KYLE-AM .. Kyle In The Morning

By Michael Breckenridge

SAN FRANCISCO — Imminent social networking site BigNinjaRobots.com ”poses for ultimate greatness,” according to lead site developer Monk Desperatov. The site is scheduled to go live at an invitation-only LAN party offered to movers and shakers from both the open source and social networking communities.

“OMFG, this is the hostest with the mostest,” major blogger Omar Ragu said. “I will *SO* be blogging there. BigNinjaRobots deprecates everything. My new profile and blog are so now, I’m wearing color.” Ragu is not a coder but does bring his public relations knowledge to the partnership. “The mashup is like a hipper skin of Imeem, GarageBand, and DropJack. It’s kuah.”

“We are bumpin’, and I’m not talkin’ forums,” Desperatov said. “This totally truthenizes what MySpace did to Friendster, but *much* cooler.”

“Yeah, those guys are just Mongolian zombie hordes makin’ angry fruit salad,” co-founder Jine Jine Charlottine said.

“Seriously, tho’. They’re the Microsoft of social networks. We’re the Suse Linux,” Desperatov said.

“Me, Monk and Jine Jine were knockin’ back Irish Car Bombs at this geek-out St. Patrick’s Day party when I realized we were the 3 Wise Men,” Ragu said. “I mean, not just because of our alcohol content, but because of our skillz, man. We are loco sick, the mouse in the hizzouse. I mentioned how casters-up so many fugglies are when Monk’s hardcore ideas just started spillin’.”

“I’m a time travelin’, buzzin’, rappin’, freakin’ ninja, man,” Desperatov said while busting some moves and flashing gang signs.

“Haha, he’s our designated drunk,” Charlottine said.

“We’re all the designated drunk,” Ragu said.

I’m an anal fistin’ kamikaze june bug surfer on acid having sex on the beach in my Dana Point paradise, you muthafuckas,” Desperatov said as he swizzled an Oreo Lebowski.

“Haha, da boss is da bomb, check that,” Charlottine said.

“But seriously, those other nets are gonna be drawin’ aces cuz of us,” Desperatov said. “We’re talkin’ bagged and tagged.”

“Not that we’re tossin’ gauntlets, understand,” Ragu said, schlepping into his P.R. mode. “In fact, we’re offering a Toyota signature Adam Carolla Corolla to any competing exec who’d like to break their site’s crayons and pac-man our debt load. We’ll even throw in the big office. How twee is that?”

BigNinjaRobots hopes to start an IPO as soon as any exchange will let them. First, however, they’ll need some empty suits to give them the right appeal to the financial world. “We will totally excessorize the right exec. No shit,” Ragu said.

“They just need to cowgirl up their technolust for reals,” Desperatov said. “No dap and dip bluetooling allowed. This is technosexual.”

“Yeah, it’s like, DropJack’s got the face card but we’re all sevens, man, cuz seven eight nine,” Charlottine said. “Who’s your mac daddy now?”

“Double true,” Ragu said.

By Michael Breckenridge

MENLO PARK, Calif. — While many companies plan summer picnics and softball games to boost camaraderie, creative organizations may choose more challenging or inventive methods of building rapport. The Creative Group, a specialized staffing service providing marketing, advertising, creative and web professionals on a project basis, recently asked 250 U.S. advertising and marketing executives to describe unusual team-building activities they have heard of or taken part in.

Those surveyed were asked, “What is the wackiest or most unusual team-building activity you’ve ever heard of a firm participating in?” Here are some of their responses:

• “Team skydiving.”
• “A group Segway tour.”
• “Line dancing on the beach in matching outfits.” 
• “We had to navigate a maze through a cornfield.”

Then again, misery loves company, which may have been the thought behind these next group outings:

• “We shoveled horse manure in a stable.”
• “We went camping 9,000 feet up and it rained for two days.” 

Some activities required employees to take a leap of faith:

• “People would fall out of a tree and hope their team would catch them.”
• “We created a human bridge to cross a small stream.”

“Teamwork and innovation are essential in the creative field, so firms are always looking for ways to enhance morale and spark the imagination,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of The Creative Group. “Because industry professionals are innovative, it’s only natural that their group activities sometimes stray from the beaten path.”

When choosing a fun group outing, for example, why go bowling or have a barbecue? KYLE-AM conducted its own survey of insane companies and discovered a harrowing array of death-defying team-building choices:

• “Our company baited shark-infested waters and then asked employees to swim naked to a floating platform half a mile out.”
• “The boss said it would demonstrate our company’s commitment to multicultural values if one of us ‘appeased the fire god’ and jump into a live volcano on our trip to Hawaii.”
• “I was part of a BASE jumping team who first had to stand waist-deep in a vat of cement. My pants fell off from the weight. Otherwise, I’d have ended up like the others.”
• “My girlfriend said her boss wanted to have a ‘Fear Factor’ contest that included kissing a live rattlesnake, eating poisonous mushrooms and something called ‘putting our heads together’ — with a bucket of superglue.”
• “My office brought in one of those money machines, except that for every dollar we caught, the amount was multiplied by ten and deducted from our paycheck. The money was supposed to be given to charity.”
• “We drew cards from a hat to determine what our team would do. My team had to set cars on fire in our competitor’s parking lot across town.”
• “My department head fired everyone and stipulated that if we divided into two teams and played tug-of-war across a swimming pool filled with sewage, the winning team could return to work with a 25 cent per hour raise.” 
• “Our company sponsored an enterprise-wide truth-or-dare contest. The winning entrant was dared to join a gang and go through the hazing ceremony.”
• “My office was divided into teams and had to act out scenes from pop songs. One of the teams used live ammunition to act out the scene from the Soul Coughing song Screenwriter’s Blues where lovers murder each other. It was very exciting.”

But the award for the most tragic company team-building event went to infamous call center conglomerate Telehell, Inc. in North Wackoff, Virginia. A fire broke out in the basement of the building. Following an employee productivity study last year, the fire alarms had been deactivated. Everyone stayed at their desks as the building became a towering inferno. By the time someone noticed flames and smoke coming up the elevator shafts and the stairwells, it was too late. Everyone broke the windows with office chairs and jumped to their deaths.

The sprinklers came on and put out the fire before the security camera tapes were consumed. Playing them back revealed the orderly participation of the employees in their last moments of life.

“I’m proud of what our previous team building efforts had accomplished,” Telehell CEO Jack Azwhol said. “When the going got tough, they worked together and remained cohesive and that’s really what team building is all about.”