This Is Not a Joke

Well, that was something you don't see every day. Last night at the 89th annual Academy Awards, Best Picture presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway teamed to up to incorrectly declare the showbiz strivers musical La La Land winner of the evening's biggest prize, the Oscar for Best Picture. It was only a matter of moments before the announcement of the actual winner, the coming-of-age drama Moonlight, but the legend of the biggest screw-up in Oscars history, played out in its entirety on live TV, is already off and running.

It was an honest mistake, and not really on the part of Beatty and Dunaway. Seconds before taking the stage, Beatty was handed the wrong envelope, a duplicate left over from the already announced Best Actress win by La La Land leading lady Emma Stone. Upon opening it and seeing the words, "Emma Stone for La La Land," he hesitated for several seconds, before saying, "The Academy Award (pause) for Best Picture (longer pause)." Thinking that Beatty was ginning up fake drama, Dunaway teased, "You're impossible." Still uncertain, Beatty showed her the envelope, whereupon she leaned into the microphone and declared, "La La Land."

The La La Land producers, director and stars took the stage to celebrate arguably the biggest career accomplishment there is for U.S. filmmakers. A speech was underway. And then the curveball. Jordan Horowitz, one of the La La Land producers, is the guy in the videos that were all over Twitter within seconds. It's Horowitz who says the immortal words, "There's a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture." A few seconds later, still holding an actual Best Picture Oscar, he says, "This is not a joke. Moonlight has won Best Picture."

There are a lot of lessons here: For one, be like Jordan Horowitz. This guy stepped into possibly the most awkward moment in Academy Awards history, no doubt while experiencing extreme personal bewilderment, and moved the show along in probably as gracious a manner as the circumstances allowed.

A simpler, more easily digestible lesson is this: Mistakes happen. Even (perhaps especially) in the precise and rational IT realm, there's still plenty of room for human error. That's one reason that the LabSim courseware we use here at TestOut Continuing Education is so effective. It's designed to replicate actual IT situations, and let you walk through the performance of actual IT tasks. You can make as many mistakes as you like, all without damaging equipment, compromising business outcomes, or ending up in a video loop on Twitter for the rest of your life.

Because, after all, mistakes are educational. We learn from failure: What did I do that caused this to go wrong? What do I need to do differently next time? LabSim lets you gain that valuable experience by yourself, on your laptop, without millions of onlookers witnessing a real-time learning curve.