Well, not by name, but yesterday I participated in the world’s largest group yodel. Not that I can yodel really, but I can move my mouth and pretend to, just like in church.

The event was sponsored by Yahoo as some promotional thing. It was actually quite a bit of fun. They lured employees, family and friends with promises of free beer, a t-shirt, some free entertainment and a chance to win an iPod. Sadly I did not win the iPod.

They had all kinds of media there and the mayor of Sunnyvale, so I think they had to make sure they would break the previous Guinness record of 937. They had thousands of buttons printed up with “I broke the record on them”, then the execs upped the ante with promises to work the cafeteria for the day if we did it. At 4 pm the COO got on the intercom system (which I didn’t even know we had) and told everyone to stop working and go yodel.

There sure were a lot of people there. 1773 to be exact which was enough to break the record as long as it’s certified by the Guinness people. That must be one strange job to maintain those records.

This must have had some serious promotional value to the company. Let’s say the average Yahoo makes $50/hour and there were 1700 employees there for a half-hour. That’s $50 * 1700 / 2 = $85,000 plus all the setup, t-shirts and other event-related costs probably made it over $100,000. In any case, Terry Semel looked relieved when the Mayor of Sunnyvale annouced the total.

Tyler Marie Ware was there and she has quite a voice for an 8-year-old. They also showed the commercial that she was in as part of her prize for winning the competition.

Wylie Gustafson led the yodel (who seems to have made amends with Yahoo) with an answer and response, but I’m not sure that we really had everybody continuously yodeling for one minute. I guess it was good enough for them.

Apparently it was on the local tv news last night and I expect more news to appear.

It was a good bit of fun and if nothing else, it made for something to write about in my blog. 🙂

Update: My Dad found a bigger picture and I’m in it! See if you can find Waldo.