Behind every successful performance, such as was the jazz symposium at the 1995 Academy of Management Conference, are people who have worked long and hard to try to ensure that the event will come to fruition; who have solved tricky problems and improvised in a number of ways, so that the performers can do their craft with a maximum of opportunity to excel. In the case of this symposium, organizing involved having very specialized microphones in place and in working order. It required getting all the right permits (some unanticipated) approved and it meant having an effective grasp of and control over the logistics of a complex process well beyond the prior experience base of most of the organizers involved. It meant doing these things at a ridiculously low price and yet operating at a cost that was higher than anticipated. New money had to be found, rules and laws had to be bent or reframed or reinterpreted. When the magic of the session unfolded, when people were learning, having fun and being moved by what they experienced on stage, it was due, in no small part, to the individuals behind the scenes who themselves had performed, learned and improvised and who thus had helped created conditions that enabled the event to take place. Such individuals often are unsung heroes. They have stories to tell that are interesting and instructive. What follows are the recollections of one such hero, Steve Havlovic, Chair of the Local Arrangements Committee for the 1995 Academy of Management Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In conversation with Peter Frost, he talks about the roles that he and others who worked with him played in preparing the ground for the jazz symposium and he describes some of what happened along the way. The story provides a perspective on the way improvisation and organizing may be intertwined in both the figure and the ground of a novel event.
