Why Would Three Self-Respecting Professional Mediators Play Dress-Up?
Many attendees at the 2006 annual conference of the Section on Dispute Resolution had to look twice when they saw one of the characters pictured here walking the conference halls. When most learned that these were actually colleagues – the question was the same: Why would these self-respecting mediation professionals play dress up? First Hint: The educational session was titled, “Heavy Metal Mediation” An interesting name for an ABA conference, but what does rock and roll have to do with mediation? Answer: it was about a taking a Rock-N-Roll attitude toward mediating commercial cases. But why the make-up? Second Hint: The message is in the medium. The rest of the course’s title was, “Real Tools for the Real World of Commercial Mediation.” The message was about more than getting outside of the box –it was about tearing the box to shreds. It was three hours of “forget everything you learned in Mediation 101” and “if it isn’t broken, break it!” and “rules are made to be broken”. Conventio
