The hospital demo we’ve been working on for a month is now out in hands of customers as of yesterday and today. The final page of the demo is a link to a microsite, which was to be completed by The Designer and Riddler. Before customers ever would have received the demo.

Last Friday, after 6pm, Riddler asks me how to make a hyperlink on a web page. This was the first clue that something bad had happened.

Why? The microsite hasn’t been built. Riddler had forgotten about it, and now that everyone capable of building this site has left for the weekend he’s attempting to design and build the microsite himself. (No, he doesn’t know how to do these things.)

Riddler fancies himself to be a gifted designer – regardless of the fact that he hasn’t done any design work in the era of the web. Remember, he’s the president of an interactive multimedia company which prides itself on cutting-edge work.

The final result? A white page, with some unstyled black text, the wrong marketing message, a hyperlink to an unrelated location, and a mailto: link which didn’t work.

The page looked as if it was designed by a 2-year old, not the ‘professional award-winning multimedia company’ referred to on the site.

And that’s why today started with a meeting to discuss this thoroughly embarrassing situation and to resolve it as fast as possible.