Every speaker must respect the power of a potato

A potato?  Jim writes ...

Bored audiences will get up and walk out of your speeches. How would you keep the attention of 400+ engineers who were attending an industry dinner event that they didn’t really want to be at on a weekday evening? I recently had the opportunity to be the master of ceremonies at such an event – great gig, tough crowd.

OK so how was a potato of use here?   Read the article for an example of how Jim used creativity and how it works so well in successful public speaking assignments