of the many attendees who had already arrived by then (and also a subscriber), suggested we make some lemonade from the lemons we had ended up with. “Why don’t you encourage those who arrive at the venue to hang around for a while, since you already have the BIC space? I am sure subscribers would love to talk to each other and to folks from The Ken.”

So, for the next hour or so, a few dozen attendees (most also happened to be subscribers, and quite a few First Principles readers!) and all of us from The Ken hung about in BIC’s wonderful and open reception, accompanied by tea, coffee, and kombuchas from the in-house café.